[0.5.3] Nefarian lair alpha & map oddities menu

User Tag List

Results 1 to 6 of 6
  1. #1
    Nyarly's Avatar ★ Elder ★ Lorekeeper of Exploration
    Reputation
    1090
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Posts
    1,650
    Thanks G/R
    367/314
    Trade Feedback
    0 (0%)
    Mentioned
    1 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)

    [0.5.3] Nefarian lair alpha & map oddities

    Hello everyone !

    If you know me, you might also know I love maps.
    And one detail in the map of azeroth alpha always bugged me:

    This huge object appears on the map near Blackrock Mountain from alpha 0.5.3 to beta 0.9.0.
    I've attempted to reach it many times, and searched almost everywhere near the entrance of the Blackrock Mountain in the Searing Gorge without success.

    So today I tried again, and teleported myself to the approximate coordinates : "-7300 -1350 1000".
    All I saw was a crash, with the typical error encountered when an object failed to be displayed.
    While annoying to crash in loops, the error still validated the fact that something was there, and that I was getting close.
    So I insisted a bit, and found that if I first teleported to "-7200 -1350 1000", and then teleported again to "-7250 -1350 1000", the client accepted to display my goal. This is what I found :




    Upon landing, I immediately realized that this was in fact nefarian's lair alpha. Or atleast the part where you have to kill Nefarian.
    Quick video for a better view : Nefarian lair alpha

    With that information, it got easier to put the pieces together.
    Nefarian's lair balcony was first spawned here, in mid-air in the Searing Gorge, invisible from the ground.

    In 0.9.1, it got textured and appeared like this :


    And it actually stayed there until 1.0.0, where it found its proper place :


    Mystery solved !
    And since i've never heard of alpha Nefarian's Lair balcony before, I thought this could be worth a thread to tell you

    __________________________________


    A few other spots are still unexplained to me, and with your help, I think we might still be able to discover a thing or two from the past.
    For today : Azeroth's dots !

    This is the map of Azeroth alpha 0.5.3 :


    See those dots ? They actually stayed there at the release, were present in 1.12.1, and only disappeared in tbc alpha (according to marlamin, didn't check tbc myself yet).
    Now you may say these are only glitches and won't show anything ingame.
    Well, I checked the bottom left one, because I knew it's where old outland was added in the 0.5.5 map. And to my surprise, Old outland is already present ingame in 0.5.3 ! (though fully untextured green).

    As for the other spots, they remained unmodified in the map, until they got removed in tbc.
    I've attempted to reach one of them once, and failed/saw nothing.
    But there are a few spots, and tons of versions were changes can occur. So I though why not tell other explorers ? If you're curious enough to check these locations one day, please tell me if you find something !
    Last edited by Nyarly; 06-26-2017 at 06:02 AM.

    [0.5.3] Nefarian lair alpha & map oddities
  2. #2
    akspa420's Avatar Contributor
    CoreCoins Purchaser
    Reputation
    125
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Posts
    407
    Thanks G/R
    73/13
    Trade Feedback
    0 (0%)
    Mentioned
    0 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)
    Are you sure about the claim of old outland being in 0.5.3? I've converted that map several times to 3.3.5, and none of the adt's exist for that area. Could be that the data is skipped over due to missing chunks, though. Very odd if it was in fact skipped over for all these years. I've spent countless hours on 0.5.3 stuff, so I would have thought I'd have found this at some point in the past.

    Interesting if true. Even more interesting if those other points are actually more data that doesn't get processed by Mjollna's converter due to inconsistencies in the map format. I'll be investigating this a bit by looking at the original WDT file (alpha's version of WDT+ADT data) in a hex editor with some of our templates for reading WDT/ADT data, in hopes of finding these little nuggets.

    As for Nefarian's Lair, I've converted the WMO from 0.5.3 to 3.3.5, and never bothered to look to see if it converted properly or displayed in-game.

