Four years have passed since the races banded together to protect the Well of Eternity from the power of the Burning Legion. The tenuous peace that once held all the hatred of the races at bay, has shattered. The lands of the world of Azeroth have once again become host to a World of Warcraft. With eight races, all vying for control of Azeroth.
Page 5 of 9
The Druid Class Hall in Legion is home to a dryad called Lunara, lifted straight from the MOBA Heroes of the Storm. Wander over to the Monk Class Hall and you'll meet Rhonda, who plenty of players assumed was a nod to MMA fighter Ronda Rousey but is actually named for Rhonda Cox, a real Blizzard sound engineer and martial artist.
At its peak, WoWWiki grew to more than 99,800 pages, making it the largest community-run wiki dedicated to any single video game on the internet. That's an enormous amount of collective note-taking from a fanbase that clearly wasn't satisfied with just playing the thing.
The teleportation trinket you pick up from Icecrown Citadel, Jaina's Medallion, has a shape and colour scheme that lines up suspiciously well with the collar Scooby-Doo wears. Nobody at Blizzard has ever confirmed it outright, but once you notice the resemblance it's genuinely hard to unsee.
Long before he was the undead lich guarding Naxxramas, Kel'Thuzad was a respected human archmage and member of Dalaran's Kirin Tor, with genuine standing among the city's magical elite. His obsession with forbidden necromancy got him cast out, and the Lich King's voice found him not long after, turning him into the very first member of the Cult of the Damned.
Because World of Warcraft and Warcraft III were being built at roughly the same time, the two teams ended up leaning on each other. Some of the earliest playable builds of WoW were actually running on a modified version of the Warcraft III engine before the MMO's own tech had caught up.
That little bird everyone begs to sit on their head wasn't planned content at all. Artist Jordan Powers had been sketching him as a personal doodle for years before he snuck a 3D version into a Warlords of Draenor garrison asset, and the team almost cut him during review. A developer spotted him at the last minute and decided to let players put him on their heads instead, and the rest is community history.
Down in the Steam Pools of southern Feralas there's a fully staffed goblin holiday resort, complete with sunbathing NPCs and a self-styled celebrity adventurer called Johnny Awesome soaking up the atmosphere. None of them have quests to give, they just exist to grumble about how overpriced the drinks are if you strike up a conversation.
South of Lor'danel in pre-Cataclysm Darkshore sits an unremarkable whirlpool that most players swam straight past for years. Jump into it, though, and you get pulled down into a forgotten underground ruin full of Highborne spirits and the bones of a long-dead demon hunter, tucked away with no quest marker pointing you anywhere near it.
In the heart of Blackrock Mountain stands a statue of Franclorn Forgewright, the dwarf who designed much of Blackrock Depths, holding an empty grip built to fit his hammer Ironfel. Slot the weapon in and it locks permanently into the monument, unlocking a hidden key compartment in the base, but the moment anyone tries to pry the hammer back out, both it and the statue shatter for good.
For years the Ashbringer sat in players' hands with no proper quest attached, which didn't stop an early forum post from inventing an entire made-up quest line to obtain it out of thin air. The story spread as if it were real, and it took roughly two decades before Blizzard finally gave the sword a genuine questline in Season of Discovery, quietly closing the loop on a myth their own community had written for them.
