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Another piece of Azshara that was left unfinished is the Timbermaw Hold, I loved visiting those gates in classic!

I can clearly imagine Vanilla Karazhan : big attunements, require arcana resist gear, massive 40 man raid and the catacomb part being a 20 man raid (like AQ20/40)

I really wish I could play this game for the first time again - 2004 was such a good time...

I think this is why Classic+ is so compelling to people. The Classic dev team has years of content at their finger tips if they were to put in the elbow grease of fitting and molding this scrapped content into the Classic game. Once all the scrapped content is done then they could build out the world in ways that Cataclysm did WITHOUT sundering the world or introducing flying mounts of course. There's a very clear path of content for Classic+. Whether everyone enjoys Blizz's version of it is another story.

As a Vanilla player so many of these were like walking through a theme park that was still being built. You could see the art and the bare bones of what they were making, but the heart and soul had yet to be put in. A ghostly building site that was abandoned and never finished. Spooky yet fascinating of what could have been. Azshara will always be my favourite zone.

I was surprised that you missed Hyjal. I remember sneaking into it in vanilla with a few guildies (just some creative wall jumping to get in). Really beautiful zone, had the world tree in it that you could climb, and even had a really cool under construction sign that we took a lot of screen shots around. But, if someone is on the Classic Servers and goes, don't do anything dumb and fall there, the corpse run back is crazy.

The portals behind the world boss dragons were originally intended to put players into the Emerald Dreamway - which, as one would guess, would exist in the Emerald Dream, and was going to allow for fast travel between the different portals in addition to giving access to the actual zones of the Emerald Dream. This was intended to fill the gaps in faction presence on the two continents. For example, Azshara would give horde quick access to the Emerald Dreamway, and Duskwood would give the Alliance the same and allowing both factions quick travel both between the continents and to areas that were otherwise a long journey to reach. (Specifically, Alliance has to take rather long flight paths to reach the North of Eastern Kingdoms (hinterlands) and the Horde has to take an excessively long journey to get to the South of Eastern Kingdoms (Duskwood). I'd imagine additional portals were probably intended, but scrapped as well) Obviously this never actually happened, but that was the original intent. I think it would make a great Vanilla+ addition, especially since when the world bosses spawned there would be a mad dash through the Emerald dream and a huge fight just outside each portal. The chaos would be excellent.

The most disappointing thing of vanilla to TBC was never completing the story for corrupted ashbringer. Said the next step was Outland but it never delivered…

I love stuff like this. Cut content, weird changes, “what could’ve been”. It’s always fascinating seeing developers’ vision compared to the product

The thing I like most about Vanilla is that almost nothing is adequately explained or resolved. For instance, there is a quest from a NPC in the Undercity that takes you all over the place, and it just ends with you delivering some stones to some guy on an island off the coast of the Hinterlands and then.......nothing.

In Vanilla WoW you can get out of bounds very easily in the Badlands, walk north-west out of the most north-western town (kargath?) and walk up into the mountains, there is atleast one gap where you can wedge and jump your way over the rocks and up into out of bounds. From there I remember there being a giant hole in the map between Badlands and Loch Modan, but you can head west and explore. I really loved exploring the world prior to Cataclysm and flying mounts.

The centaurs in Desolace seemed to need more than just the outside of Maradon.

What I liked about vanilla was it's mysterious atmosphere and the undiscovered world. I loved just wander around and look for some cool little places

Karazhan was always intended to be a Vanilla raid and its one of the first they started development on before the game even came out. The issue they ran into was that it ended up being TO big, even bigger than the Karazhan we got in TBC so they ended up pushing it back, which is why MC was developed within a single week. Vanilla was originally intended to continue past Naxxramas with patch content, Kara being one of the said raids, which is why the Staff of Ateish has an on use ability to open a raid/group portal to Karazhan. The finished Karazhan ended up being slapped into TBC's launch, seeing as Karazhan has absolutely nothing to do with an Outland themed expansion and why majority of the Kara loot table is a bunch of Draenor/Outland themed items/weapons. (Gorehowl, Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix, Legacy) that were presumably from an Outland raid we never actually got

The raid portal at the bottom of darkwhisper gorge, that leads into hyjal! This has been one of the more intriguing ones for me.