  3. #3
    Nyarly's Avatar ★ Elder ★ Lorekeeper of Exploration
    Reputation
    1090
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Posts
    1,650
    Thanks G/R
    367/314
    Trade Feedback
    0 (0%)
    Mentioned
    1 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)
    Damnit, my bad, I reinstalled the client, tried again, and it's not there. must have been remains from previous model swapping... Sorry
    But as far as I can see, there's no adt for 0.5.3 and 0.5.5. Did you manage to extract them?

    And yeah, there's no info in the adts (since 0.6.0) about these spots, but it wouldn't be the first time that something appearing in the minimap happens to exist (or existed) ingame.

  4. #4
    spoutnik's Avatar Elite User
    Reputation
    395
    Join Date
    Dec 2008
    Posts
    353
    Thanks G/R
    15/54
    Trade Feedback
    0 (0%)
    Mentioned
    0 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)
    Very nice post Nyarly !

    Originally Posted by Nyarly View Post
    But as far as I can see, there's no adt for 0.5.3 and 0.5.5.
    Hmm.. there *are* adt for Old Outland in 0.5.5

    Originally Posted by Nyarly View Post
    A few other spots are still unexplained to me, and with your help, I think we might still be able to discover a thing or two from the past.
    For today : Azeroth's dots !
    One thing that you must know about minimaps during alphas/beta in those times: they were rarely up to date, and more than half the time they reflected a past state of the world. Look at the Kalimdor map from 0.5.3, or in my Historique du développement de Burning Crusade post in the ridpef forums (that I really should translate and post it there one day !)

    In that case, there are most likely glitches. I've spent a good amount of time in the files in the alphas/beta, and I never found anything there, sadly
    And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
    I'll see you on the dark side of the moon

  5. #5
    akspa420's Avatar Contributor
    CoreCoins Purchaser
    Reputation
    125
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Posts
    407
    Thanks G/R
    73/13
    Trade Feedback
    0 (0%)
    Mentioned
    0 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)
    The flightmap in 0.5.3 even still shows the dragon isles. They didn't bother updating that for a while. Many times, the minimaps are kinda glitchy - during MoP, the phased ship in stormwind that would take you to Pandaria had no water under it, even though it should have. I recall reporting it as a bug at some point, and as far as I know, remains in the game to this day. They often forget to turn on water, turn off trees, etc. During Cata, Kalimdor had a very early version of the Lost Isles off the coast near Durotar in the minimaps, yet no map files ever shipped for that area (sadly).

  6. #6
    Nyarly's Avatar ★ Elder ★ Lorekeeper of Exploration
    Reputation
    1090
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Posts
    1,650
    Thanks G/R
    367/314
    Trade Feedback
    0 (0%)
    Mentioned
    1 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)
    Welp, I lost all the pictures and video of the OP, but thanks to tspearman's tool I was able to get there in 0.10.0 with the textured version.

    So, here's nefarian's lair original location :
    Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet

    Must have been too easy to reach, so they decided to move it higher.

Similar Threads

  1. Practice map oddities.
    By Hopps in forum Heroes of the Storm General
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 07-26-2014, 06:18 PM
  2. WoW alpha MPQ maps
    By Avatarxxx in forum WoW ME Questions and Requests
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: 08-04-2011, 11:15 AM
  3. [Levitate] Nefarians Lair
    By deadskinmask811 in forum World of Warcraft Exploration
    Replies: 8
    Last Post: 01-31-2010, 10:05 PM
  4. [Guide] How to get under outlands in 2.4 + Uninstanced Nefarian's lair
    By Kultapossu in forum World of Warcraft Exploration
    Replies: 20
    Last Post: 05-31-2008, 06:46 PM
  5. WOTLK Alpha: Instance Map ID's
    By Cirrus in forum World of Warcraft General
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 05-23-2008, 02:46 PM
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 04:52 AM. Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.3
Copyright © 2024 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved. User Alert System provided by Advanced User Tagging (Pro) - vBulletin Mods & Addons Copyright © 2024 DragonByte Technologies Ltd.
Digital Point modules: Sphinx-based search