Explorer’s Spirit Karazhan Crypts.

I like to think I’ve always been a really good beta tester, figuring out interesting bugs, interesting ways to get to locations, and even getting to places I shouldn’t.  I figured out Diablo 1′s mana shield bug on my own.  I once was able to get inside a wall in the original Planetside and shoot people, while literally being unassailable.  I enjoy exploring, testing, breaking, it’s part of who I am, and when I learn about a new easter egg or bug, I usually have to see it.

Last night, my friend Calvin and I were looking up interesting things in WoW, from the Creepy Goldshire Children, to the large Dragonblight skeleton, and we stumbled upon Karazan Crypts and a way into there.  That little itch was resparked in me, and I was determined to get there, to see it, particularly since it was supposed to be the creepiest thing -in- World of Warcraft.  It’s times like this I think I can really relate to old explorer’s, that need to see what’s there, despite the consequences.  Sure others had gone before me, and there was footage and photos to prove it, but it never is the same as -going- there.

I’ve broken the ToS a few times to explore new lands, most of the time unscathed, a few times temp banned.  My guild master this time, after seeing Calvin and I disconnect 30 or so times in a row got wind that something suspicious was up, and I was honest, and she was honest, afraid that the guild might suffer for me needing to break the ToS.  Citing things like the Paragon issue (thought not by name) as an example of a guild suffering for rulebreaking.

Yet the pull of new, the pull of digging too deep, really gets my dwarven instincts rolling.  (Even though I’m Horde at the moment.)  So despite her very polite request for me to stop, and a small pang of guilt for worrying her, I soon found myself in Karazhan Crypts, like I had Hyjal and the Emerald Dream long before.  And, I enjoyed it, we smiled and laughed, and explored, came up with theories for certain rooms, even looked up theories as to what the crypt was.

Back when you could mountain hop up to Mount Hyjal, an instance there that mirrored Onyxia’s Lair, led many to believe that there’d be a fight with Deathwing up there.  Years later, Hyjal releases as part of Cataclysm, and the final boss, Deathwing.  Well played players.  We didn’t find much about Karazan Crypts.  It appears to be  more than just Kara though, being part of the village surrounding Kara, and going all the way over into Duskwood.

With Deadwind Passes and Duskwood’s interesting history with the Scythe of Elune, what equate to World of Warcraft’s 4 horsemen of the apocolypse; the dark riders, Raven Hill’s long dead embalming school, issues with undead and black magic rampant, and of course Karazhan and all of the evil done there, the crypts seem like one of the more unholy, powerfully dark parts of World of Warcraft.  A literal bridge under two of the oddest, and darkest zones in the game.  What horrors could have created this place?  And what kind of people mutilated others, chopping off their hands, removing their eyes, and hung them upside down?

(That last part is The Upside-Down Sinners, Pictured here.)

 

Creepy, yes?  But anyway, exploring down there, theorizing which rooms were boss rooms, what kind of bosses might be located there, the strange connections between Kara, Raven Hill, and the Scythe of Elune, really smiling and enjoying the game.   Sharing that sort of experience with others is just as good if not more delicious than raiding to me.  Visiting the forbidden GM islands, the dev stuff below Westfall/Deadmines, Ice Cream Valley!  How many wonders in World of Warcraft would I have missed without being willing to dig too deep?

How many bugs would have gone unpatched, without people discovering them and using them.  And how unfair would it be for Blizzard to strike down a group of people completely unrelated to the crime?  If they did, that’s a problem with the company, not the player.  I’ll take responsibility for what I did, as I have in the past, -I- did this, and I did it because my explorer’s instinct was too strong to resist.  And I now have a memory I can treasure, that’s special and rare.  Like defeating Yogg+0, or seeing unfinished Hyjal, like finding the Easter Egg in adventure, or the contest room in Link to the Past.  Finding those things some people may never know about, is part of the joys of gaming, one of the things an interactive medium can offer much easier than other kinds.

So I’m sorry, sweet Guild Mistress of Reckoning, your words did hold weight, but sometimes a Dwarf just has to dig.