One area I always wondered about was BLACKCHAR CAVE in the Searing Gorge. It was right next to the entrance to Blackrock Mountain, had a special area name that showed up when you were near it, etc. -- but it was just EMPTY in the game. It really looked like it was intended to be an instance entrance....

One thing i found while exploring that i have NEVER seen mentioned in one of these types of videos is if you break out of bounds in RFD and head towards Feralas, at the point where the small camp is there actually is a meeting stone there, another is the instance portal in darkwhisper gorge in winterspring, and last is the outland gate placed outside of bounds in zul gurub

I'm glad you brought up Eranikus. I got invested in that story after giving up a trinket and nothing came of it ever.

The questline involving worgen and the loss of the Scythe of Elune just suddenly ended in vanilla and left a lot of us wondering why it suddenly stopped.

Ravenholdt doesn't seem finished too. You farm rep with them and then nothing happens

They had Hyjal planned as well and had a good chunk of it started, there's also so many zones that we don't get to visit until Cata like Gilneas or Twilight highlands.

The artistic development is truly overlooked. Detail and thought put into every part of this game is and will always be the game changer. I love the music and it's placement.

There was a portal in Winterspring for a Classic Mount Hyjal zone. It was so weird finding it after slaying all the elite demons there

One of the things I noticed is that the professions never had their endgame finished, most of them were missing level 60 items and endgame applications for 300 skill level. Fishing and Cooking really stand out in my memory because nothing at the end of their skill caps was useful. The biggest thing you missed is Mount Hyjal, a giant gaping hole in the map every time you view Kalimdor.

I LOVED the lore and vibe of Uldum, Uldaman, all that stuff. Ive been sad my entire life that vanilla quest chaiin didnt continue!!

I did a lot of what they call "exploration" back in the day. Even after they patched away wall walking/running, it had a small but happy community. My favorite "place" was the mirror world found inside the ZG instace, from behind the portal. It lead to all kinds of cool unfinished places, including a very strange and weird version of Deadwind Pass.

I would LOVE to see all of these added into Classic Wow. Also creating "Heroic" versions of all lower level dungeons would be awesome. The WoW devs have an infinite amount of cool things they could include in Vanilla wow.. its just whether or not they actually implement them

How about Hinterlands Alliance side? Originally in Hinterlands both factions had only very few quests and poor rewards, however, in a later patch Horde got a lot of quests with incredible rewards mostly for Jintha'alor while the Alliance got nothing.

honestly, they missed out alot with CoT. amazing how they never made a CoT for events of Tides of Darkness like... - The Hordes first assault on the northern Eastern Kingdoms and forming of the Alliance - Gul'dan and the Stormreaver/Twilights Hammer clans betrayal of Ogrim Doomhammer and the Horde - The final confrontation at the foot of Blackrock Mountain (Doomhammer VS Lothar's fight) - The Creation of the Paladin order by Alonsus, Uther and Turalyon - The treason of Alterac against the Alliance, letting Doomhammers forces through the uplands unhindered - The joining of Zul'jin's Amani Trolls to the Horde - The creation of some of the first two-headed Ogres - The formation of the Sons of Lothar and the events of Beyond the Dark Portal many missed opportunities

I love secret Finding in Wow, it's loads of fun. For them to not do anything with Quel'thalas even to this date other than it being a Lone Tower at the Edge of the world stuns me. There's so much opportunity for new content to add in. It's like Filling in the rest of the Map from Oldschool Runescape of the Black parts that we can't get into for almost 20 years, then they start unlocking them.

They cut an enormous amount of content during alpha. They probably realised they wouldn't be able to finish most of it in time for original release. Then figured it would be added in future patches. But as priorities changed, most of it was abandoned..

My thoughts for player housing was instead for it to be guild halls. Your entire guild can build up and customize a location that would double as a community hub. Would have been really cool if they made them locations in the world you could claim and attempt to hold. Talk about an awesome pvp mechanic.

