Unexplored Areas from Original WoW - Karazhan Crypts, Azshara Crater
wowhead.comThroughout World of Warcraft's Development, there have been numerous areas that players have been able to access with clever mechanics or even just plain old datamining, many of which were never implemented or developed for future expansions. Today we'll take a look at two of those locations, which were discussed at Blizzcon!
Karazhan Crypts in Original WoW
Wow Secrets — Karazhan Crypt by Hayven Games
During the Blizzcon 2023 Developer Panel, Blizzard teased multiple locations for future phases of Season of Discovery. The final teaser was for Karazhan Crypts, a location players have never been able to access. While Karazhan was implemented later in The Burning Crusade expansion in January 2007, the Crypts was not a place included in the new raid instance.
In a Blue Post in 2014, Blizzard Developer Bashiok shut down rumors that the reason the Forgotten Crypts weren't opened was because of ESRB game rating concerns --
Oh yeah, I remember that! Haven't seen a screenshot in quite a while. Not sure I know the story on it but knowing our development processes back then there tended to be a lot more stuff made that we just didn't use. I can't imagine the game rating rumor is accurate, because if it was content we wanted to use we'd just take out the upside-down sinners or whatever the issue was and use it for whatever it was we wanted to do with that space. It's not like they're permanent fixtures. Fun rumor though! :) More likely we just changed our minds.
Azshara Crater in Original WoW
Azshara Crater was randomly mentioned in Patch 1.3's Patch Notes, an area that wasn't even accessible to players. This lead to many players speculating it would eventually be released and playable. At various Blizzcon events,
