Exploring Beyond Stratholme to Find the Hidden World of Warcraft Zone of Quel'Thalas

Today is the release of the 2000 subscriber special! This is the place you all wanted to see. Today, we revisit Stratholme and beyond to the hidden zone of Quel'Thalas, a zone not normally explorable!

This place is full of wonder and mystery, and new things were added to the area in the World of Warcraft expansion: Shadowlands! Not sure why they did, but maybe you can help me solve the mystery?

The original video on Stratholme on my channel is the very reason this channel went in the final direction of exploration, as I had previously tried many different video types. My visit to Stratholme garnered the most attention, AND it was the most fun video I had made up to that point. I have always loved exploring in WoW, and I love that I get to share it with all of you even more.

Original Stratholme/Quel'Thalas Video:

Support links:

Chapters:

Intro: 00:00-00:48
How to Get Out of Bounds: 00:48-00:58
The Living Side: 00:58-02:51
The Undead Side: 02:51-03:42
The Final Part of Stratholme: 03:42-06:32
The Exploration of Quel’Thalas: 06:32-11:00
Behind the Quel’Thalas Portal: 11:00-12:52
The Ocean Side of Quel’Thalas: 12:52-17:18
The Out of Bounds, Night Elf Ruins: 17:18-18:00
Conclusion/Patron Shout-Out: 18:00-18:38

[ReverenceWarlock]

Seeing this kind of stuff is honestly so mesmerizing. I wish we could've got to go in and explore Stratholme outside the instance. I do wish that maybe one day they revisit some of this stuff and finish it up. I would love for them to bring back the original Naxx 40 by finishing that Naxx and having us go through Strath to get to it and then we could farm tmog from there. Then again at the same time, this is the last marks of the original devs and yeah, it's beautiful ❤️

Also you mentioned that purple light wasn't there before when you went there the first time? That's interesting, that has me thinking they've been working on it recently, perhaps they plan on doing something with it. Honestly it's not a farfetched idea simply because of all the stuff they've been doing lately. I mean they've mentioned things like resettlement of gilneas, we've gotten that undead quest line where we clear the plague, that and they've done a bit of stuff so far for night elves on DF. So who knows they've probably come back to this and decided to put it to some kinda use. For all we know they might be purposing this for the new World tree or something, since you can't exactly just.... Move.. the one that's burnt to a crisp lol. Idk it's interesting and I'm eager to see what they've got in store, whether it includes these places or not

[morthaine]

Pre BC, there was nothing back there but the ocean and the night elf ruins. After they added the portal to Ghostlands when BC came out, they took a chunk of the layout and pasted it in so it would look like Ghostlands was there from a distance.

[santiagouc]

I don't know why but visiting this kind of places gives me a sort of nostalgia...Even tho i never played vanilla nor retail (private server). But some of this areas like Stratholme, the green portals for the nightmare drakes, Quel'Thalas, Shattrath, etc. Some of this areas had a huuuge impact on lore or some kind of event at some point, like Tanaris and the Ahn'Qiraj event. For some reason i find lovely to imagine that at some point in Warcraft's history, those places were FULL of people or narrative, so many great times and now they are empty, abandoned. Kind of sad but also beautiful, reminds me to enjoy the moment, because maybe in the future i won't be able or things will change, i like it or not.

[CallistaZM]

This is my favorite hidden area in wow, i come back here a lot just whenever im bored or sad. The purple dome appeared in Legion and was probably going to be for the void elf allied race starting but they went a different direction instead and just left this behind. At least, thats the prevalent theory.

[Eventwow]

17:03 the shadows are left over from vanilla days rendering setting that was never changed. I remember exploring zones and would see a shadow of tree but no tree. The tree was on the other side of the mountain

[suomar-art]

For a few years after the new Tirisfal Glades was added to the game in BfA it was actually extremely easy to get to this area: the invisible wall behind Scarlet Monastery was for whatever reason moved, allowing you to literally just walk into Quel’thalas. I found this by accident and recorded the footage because it seemed like nobody else had noticed it - unfortunately it seems to have been fixed now!

[Eyevou]

Those bloodelf assets weren't there originally, I can assure you of that. The zone changing will always remind me of the cave in the mountains of Dun Morogh that use to change your zone to Silithus.

[herrpez]

"Doodad" is the term Blizzard uses for items you can place in the world, all the way back from the StarCraft editor (possibly earlier, but that's the earliest I know of personally). It was also the label of a couple of benches around the world during vanilla; one set that comes to mind is the set of benches inside one of the outbuildings near Karazhan. They were updated later on, but it is entirely conceivable that the current Stratholme you display in the video is left over from all the way back then (pure speculation on my part).

[christophermaldonado]

199! Damn you’re doing well brother! Please keep it going. I started in TBC and so wish I can get back into the game. Always be well all!

[lychenthrope]

Ghostlands was originally meant to be on the same MAP as vanilla, but server sizes didnt support it and so it was moved to the outland map, which is why the chunk of Ghostlands is there to keep the illusion up. That's why you can't fly in Azuremyst or in Quel'thalas.
Also, the music in the ocean is actually Desolace/Barrens/Ocean.
By the way, the reason why Chromietime activates is because you can actually just swim/fly to the HIGH ELF* ruins from the BFA era Lordaeron. I assume thats also why the purple is there, because it was a BFA asset they were testing.

[NullRageGaming]

I'd bet that purple glow is due to the addition of the Void Elf Allied race. IIRC part of their intro quest takes place in and around Quelthalas. Would need to nail down the exact position to prove correlation. Being that they we're only added in Legion that might explain why it wasn't present on your earlier explorations.

[dtam]

From my understanding anything that is in the game but unfinished was initially planned to launch with the game but was scrapped due to time constraints. The world designers created all the zones and then they brought in the quest designers to build the quests around the zones. I imagine the world designers were mostly done with their work while other teams were still trying to flesh out the zones with quests and npcs. This allowed them to get ahead and make zones that the teams didn't have time to finish as they got closer to launch so they decided to pause development in these later zones.

[Eventwow]

6:58 from what I remember in vanilla 2005 era, when swimming around the northern part of the map this was present looking up the Mts from the ocean.

[TrepidDestiny]

I've been to Quel'Thalas multuple times and have never seen the purple bubble. Interesting.
The way I used to get to it (idk if they put a barrier up in retail these days) is I would jump off the cliff into the ocean at Scarlett Monastery and swim up the coast to the ruins. I know you can still use this method on Classic servers.

[sympathiea]

Woah, your channel has really grown, awesome job. Old fan, very proud of how you're doing ^-^

So the thing with doodads is that's just the name for basic props that can have hovertext or clickability added to them; braziers, flower pots, mailboxes, church pews—that kinda thing

[RAHowarth]

Your awesome chill attitude. Interesting exploration of this nostalgic game. And humility at the end and gratitude for your subscribers etc has earned you a sub from me :P Hope you get the success you’re aiming for! :)

[tomthelockguy]

If I could make a suggestion: Azshara’s Eternal Palace. I’ve always tried to use far sight on her fight platform. I couldn’t get far, had limited time to explore between wipes.

[SirPhoebus]

Amazing work documenting this area!!! Very well done !!

[manoftherainshorts]

This game is great exploration-wise... I never inew this game actually had a zone called Quel'Thalas! And it probably survived since Vanilla! Interesting.

[flame]

Also re: the shadows on the ocean floor, they aren't limited to Quel'thalas. One time I decided to swim to the bottom of the ocean floor in the death knight starting area, and they're down there too. No idea why.