By the way, this is a theory but, I believe Timeless Isle is the closest thing to Emerald Dream that they've created. It was supposed to be very challening endgame, but just a zone. Not a raid or dungeon. Timeless Isle fits that... lots of enemies to battle, lots of things to unlock, things to grind for, I spent a whole year on that Island with my friends basically in 2013-14. I believe that Emerald Dream was essentially the same type of gameplay!

Garrisons wasnt player housing, there was very little in the way of customization, and the fact they put everything you would ever need inside of it, it was more like your own personal capital city. Also, tinfoil hat, it was created as a way for other players to shut people up who wanted _actual_ player housing, since its constantly parroted out whenever the idea is brought up. There have been quite a few MMOs that have had excellent player housing, like the aforementioned SW Galaxies, and Ultima, along with SWTOR, Wildstar and FFXIV. none of which took away the players desire to enjoy the gaming world with other players.

Azshara was one of my favourite places to go on a PVP server because the only people around were gold farmers, also the zone had this awesome ancient lost land vibe. Swamp of Sorrows was a good place to go too, to avoid other players lol.

I always liked the emptiness of Vanilla Azshara. It was a good spot for farming herbs, fish and a few other bits and pieces. I always found it a relaxing place to visit if I just felt like chilling. Vast empty forests with various beasts just doing their thing ; ancient ruins with random Nagas lurking , up to no good; sea giants patrolling the Bay of Storms. The fact that there were few good reasons to go there meant that there were few players there also. There were plenty of places in Vanilla Azeroth packed full of purpose. Azshara , was just there. A bit of wilderness on the edge of the world - filled with possibility. And then they turned it into Goblin Vegas or some crap

Something that I think is really funny is that once Uldum was added to the game not only does it not continue that quest thread, the Valley of the Watchers doesn't even lead to Uldum. That's a dead end; you get to Uldum through an unnamed valley to the west.

Kara crypts were used in the fangs of the father questline in cata!

Wotlk and TBC also has areas like this. Eversong woods having Tor'Watha Wotlk having the missing Gundrak raid.

Caverns of time actually looked a lot different in actual vanilla wow, back in the day. It probably had the same overall structure, but there was no visible ground or walls; you were literally just running around in what looked like deep space.

I feel like priv servers like Duskhaven are kind of onto it, but they insist on using cata+ abilities with wrath talents. Perhaps that, too, is them being onto something. It's very hard to balance classes the way classic works. It's just all built for melee scaling.

I remember wall climbing to get into Mount Hyjal and was sooooo excited, until I realized there was really nothing there and at the end of the road was just a traffic barrier with flashing lights.

You forgot to mention Hyjal, which was even in the world map of vanilla, just the portal to it from Darkwhisper Gorge was blocked with a gate. Also that place in Felwood where there is that huge cave system where warlocks go for their dreadsteed quest, that was originally meant to be a dungeon, which is why the place is so massive despite only having couple quests tied to it.

You should talk about Turtle Wow its doing many of these things very well!

The area with people hanging upside-down in Karazhan's basement is pretty uncharacteristically dark and morbid for WoW but it's just another reference to the greatest movie ever made - Big Trouble In Little China! The Six-Demon-Bag trinket is also a direct reference to the movie! BEST MOVIE!!!!!

If you're interested in a Vanilla + experience that's really enjoyable, check out Turtle WoW. They've implemented some of the things you talked about here, like making Kharazhan Crypts an actual dungeon, adding playable Goblins to the Horde and High Elves to the Alliance in Vanilla, adding new quests and even towns to old, familiar zones, etc. I'm really enjoying it!

That was an absolutely amazing video!! I love the time you spent into this, taught me some things I didn't know! I'm surprised you didn't cover Hyjal at all, there was a lot of developed unused content there as well!

I liked Azshara a lot. It felt like a very mysterious zone. Like there was more going on we couldn't quite see (yet). I guess all the unfinished content played a part in that

I will never not be sad they didnt implement the emerald dream as a zone. I just love the way it looks unfinished, so if they actually put stuff in it that would be amazing.

