[Pandaria] The Many Mysteries and Wonders of the Underside of Pandaria

[Teryaki]

Good Morning Ownedcoreians!

This morning we started to discover the underside of the continent Pandaria. There hasn't been any posts of this since we all know that Blizzard fixed flying under the ground by adding disconnection mechanics underground. Well, with the help of drm420, and VoTuUs for the offline mode I was able to explore this and share it with you all. So special thanks for those two individuals who made this possible as well We used the Puntable Marmot to get though the instance portal at the new raid instance Mogu'shan Vaults and got under the world that way.

Now this post will have a ton of pictures! I wasn't gonna make a movie because it would be immense. I will make this as easy to navigate as possible. I will also give a description of where it is. So without further ado, enjoy the views of the underside of Pandaria! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Kun-Lai Summit



^ These two were found underneath the Shado-Pan Monastery.


^ A very long pole that goes down forever under Shado-Pan Monastery


^ This is at the Binan Village. A glimpse of what the buildings look like from underneath.

The Great Wall of Pandaria


^ A very odd box under the wall. I suspect these are for the phasing mechanics that are used extensively on the continent. More to come in the Valley of the Four Winds section. (Wow, you can see my watermark in that one...)


^ Ground jutting down underneath the Wall.



^ Another wall underneath the Wall? Was this prototype for what they first wanted the wall to look like?


^ An odd piece of rock under the Wall, its invisible from the top.

Townlong Steppes and Dread Wastes








^ Underneath most of the trees in both Townlong Steppes and Dread Wastes are these purple boxes. I suspect them to be involved with phasing in the world.




^ I have no clue what these are for. I have never seen these in World of Warcraft before.


^ Odd underground steam or mist in Dread Wastes.

Vale of Eternal Blossoms


^ Under the Shrine of the Two Moons. As you can see, the buildings go deep into the ground.


^ A smaller box under the water in the Vale.

Valley of the Four Winds






^ Weird blocks under the crops. *I am thinking it is phasing as well, or some mechanic when it comes to how the crops work. *The turnips are cut off as well




^ Closeups of what the blocks look like. *They remind me of that developer area called "Scott Test" where it was a large room with a smaller room in the middle.



^ The bridge from Jade Forest goes deep into the ground

The Jade Forest


^ Under the Temple of the Jade Serpent


^ Statue that is partially hidden above ground, but fully visible under the ground


^ Horde starting area temple, its blocky underneath.

Island North of Townlong




^ Cave with entrance, and inside the cave.






^ What looks to be the new instance. Not solid in the back for some reason, but it is still in development.

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Here are some screenshots from drm420 as well. Credits to him for these screenshots, and for helping with the marmot to get under the ground.

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Thank you for viewing this thread, it was really fun exploring under the continent of Pandaria! If you would like to see bigger pictures of the photos taken above, please go to Underground Pandaria Exploration to see my whole gallery of my explorations. I hope it wasn't too confusing of a read as well, tried my best to keep it as sorted as possible. I would also like to encourage people to try and explore under the world using offline mode as well. I am almost certain I didn't find everything, and would like to see if anyone can find anything interesting and cool!

Until next time!
Teryaki

[fa3sr011]

+rep
Excellent post. Thanks for sharing. I particularly like the new golden outlined box that I've never seen before either.

[Nyarly]

Very cool stuff !
Loved the golden box and the smaller ones with textures on it

Must spread again, i'm a bad user..

[WizardTrokair]

I do love the objects we haven't seen before... the golden boxes and the different textured ones that are probably for phasing as you guess.

I also liked the underground statue. StrangleTusk is a big fan of submerged objects, so I'm sure he will enjoy that one as well once he sees this thread.

Phenomenal stuff, Teryaki! Of course I must spread my reputation before giving to you again.

[drm420]

Good post had fun exploring with ya : D

[spoutnik]

Some nice stuff indeed !

(and grats Trokair on Legendary ! ^^)

[drm420]

so that is a projection for the sky box :3 I remember seeing that sort of thing in a lot of other games they make a tiny mirrored model some where under the map to project something into the sky box if we went there on a live server a giant version of us mostly likely would be projected into the sky in the dread waste xD

[Teryaki]

Ah, that would make sense!

Ever since that post about the watermarking in our screenshots has got me noticing it a lot in my own screenshots. Not that I am worried or anything, but its amazing I never noticed it before. I always wondered why my pictures were always kinda of distorted.

[WizardTrokair]

so that is a projection for the sky box :3 I remember seeing that sort of thing in a lot of other games they make a tiny mirrored model some where under the map to project something into the sky box if we went there on a live server a giant version of us mostly likely would be projected into the sky in the dread waste xD

I had no idea... this is fascinating to me. +3 rep for the info, drm420.

Probably not related... but there is a strange white rectangle or screen diagonally underneath the aquarium of the Maker's Perch in Sholazar Basin. It can only be seen from certain angles. I always wondered about this 'screen'... I wonder if it is the same sort of thing?

[Teryaki]

That could very well be the case. I can't remember what it looks like exactly since i haven't been down there in years, but I think I can kind of picture what you are talking about.

I wish we could test it out as well without getting disconnected. That would be pretty funny to see me as the skybox with my cloud serpent

[drm420]

Here is an example of some of the fun you can have with sky box projections

[Teryaki]

That is really interesting drm420. I wonder if we missed these in previous underground explorations if these are in fact used for skyboxes? Because this surely isn't the first time Blizzard used a skybox in WoW, they have been using them since the release of Burning Crusade.

[xPlacebox]

Awesome pics! +rep if I can

[drm420]

That is really interesting drm420. I wonder if we missed these in previous underground explorations if these are in fact used for skyboxes? Because this surely isn't the first time Blizzard used a skybox in WoW, they have been using them since the release of Burning Crusade.

Maybe the thing about WoW's skyboxes vs other games skyboxes is that wow does not use projectors for the most part. The main reason for using a projector to my knowledge is to blow up a small model into something big so you don't actually have to render an entire city or something like that so say your level your making is a city block and the invisible walls are chain link fences instead of modeling out the rest of the entire city past the chain link fence with collision detection and all that stuff that takes up resources you would create a mock up of the rest of the city and project a mesh with no collision of the that mock up around your city block to create the illusion that that one city block is actually a part of a huge detailed city you spent a long time modeling every block. With wow you don't really need that sort of thing because everything is modeled and the borders of the game for the most part are oceans or the twisting nether.

But at the same time maybe around where the BC Eastern kingdom zones touch the vanilla EK zone you might have some projected structures. Hope this might clarify the use of projectors for sky boxes :3 I could make an example video of a projector and what it looks like in Half life 2 or L4D sometime if you want :3

[Teryaki]

Yeah, I don't think Blizzard traditionally uses the skybox projectors. I don't know, a lot a interesting things that are still unknown at this point with all the new things from the expansion that was introduced. I am still unsure about that golden box. I would like to see if I can find out more, but was unable to find anything on it using google. Maybe someone from the model editing or emulation section could answer this question?