Hey everyone - this is a little bit of a different video. I figured I'd make something a little more personal to celebrate 10k subscribers, and that just so happened to align perfectly with some events in WoW. I understand this may not be everyone's cup of tea, and I don't expect this video to get as many views as normal because of that - but that's all good. I really enjoyed making this, and I hope that it is at the very least comprehensible to everyone else. If you want some more stuff from me, check out my streams over on Twitch. They're usually a strange time. You can see how truly illiterate and poorly spoken I am there. More videos coming soon. Thanks all :)
Oh this video brought me back! I remember being 12 yrs old playing this with my friend on my dads account and climbing up the cliffs, clipping through walls, glitching under Karazhan. Those were the days man, getting home from highschool, logging on and playing old school WoW. Thank you for this
Thank you for sharing your story. I'm sorry to hear about your mum passing - but it sounds like you had a wonderful time with her, your brother, and your dad. MMOs and other long-living games have such an inherent ability to grow as we do, and the stories that come from that are always very touching.
@@Painticus Thanks man, yeah hella fond memories! She was our raid healer, played an orc Shammy for my first ever raid in WoTLK. I'll never forget the yell of anger from her in the other room as someone asked if she had lag and she just muted to yell "No I'm shit!" 😂 I love hearing peoples stories with WoW, and the idea that you ran around OG Naxx is so cool, and that your brother let you take control so you could experience that for yourself! I keep wanting to go back to WoW, but like you've mentioned, the social aspect is... Daunting. But this video is a masterpiece.
Yeah that ending got me :sob: The tribute to Hayven too, my single favorite channel on UA-cam and the reason I come back to WoW time and time again. Wonderful stuff.
This video is a masterpiece. It single handedly captures the sense of nostalgia i have for the game. Ending the whole video with the grizzly hills music really puts all of it together.
I remember my first time playing WoW, I made a blood elf priest and curiously ventured past the ghostlands/plaguelands portal only to be greeted with hostile skull icon blood elves. I got scared shitless when they started running towards me, and this has stuck with me as a core memory. I absolutely adore the zone and it's ambiance, and since a Quel' Thalas revamp is pretty much confirmed with the release of Midnight, I'm really excited to see what they do with the zone. Lovely video brother
@@Painticus yeah, it was such a surreal vibe change as it all went from "midnight mystery" to an infested, reddish hellscape. It didn't help that I was 9 back then and I barely knew how to play :D
Crazy how that little "hidden path" had the exact same effect on me and my siblings; from then on, we set out to explore the world as lvl 1 characters, RPing as beggars to scrounge up some gold for god knows what :p Anyway, great video, congrats on 10k :)
Using the "Totems of the Grizzlemaw" soundtrack for the ending monologue was an excellent choice. One of the soundtracks that now hits different for me is Eversong Woods when I was playing a blood elf years ago, I associated the soundtrack with mystique and wonder and nowadays, whenever I hear it, there is so much melancholy and lost nostalgia in there. Totems of the Grizzlemaw however, is still the same gut punch now, as it always was. Amazing video and you have a really relaxing voice!
This is an insanely well done video. One of my favorite pieces of WoW content I’ve ever seen. The nostalgia filled build to the happy note of the credits was just so perfect. I was vibin then I was happy sad.
When I was a retail RPer, a group used the Karazhan Crypts as a place for an RP group. Being able to experience this strange experience with other people as we walked around and RPed with one another was an amazing feeling. One of my core memories was when I was younger. But after that little group, I decided to go back alone. And going back alone into those Crypts really puts into perspective just how creepy and off-putting it is. It was wonderful. And then Legion came out and I remember doing the steps for the Lucid Nightmare and being brought back all the to the Crypts. And to explore them another time was wonderful. The Crypts serve as such a unique place like no other in WoW. What a great video to jog the memory!
I always wished I could get into the RP elements of the game because it genuinely seems like RPers are having a better time than anyone else. And what a place to RP in too! Any kind of group stuff in the crypt must have been really fun.
I remember the feeling of lagging out of bounds in toontown and wizard101, of suddenly being somewhere else when just moments ago you were in a party of friends. Like walking through a doorway into another part of the house and suddenly hearing all your friends voices stop all at once.
That change to the "Quel'thalas" region above Stratholme is 100% prepping for the actual kingdom of Quel'thalas to be brought into the main map in Midnight.
Man I miss playing WoW as a kid. My dad showed me how to play when I was about 9, and I don't think I ever reached level 30 because the main thing I did in the 4 years or so I played was pick a random direction and go walking off into it until I reached a barrier or enemies I couldn't run away from fast enough. I think I've spent my entire gaming experience since trying to chase that feeling again. Thanks for reigniting my nostalgia. Maybe I'll ask my dad if my old character still exists.
MMOs are so good for liminal spaces because of the wide empty spaces meant to be filled with players, or empty interiors with nothing in them, waiting for some players to roleplay in those environments.
Wow, this video was a beautiful love note to the most mysterious and sentimental aspects of the game we love(d). Thanks for making this wonderful piece
I started playing with my brother myself back in Feb 2007 after TBC came out. We used to share an account but by the end of TBC, he had his own and I had 2 with me paying for all 3. We played all the way up to Shadowlands with me taking a brief break in MoP and WoD due to money, but his account was kept up. In that time frame, I couldn't afford to pay for my own accounts, but I always found money for his. My brother stopped playing not because he lost interest but because COVID took him the day after Shadowlands came out. It took me until Oct 2023 to finally convince myself to come back and play again although I didn't let my accounts or his lapse in that time frame. I upgrade all 3 to Dragonflight, and I still pay for his account even if he can no longer play with me. Sometimes I log into it just to play with his toons alongside my own like we used to do even if his toons are only on follow with mine. While I've upgrade my two accounts to The War Within, I haven't upgraded his. I haven't decided if his account will only get the free expansion upgrades going forward and I'll only upgrade mine or if I'll upgrade his later when it goes on sale. I'll likely never cancel his subscription, though. We played for 13 years together and I've already sunk a lot of money into the game. Paying $155.88 for a year subscription for an account I don't really play just to have something of my brother still with me is nothing.
I'm so sorry to hear about your brother. It sounds like you had a wonderful time together over the years and it was incredibly kind of you to support all of those accounts by yourself. I don't know if this applies to every sibling relationship - but I know that in mine we're not always vocal about our gratitude or love for one another. I can see that your brother means the world to you, and I guarantee he felt that. Thank you for being a wonderful sibling, and know that he'll always be with you both in-game and out. I hope you're doing alright ❤
It's weird. I only started playing WoW about three years ago with Classic. But it has easily become one of my favorite games. Even though I wasn't around for the OG days, those days were when I was a kid playing games. I always wanted to play WoW but didn't have a good PC. I'm just thankful that I can finally explore Azeroth. And hey, I'm shy too. But there are some chill guilds out there!
There is alot of lore about the tower of karazhan in the book 'the last guardian'. It is said that there was a "mirrored" tower going underground beneath it with all the devilry. I recall that there was a mention about the upside down corpses as well.
Oh very cool! I've been meaning to read some of the novels for a while. I've spent so much time listening to lore channels like Nobbel, I feel like I should commit. If there's anything that hints towards the Crypts at all I'm very interested.
An absolutely fantastic video, that managed to put words to a lot of the feelings I have when it comes to games as a whole, and my love for exploring the things we're never really meant to see or how a game was going to be in earlier versions. Even as someone new to WoW who came over from XIV only recently, that final section about coming home really did hit me. I look forward to seeing more videos from you, man. I hope you have a good day.
