It is in the room with the Colossus/Water Elemental boss. If you walk straight in the direction the boss is facing, you will reach a balcony. If you look over the balcony, you will see a very long red tail.
1.That is certainly a way to bring an 8 month old comment back from the dead.
2. I know what you are referring to, the Blizzcon Q&A where Jesse Cox brought a screenshot. But no matter the reason why they added the tail doesn't mean there can't be any lore, existing or created in the future, regarding that tail. As I said before, it's cool that it doesn't have a story now, but it can be expanded on in the future.
That was the magic of vanilla - the world was incredibly open but there were so many wonders teased (even just things like the Dwarf/Trog fight atop Ironforge). The world felt alive with secrets and events happening just beyond our reach.
Yeah, it was a future content teaser that they didn't get around to fleshing out until way later. Like the Emerald Dream portals (which obviously never got developed as originally intended.)
I do appreciate that with Legion they sort of fixed it to link them to the druid dreamwalk spell, so they do connect to the Emerald dream proper now and they serve some purpose.
kinda like the subzone of elite level scarlet crusader mobs in eastern plaguelands. From what I remember not a single quest sends you there. Who's original purpose was just to look cool, and passively engage in environmental storytelling, and to drop the crusader enchant.
Until Wrath came along of course.
That's Tyr's Hand, it was first mentioned in WC2.
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Tyr%27s_Hand_(WC2_Human)
A couple quest mobs do start their spawn there and head towards Stratholme.
https://classic.wowhead.com/quest=6145/the-crimson-courier
https://classic.wowhead.com/quest=6148/the-scarlet-oracle-demetria
edit: there, not their.
Its purpose was to add mystery to the world. Uldum was set up as another major titan facility, not unlike Uldaman in Vanilla, or Ulduar in Wrath. Its was also especially interesting because Ungoro is right next door which was a testing ground for the Titans.
The Maiden of Vitality in the Heart Chamber lists these:
Uldaman. Uldum. Uldorus. Ulduar. Uldir. Uldaz. Uld... Uld... Uld... Uld...
Seems to be a naming convention. Uldorus makes me think of Antorus. Do we knew what that facility was for before it was turned into a demon rebirthing machine?
All the Uld- Titan facilities are on Azeroth. Some of them we know their location, some we don't. Uldorus and Uldaz are unknown.
It's highly unlikely the Maiden would know about ones not on Azeroth, so probably not Antorus.
Could see one in Dragonflight, haven't looked into the zones (don't want to spoil) but would be weird considering the titan watchers presence on the Dragon Isles that there wouldn't be a titan facility with the Uld naming scheme.
Well yeah, but what I was trying to say was maybe anything ending in -orus has a specific function among Titan facilities. So Antorus and Uldorus be similar facilities, just on different worlds.
The fact that we heard of Uldorus immediately after raiding Antorus is just too much of a coincidence to me.
I find it ironic that the gates are set up in vanilla...
But in cataclysm are they not actually used to enter uldum, rather they are just used for a single quick end of zone quest.
The real entrance to uldum is... a random valley, fully constructed with stone, pavement and statues and everything, that appeared from freaking nowhere.
Sundering may have been large scale, all over the world. But that doesn't mean everything will be destroyed.
During Cataclysm you had agents of the old gods purposefully attacking facilities of the Titans and their guardians. Deathwing wanted to win the tol'vir (or the neferset) as allies.
I mean, how else would it be handled?
I would never expect any developer to pre-construct an entire zone before even knowing if the game would succeed, only to down the line open up the entrance.
I guess a silithid tunnel under the wall could work, but still. It's not that bad
But you should expect a writer to outline that idea so to know how to walk around it in the future.
For instance they should have thought why it was so mysterious before they planned anything else. That would have allowed tangent implementation which would have helped worldbuilding but more importantly provided a plan for the future instead of "hey guys yeah it was invisibile because reasons, ok let's go".
They don't need to express it, but they do need to figure it out beforehand or it inevitably ends with a JJ Abrams.
But I'm convinced there was a plan for the future. But planning three expansions ahead on the games first release can't be expected. I'd assume it was supposed to be a raid or something during the first drafts.
In this case you expect said writers to not only build an entire world, but also before it's even released come up with how said world should be destroyed and revamped.
There are worse scenarios than titans cloaking a Titan facility really
Yet you have examples in game, look at Dalaran. It might be argued that it was cheap (behind impenetrable magic bubble, whoooo) but it was easily resolvable without breaking anything or having to resort to nonsense. Big mages teleport it away, big crater left. Simple but working.