I just came across the gates to Uldum (without the quest) while playing on a vanilla private server and went looking for a video talking about this kind of stuff, and lo and behold this is exactly what I wanted! It even leads with the example that caught my attention! There's so many mysterious "cliffhangers" in the world that make it so magical to explore, and I feel like subsequent expansions never really captured that. TBC, Wrath, and Cata all focused very much on wrapping up major loose ends, rather than introducing many new mysteries (though there were definitely some, like the creature swimming underneath one of Northrend's troll dungeons).

On the topic of player housing: The game I feel did player housing best was Wildstar. You had an instanced plot that was the same size as all others and you could customize that plot to your hearts content. You could put a cookie cutter house on it or do a completely unique design. You pick up decor from random world drops, dungeon drops, etc. They even had a player profession that was crafting housing decor. The entrance to your housing plot was an instance in the main city. It was a place to go and just kinda create something to your liking. Yet it was attached to the main city so just like in real life, if you need something, you gotta leave the comfort of your home and go into town!

a very nice video that made me remember how my brother used to arrange tours inside our guild before cataclysm and flying in the old world he'd issue guildies with elixirs of waterwalking and we'd all ride with him on the surface of the ocean from the eastern shores of tanaris to the southern most tip of kalimdor there we could ride up a very specific incline and come up and over into a glitch in the graphics leading us below ahn'qiraj to huge fields of giant shimmering semi-transparent eggs it was such a beautiful area and i miss that place and i'm very sad i lost those and many other screenshots from that time

I would actually be compelled to play Classic if they used it as a sort of "what if" sandbox for ideas that either fell by the wayside entirely, or were repurposed for future expansions. Because there was so much more than even what was mentioned in this video. The unfinished Varian Wrynn "Missing Diplomat" questline; the partially built Mt. Hyjal zone; the scrapped Dragon Isles raid; the Northern Lordaeron zone that appears on the map, but is inaccessible; the scrapped plans to have Quel'thalas as a fully incorporated high level zone; the Stonetalon Peak Caverns that played a huge part in WC3, but never made it into WoW; the original ideas for Gilneas such as it having been overrun by Naga; Undermine as a full zone, and so much more

I always wished Blizz didn't do expansions. Here is hoping a Classic+ someday.

Don't forget the door behind Bael'gar in BRD was supposed to lead deeper into the undercity.

this game 20+ years later still getting picked apart. great things never die

I would say player housing will still be a good idea. People can do raids and dungeons and bring memorabilia and collectables to decorate the house with. Friends in your party can visit the house etc. This would be purely a cosmetic and social feature. I wouldn't want to see any vendors or anything there as we'll run into the same garrison issue of never needing to leave.

Great video, must have been a ton of work to find all of this stuff!

love how most of the content showcased here is actually added, or plan to be added in a certain vanilla + private server

Eranikus's 'chain' ended with the Scarab Lord questline I think, where you ended up having to free him for the green scepter shard.

Hyjal was practically finished, they just never added content.

Man I am dissappointed with the Eranikus questline, it could have been such a cool and memorable thing like The Battle of Darrowshire questline if it wasn't cut short. I recently got it while leveling my warrior and with enough nagging, begging, and threatening to split my soul apart by Eranikus I finally turned him in. Not even Turtle WoW has done anything with that questline yet.

One thing you didn't mention in terms of unfinished quests was the "Burning Inn" quest line for Horde in Dustwallow. The quest line kinda just ends without any resolution, and they eventually do revamp the zone in Wrath I think, but I was annoyed at it ending in Classic because I had so many characters that I had leveled since they redid the zone, I completely forgot that in Classic there was no resolution. There's a ton of empty space in the swamp where they could add the Grimtotem that eventually make their way there, even if they don't bother with the Goblin town.

15:32 Technically speaking it'd actually be Val'Sharath, as it was modeled after the Emerald Dream and the Druid-exclusive Emerald Dreamway.

Cool video! I always wondered what was going to be in the zone above the Stormwind area and NE of Redridge!!