It's really cool to see people coming over to WoW from FFXIV - for a year or two it really looked like the writing was on the wall for Blizzard (and rightfully so). It's really great to see how they are turning things around - and it's also lovely to see how many people now have a place for both FF and WoW at the same time. Both games are wonderful, and both have had their ups and downs. Long gone is the tribalism that once existed (albeit largely one-sided from WoW fans) and we can all just enjoy the games together now :)
29:40 "this entire snowy area [within Naxxramas] that was fabricated ... for the final boss room" So, this is actually a cut out chunk of Winterspring. The reason this is in KT's room was intended to show you after you kill him that you're seeing the magics of Northrend, as a kind of "see you here eventually!" wink to the playerbase, but that continent was but a glimmer in Blizzard's eye in 2006 when Naxx40 went live, so they just used Winterspring as a standin for Northrend. This same section was also used for the cinematic trailer of Kel'thuzad released for 1.12.
I, like you, started this game as an incoherent child. I never reached max until WotLK and have continued playing retail and classic into my adult life. Damn, this video spoke to me in so many ways, the mystery and nostalgia surrounding little things in azeroth, things I'll never be able to experience again you captured it perfectly. Phenomenal video, thank you
hey, this made me weirdly emotional, not in a bad way- so thank you, i been playing wow since i was 7yo and sharing a laptop with my mom..even though my idea of "playing" was fishing for her lvl 80 lock in wrath and making 17 level 1-10s getting them lost and deleting them..or being like 11 yo in cata rping as a cat in duskwood on my druid, i never got to completely PLAY high end wow before bfa, i quit in shadowlands, came back for dragonflight and now do content i never knew id be able to even do..mythic raiding, high keys..rated pvp...ect..speaking of rated pvp the vicious saddle mounts were some of the most amazing looking mounts i ever seen when i was younger, an unobtainable thing to drool over basically, and now that i have 3 of them it just feels weird, i like them, theyre cool, but now what? same thing with time lost, i remember flying around northerend on my moms character looking for him when it was current, and now this year i got him for us both..and another friend of mine, i honestly hope people keep needing me to farm him out for them because i like having the excuse to go back to that zone, some things i have now i wish i didnt, and i still wish i could go back to being a child wearing dresses on a hunter and needing my moms help through most quests i was doing..unfortunately my parents have such little interest in playing now which is pretty painful considering i never got to play with them at a max level or anything, my silly little dream was to raid with them, just a game but yet it is not, the sentimental value wow holds on my own and many peoples lives is insane, my parents met there,and i met my current partner there too, most of my core happy memories in my chaotic childhood were of wow..the main thing i shared with my parents to bond over..was wow, if we have any say in what our afterlife is like i think i know what that would be.
I've never played WoW. But this video has a very comfortable feeling to it. It may not perform as well as other videos as you said, but i am glad you made it anyways
I haven't played the game in many years but still can't help watching it from a distance. Similar to you I also loved exploring hidden nooks and all the places that felt like I wasn't supposed to go there. Gotta say though I love how they handle the draw distance with the fog in-between the mountains in the retail version, it's very beautiful.
Yeah, retail WoW's draw distance is gorgeous. The only time I've seen it fail is when approaching the Silithus zone because the giant sword in the ground pops in way too late haha.
This may be one of my favorite pieces of wow content I have ever seen. On a small little channel that deserves so much more love. I can see that this is out of your normal pool of content but I am really grateful its here. As someone who has also grown up but never forgot these little parts of my childhood with classi wow this video... its just really special. God that outro gave me goosebumps.
The untextured Naxrammas model inside of Stratholme was there in the original release of the game. I remember going on an exploration kick for about a year during Burning Crusade and I got there and a ton of other fun areas. Old Ironforge, the Ironforge Airport, the crypts beneath Karazhan, some weird places inside of Gnomregan, the uninstanced version of a lot of dungeons. Went to GM Island once and even saw the white room. Got up Mt. Hyjal when it still had those black/yellow striped barriers with the flashing lights that said "Under Construction" along the path. I wish I could remember everywhere I went. Exploration kind of lost it's shine with me by the time of the Wrath expansion and then by the end of Cataclysm, various factors killed all of my will to play the game anymore and that's when I quit. Some months before the Panda Theme Park expansion. But up until this video I had no idea that Quel'Thalas was sitting up there with one lonely tower. Still learning new things even after quitting this game in 2012 and never looking back.
The Ironforge Airport is one that I loved going to when I was younger. I always had someone move my character there for me because I was terrible at any kind of platforming (and I still am), but I finally made my own way up there in 2015 or so on the private server Nostalrius when a friend guided me up. Good times.
This is such a phenomenal video, so incredibly well done and thought out. You clearly put your heart and soul into this, it shows. Thank you for this beautiful work of art and for so many new things to think about.
2:50 this story made me remember when I was a kid I was the younger of my cousins and saw a tiny Super Smash Bros cover in a magazine I point to it and said "Hey its Pikachu!" and they called me stupid for daring to think Pikachu could be included in the game, I was mocked for days thanks to that, and didn't even had a vindication when we finally rented the game because they pretend that they knew Pikachu was there since the beginning and I was too stupid to not get the "joke".
Grats on 10k man, you deserve it and way more. Been here since the Pagan videos. I'd love to explore with you and show you some more cool spots, maybe if they someday let NA and EU people play together.
I appreciate this video so much because it validates my own behavior back in the vanilla days. I remember eagle eye'ing my way to the Ironforge airfield, corpse-running my lil level 21 troll hunter to the tauren village on the southwest coast of AQ40, and I remember swimming from Booty Bay to the Blasted Lands just so I could see the Dark Portal in person. Seeing someone treat SOD like that is so refreshing because I've been wondering, "What have they changed that the average player won't go looking for?" Bless.
I don't play classic season of discovery, but if blizzard really wants to blow players' minds they could add a lengthy and convoluted, barely explained chain of tasks and quests to unlock the uncorrupted ashbringer in classic.
During Cata, I once summoned a 40 person raid to the location at 16:57, they where anticipating a summon into the warchief building for the faction boss kill.... the group was very, very confused.
That's spectacular haha! I miss doing faction boss fights, some of those were truly insane. So many memories of alliance folks attacking Orgrimmar and my FPS dropping to around 5. Doesn't happen so much any more unfortunately, but who knows what could change in the future!
films and tv shows based on MMOs will talk about "forgotten, unused dungeons and rooms blocked off by the developers but are stiill in the game , full of developer secrets and powerful weapons!" when in real life theyre just barely working barren spaces with mispelled room names and confusing geometry
Back in Closed Beta (I also played in the Friends and Family alpha, I remember when rogues could use bucklers and gain block too) we would explore like this. Our guild was all about it sometimes, when we weren’t grinding. We got into stratholme once and saw only purple texture placeholders on a lot of the buildings before we were removed by the GMs. Ahh good times Some of our guild were the first into Tanaris too. Our legend became that the places they were removed by GMs are the places in Tanaris where the footprints end with a dead caravan littered around. I haven’t played WoW since Wrath though. Definitely good times :)
my friends and i used to glitch all over the maps in wow. my favorite was getting into all the blocked-off areas in eversong woods, like on top of the spires (rip meteorite from legion) and secret areas around silvermoon with messed up buildings. you could also get into an uninstanced version of zul'aman, and people on my bnet asked me why my character location said "unknown". i haven't talked to the friends i had a 1 week long skype call with in years.
