7 Crazy Secrets In Classic WoW 

I think a lot of the places like Shatterspear and the mostly inaccessible dwarven farms (there's also one in wetlands hills) or the airstrip are just there to make the place look lived in, not everyone needs the help of adventurers. It helped a lot in creating the atmosphere of an actual world rather than themepark you ride through.

A lot of this stuff, like the Troll village and the farms, were added for flight paths. The idea was that you would fly over the world and see all these cool things that you simply couldn't get too and the world would look alive.

8:01 when the intern is told to delete the gnome village but he doesn't know how so he just removes the models into sea at the corner of the map

Fun fact: the hidden dwarf camp now in retail, is abandoned and if you go inside the hut, the music changes to a creepy vibe and there is a skeleton standing by the table.

Fun Fact: The island you water walked to has relevance! In phase 5 for AQ 40. a scepter bearer/scarab lord must open the door for the server after both factions have gathered 100,000s of resources. The quest-line to get the mount and scepter are some of the most rigorous quests line classic and need a guild to support you. Somewhere down the line there's a quest for a Naga and a Gnome to become lovers, after you do so you get a swim spell that lets you swim in fatigue water in order to get to that island and dig up another item.

The underwater town was reachable by engineers. There was a chance that the gadgetzan teleporter would, in stead, teleport you down there. With no real way to get out.

Hidden floor in the Undercity suppose to be in game but Blizz decided that it will be too confusing for people to navigate around. Something like old Ironforge

The South Sea Islands. I remember exploring this. There's a ton of underwater buildings, as well for apparently no use. You could only really see them by using the farsight shaman power and explore the ocean floor. There was also a bottle on one of the islands...though I don't remember if it was a part of the original islands or after the islands got an overhaul. There was a message in the bottle that simply said, "What the heck are you dong here?" Yes, there was a typo in the word "doing" which showed as "dong"...so most players who knew about the islands referred to them as the "Dong Islands".

you still missed a few big ones: on the tallest mountain in stonetalon theres a big "HELP ME" written in ground textures, the secret tauren village south of silithus, and newman's landing (which is where new characters spawn before the intro cinematic starts)

Man I remember going to all these places. I'd sometimes just sit in Newman's Landing. I also think a lot of these places were made for something to look at during certain flight paths because one flight path went right through the village of the dancing trolls.

There is another hidden place: if during Vanilla/Classic you went to the north coast of Tirisfal Glades and started swimming northeast along the coast, you'd eventually come to an area with Night Elf architecture. Just a few empty and abandoned buildings, no NPCs. But it did resemble the NE starting area in feel. This area was later overlaid by Eversong Woods and Silvermoon City, so is now completely gone. There were apparently lore reasons for the village, but evidently before the Blood (or High) Elves were given their own distinctive architecture, so basic NE structures were used. Speaking of Silvermoon City, if you stand outside the city and jump, you can see buildings and towers that do not exist when you actually enter the city.

Alot of these are just places they put in to see when you take a flight path

South sea islands used to be part of the AQ quest line.

No one ever mentions the troll village that’s outside of Kara if you go out of bounds while inside the raid.

So originally the plan was never to make expansions for WoW but just to add and increase the size of the world over time (kinda like WarFrame is going now for example) that is why most of these areas are in the game. Obviously later on blizz changed their minds and did decide to release expansions (weird right, more money and suddenly the plan changed.. :p). There's some old dev vids were Jeff talks about this from like 2005 orso.

This is one of my favorite things about WoW! There's so many cool random places to find, even without going out of bounds on the map. It makes Azeroth feel so big and real, which is the main reason I first fell in love with the game as a kid!

In vanilla/BC, as an Alliance player, I went to Shatterspear and all the NPCs were neutral to me. Had a good time partying with them, waving at people on the flight path overhead, spamming /dance and /laugh. I always wished locations like that had NPCs you could interact with, like simple traders who carried something minor but unique (a kind of fruit you couldn't get anywhere else, for example), tiny quests (solve the mystery of the murdered family in the tauren farm south of Silithus, bring some beer to the lonely dwarven farmer, find the pirate treasure in the South Sea Islands), a unique skin for a hunter pet, etc. My favorite secret area was Developer Island, though.