You really must make more of these videos! I saw the later video first and this one now, really great! Please make more on Classic but also TBC and WOTLK as well if you can find data and info on those also. Really hope to see more of this kind from you! ❤

6:50 why didn't you talk about how this chain quest was basically solved in the green scepter shard part of the scepter of the shifting sands chain quest? That's where you finally awaken and free Eranikus properly.

I can tell you enjoyed making this vid, it's such a great idea for one! Though the audio seems off in this, do you have a new setup?

a lot of the vanila quests just vanishing and never geting updates is due to priority chnages and the move to expansions like bunring crusade and wrath etc. although in wraths case it too ended up very different in the end due to activision aquisistion chnaged a lot, wrath was planed to have several large content drops and not have a folow up expac but activision wnated more boxies with big price tags, one content drop being an area under northrend, others being aditinal dragon sanctums beyond the obsidian and ruby ones, and icecrown citadel itself being twice as big as we got, the 3 small dungeons we got withing it were emant to be part of the raid.

I think what I loved about vanilla wow was all the janky DND type exploration gameplay we got and it feels like after Blizzard sold out to activision instead we got the sort of theme park ride experience where everything is stream lined and what you end up "exploring" is rather just intended or inconsequential which rubs me the wrong way and feels kind of soulless because the devs didnt want to create content only a minority of players would see or do. I really truly miss the old feeling of vanilla WoW because it seems like something thats been lost to time. To me vanilla WoW really felt like a real world in a sense where you were free to do anything and no one was putting any pressure on you but there was also a natural progression to your group experiences, over time in general the culture and desire of gaming is that everything is already figured out, min maxed, data mined, everyone is in a competitive rush to get the best stuff and max level asap. Theres no time to breathe or explore, so sense of adventure or just appreciation of the world itself and it feels more distorted like people are forced into a mindset of fun is based around efficiency and winning. To me it seems like videogames have kind have become imbalanced due to a corporate culture of greed and trying to figure out how to exploit motivations rather than giving people room to enjoy something that is artistic and logical, it feels like at best the art has become a superficial backdrop that could be interchangable with a bunch of algothyms of this is what a sand environment should be like or this is what a volcanic environment should be like and this is the procedural math on how to develop it. What im basically saying is that blizzard or any other company is not making Dungeons like BRD anymore. I feel like there is a certain soul to janky games and its what is missing from modern gaming.

Isn’t Turtle WoW doing a lot of things that blizzard scrapped on their server?

I mean, the obvious Uncorrupted Ashbringer would have been dope if they fleshed that out in classic+ they already have the corrupted one and the RP in SM, they could add a whole quest chain involving the lost son that was supposed to be in Outlands,(speaking of which) they could still add ramparts through the dark portal but have it be that the world is way more messed up than the version we got in TBC that has the borders blocked off or broken off from the rest of the Outlands and we have dwarves/goblins blast a tunnel to another part or some other sort of travel between zones out here so it's not ALL of TBC getting added when they go through.

I have been really jonesing for classic classic lately. If Bliz did a real classic plus in any form I'd have to jump on, wife be damned.

I've fallen through the map in searing gorge to underground dwarven mining caves that are normally inaccessible and full of dwarves (the fall killed me sadly). Also you forgot to mention old deadwind pass but I don't think that's really necessary, but I'm sure more was to be done in that zone.

great video but you didnt mention hyjal, you could wall jump into it from the elite demon area in Winterspring* an old scool photobucket photo of my vanilla guild having officer meetings on the under construction signs at the top of mt hyjal.

16:56 Also City of Heroes after they added instanced bases.

A whole set of quests that went unfinished were the class mount quests. They originally did not intend for mounts to be bought; there was going to be a questline for each class. The only two that got finished were the Paladin and most of the Warlock (or I might have that reversed). In particular, I remember a step in one of them where an NPC just hands you a quest item and mentions at the end of the text "This will not be so easy in the future" - a reference to the fact they intended this item to be an actual quest, not just talk to him. In the end, the NPC was wrong- it would continue to be that easy forever since they never finished it or any of the other mount quests. At least up to Cataclysm anyhow- thats when I departed.