This kind of reminds me of a lot of my own experiences with WoW. I never stepped foot into a raid until ICC even though i started in mid TBC. All the raids of vanilla and TBC were so legendary and had such an air of mystery and fascination for me that i was incredibly excited to try them when classic came out. I only ever played the first 2 tiers in both versions, because when i actually played them, their legendary status in my head kind of started to evaporate. So, AQ, Naxx, BT, and Sunwell are still all untouched by me as current content, and they might just stay that way because i enjoy the fact that the game still has mysteries and legends that i have never experienced the proper way they were meant to be experienced.
I still have fond memories playing WoW from about 2006-2008 only played Vanilla and Burning Crusade and never touched the game past it. But I ended up watching this whole video, it was a fun nostalgia trip from a great game I played during that time in my life.
this goes so hard, im always excited to see your videos in my subscription tab, this brings me back to playing until the trial level cap and making a new character every few days when i was too young and poor for a WoW subscription. I miss this, and old school swtor, and late 2000s to early 2010s garry's mod.
The old Karazhan crypt is my most favorite place of all time in WoW. Love to RP in there too. There's such an unnerving factor to it due to its theme but also how it just feels forbidden. You can visit it normally when doing the Lucid Nightmare secret (but only once) unless you have pillow toys :)
Grats on 10k! 32:40 As a connoisseur of weird flavour details, there's a couple of games - The Division 2, and Ready or Not - that shocked me by how many little extraneous touches they had used to make the world feel real. Just as an example, in Ready or Not's hospital level, there's a play area for children and in it there's a Barbie car with an action figure in it; but, if you look behind a chair you can find the Barbie, as though a boy had thrown it away so he could use the car for his action figure.
I love this kind of thing. I genuinely do wonder if there are people on game dev teams that are dedicated or specialised in that, or if its just environment designers having some fun. Either way, I hope people keep doing it forever.
@@PainticusMaking a world feel lived in is an art form in its own right. It can be just a little thing like a toy asset here or a poster in a room, or it can be something as grandiose as the Karazhan Crypt with its environmental story telling. I'm just like many others, back when I still played WoW I would explore areas I'd see on the map and tried to get into them the 'wrong way', usually without knowing they were unless I had seen them in an exploration video like the wall-walking or Nogg-A-Holic movies. Just the same why I have held onto a vanilla WoW client's files to run a server just for myself with, to exploroe the 1.12 patch freely with dev tools.
This video was like playing back my teens 😢🥹 I've come back to Wrath Classic & Cata Classic, after leaving at the end of the original Cataclysm. Watching this whole thing brought me back to a time where I would be raiding Kara with friends.. too many that I've lost forever, and how that can never happen again for me. It's heartbreaking, but like you mentioned, a memory that I uniquely have. Something I can hold onto for another 15 or so years 🥺
I loved this video. I've always been one to seek out the out of bounds areas, and WoW was fantastic for that for a very long time. I'm also that person who will swim for half an hour for even the promise of a possible path to an off limits area. I stopped after Pandaria, but gosh, it's so nice to see Kara and the crypt. Good memories.
During my high school years I had major issues with depression. My coping mechanism became to sleep after school and stay awake all night. I wanted to isolate myself, so I spent a lot of time playing WoW. Wandering around the world, questing at 4AM gave me a feeling that I can't really explain. I took a break from WoW and my account got compromised and eventually banned. I just ended up getting a new account, one I still play to this day. During isolation from Covid I had thay kind of feeling again. And I found my original battle chest. So I used the code to get my old account back. I logged in to my dwarf hunter. And walked around Grizzly hills once more. Finding a quiet area by a stream. I placed a campfire, sat down with my pet bear, Benji, and logged out. I like to imagine he's there, living off the land. Catching fish and drinking ale with that bear.
this was a genuinely beautiful video. I still remember my first time seeing and playing WoW. My neighbor, Jack, was like. 7 years older than me, and he was my hero. we both got a bit older and we both moved houses, so we weren't neighbors anymore, but since our parents were friends, I would still get to see him sometimes. One day, when I went to visit him, I see him playing a cool ass game on his computer and I ask about it. He's playing this big ass cow dude with a pet raptor. I think thats the coolest shit in the world. I asked him if I could play, and he lets me make a character. I wanted to be one of the skeleton people with a raptor, too. Sadly, that wasn't an allowed race/class combo at the time, so I believe I settled by making a rogue. before I even actually got to start killing things, I had to go home, but i got to look around and move and it was incredible. That was my first (and only) experience with vanilla WoW. A few years later, I was able to convince my parents to let me get it myself, so I could actually try it out. By then, it was the tail end of the Wrath xpac. I started out with some night elf. I think a druid. didn't play him for long. but the one character I played for like. months. was a human pally, named Elrobelan. (I even made a facebook page for him. "Elro B. Lan." i put his job down as like. "works for: king of stormwind". deleted the page a few years ago, sadly.) I got him up to (i believe) level like. 72. then I had to stop playing, since when your allowance is 5$ a week, 15 dollars a month on ONE game is a bit much. Years later, I was in boarding school, and had made a lot of friends online. One of them was english, and asked me if I was interested in playing WoW again. They wanted the Recruit a friend mount, since it was a 2 seater flying mount, and was offering to pay for a couple of months of gametime for me, since otherwise it would be just going to waste on an unused account. I accepted, and played WoW on EU servers for the next few years. All the way from WoD to the tail end of Legion. Then I met someone. I met her through a friend's girlfriend. they had been online friends for years, until she left to join the military to get away from her mom. After she finally made it through basic training, she was discharged and needed someplace to go, so she went to crash at her online friend's place. We got to talking, and she mentioned she used to play WoW and i offered to buy her some game time, since she mentioned she hadn't played in forever. thats when I switched over to US servers. Thank god, too, since I went from like. 800 ping on a good day to maybe 100. We ended up dating for... 4 years? we broke up on good terms a bit over a year ago, and shes still my best friend, but god. this game has memories to so many parts of my life now. I still play, but due to... several life events, I haven't been playing much this past year or so.
Great video, I used to love exploring out of bounds in wow, so this was a nice trip down memory lane! Great narration too, loved all the little tangents!
This was such an amazing video! I really appreciate the inclusion of your personal touches, as in, stories from your own experiences. You’re an amazing story teller. Also, is your “just play a warrior mate”/“I done sunwell mate”/“move mate!”, a very old Preach Gaming reference? lol
Those are absolutely Preach references! I adore his stuff and have for a long time now. I still remember the very first time he did the "move mate" bit on an old webshow with him and Ghosty - I was crying laughing.
This video is genuinely incredible! It's really interesting to see all these places and changes to a lived in world - even for me, someone whose WoW experience boils down to playing it for a couple of hours at a friend's house. With all of your knowledge about the game, it feels a little like being guided through a foreign city by a local. So thanks for showing me around your "hometown"! Will you update us if anything manifests in the Crypt? I'm kind of intrigued and probably won't find out otherwise...
i’m working rn so i can’t watch this yet but when i tell you this upload made me SCREAM…i just know this video is gonna be so good for me and my partner and we are eating so well thank u paint ily
My favorite MMO is The Secret World (not the new one named Secret World Legends, old one). Me and some friends tried to do some dungeons there that were kinda hard and needed a team of 5 as well. And something that blew my mind as a 14 year old, some forgotten UA-cam video of a dude soloing it on the highest difficulty. That memory will stick with me for some years.
I watched a video a few years ago on The Secret World and it looked fascinating. It's such a cool concept for a game, reminds me a bit of Deus Ex or Vampire: The Masquerade and their various secret societies. I was also surprised to hear that the horror game The Park was a spinoff from it!