I went to the South Seas islands with my lock without any water walking or swim speed potions... Just was careful to get as close as I could before fatigue started, SS'd myself, created a healthstone, and started swimming straight for it.... Once I was almost dead from fatigue, ate my lock rock, kept swimming til dead... and then popped my SS and swam the rest of the way... wasn't too terribly difficult, tbh...

The shatterspear trolls village i think is a fly over point. Blizz used to put interesting little easter eggs along flight paths.

first one is just for flight path scenery.

I've been to that building at the bottom of the ocean in Tanaris without cheating whatsoever! It requires a very well geared resto druid (with mana potions) and you can outheal the extreme fatigue. Mixed with seal form you can outlast pretty much any fatigue until you reach the end of the earth. Also, if you touch the floor of the ocean in that place you immediately die.

I always thought the Shatterspear village was just scenery as you'd fly over there with the gryphon. After Cataclysm the place actually es part of Darkshore and is questing area for Alliance.

I remember watching a video in 2007, that was like 240p about the Bengal tiger mount.

The coolest things u could find in old vanilla wow was when you wall walked out from instances or blinked out etc. Getting out of bound in deadmines you would see the old dalaran sphere just randomly placed repeatedly over a ravine... If you went out from Zul'Farrak instance you would find plain white textured floor covering the whole shimmering flats. We covered some of it in Nogg-Aholic the movie. But not all :D

The underwater area might have been a developer drop spot, where they've dropped some things they needed in the zone, but forgot to clean up afterward.

Found that underwater mining village in wrath and managed to see It in the live server. But I noticed on the map where there is a generic compass looking thing over the water there is something in that location.

The underwater houses off the coast of Tanaris is for a engineering quest in Legion to get Blingtron 6000. It's a fun quest chain xD

There could be several reasons to why there is a village in the ocean. It could be that a developer put it there so that one could copy certain elements that were needed multiple times in the map without having to load it in each time. And then they forgot about it. Or it could be that the village used to be somewhere else and then removed temporarily for whatever reason. And then temporarily became permanent and they forgot about it.

showing the location on the map for some of these locations would have been helpful lol

That “secret” place in undercity, is the place where the Vendors were back in the days of the BETA. 🤗 E clearly remember it.

engineers in legion go to the sunken tanaris gnome buildings as part of a quest. there were additional buildings in the vanilla map that did end up getting removed post cataclysm, though. but the gnome buildings stayed

“However, with that being said”

South Islands were part of the Scarab Sceptre questline. You would reach them with a swimspeed buff from a naga. The zone in Stonetalon are actually used in the new Stonetalon after Cataclysm

The southsea islands are part of the Scepter of the shifting sands questline you get a buff from the mermaid to allow you to speedily cross the water.

the logging camp is the one that was destroyed in the TFT bonus orc campaign and was under admiral proudmores command

Nice vidz as always, vaulty I watched almost all your vidz, awesome content, I played vanilla 15y ago and seeing all of this is a pleasure, and I literally didn't know almost everything xD although I was a hardcore... Big up to your edition/narration really I loved watching all your vidz

The second place you have to go for the quest cain for the AQ 40 opening ;)

That last one looks like part of hyjal in the deayhwing expansion

it feels like I've watched this video for the 100th time, even though its the first time LMAO!!

I was really hoping to see the old classic way to enter Mount Hyjal, before it was an available zone. You had to go to Dark Whisper Gorge in Winterspring and do a bunch of wall jumping and use the old unstuck method where it teleported you forward (before the Hearth and Graveyard unstuck features). I wish I still had all my pics and videos from when I used to go in there and explore. It was very similar to how it looks now but without any NPCs. It even had a goblin road sign in it that said "Under Construction" or something. I'll try to see if you can still do it.