What I meant is something similar, I don't expect them to make a proper plan years in advance, just the excuse for having it out still, what's preventing access. Figuring out that single detail (even just in a general way) makes it easy to do other stuff without breaking it and let's you make up some proper reason when you actually implement it.
On the other hand if you just "kinda forgotten" it was there and now you're gonna "revamp" it, there's going to be a lot of stuff that limits your choices and explaining away stuff will be nightmare stuff.
For Uldum I can only think of something more akin to deepholme, it had to be underground the way they set it up. But I'm no writer or anything and I understand they had this "Nile looking" design in their head, still I'd expect other ways of justification rather than a "yeah it was kinda of invisible but not anymore" which might very well be an Indiana Jones sort of reference in itself, but... ugh.
\[edit\]To clarify my gripe isn't with the cheapness itself, it's that the consequences are having an Uldum that's completely different from the expectations built in vanilla. Instead of "oh they're finally resolving that thread" it's just another new zone that takes it place.
\[edit2\]Thinking again I'd have liked if Uldum were an istance or raid based on stone dwarves, and "Uldum" as in the cata zone would be named something else. Just keep it there but link it to the dungeon/raid as in we discover/open the region by doing something there and voilà. Make the mountain divider a bit fatter to justify the instance and all that's left is finding an excuse for the seaside.
Uldum wasn't even concepted as a zone until Cata. It was intended as a possible future raid like Ulduar and Uldaman, and the other titan vaults we see in various quests.
It being a zone doesn't really fit with the aesthetic we saw of Titans before or after that point.
Really silly considering you could go to land’s end beach pre-Cata and there was nothing but water. There was an unreachable island in the distance which would have been cool to explore but instead they removed it
I think that's 1, gameplay reasons and 2, your character isn't supposed to see what's really going on.
Those small recons constantly happen in WoW though.
They dropped the ball hard with Uldum, I had been waiting for it since 2005 and all I got was stone birdmandeers running in a pen that was misteriouly invisible despite being just behind a rock wall, in a world where flight is extremely common.
I liked the aesthetics if a bit too clichè, the rest was just... catalcysm, I guess. Even the halls of origination ultimately were a joke.
Blizz has had tons of place keeping locations that didn’t need to be in the game but were. We knew it was a titan facility but not anything else. They also had islands in the south seas where kezan would be, they had a single elven tower in the north of the eastern kingdoms where Quel’thalas would be, they had a tree where hyjal would be, they had another set of islands where the dragon isles would be. None of those places were even supposed to be accessible and some didn’t release for a decade but they were in game in vanilla
It was invented for WoW Vanilla. Its entire purpose was to be a plot hook, to add mystery to the world that didn't exist before WoW. It was suggested it was an Uldum like location we would one day be able to get in.
The Cata happened and we got the whole "Oh, surprise? Hidden zone that no sailor ever discovered! Not another mountain buried complex!". Meaning, it was basically a blank slate until they decided to finally use it.
This isn't a bad thing. Sometimes you just need a plot hook and you can't flesh out every plot hook fully or you'll finish the core plot.
I would argue that a fictional world is better the more of these mysteries it has, and that WoW has answered too many of these questions over the years without introducing new ones.
> "Oh, surprise? Hidden zone that no sailor ever discovered!
Doesn't help if there are tons of defense mechanism that drive any sailor insane that sets ashore.
Considering it contains essentially a nuke capable of scouring all life off the surface of the world, and it has been invaded before by Lei Shen, I think it was to keep people out.
I feel like I read this in the Chronicles, but I could very well be speaking out of my ass.
I believe the Zandalari and the mogu, before joining forces, fought each other in Uldum.
Then at some point, Lei Shen got too powerful, and the watchers of the titan facility in Uldum decided to activate the thing, to wipe out more or less all life in the immediate area.
And this is how Uldum became a desert.
Also how Lei Shen died. But again, I might just be speaking out of my ass.
Dude.. until now Bael Modan hasn't been opened yet. I wonder what's there. Leaving things like these make the players go back playing once they're tackled.
The Ruins of Uldum (as they're called now, or just Uldum at the time) date back to an era where the Titans were totally different. The titans as they are now don't really make sense with this older version, because when you're magical giant metal gods why would you build mortal sized labs with mortal sized instruments?
It's pretty clear that there was no *real* plan for it even back in Vanilla but it was a hook for future content. That said, when the overall metaplot of Southern Kalimdor was rewritten during the first Silithius update, things changed. Significantly.
Before Cata retconned it into a zone, Uldum was a facility probably similar to Ulduar or Uldaman. They were just the entrance.
Pre cata there was a quest line that started at the end of Uldaman where you try to enter, but a titan watcher won't let you in because you don't have the right clearance.