I love stuff like this! Despite being a big Warcraft fan since II, I was an extremely casual WoW player and quit before TBC, so I never saw a lot of cool stuff like higher dungeon content (let alone raids). I did love exploring around and doing stuff like swimming around continents. Discovering Newman's Landing was one of my favorite experiences. I never got into the crypts and only learned about them later through videos. Isn't it fascinating what a simple closed door or unexplained area can do?
I remember the Karazhan Crypt gate not allowing you to pass through it while a spirit in Cataclysm. For a while, the only way you could get there was by using a mount-up trick in Stormwind to drop through the world, then mount up and fly, blind, all the way through multiple zones to Deadwind Pass to fly up into the geometry of the Crypt. Being the sort of person who, like you, would swim around the coasts of the continents to see what was still out there, I loved the challenge of the somewhat questionable means of accessing things. I'd use the then-rare two seater mounts to take friends to see it, and at one point had lead another friend on their warlock so they could summon their guildmates there for a halloween event. Later on, I believe an easier way via the uninstanced version of Zul'Gurub was found which meant you only had to fly north a bit, and that became the norm.
Something that I always see overlooked in just about every analysis of Karazhan Crypts is that "The Upside-down Sinners" is a direct reference to a movie called Big Trouble in Little China, right down to the name and the chained underwater bodies. It's not the only reference to that movie in WoW either, with another notable one being the trinket "Six Demon Bag."
i know maybe 3 things about world of warcraft but i have a vicarious fondness for it bc of videos like this. also the digs at fear and hunger fans made me laugh.
I used to only play warriors in games too. I'm very thankful I expanded my horizons n grew to love magic based classes. Magic can be a lot of fun, especially when it's combined w melee combat well.
43:22 My brother did that for me because I liked Unicorns and the Lucid nightmare is a goth unicorn, I double checked which puzzle you were talking about and realized this is something my account has access to.
I've been watching your videos for a while and this one's got to be one or your best ! I've never cared about mmos, much less wow, but this video has me enraptured. its great !
Man, this takes me back. I was a hard core player, and was in the #1 raid guild on my server for a while. I can't really say I regret it, but looking back I do wish I'd done something more with the years - *_years_* - I spent on WoW. This game was also where I learned that women in video games are very much unwelcome. I was very naive back then and I have so, so many stories about dudes in vent or a ZG pug that would spend the entire raid/quest/what have you criticizing me or making incredibly creepy comments towards me.
Ive been to all these places in 2014 and holy shoot did this gave me some nostalgia😂 I remember doing the chimney glitch in the mage quarter back in cata (tauren could not do this btw) and flying all the way beneath the map, through the underwater segment of the deeprun tram right until i reached quel thalas + the segment of strath that got cut out
"slough" is actually a word, though it'd be pronounced more like "sluff" I think? it's basically the shedding of a lot of dead skin (like a snake or someone who needs to see a doctor immediately) or getting rid of something undesirable. I think both are pretty apt when it comes to the slough of despair. just gonna take this moment and also say: thank you so much for this. you brought back a lot of fond memories and this was a nice surprise on my notifications. can't wait for your next video, dude!
24:30 at this point you go into a montage of things "no one cares about" and oh my god my ears were perking up at every single one! Please make more videos about the weird layout of Dire Maul or the Eastern Plaguelands revamp in CoT: Stratholme!
Now, I'm obviously not certain of this, but I would guess that the "Upside-down Sinners" area is a reference to the movie Big Trouble in Little China. So while it's certainly a creepy image, all I can think is, "Chinese have a lot of hells."
The "Upside-Down Sinners" is definitely a reference to the movie, Big Trouble in Little China, which featured the "Hell of Upside-Down Sinners." Still the spookiest zone, with no explanation.
When thinking about thoughts or thinking, you usually want to be able to describe it in a way that others can fully understand, however the more you think about thinking and thoughts the more defined the feeling gets to YOU, the one doing the thinking, but the harder it gets to describe it to others. Also yea, playing MMO's as a solo for the same reason as you, it makes me enjoy the game more but also less at the same time cuz I watch other people playing together lol Also also, as a person who doesn't feel like they managed to grow up at all through my life I wasn't ready for the ending words. I understand them but I don't feel like I have experienced them.
Hey there Painticus! I love your channel and I really admire all of the effort and thought you put into all of your vids! I had a suggestion for a game you would probably love, if you dont wanna check it out thats entirely fine also, but I find that the indie game, dread delusion, that just came out of early access is right up your alley. Once again, I love your vids and cant wait to see what you do next.
If we're talking spooky spaces irl, on your joke of Molten Core = Milton Keynes; that location is a great topic. Its built on a lay line, and by one of the richest families in the world (Evelyn Rothschild) headed up the MK Development Corporation. Story goes, it was a 'test' city that had accelerated development, in like less than 30 years, boomed into what it is today, with all the major business being located right along the leyline, and the rest of the city built in an American 'grid' like setup, sprawling out; something not the most common for cities in the UK. A bit of digging and research brings up a wealth of paranormal, liminal, and black energy type topics related to that area. I know you do wow stuff but it could be a stellar topic for a video.
when I first played (on a private server in late 2010) the friend who burned the game on dvds for me (lol) took me to quel'thalas. we swam, of course. it was a really good time. hope friend is still alive though
Hey everyone - this is a little bit of a different video. I figured I'd make something a little more personal to celebrate 10k subscribers, and that just so happened to align perfectly with some events in WoW. I understand this may not be everyone's cup of tea, and I don't expect this video to get as many views as normal because of that - but that's all good. I really enjoyed making this, and I hope that it is at the very least comprehensible to everyone else.
If you want some more stuff from me, check out my streams over on Twitch. They're usually a strange time. You can see how truly illiterate and poorly spoken I am there.
More videos coming soon. Thanks all :)
This is awesome :D
I enjoyed this a lot! Never played WoW. 20 years of playing Runescape off and on so I can relate.
great work as always ! you are so talented, man !
This is the first video I watched from your channel, if your other content is different, please make more like this one, it's amazing :)
All good bro I was just searching for a long video to sleep to ❤❤
Oh this video brought me back! I remember being 12 yrs old playing this with my friend on my dads account and climbing up the cliffs, clipping through walls, glitching under Karazhan. Those were the days man, getting home from highschool, logging on and playing old school WoW. Thank you for this
Thank you for sharing your story. I'm sorry to hear about your mum passing - but it sounds like you had a wonderful time with her, your brother, and your dad. MMOs and other long-living games have such an inherent ability to grow as we do, and the stories that come from that are always very touching.
@@Painticus Thanks man, yeah hella fond memories! She was our raid healer, played an orc Shammy for my first ever raid in WoTLK. I'll never forget the yell of anger from her in the other room as someone asked if she had lag and she just muted to yell "No I'm shit!" 😂 I love hearing peoples stories with WoW, and the idea that you ran around OG Naxx is so cool, and that your brother let you take control so you could experience that for yourself! I keep wanting to go back to WoW, but like you've mentioned, the social aspect is... Daunting. But this video is a masterpiece.
The whole video was the wind up. That final message plus music, was the blow to the gut. Damn well made.
Yeah that ending got me :sob: The tribute to Hayven too, my single favorite channel on UA-cam and the reason I come back to WoW time and time again. Wonderful stuff.
This video is a masterpiece.
It single handedly captures the sense of nostalgia i have for the game.
Ending the whole video with the grizzly hills music really puts all of it together.
