What did silithus look like before patch 1.8?

[RickJamesLich]

Southwind was there still and so was the initial camp that you see when you come from Un'goro but beyond that it was a desert area with a LOT of bugs all along the way, like I know the zone ended up having many bugs but they were literally covering the map to the point where it seemed like they did it purposefully so you wouldn't explore too much. For some reason I remember them being elite (like the worms and scorpions) but could be wrong. I remember really wanting to check out the zone when I was on my way to 60 but some of the details are still vague. I know when you actually got to the silithid wall you'd see an animation of a part of the wall being covered with vines/roots.

[mmocfd1b0ab5a3]

It was basically the same, there was just that bottom part that became Ahn'Qiraj

https://web.archive.org/web/20051031.../map.asp?ID=40

[RobertMugabe]

Interesting that they had the entire AQ area planned to be an outside area. I mean, it was actually there for a while I believe as well. They "finalized" (made it possible to fly over to it) in Cataclysm, but I wonder what the area was originally going to entail. Rather interesting.

Do you think there was the intent to make it like other raids with a dungeon that led to a raid instance? Maybe even a playable outside (non-instanced) area like Blackrock Mountain had leading into the dungeons? All the dungeons released at the beginning of Vanilla that had raids tied to them had the raids in the instance. Even Stratholme was like this originally, but the idea was scrapped for the cooler floating Necropolis idea instead of having it float above the back gate of Stratholme. If you glitch out of bounds and fly over there on retail, you'll even see the untextured Necropolis floating up there and you can use that gate that's normally blocked off with the raid portal.

Personally, I really enjoyed the raids being inside of dungeons. Made the whole area a loot spookier imo. I guess they didn't want to put in the effort when they were familiar with players just getting attuned to the instance and teleporting straight into it. But all of this really gets me wondering about their initial plans for AQ... And a lot of stuff that was scrapped in Vanilla like Northrend and Outland and all of that. It was all planned originally with the level cap going to be at 100 instead of 60. You can read about it somewhere I'm sure. They talked about it for a documentary I believe.

AFAIK AQ40 was always supposed to be a raid, but as for the actual ruins of AQ it seems that they've experimented with hard outdoor content (I believe in beta the entire zone was called something like "outdoor dungeon" or something like that)

[In Ogres We Trust]

Just stick to Winterspring.

[Odinfrost]

Southwind was there still and so was the initial camp that you see when you come from Un'goro but beyond that it was a desert area with a LOT of bugs all along the way, like I know the zone ended up having many bugs but they were literally covering the map to the point where it seemed like they did it purposefully so you wouldn't explore too much. For some reason I remember them being elite (like the worms and scorpions) but could be wrong. I remember really wanting to check out the zone when I was on my way to 60 but some of the details are still vague. I know when you actually got to the silithid wall you'd see an animation of a part of the wall being covered with vines/roots.

Only had a level 10 or something when that event happened, so I can only tell what I have heard about it. Apparently, while they swarmed the place with all those elite mobs, they also gave them much higher than average drop rate for rare good loot, so people were grouping and farming the mobs in prepping for the release.

[Daikoku]

Added Lightning Breath pet ability for Wind Serpents. This ability instantly hits a single target for Nature damage at medium range.

Remember that day...those pet were hitting like truck

[diarx]

Southwind was there still and so was the initial camp that you see when you come from Un'goro but beyond that it was a desert area with a LOT of bugs all along the way, like I know the zone ended up having many bugs but they were literally covering the map to the point where it seemed like they did it purposefully so you wouldn't explore too much. For some reason I remember them being elite (like the worms and scorpions) but could be wrong. I remember really wanting to check out the zone when I was on my way to 60 but some of the details are still vague. I know when you actually got to the silithid wall you'd see an animation of a part of the wall being covered with vines/roots.

Think that's mostly what I remember, believe the land was relatively flat, albeit a small undulating bumpyness to the sand, no major hills/landmarks, maybe half the size of what it eventually became, I think barely formed aside from the bordering mountains acting as barriers.

There were definitely tons of scorpions, some other non-humanoid creatures and not a lot else. I remember grinding scorpions at 60 on my first high level character (shaman), they weren't elite afaik? Cenarion hold definitely wasn't there, though can't really remember the gates myself. Probably would have ventured all the way down that end of the zone once being such an uninteresting zone.

[anon5123]

In 1.1 there was nothing in there except a bunch of random elite mobs with no loot tables. They later added some NPCs and stuff at Cenarion Hold, but there really was nothing of value in Silithus until 1.6 or 1.7 just before the war effort started.

Silithus was just intentionally left un-finished so that they could launch the game on schedule.

- - - Updated - - -

Only had a level 10 or something when that event happened, so I can only tell what I have heard about it. Apparently, while they swarmed the place with all those elite mobs, they also gave them much higher than average drop rate for rare good loot, so people were grouping and farming the mobs in prepping for the release.

You're thinking of the gate opening event.

When the AQ gates open, for 10 hours it spawns lots of giant elite mobs that have a high drop chance for BoE blue items.

[Soon-TM]

AFAIK AQ40 was always supposed to be a raid, but as for the actual ruins of AQ it seems that they've experimented with hard outdoor content (I believe in beta the entire zone was called something like "outdoor dungeon" or something like that)

Iirc they wanted AQ to be an improved version of the Tainted Scar in Blasted Lands. The plan was later scrapped for reasons unknown (to me, at least).

[Nurdan]

If I remember correctly (it was very long time ago and I only ever accidentally stumbled into the zone once by accident, didn't find anything worth doing, and left), the zone originally looked a lot more like Tanaris. More yellow sandy desert as opposed to revamp Silithus' more reddish rocky desert.

[chazus]

Interesting that they had the entire AQ area planned to be an outside area. I mean, it was actually there for a while I believe as well. They "finalized" (made it possible to fly over to it) in Cataclysm, but I wonder what the area was originally going to entail. Rather interesting.

Nothing, sadly. I hate to crush dreams, but it was exactly as it looks like.

Before the wall was open, and before AQ even existed, you could get back behind there (I have a ton of screenshots from it somewhere, back in ~1.3 or 1.4). It's literally as you see it there, but they simply instanced it. A few graphical assets were adjusted and moved (the last fight of AQ20 was a LOT more dense in pillars) but other than that, all they did was slap a dungeon instance portal between the two.

Though, I could say there were 'other things' planned, because the minimap did NOT match the actual terrain.

[avitush]

If I remember correctly, the place existed and could be accessed by players at that point, but it was basically a giant desert of nothing. I mean, there were various bug mobs and such around that you could fight and kill (although I don't think they dropped anything), but no quests or any real reason to be there unless you were just exploring.

[Redasurc]

Fighting thunderaan and creating thunderfury takes place in zilithus. So nortwestern part remains untouched since 1.1.0

[czarek]

Apparently this zone was revamped, and turned kj to a level 60 solo quest zone and group quest zone.

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Patch_1.8.0

Any screenshot or video of silithus before patch 1.8 or did it simply not exist the way hyjal and Silvermoon didn't?

Zone was pretty unfinished at the begining. They didnt revamp they just finished it :P This zone is most changing zone in WoW.