Thank you for watching! If you haven't already, take the time to check out the rest of the Ancient Lore series at the playlist below, as well as subscribing to The Dan Nation for the regular updates I put out. www.youtube.com/@TheDanNation/subscribe ua-cam.com/play/PLz3HFn9IbUgkjnDezofH-cz0_0I6urUOe.html
I was thinking... it doesn't qualify as cut content, but you know - well imho at least - one thing that had great chances but blizzard let slip between their fingers? Teldrassil. Why wasn't it developed more? They made this abominable huge baobab (and tbh I'm fond of its dumb shape, I don't like how in the depictions now it's a super cool twisting elf-tree, it made more sense lore-wise before) and the subplot about its corruption, but never worked well and more on it... they could have made dungeons set inside it, a whole "under... ground? underbark? ehm xD" area of tunnels in it, they could have made towns and areas on the giant branches on its circumference (at least the ones below the playable level) maybe even with wooden walkways connecting them toward the roots... etc etc... it's a bit late, thinking these things like 18 years later, but I was like... uhm struck by lighting and had this idea xD
IIRC the developers have said the Ironforge airfield was added purely to provide some scenery for players taking a flight path to and from Ironforge. They added scenery on other flight routes as well but the airfield is the most elaborate one, aside from perhaps the dancing troll village near the border of Moonglade and Darkshore. Though the dancing troll village may actually have originally been intended as a Horde quest hub in Darkshore, as if you do get in there (via slowfalling from Moonglade) there are some NPCs inside the buildings that are friendly to Horde players, and there actually is a path in Darkshore that leads towards the village but gets blocked off by mountains. So it's speculated that Blizzard may have added the troll village as a Horde town before the decided to make it a zone with only Alliance quests, and instead of removing it they just altered the zone geometry to make it inaccessible but left it as flight path scenery.
I can absolutely believe that about the Ironforge Airfield, do you have a source on those comments if possible? As for the troll village in Darkshore, from my understanding it was also purely for flight path eyecandy, and not as a potential hub for the Horde in Darkshore. Many times developers would ID NPCs as either Horde or Alliance in the weirdest spots, just for easter egg grade fun. A few good examples of this are the farms on the East Coast of Arathi or the lone Tauren on the Southwest coast of Silithus. They're not meant for anything, just bonus tidbits for people to find if they really explored. Thank you for the comment!
They really really dropped the ball on Azul’Nerub The nerubian lore and vision of what that underground empire looked like . . . It could have been it’s own expansion . And it would have been incredible .
I couldn't agree more, we could have learned SO MUCH, especially how the Nerubians evolved in relation to the Old Gods and how much tye scourge took from them.
@@TheDanNation yeah the lore alone would have made it super hype . Just imagine a cinematic of the alliance trying to make a settlement on Northrend to start to assault to the frozen throne Only to be thwarted by blizzards creating a fog of war . And then being attacked from these creatures tunneling under them . . . Before we could ever reach the throne . . We have to deal with this entire underground empire . Use the tunnels to create a counter attack . Ahhhh . Could have been so legendary .
I've just learned about the incredible lore for the spiderbois, I'm hoping the next xpac (leaks kind of fit the theme too) touches on them. I love their lore and would be a huge win
I'm a bit split on this idea cause I find it awesome, but at same time I can see why Blizzard wouldn't be eager to do it, in terms of how they wanted to make the expansion long. Indeed it could be its whole expansion. ACTUALLY they could still do it, could be some old gods / undead related thing, not during the past scourge war but now that the scourge isn't a thing anymore and the power balance has shifted (also meanwhile other old gods were fought etc, there could be development in the story tied to that)
It is very important to note that the Shade of Eranikus storyline was finished as part of the Scepter of the Shifting Sands storyline, a quest chain that only a small fraction of the playerbase, both then and on classic, ever got to experience which is why that misconception that the quest chain was incomplete persists.