One thing most people never saw which was prolly an easter egg or something is the huge smiley face under Karazhan, you could clip under it and see it pre-Cata. Not sure if its patched in Classic, someone should try.

I had a great idea that could work well with player housing. You would have a new profession which would be called woodworking and maybe a gathering profession to go with that called lumberjack. So with lumberjack. Or you could do herbalism in conjunction with this but you would go out chop down trees, get wood and then miners could use stone to produce houses and the woodworker profession could use that wood to make bows crossbows pole arms shields stuff like that. Basically weapons and armor that are not in the crafting professions. I just think that would be really cool and it reminds me of Lord of the rings online which also included furniture creation through that profession as well

you don't need to clip into Old Ironforge. there's literally just a door to it in the throne room lol.

I am using Vanilla WoW Trinity RePack in order to create extended wow classic experience with custom quests including Airport, Farms, Elven Gate, and others. I will use handful of information from this clip to make solution even better. It will have two realms, one for single player experience, another for multiplayer but reduced and recalculated to three ppl in group be able to make dungeons and 5 for raids.

See, it's this kind of content 'or lack thereof' that made me wish that Classic WoW was like OSRS, where is grown with the old school game in mind instead of just walking back down the same path as it's retail counterpart.

Cheers for the entertaining video, one omission when you were talking about the unfinished zones though... Hyjal was in the game, it was even on the map, you could wall jump your way into it and it was more or less what we got with the Battle for Mount Hyjal raid in TBC, just lacking the NPCs and bosses.

I my opinion, it might just be too late for personal housing in Classic. However, to keep a guild feeling like a tight community, how about guild owned houses? That way there is more interacting.

7:50 the ravasaurs could make use of the elite dinosaur area which has a strangely low amount of quests associated with it, similarly to the wintersabers using the elite giants area.

With player housing, I kinda like Star Wars The Old Republics stronghold system. Placing items can be a bit irritating and restrictive, but once you figure things out its nice having a place of your own to decorate and chill at.

in my opinion, allowing flying basically everywhere, and allowing a special hearthstone to dalaran (once you get to legion) your "player housing" is basically literally Dalaran. With the exception of the portals being removed.

About the Legion weapons. You were kinda right. But the quests would lead you under the Tower in a new section. The Crypts, on the other hand, was still never used until much later for a mount quest but only the first room. When Blizz updated the first section, before that happened, some players noticed the changes, the iron gate was removed and replaced, there's now a large troll-ish wooden wall blocking you from entering the long hallway, a "plus" in now in the hold you could jump to reach the lower floor, and a table with items was placed on it. But for now, the rest of the whole area is still unused.

I would have mentionned Hyjal, with Archimonde's skull, and the Vault I mean there's a portal behind bars, damn, so enticing !! Great video btw

in Winterspring Darkwhisper Gorge there is a raid entrance with a gate in front it.

Eranikus and the Emerald Dream being excluded was the one that stuck with me the most.

Like always the best at making what we all are trying to say for years thanks Willie ❤

Good video thanks!

The eranikus quest was "updated" With the scepter green shard if i remember correctly

"In reality it wasn't beckoning very hard" - you got me on that one

Back in 04/05 we were changing the mpq files of instanced dungeons to get into emerald dream and old kara. Often once you entered the changed instanced there would be a big drop to the changed zone, hence noggenfogger for slowfall and its community. On the booty bay boat, you could have a warlock fear you on the sail and you would actually have a chance to run really fast through hellfire peninsula way before tbc announced. Wall walking and model changing was some of the most fun ive had in wow besides bgs being released.

Lovede the video WilliE! Even I learned something new and I'm a huge lore nerd 😅

Hyjal was supposed to be a raid in classic too, you could reach a well hidden portal from Winterspring in some cave that was blocked by some bars, probably could pass the bars with a fear glitch, but the portals should take anywhere

My favorite thing about Kara is the smiley face underneath it :) (that is saying something too cause I love Kara)