I remember my first time playing WoW, I made a blood elf priest and curiously ventured past the ghostlands/plaguelands portal only to be greeted with hostile skull icon blood elves. I got scared shitless when they started running towards me, and this has stuck with me as a core memory. I absolutely adore the zone and it's ambiance, and since a Quel' Thalas revamp is pretty much confirmed with the release of Midnight, I'm really excited to see what they do with the zone. Lovely video brother
I never actually left the ghostlands as a low level Blood Elf - did it genuinely just throw you out into the plaguelands? That's wild!
@@Painticus yeah, it was such a surreal vibe change as it all went from "midnight mystery" to an infested, reddish hellscape. It didn't help that I was 9 back then and I barely knew how to play :D
@Painticus following the road would of, but there was a portal in the capital to UC you were expected to take.
Crazy how that little "hidden path" had the exact same effect on me and my siblings; from then on, we set out to explore the world as lvl 1 characters, RPing as beggars to scrounge up some gold for god knows what :p Anyway, great video, congrats on 10k :)
Oh god I had forgotten how common gold beggars used to be. And I was absolutely one of them
same for me.
and I was sent there by a quest, because I first saw it on a shaman. but it still felt like such a discovery!
Is that "or m8, u can be a warriouh" a reference to preacher? 😂😂
It absolutely is! I've been subbed to him for nearly 11 years now so tons of his jokes and bits are burned into my brain forever haha
Using the "Totems of the Grizzlemaw" soundtrack for the ending monologue was an excellent choice. One of the soundtracks that now hits different for me is Eversong Woods when I was playing a blood elf years ago, I associated the soundtrack with mystique and wonder and nowadays, whenever I hear it, there is so much melancholy and lost nostalgia in there. Totems of the Grizzlemaw however, is still the same gut punch now, as it always was. Amazing video and you have a really relaxing voice!
This is an insanely well done video. One of my favorite pieces of WoW content I’ve ever seen. The nostalgia filled build to the happy note of the credits was just so perfect. I was vibin then I was happy sad.
"I skipped Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands (...)" - that is a sub form me
When I was a retail RPer, a group used the Karazhan Crypts as a place for an RP group. Being able to experience this strange experience with other people as we walked around and RPed with one another was an amazing feeling. One of my core memories was when I was younger. But after that little group, I decided to go back alone. And going back alone into those Crypts really puts into perspective just how creepy and off-putting it is. It was wonderful. And then Legion came out and I remember doing the steps for the Lucid Nightmare and being brought back all the to the Crypts. And to explore them another time was wonderful. The Crypts serve as such a unique place like no other in WoW.
What a great video to jog the memory!
I always wished I could get into the RP elements of the game because it genuinely seems like RPers are having a better time than anyone else. And what a place to RP in too! Any kind of group stuff in the crypt must have been really fun.
I remember the feeling of lagging out of bounds in toontown and wizard101, of suddenly being somewhere else when just moments ago you were in a party of friends. Like walking through a doorway into another part of the house and suddenly hearing all your friends voices stop all at once.
"MMO just sounded like somebody fucking up the alphabet." Just brilliant.
That change to the "Quel'thalas" region above Stratholme is 100% prepping for the actual kingdom of Quel'thalas to be brought into the main map in Midnight.
Absolutely phenomenal. Best WoW content I've seen on UA-cam since I started playing in Legion.
Man I miss playing WoW as a kid. My dad showed me how to play when I was about 9, and I don't think I ever reached level 30 because the main thing I did in the 4 years or so I played was pick a random direction and go walking off into it until I reached a barrier or enemies I couldn't run away from fast enough. I think I've spent my entire gaming experience since trying to chase that feeling again. Thanks for reigniting my nostalgia. Maybe I'll ask my dad if my old character still exists.
MMOs are so good for liminal spaces because of the wide empty spaces meant to be filled with players, or empty interiors with nothing in them, waiting for some players to roleplay in those environments.
Wow, this video was a beautiful love note to the most mysterious and sentimental aspects of the game we love(d). Thanks for making this wonderful piece
I started playing with my brother myself back in Feb 2007 after TBC came out. We used to share an account but by the end of TBC, he had his own and I had 2 with me paying for all 3. We played all the way up to Shadowlands with me taking a brief break in MoP and WoD due to money, but his account was kept up. In that time frame, I couldn't afford to pay for my own accounts, but I always found money for his. My brother stopped playing not because he lost interest but because COVID took him the day after Shadowlands came out. It took me until Oct 2023 to finally convince myself to come back and play again although I didn't let my accounts or his lapse in that time frame. I upgrade all 3 to Dragonflight, and I still pay for his account even if he can no longer play with me. Sometimes I log into it just to play with his toons alongside my own like we used to do even if his toons are only on follow with mine. While I've upgrade my two accounts to The War Within, I haven't upgraded his. I haven't decided if his account will only get the free expansion upgrades going forward and I'll only upgrade mine or if I'll upgrade his later when it goes on sale. I'll likely never cancel his subscription, though. We played for 13 years together and I've already sunk a lot of money into the game. Paying $155.88 for a year subscription for an account I don't really play just to have something of my brother still with me is nothing.
I'm so sorry to hear about your brother. It sounds like you had a wonderful time together over the years and it was incredibly kind of you to support all of those accounts by yourself. I don't know if this applies to every sibling relationship - but I know that in mine we're not always vocal about our gratitude or love for one another. I can see that your brother means the world to you, and I guarantee he felt that. Thank you for being a wonderful sibling, and know that he'll always be with you both in-game and out. I hope you're doing alright ❤
You're a great storyteller. Thanks for sharing your experience, I didn't expect this one to be that emotional
It's weird. I only started playing WoW about three years ago with Classic. But it has easily become one of my favorite games. Even though I wasn't around for the OG days, those days were when I was a kid playing games. I always wanted to play WoW but didn't have a good PC. I'm just thankful that I can finally explore Azeroth. And hey, I'm shy too. But there are some chill guilds out there!
There is alot of lore about the tower of karazhan in the book 'the last guardian'. It is said that there was a "mirrored" tower going underground beneath it with all the devilry. I recall that there was a mention about the upside down corpses as well.
Oh very cool! I've been meaning to read some of the novels for a while. I've spent so much time listening to lore channels like Nobbel, I feel like I should commit. If there's anything that hints towards the Crypts at all I'm very interested.
This is the first video I am seeing of yours and I really enjoyed it. Please keep making content!
An absolutely fantastic video, that managed to put words to a lot of the feelings I have when it comes to games as a whole, and my love for exploring the things we're never really meant to see or how a game was going to be in earlier versions. Even as someone new to WoW who came over from XIV only recently, that final section about coming home really did hit me.
I look forward to seeing more videos from you, man. I hope you have a good day.
It's really cool to see people coming over to WoW from FFXIV - for a year or two it really looked like the writing was on the wall for Blizzard (and rightfully so). It's really great to see how they are turning things around - and it's also lovely to see how many people now have a place for both FF and WoW at the same time. Both games are wonderful, and both have had their ups and downs. Long gone is the tribalism that once existed (albeit largely one-sided from WoW fans) and we can all just enjoy the games together now :)
29:40 "this entire snowy area [within Naxxramas] that was fabricated ... for the final boss room" So, this is actually a cut out chunk of Winterspring. The reason this is in KT's room was intended to show you after you kill him that you're seeing the magics of Northrend, as a kind of "see you here eventually!" wink to the playerbase, but that continent was but a glimmer in Blizzard's eye in 2006 when Naxx40 went live, so they just used Winterspring as a standin for Northrend. This same section was also used for the cinematic trailer of Kel'thuzad released for 1.12.