Turtle wow giving us some of these! Doing a much better job than blizzard in fulfilling a classic plus. We have Hyjal, Kara, Gilneas, Islands like Tel'Abim and Gilligans, High elves, goblins. Truly the classic experience I wanted but blizzard didn't care to deliver
One thing about Eranikus, his story actually did get finished, just in a way almost nobody experienced so few people even remember it had a sort of conclusion in-game. He appears as one of the special bosses for the Scepter of the Shifting Sands quest line, as one of the holders of the gems you need to rebuild the scepter. You fight him in moonglade and have to hold him off until Tyrande shows up with her priestesses to cleanse him, and he turns back into a normal green dragon and goes back to the emerald dream to help fight the nightmare again
I'll be honest, I entirely forgot about that. I still feel that, just like with how Silithus was initially unfinished and near empty, it still counts as something that was left unfinished for QUITE a while, but I appreciate you bringing this up as I completely forgot about him popping back up in that event.
@@TheDanNation I can see that, it is definitely unfinished for 90% of the player base and it feels like a really weird way to conclude his story. It felt like they just needed a green dragon for the quest and he was the first one they could find that players would recognize. I believe in another timeline where they weren’t in such a time crunch, they would have continued the quest so you could get a replacement trinket for doing the right thing and helping to cleanse and free him.
I agree entirely, and I'm really glad you brought it up, it's always nice to see those kinds of important lore callbacks that Blizzard did really love doing for a long time.
The airfield was accessible through the Old Ironforge before they revamped it... people were whining that the city was too big so we got the boring circle that is is now...
you could have padded this out a little more with details about the pre-TBC Outland, which was an island off the coast of Azeroth in Vanilla. There wasnt much there, a very early proto-Hellfire Peninsula with no NPCs or finalized art. Interesting to note was that the corpse of Mannoroth (I think that was his name, the dead Pit Lord from WC3) was present. There was one mob in this region, a centaur that didn't have any actions -- when you killed it, it dropped a battle standard in place where the corpse was. Super weird behavior that had at that point not been seen in the game.
As I mentioned in my social post for this video, I didn't feel that was appropriate as from my understanding, the pre-TBC Hellfire was intended just as a testing ground for TBC and was never made to be something that was going to be released as part of Vanilla. Essentially, the content it was used for came out on time. I could very easily be wrong on that, but I also plan on doing a big Burning Crusade episode where I'll be covering it in detail, so I didn't feel to pressured to talk about it here. Also, this one was nearly 20 minutes and I really try not to go longer than that. Thank you for the comment!
One big minus (imo) for this is that what is being talked about is not presented on the screen for the most part. Outside of that, very nice collection of old info that probably a large portion of the playerbase do not know.
I do my best on these to provide imagery relevant to what I'm talking about, but these are meant to be placeholders for the video. It's meant to be listened to and not watched, for the most part.
For those of you that dont mind private servers, turtle wow did adress ALOT of those missing features, making it a more complete and beautiful experience. 😁
I can't say enough good things about what's going on with Turtle WoW, and I'm incredibly excited for the upcoming patch Oct 3rd. Everyone should swing by and check it out ---> turtle-wow.org/#/home
@@snakebebop @literallynobody9769 is correct, and even still, nothing lasts forever and all. Look at what happened with the Official China WoW Servers, everything got deleted anyhow. I know that's not comforting but it does happen, even to official servers. Try it out, Turtle is free and a great way to dip your toes in!
@@TheDanNation speaking of the Chinese servers, I will have to admit, might be worth waiting a little bit to try it out for the first time. The huge population boom on the server seems to need a bit more time to calm down. Could be fine now, but o found it pretty impossible to play for quite a while. The Chinese servers are up now but idk how stable the population situation is on them, and I know the population on the single European server is pretty much always at 12-14k+ still. I find that insanely packed especially when thousands of those are going to be doing the hardcore challenge and starting zones are a nightmare lol. Im kind of expecting with the huge, awesome looking patch coming out, they're going to end up needing another Europe server lol. It's a totally awesome server lol, at this point I'm pretty sure they're way bigger than nostalrius ever was lol. But they're so good they've recently suffer from success lol.
Seeing all this cut content is very interesting, but it also makes me a bit sad. There are so many things Blizzard could’ve done before just sticking us in Outland. I would’ve loved to have seen a more fleshed out Azeroth.
4:50 ...and then, you complete the quest during a special event in the Scepter of the Shifting Sands questline, specifically during the quest [The Nightmare Manifests]. It might not have been the best idea, but this was back when Blizzard was trying to make everything have a big, epic conclusion. Regardless, there was a conclusion to Eranikus' storyline, even if we didn't get to see it.
I kept waiting for a mention of Hellfire Peninsula as it existed in the original WoW files and intended to be a zone prior to its rework into Outland for BC. Content for another day, I suppose! Some of these were even new to me. Thanks!