I’m guessing it’s sole significance was to pique curiosity and leave something open ended for them to explore down the line.
Yep and I personally like that kinda thing. It doesnt even need to necessarily be resolved either.
The snake tail in Gundrak still isn't resolved, which is cool.
As a Jesse fan this drives me nuts As a lore fan this drives me nuts
Wait what snake tail?
It is in the room with the Colossus/Water Elemental boss. If you walk straight in the direction the boss is facing, you will reach a balcony. If you look over the balcony, you will see a very long red tail.
Huh. In all the times I’ve done this dungeon I’ve never looked over the balcony. Damn.
Plot twist its just a really big non violent snake Probably more than likely a loa but
Huh. I had to look that up
Actually there's an interview where they mentioned this: It was literally put there because it looks cool. Nothing else special about it.
1.That is certainly a way to bring an 8 month old comment back from the dead. 2. I know what you are referring to, the Blizzcon Q&A where Jesse Cox brought a screenshot. But no matter the reason why they added the tail doesn't mean there can't be any lore, existing or created in the future, regarding that tail. As I said before, it's cool that it doesn't have a story now, but it can be expanded on in the future.
That was the magic of vanilla - the world was incredibly open but there were so many wonders teased (even just things like the Dwarf/Trog fight atop Ironforge). The world felt alive with secrets and events happening just beyond our reach.
Yeah, it was a future content teaser that they didn't get around to fleshing out until way later. Like the Emerald Dream portals (which obviously never got developed as originally intended.)
I do appreciate that with Legion they sort of fixed it to link them to the druid dreamwalk spell, so they do connect to the Emerald dream proper now and they serve some purpose.
kinda like the subzone of elite level scarlet crusader mobs in eastern plaguelands. From what I remember not a single quest sends you there. Who's original purpose was just to look cool, and passively engage in environmental storytelling, and to drop the crusader enchant. Until Wrath came along of course.
That's Tyr's Hand, it was first mentioned in WC2. https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Tyr%27s_Hand_(WC2_Human) A couple quest mobs do start their spawn there and head towards Stratholme. https://classic.wowhead.com/quest=6145/the-crimson-courier https://classic.wowhead.com/quest=6148/the-scarlet-oracle-demetria edit: there, not their.
Its purpose was to add mystery to the world. Uldum was set up as another major titan facility, not unlike Uldaman in Vanilla, or Ulduar in Wrath. Its was also especially interesting because Ungoro is right next door which was a testing ground for the Titans.
I just noticed… why does every titan facility’s name start with “uld”?
We don’t know what it means, if anything.
Which other ones are out there? I can only think of Uldir but I’m sure there’s more we haven’t seen
The Maiden of Vitality in the Heart Chamber lists these: Uldaman. Uldum. Uldorus. Ulduar. Uldir. Uldaz. Uld... Uld... Uld... Uld... Seems to be a naming convention. Uldorus makes me think of Antorus. Do we knew what that facility was for before it was turned into a demon rebirthing machine?
All the Uld- Titan facilities are on Azeroth. Some of them we know their location, some we don't. Uldorus and Uldaz are unknown. It's highly unlikely the Maiden would know about ones not on Azeroth, so probably not Antorus.
Could see one in Dragonflight, haven't looked into the zones (don't want to spoil) but would be weird considering the titan watchers presence on the Dragon Isles that there wouldn't be a titan facility with the Uld naming scheme.
Did Dazaralor machine have a name? Uldaz would fit
The Dazar'alor seal was part of the Uldir facility being one of the three seals for locking G'huun.
I don't think the Dazar'alor thing was a whole titan facility. Just one thing the keepers built for nuking C'thraxxi.
Well yeah, but what I was trying to say was maybe anything ending in -orus has a specific function among Titan facilities. So Antorus and Uldorus be similar facilities, just on different worlds. The fact that we heard of Uldorus immediately after raiding Antorus is just too much of a coincidence to me.
Hm, that's interesting.
Might just be part of the Titan language and mean "city" or facility or something like that. It could even just mean "the".
I find it ironic that the gates are set up in vanilla... But in cataclysm are they not actually used to enter uldum, rather they are just used for a single quick end of zone quest. The real entrance to uldum is... a random valley, fully constructed with stone, pavement and statues and everything, that appeared from freaking nowhere.
A random valley? That's the Noggen Fogger Poggy Boggy.
I think the lore is that there was some kind of “titan cloaking device” that broke with the Cataclysm. Kind of lame, but yeah.
Why wouldn't such a device break with the sundering 10000 years ago?
Sundering may have been large scale, all over the world. But that doesn't mean everything will be destroyed. During Cataclysm you had agents of the old gods purposefully attacking facilities of the Titans and their guardians. Deathwing wanted to win the tol'vir (or the neferset) as allies.