I, like you, started this game as an incoherent child. I never reached max until WotLK and have continued playing retail and classic into my adult life. Damn, this video spoke to me in so many ways, the mystery and nostalgia surrounding little things in azeroth, things I'll never be able to experience again you captured it perfectly. Phenomenal video, thank you
hey, this made me weirdly emotional, not in a bad way- so thank you, i been playing wow since i was 7yo and sharing a laptop with my mom..even though my idea of "playing" was fishing for her lvl 80 lock in wrath and making 17 level 1-10s getting them lost and deleting them..or being like 11 yo in cata rping as a cat in duskwood on my druid, i never got to completely PLAY high end wow before bfa, i quit in shadowlands, came back for dragonflight and now do content i never knew id be able to even do..mythic raiding, high keys..rated pvp...ect..speaking of rated pvp the vicious saddle mounts were some of the most amazing looking mounts i ever seen when i was younger, an unobtainable thing to drool over basically, and now that i have 3 of them it just feels weird, i like them, theyre cool, but now what? same thing with time lost, i remember flying around northerend on my moms character looking for him when it was current, and now this year i got him for us both..and another friend of mine, i honestly hope people keep needing me to farm him out for them because i like having the excuse to go back to that zone, some things i have now i wish i didnt, and i still wish i could go back to being a child wearing dresses on a hunter and needing my moms help through most quests i was doing..unfortunately my parents have such little interest in playing now which is pretty painful considering i never got to play with them at a max level or anything, my silly little dream was to raid with them, just a game but yet it is not, the sentimental value wow holds on my own and many peoples lives is insane, my parents met there,and i met my current partner there too, most of my core happy memories in my chaotic childhood were of wow..the main thing i shared with my parents to bond over..was wow, if we have any say in what our afterlife is like i think i know what that would be.
God damn. That was a thing of beauty. And that ending! Wow...
I've never played WoW. But this video has a very comfortable feeling to it. It may not perform as well as other videos as you said, but i am glad you made it anyways
Beautiful video. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and love for this game.
I haven't played the game in many years but still can't help watching it from a distance. Similar to you I also loved exploring hidden nooks and all the places that felt like I wasn't supposed to go there. Gotta say though I love how they handle the draw distance with the fog in-between the mountains in the retail version, it's very beautiful.
Yeah, retail WoW's draw distance is gorgeous. The only time I've seen it fail is when approaching the Silithus zone because the giant sword in the ground pops in way too late haha.
This may be one of my favorite pieces of wow content I have ever seen. On a small little channel that deserves so much more love. I can see that this is out of your normal pool of content but I am really grateful its here. As someone who has also grown up but never forgot these little parts of my childhood with classi wow this video... its just really special. God that outro gave me goosebumps.
Excellent video, definitely inspired some nostalgia of when I played WoW with my brother.
The untextured Naxrammas model inside of Stratholme was there in the original release of the game. I remember going on an exploration kick for about a year during Burning Crusade and I got there and a ton of other fun areas. Old Ironforge, the Ironforge Airport, the crypts beneath Karazhan, some weird places inside of Gnomregan, the uninstanced version of a lot of dungeons. Went to GM Island once and even saw the white room. Got up Mt. Hyjal when it still had those black/yellow striped barriers with the flashing lights that said "Under Construction" along the path. I wish I could remember everywhere I went. Exploration kind of lost it's shine with me by the time of the Wrath expansion and then by the end of Cataclysm, various factors killed all of my will to play the game anymore and that's when I quit. Some months before the Panda Theme Park expansion.
But up until this video I had no idea that Quel'Thalas was sitting up there with one lonely tower. Still learning new things even after quitting this game in 2012 and never looking back.
The Ironforge Airport is one that I loved going to when I was younger. I always had someone move my character there for me because I was terrible at any kind of platforming (and I still am), but I finally made my own way up there in 2015 or so on the private server Nostalrius when a friend guided me up. Good times.
I didn't think a video about a game I'd never played could get me so invested... And here I am now. Great video!
This is such a phenomenal video, so incredibly well done and thought out. You clearly put your heart and soul into this, it shows. Thank you for this beautiful work of art and for so many new things to think about.
2:50 this story made me remember when I was a kid I was the younger of my cousins and saw a tiny Super Smash Bros cover in a magazine I point to it and said "Hey its Pikachu!" and they called me stupid for daring to think Pikachu could be included in the game, I was mocked for days thanks to that, and didn't even had a vindication when we finally rented the game because they pretend that they knew Pikachu was there since the beginning and I was too stupid to not get the "joke".
They will never admit that they were wrong and the spite that this creates in us will make us more powerful than they can imagine
I love the memories this video is built around! Makes me remember all the weirdness, failures, and triumphs of my own WoW journey. Cheers!
Grats on 10k man, you deserve it and way more. Been here since the Pagan videos. I'd love to explore with you and show you some more cool spots, maybe if they someday let NA and EU people play together.
I appreciate this video so much because it validates my own behavior back in the vanilla days. I remember eagle eye'ing my way to the Ironforge airfield, corpse-running my lil level 21 troll hunter to the tauren village on the southwest coast of AQ40, and I remember swimming from Booty Bay to the Blasted Lands just so I could see the Dark Portal in person. Seeing someone treat SOD like that is so refreshing because I've been wondering, "What have they changed that the average player won't go looking for?" Bless.
I don't play classic season of discovery, but if blizzard really wants to blow players' minds they could add a lengthy and convoluted, barely explained chain of tasks and quests to unlock the uncorrupted ashbringer in classic.
Alternatively they should make it a 0.001% chance drop from fishing like the old rumours claimed
@@Painticus Maybe it already is.
Cool. Pretty sure Slough of Despair is a level in the first Doom as well
So it is! I had completely forgotten that. That makes the spelling error all the more weird.
@@Painticus yeah innit. I'm just glad I've never had to go to actual Slough
the zoom out with howling fjord music was foul man, damn
/2 WTB heart strings
During Cata, I once summoned a 40 person raid to the location at 16:57, they where anticipating a summon into the warchief building for the faction boss kill.... the group was very, very confused.
That's spectacular haha! I miss doing faction boss fights, some of those were truly insane. So many memories of alliance folks attacking Orgrimmar and my FPS dropping to around 5. Doesn't happen so much any more unfortunately, but who knows what could change in the future!
You made me cry at the end, man
Nice video, exploring obscure wow locations is always interesting
films and tv shows based on MMOs will talk about "forgotten, unused dungeons and rooms blocked off by the developers but are stiill in the game , full of developer secrets and powerful weapons!" when in real life theyre just barely working barren spaces with mispelled room names and confusing geometry
"Heroic Leap mate, it's BiS" I love that line.
Back in Closed Beta (I also played in the Friends and Family alpha, I remember when rogues could use bucklers and gain block too) we would explore like this. Our guild was all about it sometimes, when we weren’t grinding. We got into stratholme once and saw only purple texture placeholders on a lot of the buildings before we were removed by the GMs.
Ahh good times
Some of our guild were the first into Tanaris too. Our legend became that the places they were removed by GMs are the places in Tanaris where the footprints end with a dead caravan littered around.
I haven’t played WoW since Wrath though. Definitely good times :)
my friends and i used to glitch all over the maps in wow. my favorite was getting into all the blocked-off areas in eversong woods, like on top of the spires (rip meteorite from legion) and secret areas around silvermoon with messed up buildings. you could also get into an uninstanced version of zul'aman, and people on my bnet asked me why my character location said "unknown". i haven't talked to the friends i had a 1 week long skype call with in years.