I've had a few folks mention this, no worries! My understanding is that the Vanilla Hellfire Penninsula was a test run for TBC and mostly recycled into the expansion. Which, while it doesn't look like, based on terrain, chronologically makes sense. I will say, if you can get me a reference that shows they did want to release the Vanilla Hellfire Penninsula I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you for your thoughts!
@@TheDanNation All I can think of is that original concept map showing zones by level and raids, that I can't seem to find now. Maybe it was ambitious enough to include stuff they'd planned for an expansion and not just initial release, because I vaguely recall them showing level 70 things on there. There might've even been "northrend" as a single zone on it. I wish I could find it.
@@michaelturner2806 No need to find it, I do know what you're talking about. That was SUPER early on and got scrapped pretty quickly, you're not wrong about it though at all!
There is also an example of Tol Barad being ingame in early Alpha which makes me believe it was supposed to be in Baradin Bay together with Kul'Tiras but both being much smaller islands
I will say, despite the many issues that BFA had, including its narrative and systems problems, i do think overall kul'tiras was very well written and executed. To this day Both kul'tiras and Zandalar are my favorite questing experiences in game. just a personal opinion tho
I appreciate your thoughts on this. I disagree, and was incredibly disappointed by prettymuch all of BfA, but that shouldn't detract from folks that did enjoy it.
@@TheDanNationfeel like I should've mentioned this in my original comment but love the content man! I really hope you can continue and your channel can keep growing!
really nice video, very informative and well put together ^^ The only thing that kind of makes me sad is that at this point, every time I see cut/forgotten content videos, basically I already know everything I'll find in them xD But still I like to hear the different takes and ideas that pop up in the videos and in the comment sections :D
Especially for vanilla, we've figured everything out that got cut a long time ago. That's one of the reasons I included a bit more speculation and suggestion in my second of these videos where I talked about cut classes, spells, abilities, etc.
@@TheDanNation did you also use the World of Warcraft Diary? I think that is the newest source of new trivia and facts about those years we had in a whole lifetime xD (and it's already how many, 5 years old? was it 2019?)
More about Quel'Thalas on the early map you can see how EPL was much smaller and Stratholm located in WPL where Hearthglen is now. Zul'Mashar in EPL must be the intended location for Zul'Aman with a body of water (Sunwell?) to the North of it and Silvermoon above it
There's a few private servers doing just that. Turtle, Epoch, and VanillaPlus are all projects utilizing cut content to generate new Vanilla experiences.
Great video, but I miss the Vashj'ir raid as an honorable mention. They scrapped it because the movement under water was so pooly received, and I wonder what they were planning with it.
Vash'jir was a great idea on paper, but never getting the Neptulon raid was unfortunate. I also entirely forgot about it for this piece. That sounds crazy, I know, one of the most glaring issues of cut content from Cata and I just *FORGOT* it, but the fact is I actively avoided doing more than the bare minimum in Vash'jir because I have severe Thalassophobia. I had to play the Subnautica games with cheats just to not have a panic attack while playing them, no joke lol.
@@TheDanNation This is the other thing, I feel like this was not called into consideration when designing an underwater level. Glad that you found your way around in Subnautica!
You forgot to include the actual unfinished quel'thalas zone. You can get there by hugging the water around the mountains in the western plague lands. There's a tower and a lone dock.
That wasn't the actual unfinished Quel'Thalas zone, that was just a structure and a dock. Sure it was put in and never used for anything, but it didn't have any connection to an unfinished or unreleased piece of content.
@@Topgun5t It does, however zone borders and areas are, to say the least, way off base sometimes. For example, you can be off the coast on the far east side of the plaguelands, essentially off map entirely, and it'll also say Quel'thalas. There's other examples of this from all over the world maps, but needless to say, we really can't use the zone tags as clear indicators, we need more evidence than just them to have a clear flag of where something is and what it is. Good question!
I agree. Uldum was a awful dissapointment. Maybe they just reused what was planned for Uldum with ulduar and it left them without ideas left for it. Hence rather generic indiana jones+egypt thing they pulled i Cata...