The hidden Dwarven farm you mentioned in hinterlands does hold value in the retail version of the game. There's an incredibly extensive chain of events to do that ultimately take you here in the end. This isn't a marked quest series nor are any quests involved. It starts by getting the battle pet Uuna and there's a really long story for her that you and it takes you to various locations including a time only instance that most people have never even seen. By the time you actually finish up this entire chain of events, Uuna will have all of her stuff including her wand. After you complete all that, there's a separate chain of events where you have to go around giving clicking on pebbles in a certain order, one of which is wayyyyyy out in the fatigue zone directly north of Nazmir in zandalar. After you go and find all these pebbles, you will eventually unlock Baal as a fightable battle pet in Frostfire ridge, BUT this is the tricky part. In order to beat Baal, you have to have Uunas story 100% complete and she'll weaken Baal for you to defeat and then claim. AFTER you've done ALLLLLLL that, Baal himself starts the very last of the series and I won't talk too much about it but at the end of this final extensive as fuck puzzle, you finally make your way to that hidden Dwarven farm in hinterlands where after completing a few of the puzzle steps there, you loot a hidden unique, one of a kind transmog appearance called The Waist of Time. This is a tremendously cool tmog and it has no other skins or recolors, it is 100% unique and exclusive. However getting this is...... A VERY lengthy and time consuming task. On a day off I was able to do the entire thing in about 16 hours, and that's flat out no lifing it. I'm talking minimal bathroom breaks and only 2 eating breaks for lunch and dinner. For a normal working person, I wager that this would take a while... A long while 😂😂 But yes, the Dwarven farm does hold relevance on retail at least!

that troll village seems surprisingly peaceful o.0

The very last location was an epic fight. I recall doing it. I seem to recall the Ancient Guardians being involved as well. Maybe riding one? It was forever ago. Perhaps 2007 or 8. I may have been experimenting with jet at the time . . .

wow! I cant believe these CRAZY secrets were right in front of me this whole time!! incredible vid!

You forgot the secret hidden level of Ironforge. you had to jump on a certain windowsill and walk into the wall to fall though it into the secret area. this area would later be opened up when the dwarf king was turned to crystal. but in vanilla this was the only way to get there. OH YEAH and there used to be a hole in the ground by Karazan that was so small only gnomes could fit though it. Down the hole was a cavern and on the ground was a giant smiley face. 🙂

I'm a vanilla enjoyer and you know a "secrets in classic" video is good when the FIRST item on the list is something I didn't know about. New fan :)

The underwater village is accessible through normal means. Take a level 1 priest. It has to be level 1 and a priest. They have enough heals with their level 1 heal to beat fatigue damage. Use an undead for increased water breathing. Get that level 1 priest to the bottom of Tanaris and you're G2G. It will take a bit to reach from healing yourself but it is do-able. I have the screenshots in my wow folder and I've never hacked or cheated.

Dev here (not a wow dev) I can explain 7:07 - This is probably where items are loaded into the game if a scene dresser has called for that object, but a location has not been given... its likely their world zero (0,0 coords for them) or could also be where anything that is either bugged or pending deletion is sent first for review or just for ease of deleting when the server's are next down for maintenance. Id be willing to bet that every time you go there thing have changed slightly

At one stage in Vanilla, Blizz nerfed the climbing angle to reduce the climbing into no go zones. On my mage I crossed from the mountains in Badlands into Burning Steppes, it says Terror Wing Path in the mountains. I did a Slow Fall into a bunch of elite draginkin which were 15 levels above. Later this was impossible because the climbing angle was changed. This was mentioned in the release notes but I forget which.

There was more of this weird stuff in closed beta. We gave /feedback or /bug reports when we found them. Some was fixed..like the mountain glitching to the developers flat plane outside the map in blasted lands. Some didn't.

I remember finding the island discussed at 3:52 during WOTLK (when it originally came out) while going for the explorer achievement and when I took a hiatus from wow shortly before Cata came out I logged out my main on that island.

Those early exploration videos were completely bonkers. The Emerald Dream and stuff. That was real crazy. It always fascinated me how much stuff they actually planned and wasn’t implemented.

There's also the landing field close to Ironforge. Normally you fly over it on the way to Menethil harbor, but if you take a secret wall climbing path near the tunnels leading to the wetlands, you can scale your way up there. Also, there's the secret path that you can take if you follow the coast land past Scarlet Monastery. It leads you to an old night elf tower, and some neat land, but if you keep going around to where Quel'thalas is, you can scale the cliff and get into the unfinished kingdom itself. It's all blank save for a single night elf style house near the tree barricade. Another one is an abandoned dock on the other side of the Elwynn mountain range. You can get there by following the coastline from Westfall. Just swim out there from where the murlocs are.

