Pandaria = Hawaii

[thesmall001]

So I'm digging through the CASC (aka MPQ) files and doing some data mining of my own. Imagine my surprise when I discover a massive map file called "hawaiimainland". So I did some digging and hooked up some of the files to load, only to discover that "hawaiimainland" was the production name for the Pandaria continent!



It's simply amazing all the little behind-the-scenes gems you find still baked into the game files. Do you guys have any favourite mysteries and oddities you've found in the game files?

Aloha!

[Simca]

Blizzard explained the reason for this once - it's a bit of an inside joke. They often refer to expansions internally as the patch number of the initial patch. In Mists of Pandaria's case, that would be '5.0'.

The reason the word Hawaii was used for the continent name is because there is a TV show called 'Hawaii Five-0'. It was very popular around the time Mists of Pandaria was in development.

I didn't think CASC held filenames inside the file structure. I thought you had to provide your own listfile.

Did you just make up a listfile with these filenames to be silly?

- - - Updated - - -

Interesting. I just noticed that is all contained in the incomplete listfile Ladislav made. I wonder where he got his data.

http://www.zezula.net/download/listfile-wow6.zip

You do have to provide your own listfile. We (the community) have most of the filenames though. The vast majority of filenames follow simple patterns or can be obtained using dictionary attacks and standard many-character bruteforce. Blizzard provides a 'namehash' for every file, so once you find the right filename its hash will match the namehash for the file, letting you know that you have guessed correctly.

[thesmall001]

Blizzard explained the reason for this once - it's a bit of an inside joke. They often refer to expansions internally as the patch number of the initial patch. In Mists of Pandaria's case, that would be '5.0'.

The reason the word Hawaii was used for the continent name is because there is a TV show called 'Hawaii Five-0'. It was very popular around the time Mists of Pandaria was in development.

OH MY GOD. That is amazing. I didn't even click onto that.

[Soulwind]

Blizzard explained the reason for this once - it's a bit of an inside joke. They often refer to expansions internally as the patch number of the initial patch. In Mists of Pandaria's case, that would be '5.0'.

The reason the word Hawaii was used for the continent name is because there is a TV show called 'Hawaii Five-0'. It was very popular around the time Mists of Pandaria was in development.

And yet they didn't put a single reference or joke in Pandaria. Shame.

I would have killed to hear the iconic theme of the show slightly modified and using chinese instruments.

It wouldn't be the first game to do it...

[Deleted]

Hahaha! Not China... freakin Hawaii