@@TheDanNation Same, even when Wotlk can be considered the best it all more on gradient with most things. Story choices too. TBC was particularily bad when it comes to that. Ot reduced illidan to just dungeon boss without much of substance, wotlk atleast tried to do soemthing and expose wow player to the story of arthas more in case they never played warcraft 3. Maybe its because Metzen was getting tired already at that point even beflre development on Cataclysm started. Quality of the story and world building did deterioriate seemingly with his burn that he was talking about when he left after Legion. Maybe its just WoW spiraling out of control in attempts of blizzard topping its previous expansions and story and trying to make things more and more "epic". It did start to feel like rehashing of the story beats from wc3 itself or just direct nostalgia driven hype as with TBC, Wotlk, WoD or Legion. Legion atleast tried to mitigate what TBC done wrong wih Illidan so i can give it that, but i am not sure if its because of Metzen alone, doesnt feel like it, especially after the way he handled Thrall and then Jaina. Having read Lord of Clans and growing up on Wc3 i just cant feel like he run his character into the ground and made him into that green jesus meme. Having him do out of character things, chief among them how he first tried and then did put Garrosh out like a dog compared to what happened in the book when he was younger and angrier there. Dont want to spoil it in case you havent read it, but i think you had. Maybe i put too much blame on him, i do love the world he created, but i feel he also caused it to get quite a bit worse and shallow as time went on. Almost like that quote "Die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain"... I dont know what to expect of his return because of this, plue i crossed out modern wow almost entirely at this point... I think writing my own fanfiction would do me more good than hoping he magicly undoes everything 😅
For this video, this is about as good as my b roll footage gets. I generally do my best to pull relevant footage without breaking copyright in any way, but my primary concern is audio quality.
Warlords was probably my favorite expansion for the first couple months of its life. What we had at first was very good and had we gotten everything else that was shown and thought to have been coming (particularly instead of the crap we eventually got...) I dare say it could've been one of the best xpacs. Instead, it's literally the worst one of them all. Maybe in some alternate universe...
2:25 The Ironforge Airfield has been confirmed as being all it was intended to be in Classic. The devs thought flight paths were too boring, so they put this and some other interesting landmarks in the world that you can only see from flight paths. That was all it was: just some eye candy and world flavor to see on a flight path.
So what you're telling me is that you believe the developers, creators of one of the most vibrant and deep MMOs to ever exist, weren't even tempted to try and make something out of a cool airfield area on the top of a mountain range in one of the most active early leveling zones in the entire game? Sure, sounds good.
✈️ Ironforge airfield was just flavor. Answered by devs at a Blizzcon panel: they just wanted something for players to look at while on a gryphon flying over.
Once again, as I've said to the few people commenting with this, if you don't think at least a few of those devs hadn't wanted to do more than that, and you're simply accepting everything at face value, then more power to you but I vehemently disagree.
I don't bemoan people reading and enjoying them, but to call them rock solid contiguous lore I think is absolutely unreasonable, especially for anything Knaak wrote.
Thank you for watching! If you haven't already, take the time to check out the rest of the Ancient Lore series at the playlist below, as well as subscribing to The Dan Nation for the regular updates I put out.
www.youtube.com/@TheDanNation/subscribe
ua-cam.com/play/PLz3HFn9IbUgkjnDezofH-cz0_0I6urUOe.html
I was thinking... it doesn't qualify as cut content, but you know - well imho at least - one thing that had great chances but blizzard let slip between their fingers? Teldrassil. Why wasn't it developed more? They made this abominable huge baobab (and tbh I'm fond of its dumb shape, I don't like how in the depictions now it's a super cool twisting elf-tree, it made more sense lore-wise before) and the subplot about its corruption, but never worked well and more on it... they could have made dungeons set inside it, a whole "under... ground? underbark? ehm xD" area of tunnels in it, they could have made towns and areas on the giant branches on its circumference (at least the ones below the playable level) maybe even with wooden walkways connecting them toward the roots... etc etc... it's a bit late, thinking these things like 18 years later, but I was like... uhm struck by lighting and had this idea xD
I'll do :D
IIRC the developers have said the Ironforge airfield was added purely to provide some scenery for players taking a flight path to and from Ironforge. They added scenery on other flight routes as well but the airfield is the most elaborate one, aside from perhaps the dancing troll village near the border of Moonglade and Darkshore.