Nice vid ^^ Some locations there i didn´t know, and some that are missing. For example the Old Ironforge an whole city below Ironforge, or the Airport above IF with the "World End Tunnel"

One person, a little girl. Got the bangle tiger mount. The make a wish foundation contacted blizzard on her behalf and blizzard gave her the mount. A pretty cool thing. To bad blizzard isn't that generous any more. #freehongkong

The abandoned "gnome" looking area from the beginning of the vid reminds me of the goblin lumber camps in Stranglethorn. Maybe this was meant to be part of STV but Blizz devs said "wait, the zone is already huge". Or maybe just was meant to be a goblin themed questing area. Or maybe just dev clutter from when they were placing similar assets in STV that never got deleted.

I've wondered about the troll dance party for YEARS! thank you!

Good video, but you forgot Hyjal! It's enormous (has it's own chat channel) and the world tree is on top. If your into exploring definitely check that out as well.

I remember just fooling around during vanilla and deciding to see what I could find see by walking around the map boundary from Feralis to Tanaris. Found a farm and a large cave with no npcs

#6 that island is for scarab lord quest chain, u can get there with a buff from an npc that are under water and she will give you the buff to swim fast to that island.

The Island from 9:16 is a part of the Waste of Time archievment in retail actualy

A world map screenshot would be helpful for some of these.

This is not as secret (as it is immediately off the IF "public" flight) but you can get up (in person) to the frozen lake above Ironforge where there is an NPC battle going on all the time. Edit: Or _could,_ I don't know what it's like now (I stopped playing at around BC)

I never seen someone talking about crom’s cave. Conan got his sword from there. I stumbled on it in the game just like Conan did. It was a nice experience.

Thank you for the nice video. From all the places, I somewhat knew only about the Undercity.

Still amazed people dont know about that hidden spot that once existed in the mountain side you had to clip inside which you would fall into a hidden area under the map where there were critters that gave enough xp to lvl 1-60 in like a few mins and gave 1 gold each back in 2006-7 and at some point people found out and they patched it. Was one of the devs that made the spot for his own xp/gold farm which was leaked and a small % of people counting me found out and used it but it was patched not long after.

I would love a WoW Dev interview asking about these secret zones!

The dwarven farm, the troll village, the dwarven airport.. Many of these were added to the game to make the world feel lived in and to give players something to look at while on flight paths through the mountains. They aren’t “Easter eggs” and weren’t planned to be used for further game features, they’re simply decorations for what would’ve been boring empty-looking spots you fly over in the world.

The random building of out of the way often where areas creators used. When creating game areas they would often use out of the way areas to work on ideas. Since you can't get to the stuff by normal means. The troll and dwarf areas were both added as fly over areas much like the airfield by ironforge. The creators added stuff like NPCs in the building I think for their own amusement lol. Or expected people to find their way there... like hyjal pre-cata.

2:31 is for the scarab lord quest line, a naga will get you there if you help her that only spawns when you have the quest. I’m probably not the only comment explaining this, maybe you already know :)

I knew about the Undercity level, I only found out because back in the day there was a player on my server who would kill people in the city from up there.

This video is the sort of thing that I hope they go forward with in regards to Classic...the old game mechanics, when they weren't garbage, and more fully explore the old world. By MoP they'd made such a hash of it that I couldn't bring myself to log in any more...

I remember "mountain climbing" to the troll village. So much fun. ^_^ In retail, you can walk in from darkshore

Didn't hear it during the tiger bit of the video, but apparently the reason why we never got an orange tiger is due to the art director having a minor conniption once seeing it in the game, and supposedly sent out an email informing everyone that Nightelves ride, black, purple, or silver tigers but never an orange one.

Fun fact that town off tanaris looks like original shimmering flats before it was sank maybe they didn't wanna completely remove it

I remember this area in WoW vanilla (now retail) #7 Stonetalon Logging Camp, this is one of the areas I levelled up my Rogues Pick Pocketing skill, back when you had to level it up.

I found the first place you showed back when I first played through the game on my first toon back in vanilla/BC and i have a much easier way to make it up there if you'd like to know!

It's interesting how they put more detail into secret islands rather than zones like Slithius.

I’m pretty sure the troll village is connected to a vehicle quest. I don’t remember which quest, or what xpac it was introduced, but I remember doing a quest (alliance) where you’re flying above, and bombing all of the trolls in the village, until you get X amount and finish the quest, then automatically fly back. I remember this, because as I was doing it, I was thinking No way! This is the hidden troll village! I wish I could remember the quest lol.

there was a random Tauren farm on the south western tip of silithus too, swim from tanaris or down from shadowmoon hold. Also you could ghost walk your way through the gates under kharazan for fun times but i guess that is more well-known now.

