Memories of TBC - Episode 2: Around the Cape!

Hey dudes. Silvite Soltis here. And today I'm back with another installment of Memories of TBC - a reflective series of my adventures in the Burning Crusade back in 2007-2008.

Last time, I talked about how I started the first expansion to World of Warcraft by killing furbolgs in Felwood using BoE greens I bought from the auction house. Since I couldn't get the expansion for quite a while after launch, there wasn't much more for me to do - other than level alts, that is. So today, I've got an alt story for you all. If you like it, feel free to add yourself to my mailing list below this post so that you can get notified when I make more posts like it in the future, and consider spreading the word around as well - I really appreciate it!

But anyway, on with the story...

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It was the early spring of 2007. As it was spring break, I had no classes at my Japanese high school. So even though I went in pretty much every morning anyway for kendo club, I had the afternoons off - which meant lots and lots of WoW. It was around this time that I actually hit exalted with the Timbermaw Hold, if I remember correctly, and I was itching for something else to do in game. So, I started exploring.

One day, while leveling my warrior up in the Hinterlands, I looked at my map and noticed that there was an empty zone up above it - not quite part of the newly-introduced Ghostlands, but also not part of the Hinterlands. So, having nothing better to do, I headed over there.

Now at the time, the computer I was using was a really crappy laptop that could hardly run WoW. The graphics were so bad that huge chunks of the land were jagged sheets of screen tearing. I found the eastern coast of the zone among the laggy blocks of turtles moving around at 8 frames per second and began moving north. I remember feeling surprised at how little of the coast I could actually run on - getting pushed into the water quite a few times and having to swim in the dark waters of...wherever I was at that point.

As I moved, I began to notice something strange; I was clearly moving along the coastline and my minimap displayed this, but as I progressed the world map showed me as moving through the continent! This was soon confirmed when I encountered a small night elf area in a zone called Quel'Thalas!

"Wow," I thought to myself, "I got here without the expansion after all!"

I took some screenshots (that I'm happy to say that I still have to this day), then decided to continue onward along the coast. After all, I was basically in the middle of the continent, and I was curious about what else I might find on this little adventure. I swam and swam next to the shore for what felt like an eternity - through it was probably more like 20 minutes now that I think about it. Unfortunately, the gazebo was pretty much all there was to see. Eventually, my warrior exited Quel'Thalas and The Veiled Sea and entered a zone that everyone knows well - Tirisfal Glades.

"No way." I thought to myself as I looked at the map again. But it was true. I had swam all the way through the continent and ended up on the other side. Laughing to myself, I killed a few undead murlocs along the coast - as if to virtually pinch myself and see if this had all been a dream or something. Alas, it wasn't. The developers had simply not put anything up where the map said land should be - not even mountains to block adventurers like myself. Oops!

So, not wanting to travel all the way back the way I had come, I waved farewell to a random lowbie undead guy, hit my hearthstone, and went back to the leveling grind...

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I hope you enjoyed my brief story of exploration in this big wide World of Warcraft. Even though I didn't actually have TBC yet at this point of the expansion's life, I can still say that this memory is one that I really cherish...for some reason. Even though I'd been playing the game for nearly 2 years at that point, the sense of wonder at the big wide world was still alive, and it's fun to see that this feeling continues even now, 13 years later. In any case, there won't be  many more of these TBC-but-not-actually-TBC-yet memories going forward, as there's really only one other event that sticks out in my mind - and I'm not even sure whether that was before or after I secured the expansion.

But yeah, that's it for today. If you liked this story or found it interesting, let me know by leaving a comment down below - and by adding yourself to my mailing list. Follow me over on Twitter for updates on new content as well, and consider checking out my videos over on YouTube if you like stimulating your eyes and ears simultaneously, as I make all of these posts into videos over there soon after I write them here. Thanks for reading, have an awesome day in Azeroth, and as always...

Take it easy!