Though the dancing troll village may actually have originally been intended as a Horde quest hub in Darkshore, as if you do get in there (via slowfalling from Moonglade) there are some NPCs inside the buildings that are friendly to Horde players, and there actually is a path in Darkshore that leads towards the village but gets blocked off by mountains. So it's speculated that Blizzard may have added the troll village as a Horde town before the decided to make it a zone with only Alliance quests, and instead of removing it they just altered the zone geometry to make it inaccessible but left it as flight path scenery.
I can absolutely believe that about the Ironforge Airfield, do you have a source on those comments if possible?
As for the troll village in Darkshore, from my understanding it was also purely for flight path eyecandy, and not as a potential hub for the Horde in Darkshore. Many times developers would ID NPCs as either Horde or Alliance in the weirdest spots, just for easter egg grade fun. A few good examples of this are the farms on the East Coast of Arathi or the lone Tauren on the Southwest coast of Silithus. They're not meant for anything, just bonus tidbits for people to find if they really explored.
Thank you for the comment!
John Staats talked about it in the Wow diaries
@@TheDanNationWoW Diaries or smthn like that it's a book made by one of Vanilla dev's.
Devs make up a lot of things
They really really dropped the ball on Azul’Nerub
The nerubian lore and vision of what that underground empire looked like . . . It could have been it’s own expansion . And it would have been incredible .
I couldn't agree more, we could have learned SO MUCH, especially how the Nerubians evolved in relation to the Old Gods and how much tye scourge took from them.
@@TheDanNation yeah the lore alone would have made it super hype . Just imagine a cinematic of the alliance trying to make a settlement on Northrend to start to assault to the frozen throne
Only to be thwarted by blizzards creating a fog of war . And then being attacked from these creatures tunneling under them . . . Before we could ever reach the throne . . We have to deal with this entire underground empire . Use the tunnels to create a counter attack .
Ahhhh . Could have been so legendary .
@@alexstreet9470 It would have completely changed the dynamic of the entire expansion and it would have been epic.
I've just learned about the incredible lore for the spiderbois, I'm hoping the next xpac (leaks kind of fit the theme too) touches on them. I love their lore and would be a huge win
I'm a bit split on this idea cause I find it awesome, but at same time I can see why Blizzard wouldn't be eager to do it, in terms of how they wanted to make the expansion long. Indeed it could be its whole expansion. ACTUALLY they could still do it, could be some old gods / undead related thing, not during the past scourge war but now that the scourge isn't a thing anymore and the power balance has shifted (also meanwhile other old gods were fought etc, there could be development in the story tied to that)
It is very important to note that the Shade of Eranikus storyline was finished as part of the Scepter of the Shifting Sands storyline, a quest chain that only a small fraction of the playerbase, both then and on classic, ever got to experience which is why that misconception that the quest chain was incomplete persists.
As someone who mentioned this yesterday, I totally forgot about that part of the scepter quest, my mistake!
Turtle wow giving us some of these! Doing a much better job than blizzard in fulfilling a classic plus. We have Hyjal, Kara, Gilneas, Islands like Tel'Abim and Gilligans, High elves, goblins. Truly the classic experience I wanted but blizzard didn't care to deliver
AMEN!
One thing about Eranikus, his story actually did get finished, just in a way almost nobody experienced so few people even remember it had a sort of conclusion in-game.
He appears as one of the special bosses for the Scepter of the Shifting Sands quest line, as one of the holders of the gems you need to rebuild the scepter. You fight him in moonglade and have to hold him off until Tyrande shows up with her priestesses to cleanse him, and he turns back into a normal green dragon and goes back to the emerald dream to help fight the nightmare again
I'll be honest, I entirely forgot about that. I still feel that, just like with how Silithus was initially unfinished and near empty, it still counts as something that was left unfinished for QUITE a while, but I appreciate you bringing this up as I completely forgot about him popping back up in that event.
@@TheDanNation I can see that, it is definitely unfinished for 90% of the player base and it feels like a really weird way to conclude his story. It felt like they just needed a green dragon for the quest and he was the first one they could find that players would recognize. I believe in another timeline where they weren’t in such a time crunch, they would have continued the quest so you could get a replacement trinket for doing the right thing and helping to cleanse and free him.
I agree entirely, and I'm really glad you brought it up, it's always nice to see those kinds of important lore callbacks that Blizzard did really love doing for a long time.
If Classic+ happens I'd like to see Uldum and Hyjal added with raids with vanilla graphics from 2004-Jan 12 2007.