The dawrven farm had one type of critter that you need to /love in order to complete an achievement "Make Love, not war" or something like that. I forgot which critter it was.

The south seas island are sceptre of the shifting sands related. And there is a naga that will give you a swim speed buff if you complete a small quest for her.

There were a lot of elements in earlier WoW maps that were reserved for later. For example: Mount Hyjal, Uldum, The Maelstrom, and all the Cata regions were already on the Vanilla map, but just not accessible. It only became accessible in Cata (which leads me to believe that Cata was supposed to be the last canon expansion). All the newer areas - post Cata - were added later. I think that Blizz has had the entire storyline plotted out until Cataclysm. This is evident by looking at the map. With this, they knew that they would include flying mounts in the future and completed parts of the map that can only be accessed by flying, so that they have less work to do down the line.

A couple more spots, including one I think is even better than the #1; The upside-down sinners (only accessible by using ghost form near Kharazan), Mount Hyjaal, where there's a construction sign, and quel'thalas before they added it in TBC.

I’m surprised the Karazhan window shadow world isn’t on this list. You can jump out of a window in Karazhan (if I recall correctly it’s around the repair/rep vendor near the library), land on some roof, and then jump either left or right. One direction leads you to an undeveloped model of Zul’Gurub, while the other direction leads you to an eerie farmland area that features at least one body strung up and hanging from a tree. You can do some more wall-jumping shenanigans at some point in the area and end up on the top of an unpopulated version of Karazhan. It’s wild!

#1 Shatterspear Village is for a quest line for the Alliance. You go there as a Tree dude and kill all the trolls.

Sick video. I like it a lot!

Okay. Im no Expert. But back in my days when we did what they would call "exploit-explore/walljump etc". You would find so much random shit when you went out of bounds. It was simply just Test areas, they never expected people to actually get there. So they sometimes made villages that if they liked em, they could just Copy pasta em in the "real world". When you design something it could be in the bottom of a volcano or the sea, since they don't look at layers. For them it didn't matter, people couldn't get there. So they thought.

#1 hidden farm, wouah, Vaulty, this remind me old memories, you can actually interact with that npc farm dawrf , if you are alliance, as I remember in classic wow , some NPC give you a mark or address you to the nearest class trainer... so, yes, this NPC is one of those, if you ask him where is the nearby class trainer he will tell you is at iron forge and will mark it on map, I don't remember the whole dialogues, cause yes he knows there is no trainer class nearby, but I remember he point me to iron forge. :D

You can access the mountain that ironforge is built under by jumping in NW Loch Modan. Theres a tiny gap in the wall that you can jump up near the tunnel into Dun Morogh, then after wall jumping up, you get access to an area in southern Wetlands, theres a farm with NPCs. Go along the mountain ridge and you can then access the airstrip featured in Cataclysm, and going up to the peak of the mountain is a campfire and a flag.

#1 Blizzard stated that these places were made as scenery during flights

when you mentioned the dwarven farm I thought you meant the one in the mountains between wetlands and dun morogh , as there are even more NPCs there and a tunnel to the void. also no gnomish airstrip?

You skipped the Catacombs under Karazhan, which are the creepiest, and underground Naxxramas ... How those didn't make it on this list i will never know.

I was surprised that the secret passageways and rooms in Ironforge were not mentioned. The only way to access them was by hunters. Dismiss pet and stand with left shoulder against door and summon pet. Pet will appear on other side of door. Use spell to see thru and control pet to explore these areas for the 60 second limit on this ability. Unfortunately I can’t remember exactly where this door is as I have not played an alliance toon since WOW’s second year. The hunter/pet ability was later removed and so the ability to explore this area.

Anytime I see videos like these I'm always reminded of Hayven Games, miss that dude.

Another fact: the mining camp in taranus was also used in retail and it is full of scorpid somethig npc and u can get quest from the camp

The shatterspear area is "Shatterspear vale" that became accessible in cata. I assume they just decided to finally make it part of the map

DUDE #5 I heard about that Bengal Timer rumor all the time back in classic. I was personally told that there was a NPC that sold the mount in that cave that randomly spawned for 10 mins once every week.

The "tiger cave" is using the Ogre Mound map and assets. So it's more likely that it was going to be used for Ogre related quests.

I'm surprised he didn't mention the Tauren village in Silithus