This kind of reminds me of a lot of my own experiences with WoW. I never stepped foot into a raid until ICC even though i started in mid TBC. All the raids of vanilla and TBC were so legendary and had such an air of mystery and fascination for me that i was incredibly excited to try them when classic came out. I only ever played the first 2 tiers in both versions, because when i actually played them, their legendary status in my head kind of started to evaporate. So, AQ, Naxx, BT, and Sunwell are still all untouched by me as current content, and they might just stay that way because i enjoy the fact that the game still has mysteries and legends that i have never experienced the proper way they were meant to be experienced.
I still have fond memories playing WoW from about 2006-2008 only played Vanilla and Burning Crusade and never touched the game past it. But I ended up watching this whole video, it was a fun nostalgia trip from a great game I played during that time in my life.
The ending got me sobbing. Beautiful video, brother. 🖤
Great video thanks! I played way way too much WoW in my early college days, and this brought back a lot of memories
this goes so hard, im always excited to see your videos in my subscription tab, this brings me back to playing until the trial level cap and making a new character every few days when i was too young and poor for a WoW subscription. I miss this, and old school swtor, and late 2000s to early 2010s garry's mod.
The old Karazhan crypt is my most favorite place of all time in WoW. Love to RP in there too. There's such an unnerving factor to it due to its theme but also how it just feels forbidden.
You can visit it normally when doing the Lucid Nightmare secret (but only once) unless you have pillow toys :)
Grats on 10k!
32:40
As a connoisseur of weird flavour details, there's a couple of games - The Division 2, and Ready or Not - that shocked me by how many little extraneous touches they had used to make the world feel real. Just as an example, in Ready or Not's hospital level, there's a play area for children and in it there's a Barbie car with an action figure in it; but, if you look behind a chair you can find the Barbie, as though a boy had thrown it away so he could use the car for his action figure.
I love this kind of thing. I genuinely do wonder if there are people on game dev teams that are dedicated or specialised in that, or if its just environment designers having some fun. Either way, I hope people keep doing it forever.
@@PainticusMaking a world feel lived in is an art form in its own right. It can be just a little thing like a toy asset here or a poster in a room, or it can be something as grandiose as the Karazhan Crypt with its environmental story telling.
I'm just like many others, back when I still played WoW I would explore areas I'd see on the map and tried to get into them the 'wrong way', usually without knowing they were unless I had seen them in an exploration video like the wall-walking or Nogg-A-Holic movies.
Just the same why I have held onto a vanilla WoW client's files to run a server just for myself with, to exploroe the 1.12 patch freely with dev tools.
damn i love this video! Thanks for making it and sharing these stories with us.
The Quel'thalas chat messages killed me. Holy KEK
This video was like playing back my teens 😢🥹
I've come back to Wrath Classic & Cata Classic, after leaving at the end of the original Cataclysm. Watching this whole thing brought me back to a time where I would be raiding Kara with friends.. too many that I've lost forever, and how that can never happen again for me.
It's heartbreaking, but like you mentioned, a memory that I uniquely have. Something I can hold onto for another 15 or so years 🥺
I love this game so damn much.
I loved this video. I've always been one to seek out the out of bounds areas, and WoW was fantastic for that for a very long time. I'm also that person who will swim for half an hour for even the promise of a possible path to an off limits area. I stopped after Pandaria, but gosh, it's so nice to see Kara and the crypt. Good memories.
During my high school years I had major issues with depression. My coping mechanism became to sleep after school and stay awake all night. I wanted to isolate myself, so I spent a lot of time playing WoW. Wandering around the world, questing at 4AM gave me a feeling that I can't really explain.
I took a break from WoW and my account got compromised and eventually banned. I just ended up getting a new account, one I still play to this day. During isolation from Covid I had thay kind of feeling again. And I found my original battle chest. So I used the code to get my old account back. I logged in to my dwarf hunter. And walked around Grizzly hills once more. Finding a quiet area by a stream. I placed a campfire, sat down with my pet bear, Benji, and logged out. I like to imagine he's there, living off the land. Catching fish and drinking ale with that bear.
this was a genuinely beautiful video. I still remember my first time seeing and playing WoW. My neighbor, Jack, was like. 7 years older than me, and he was my hero. we both got a bit older and we both moved houses, so we weren't neighbors anymore, but since our parents were friends, I would still get to see him sometimes. One day, when I went to visit him, I see him playing a cool ass game on his computer and I ask about it. He's playing this big ass cow dude with a pet raptor. I think thats the coolest shit in the world. I asked him if I could play, and he lets me make a character. I wanted to be one of the skeleton people with a raptor, too. Sadly, that wasn't an allowed race/class combo at the time, so I believe I settled by making a rogue. before I even actually got to start killing things, I had to go home, but i got to look around and move and it was incredible. That was my first (and only) experience with vanilla WoW.
A few years later, I was able to convince my parents to let me get it myself, so I could actually try it out. By then, it was the tail end of the Wrath xpac. I started out with some night elf. I think a druid. didn't play him for long. but the one character I played for like. months. was a human pally, named Elrobelan. (I even made a facebook page for him. "Elro B. Lan." i put his job down as like. "works for: king of stormwind". deleted the page a few years ago, sadly.) I got him up to (i believe) level like. 72. then I had to stop playing, since when your allowance is 5$ a week, 15 dollars a month on ONE game is a bit much.
Years later, I was in boarding school, and had made a lot of friends online. One of them was english, and asked me if I was interested in playing WoW again. They wanted the Recruit a friend mount, since it was a 2 seater flying mount, and was offering to pay for a couple of months of gametime for me, since otherwise it would be just going to waste on an unused account. I accepted, and played WoW on EU servers for the next few years. All the way from WoD to the tail end of Legion.
Then I met someone. I met her through a friend's girlfriend. they had been online friends for years, until she left to join the military to get away from her mom. After she finally made it through basic training, she was discharged and needed someplace to go, so she went to crash at her online friend's place. We got to talking, and she mentioned she used to play WoW and i offered to buy her some game time, since she mentioned she hadn't played in forever. thats when I switched over to US servers. Thank god, too, since I went from like. 800 ping on a good day to maybe 100. We ended up dating for... 4 years? we broke up on good terms a bit over a year ago, and shes still my best friend, but god. this game has memories to so many parts of my life now. I still play, but due to... several life events, I haven't been playing much this past year or so.
Great video, I used to love exploring out of bounds in wow, so this was a nice trip down memory lane! Great narration too, loved all the little tangents!
This was such an amazing video! I really appreciate the inclusion of your personal touches, as in, stories from your own experiences. You’re an amazing story teller.
Also, is your “just play a warrior mate”/“I done sunwell mate”/“move mate!”, a very old Preach Gaming reference? lol
Those are absolutely Preach references! I adore his stuff and have for a long time now. I still remember the very first time he did the "move mate" bit on an old webshow with him and Ghosty - I was crying laughing.
This is a game that refuses to hold your hand.
This video is genuinely incredible! It's really interesting to see all these places and changes to a lived in world - even for me, someone whose WoW experience boils down to playing it for a couple of hours at a friend's house. With all of your knowledge about the game, it feels a little like being guided through a foreign city by a local. So thanks for showing me around your "hometown"!