Turtle WoWs patch on October 3rd has Hyjal as one of its new vanilla+ zones, strongly recommend you check it out when it comes out!
The airfield was accessible through the Old Ironforge before they revamped it... people were whining that the city was too big so we got the boring circle that is is now...
you could have padded this out a little more with details about the pre-TBC Outland, which was an island off the coast of Azeroth in Vanilla. There wasnt much there, a very early proto-Hellfire Peninsula with no NPCs or finalized art. Interesting to note was that the corpse of Mannoroth (I think that was his name, the dead Pit Lord from WC3) was present. There was one mob in this region, a centaur that didn't have any actions -- when you killed it, it dropped a battle standard in place where the corpse was. Super weird behavior that had at that point not been seen in the game.
As I mentioned in my social post for this video, I didn't feel that was appropriate as from my understanding, the pre-TBC Hellfire was intended just as a testing ground for TBC and was never made to be something that was going to be released as part of Vanilla. Essentially, the content it was used for came out on time.
I could very easily be wrong on that, but I also plan on doing a big Burning Crusade episode where I'll be covering it in detail, so I didn't feel to pressured to talk about it here. Also, this one was nearly 20 minutes and I really try not to go longer than that.
Thank you for the comment!
Where do you have this info from about the centaur?
@@KevinArcade87 first hand knowledge, i went there on live servers back in the day
One big minus (imo) for this is that what is being talked about is not presented on the screen for the most part. Outside of that, very nice collection of old info that probably a large portion of the playerbase do not know.
I do my best on these to provide imagery relevant to what I'm talking about, but these are meant to be placeholders for the video. It's meant to be listened to and not watched, for the most part.
For those of you that dont mind private servers, turtle wow did adress ALOT of those missing features, making it a more complete and beautiful experience. 😁
I can't say enough good things about what's going on with Turtle WoW, and I'm incredibly excited for the upcoming patch Oct 3rd. Everyone should swing by and check it out ---> turtle-wow.org/#/home
@@TheDanNation I'm interested in it but I hate losing my progress because the servers were taken down by Activision
@@snakebeboppretty confident they are hosted in Russia. Good luck taking that down from the USA lol
@@snakebebop @literallynobody9769 is correct, and even still, nothing lasts forever and all. Look at what happened with the Official China WoW Servers, everything got deleted anyhow. I know that's not comforting but it does happen, even to official servers. Try it out, Turtle is free and a great way to dip your toes in!
@@TheDanNation speaking of the Chinese servers, I will have to admit, might be worth waiting a little bit to try it out for the first time. The huge population boom on the server seems to need a bit more time to calm down. Could be fine now, but o found it pretty impossible to play for quite a while. The Chinese servers are up now but idk how stable the population situation is on them, and I know the population on the single European server is pretty much always at 12-14k+ still. I find that insanely packed especially when thousands of those are going to be doing the hardcore challenge and starting zones are a nightmare lol.
Im kind of expecting with the huge, awesome looking patch coming out, they're going to end up needing another Europe server lol.
It's a totally awesome server lol, at this point I'm pretty sure they're way bigger than nostalrius ever was lol. But they're so good they've recently suffer from success lol.
Seeing all this cut content is very interesting, but it also makes me a bit sad. There are so many things Blizzard could’ve done before just sticking us in Outland. I would’ve loved to have seen a more fleshed out Azeroth.
Turtle WoW has done a really great job of using a lot of these assets, if you haven't checked them out yet you should take a day to see the server!
4:50 ...and then, you complete the quest during a special event in the Scepter of the Shifting Sands questline, specifically during the quest [The Nightmare Manifests]. It might not have been the best idea, but this was back when Blizzard was trying to make everything have a big, epic conclusion. Regardless, there was a conclusion to Eranikus' storyline, even if we didn't get to see it.
I kept waiting for a mention of Hellfire Peninsula as it existed in the original WoW files and intended to be a zone prior to its rework into Outland for BC.
Content for another day, I suppose! Some of these were even new to me. Thanks!
I've had a few folks mention this, no worries! My understanding is that the Vanilla Hellfire Penninsula was a test run for TBC and mostly recycled into the expansion. Which, while it doesn't look like, based on terrain, chronologically makes sense. I will say, if you can get me a reference that shows they did want to release the Vanilla Hellfire Penninsula I would greatly appreciate it.
Thank you for your thoughts!
@@TheDanNation All I can think of is that original concept map showing zones by level and raids, that I can't seem to find now. Maybe it was ambitious enough to include stuff they'd planned for an expansion and not just initial release, because I vaguely recall them showing level 70 things on there. There might've even been "northrend" as a single zone on it. I wish I could find it.
@@michaelturner2806 No need to find it, I do know what you're talking about. That was SUPER early on and got scrapped pretty quickly, you're not wrong about it though at all!
There is also an example of Tol Barad being ingame in early Alpha which makes me believe it was supposed to be in Baradin Bay together with Kul'Tiras but both being much smaller islands
I've heard rumors about this but I never saw any pictures of this, I'd love to know more!
I will say, despite the many issues that BFA had, including its narrative and systems problems, i do think overall kul'tiras was very well written and executed. To this day Both kul'tiras and Zandalar are my favorite questing experiences in game. just a personal opinion tho
I appreciate your thoughts on this. I disagree, and was incredibly disappointed by prettymuch all of BfA, but that shouldn't detract from folks that did enjoy it.
@@TheDanNationfeel like I should've mentioned this in my original comment but love the content man! I really hope you can continue and your channel can keep growing!
@@Azuren48 Thank you!
Nice job! Very interesting.
Thank you much!
Immediate sub, this was so cool dude 😊
Thank you so much!
really nice video, very informative and well put together ^^
The only thing that kind of makes me sad is that at this point, every time I see cut/forgotten content videos, basically I already know everything I'll find in them xD
But still I like to hear the different takes and ideas that pop up in the videos and in the comment sections :D
Especially for vanilla, we've figured everything out that got cut a long time ago. That's one of the reasons I included a bit more speculation and suggestion in my second of these videos where I talked about cut classes, spells, abilities, etc.
@@TheDanNation did you also use the World of Warcraft Diary? I think that is the newest source of new trivia and facts about those years we had in a whole lifetime xD (and it's already how many, 5 years old? was it 2019?)
I have not, I gave up midway through BFA and never invested myself in the Warcraft Diary.
For the Wod segment you could of said the entire expansion and it would have fit just right.
Woof, but also, you're not wrong!
Could you please list the music used in your video if possible? Very well made and nicely paced!
It's all from Turtle WoWs official in game soundtrack, you can find out more over at turtle-wow.org/#/home
More about Quel'Thalas on the early map you can see how EPL was much smaller and Stratholm located in WPL where Hearthglen is now. Zul'Mashar in EPL must be the intended location for Zul'Aman with a body of water (Sunwell?) to the North of it and Silvermoon above it
Honestly, I wouldn't doubt this, it feels like it fits really well.
Love it! Looking forward to that video on death in Warcraft.
You should be excited for tomorrow, then!
I would eventually like to see Classic feature aome unfinished content finished
Yes!
All this cut content should be "classic +"
There's a few private servers doing just that. Turtle, Epoch, and VanillaPlus are all projects utilizing cut content to generate new Vanilla experiences.
Great video, but I miss the Vashj'ir raid as an honorable mention. They scrapped it because the movement under water was so pooly received, and I wonder what they were planning with it.
Vash'jir was a great idea on paper, but never getting the Neptulon raid was unfortunate. I also entirely forgot about it for this piece.
That sounds crazy, I know, one of the most glaring issues of cut content from Cata and I just *FORGOT* it, but the fact is I actively avoided doing more than the bare minimum in Vash'jir because I have severe Thalassophobia.
I had to play the Subnautica games with cheats just to not have a panic attack while playing them, no joke lol.
@@TheDanNation This is the other thing, I feel like this was not called into consideration when designing an underwater level. Glad that you found your way around in Subnautica!
You forgot to include the actual unfinished quel'thalas zone. You can get there by hugging the water around the mountains in the western plague lands. There's a tower and a lone dock.
That wasn't the actual unfinished Quel'Thalas zone, that was just a structure and a dock. Sure it was put in and never used for anything, but it didn't have any connection to an unfinished or unreleased piece of content.
@@TheDanNation I thought it said quel'thalas at the minimap though, did it not?
@@Topgun5t It does, however zone borders and areas are, to say the least, way off base sometimes. For example, you can be off the coast on the far east side of the plaguelands, essentially off map entirely, and it'll also say Quel'thalas. There's other examples of this from all over the world maps, but needless to say, we really can't use the zone tags as clear indicators, we need more evidence than just them to have a clear flag of where something is and what it is. Good question!