Will you update us if anything manifests in the Crypt? I'm kind of intrigued and probably won't find out otherwise...
i’m working rn so i can’t watch this yet but when i tell you this upload made me SCREAM…i just know this video is gonna be so good for me and my partner and we are eating so well thank u paint ily
I always look forward to the Karissa scream comments!!! I hope you enjoy :)
28:26
BarnyBeekeeper's Scarab lord series came to mind. these places clearly hold so much memories to so many people. Its unfathomable
My favorite MMO is The Secret World (not the new one named Secret World Legends, old one). Me and some friends tried to do some dungeons there that were kinda hard and needed a team of 5 as well. And something that blew my mind as a 14 year old, some forgotten UA-cam video of a dude soloing it on the highest difficulty. That memory will stick with me for some years.
I watched a video a few years ago on The Secret World and it looked fascinating. It's such a cool concept for a game, reminds me a bit of Deus Ex or Vampire: The Masquerade and their various secret societies. I was also surprised to hear that the horror game The Park was a spinoff from it!
I love stuff like this! Despite being a big Warcraft fan since II, I was an extremely casual WoW player and quit before TBC, so I never saw a lot of cool stuff like higher dungeon content (let alone raids). I did love exploring around and doing stuff like swimming around continents. Discovering Newman's Landing was one of my favorite experiences. I never got into the crypts and only learned about them later through videos. Isn't it fascinating what a simple closed door or unexplained area can do?
I remember the Karazhan Crypt gate not allowing you to pass through it while a spirit in Cataclysm. For a while, the only way you could get there was by using a mount-up trick in Stormwind to drop through the world, then mount up and fly, blind, all the way through multiple zones to Deadwind Pass to fly up into the geometry of the Crypt. Being the sort of person who, like you, would swim around the coasts of the continents to see what was still out there, I loved the challenge of the somewhat questionable means of accessing things.
I'd use the then-rare two seater mounts to take friends to see it, and at one point had lead another friend on their warlock so they could summon their guildmates there for a halloween event. Later on, I believe an easier way via the uninstanced version of Zul'Gurub was found which meant you only had to fly north a bit, and that became the norm.
Something that I always see overlooked in just about every analysis of Karazhan Crypts is that "The Upside-down Sinners" is a direct reference to a movie called Big Trouble in Little China, right down to the name and the chained underwater bodies. It's not the only reference to that movie in WoW either, with another notable one being the trinket "Six Demon Bag."
i know maybe 3 things about world of warcraft but i have a vicarious fondness for it bc of videos like this. also the digs at fear and hunger fans made me laugh.
the fear and hunger digs are hard but fair
I loved the whole video. A very nice ending. One of the best WoW videos I've ever seen !
Your greatest accomplishment is making a WoW video that's actually interesting
I used to only play warriors in games too. I'm very thankful I expanded my horizons n grew to love magic based classes. Magic can be a lot of fun, especially when it's combined w melee combat well.
My brain utterly imploded when i heard tracks from EATEOT while you're talking about wow, completely unlocked some new pathways lol.
43:22
My brother did that for me because I liked Unicorns and the Lucid nightmare is a goth unicorn, I double checked which puzzle you were talking about and realized this is something my account has access to.
What a cool video concept, I kinda wanna do this for one of my favorite games :3
I've been watching your videos for a while and this one's got to be one or your best ! I've never cared about mmos, much less wow, but this video has me enraptured. its great !
Man, this takes me back. I was a hard core player, and was in the #1 raid guild on my server for a while. I can't really say I regret it, but looking back I do wish I'd done something more with the years - *_years_* - I spent on WoW.
This game was also where I learned that women in video games are very much unwelcome. I was very naive back then and I have so, so many stories about dudes in vent or a ZG pug that would spend the entire raid/quest/what have you criticizing me or making incredibly creepy comments towards me.
Ive been to all these places in 2014 and holy shoot did this gave me some nostalgia😂
I remember doing the chimney glitch in the mage quarter back in cata (tauren could not do this btw) and flying all the way beneath the map, through the underwater segment of the deeprun tram right until i reached quel thalas + the segment of strath that got cut out
17:15 DONT THINK I DIDNT FUCKIN POG AT A MFIN ANATOMY BY KITTY HORRORSHOW REFERENCE!!!!
"slough" is actually a word, though it'd be pronounced more like "sluff" I think? it's basically the shedding of a lot of dead skin (like a snake or someone who needs to see a doctor immediately) or getting rid of something undesirable. I think both are pretty apt when it comes to the slough of despair.
just gonna take this moment and also say: thank you so much for this. you brought back a lot of fond memories and this was a nice surprise on my notifications. can't wait for your next video, dude!
It is indeed a word, and you'd also be correct that the "gh" at the end sounds like f... for some reason. English is weird.
It might also be a reference to a level of Doom 93 with the same name
To spite the English language I'm going to refer to it as the "Slow-ge" from now on
24:30 at this point you go into a montage of things "no one cares about" and oh my god my ears were perking up at every single one! Please make more videos about the weird layout of Dire Maul or the Eastern Plaguelands revamp in CoT: Stratholme!
I'm watching this, while strolling through empty streets of the city I live in at 4am
Now, I'm obviously not certain of this, but I would guess that the "Upside-down Sinners" area is a reference to the movie Big Trouble in Little China. So while it's certainly a creepy image, all I can think is, "Chinese have a lot of hells."
Oh that's very cool - I never thought about that! It definitely could be, Blizzard loves referencing basically everything
Holy fuck, this is the first time I've seen anyone play Ex Mortis since I was a kid. I instantly recognised that staircase.
The "Upside-Down Sinners" is definitely a reference to the movie, Big Trouble in Little China, which featured the "Hell of Upside-Down Sinners." Still the spookiest zone, with no explanation.
Howling fjord is an excellent choice to end the video on
When thinking about thoughts or thinking, you usually want to be able to describe it in a way that others can fully understand, however the more you think about thinking and thoughts the more defined the feeling gets to YOU, the one doing the thinking, but the harder it gets to describe it to others.
Also yea, playing MMO's as a solo for the same reason as you, it makes me enjoy the game more but also less at the same time cuz I watch other people playing together lol
Also also, as a person who doesn't feel like they managed to grow up at all through my life I wasn't ready for the ending words. I understand them but I don't feel like I have experienced them.
WoW and Aion were my first mmos I broke out of the map and it was amazing.
Bro casually hits the ending of the video by loud grizzly hills music as if it was braveheart movie.
What a Painty kind of day
I thought the whole puzzle bit was a joke but no that's just actually the stuff you have to do get lucid nightmare wow lmao
Hey there Painticus! I love your channel and I really admire all of the effort and thought you put into all of your vids! I had a suggestion for a game you would probably love, if you dont wanna check it out thats entirely fine also, but I find that the indie game, dread delusion, that just came out of early access is right up your alley. Once again, I love your vids and cant wait to see what you do next.
Also, if youve already checked it out on stream, my apologies!
If we're talking spooky spaces irl, on your joke of Molten Core = Milton Keynes; that location is a great topic. Its built on a lay line, and by one of the richest families in the world (Evelyn Rothschild) headed up the MK Development Corporation. Story goes, it was a 'test' city that had accelerated development, in like less than 30 years, boomed into what it is today, with all the major business being located right along the leyline, and the rest of the city built in an American 'grid' like setup, sprawling out; something not the most common for cities in the UK. A bit of digging and research brings up a wealth of paranormal, liminal, and black energy type topics related to that area. I know you do wow stuff but it could be a stellar topic for a video.
when I first played (on a private server in late 2010) the friend who burned the game on dvds for me (lol) took me to quel'thalas. we swam, of course. it was a really good time. hope friend is still alive though