I agree. Uldum was a awful dissapointment. Maybe they just reused what was planned for Uldum with ulduar and it left them without ideas left for it.
Hence rather generic indiana jones+egypt thing they pulled i Cata...
Cata was unfortunately chock full if serious mistakes, but I will say many of Cataclysms sins were based in things Wrath started.
@@TheDanNation Same, even when Wotlk can be considered the best it all more on gradient with most things.
Story choices too. TBC was particularily bad when it comes to that. Ot reduced illidan to just dungeon boss without much of substance, wotlk atleast tried to do soemthing and expose wow player to the story of arthas more in case they never played warcraft 3.
Maybe its because Metzen was getting tired already at that point even beflre development on Cataclysm started. Quality of the story and world building did deterioriate seemingly with his burn that he was talking about when he left after Legion.
Maybe its just WoW spiraling out of control in attempts of blizzard topping its previous expansions and story and trying to make things more and more "epic".
It did start to feel like rehashing of the story beats from wc3 itself or just direct nostalgia driven hype as with TBC, Wotlk, WoD or Legion.
Legion atleast tried to mitigate what TBC done wrong wih Illidan so i can give it that, but i am not sure if its because of Metzen alone, doesnt feel like it, especially after the way he handled Thrall and then Jaina.
Having read Lord of Clans and growing up on Wc3 i just cant feel like he run his character into the ground and made him into that green jesus meme.
Having him do out of character things, chief among them how he first tried and then did put Garrosh out like a dog compared to what happened in the book when he was younger and angrier there. Dont want to spoil it in case you havent read it, but i think you had.
Maybe i put too much blame on him, i do love the world he created, but i feel he also caused it to get quite a bit worse and shallow as time went on. Almost like that quote "Die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain"...
I dont know what to expect of his return because of this, plue i crossed out modern wow almost entirely at this point... I think writing my own fanfiction would do me more good than hoping he magicly undoes everything 😅
Nice
A lot of content for Classic+
Can we take gnomer back too? Awake me from this dream.
One day lmao
great video! one suggestion show more relevant b roll to what you are saying.
For this video, this is about as good as my b roll footage gets. I generally do my best to pull relevant footage without breaking copyright in any way, but my primary concern is audio quality.
Warlords was probably my favorite expansion for the first couple months of its life. What we had at first was very good and had we gotten everything else that was shown and thought to have been coming (particularly instead of the crap we eventually got...) I dare say it could've been one of the best xpacs. Instead, it's literally the worst one of them all. Maybe in some alternate universe...
On paper, the expansion felt like a stellar idea, put into practice though it fell on its face every step of the way.
I like cata Uldum :(
I mean, more power to you, that's totally okay, I just didn't at all D:
Wow always over promised on expansions and under delivered. Literally every time
Consistently, every single time it feels. I give exception to TBC but even Wrath disappointed me heavily.
2:25 The Ironforge Airfield has been confirmed as being all it was intended to be in Classic. The devs thought flight paths were too boring, so they put this and some other interesting landmarks in the world that you can only see from flight paths. That was all it was: just some eye candy and world flavor to see on a flight path.
the iron forge airfield was something to look at from flight paths.
So what you're telling me is that you believe the developers, creators of one of the most vibrant and deep MMOs to ever exist, weren't even tempted to try and make something out of a cool airfield area on the top of a mountain range in one of the most active early leveling zones in the entire game?
Sure, sounds good.
✈️ Ironforge airfield was just flavor. Answered by devs at a Blizzcon panel: they just wanted something for players to look at while on a gryphon flying over.
Once again, as I've said to the few people commenting with this, if you don't think at least a few of those devs hadn't wanted to do more than that, and you're simply accepting everything at face value, then more power to you but I vehemently disagree.
Plus who the hell would read those comics and books???? ft
I don't bemoan people reading and enjoying them, but to call them rock solid contiguous lore I think is absolutely unreasonable, especially for anything Knaak wrote.
40 mana kara > 10man kara. I saw video of unfinished 40 mana kara years ago it was 2x size tbc kara
Holy shit that'd be epic, do you have a link by chance to see this?
This was very interesting to watch and the music fits very well to it.
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it!