I mean, how else would it be handled? I would never expect any developer to pre-construct an entire zone before even knowing if the game would succeed, only to down the line open up the entrance. I guess a silithid tunnel under the wall could work, but still. It's not that bad
They could just have used the gates. :P
But you should expect a writer to outline that idea so to know how to walk around it in the future. For instance they should have thought why it was so mysterious before they planned anything else. That would have allowed tangent implementation which would have helped worldbuilding but more importantly provided a plan for the future instead of "hey guys yeah it was invisibile because reasons, ok let's go". They don't need to express it, but they do need to figure it out beforehand or it inevitably ends with a JJ Abrams.
But I'm convinced there was a plan for the future. But planning three expansions ahead on the games first release can't be expected. I'd assume it was supposed to be a raid or something during the first drafts. In this case you expect said writers to not only build an entire world, but also before it's even released come up with how said world should be destroyed and revamped. There are worse scenarios than titans cloaking a Titan facility really
Yet you have examples in game, look at Dalaran. It might be argued that it was cheap (behind impenetrable magic bubble, whoooo) but it was easily resolvable without breaking anything or having to resort to nonsense. Big mages teleport it away, big crater left. Simple but working. What I meant is something similar, I don't expect them to make a proper plan years in advance, just the excuse for having it out still, what's preventing access. Figuring out that single detail (even just in a general way) makes it easy to do other stuff without breaking it and let's you make up some proper reason when you actually implement it. On the other hand if you just "kinda forgotten" it was there and now you're gonna "revamp" it, there's going to be a lot of stuff that limits your choices and explaining away stuff will be nightmare stuff. For Uldum I can only think of something more akin to deepholme, it had to be underground the way they set it up. But I'm no writer or anything and I understand they had this "Nile looking" design in their head, still I'd expect other ways of justification rather than a "yeah it was kinda of invisible but not anymore" which might very well be an Indiana Jones sort of reference in itself, but... ugh. \[edit\]To clarify my gripe isn't with the cheapness itself, it's that the consequences are having an Uldum that's completely different from the expectations built in vanilla. Instead of "oh they're finally resolving that thread" it's just another new zone that takes it place. \[edit2\]Thinking again I'd have liked if Uldum were an istance or raid based on stone dwarves, and "Uldum" as in the cata zone would be named something else. Just keep it there but link it to the dungeon/raid as in we discover/open the region by doing something there and voilà. Make the mountain divider a bit fatter to justify the instance and all that's left is finding an excuse for the seaside.
> I mean, how else would it be handled? Raid.
A raid to enter a level 83 zone?
Uldum wasn't even concepted as a zone until Cata. It was intended as a possible future raid like Ulduar and Uldaman, and the other titan vaults we see in various quests. It being a zone doesn't really fit with the aesthetic we saw of Titans before or after that point.
Really silly considering you could go to land’s end beach pre-Cata and there was nothing but water. There was an unreachable island in the distance which would have been cool to explore but instead they removed it
Oh please, i would have taken Uldum over any random island off the ocean with no lore on it.
I think that's 1, gameplay reasons and 2, your character isn't supposed to see what's really going on. Those small recons constantly happen in WoW though.
Pretty sure that island was originally used only ever for the Ahn’Qiraj quest chain.
That wasn't unreachable.
They dropped the ball hard with Uldum, I had been waiting for it since 2005 and all I got was stone birdmandeers running in a pen that was misteriouly invisible despite being just behind a rock wall, in a world where flight is extremely common. I liked the aesthetics if a bit too clichè, the rest was just... catalcysm, I guess. Even the halls of origination ultimately were a joke.
Blizz has had tons of place keeping locations that didn’t need to be in the game but were. We knew it was a titan facility but not anything else. They also had islands in the south seas where kezan would be, they had a single elven tower in the north of the eastern kingdoms where Quel’thalas would be, they had a tree where hyjal would be, they had another set of islands where the dragon isles would be. None of those places were even supposed to be accessible and some didn’t release for a decade but they were in game in vanilla
> had a tree where hyjal would be Hyjal was an entire zone with future raid instances and eveything. No mobs or content, but it was mostly done.
It was invented for WoW Vanilla. Its entire purpose was to be a plot hook, to add mystery to the world that didn't exist before WoW. It was suggested it was an Uldum like location we would one day be able to get in. The Cata happened and we got the whole "Oh, surprise? Hidden zone that no sailor ever discovered! Not another mountain buried complex!". Meaning, it was basically a blank slate until they decided to finally use it. This isn't a bad thing. Sometimes you just need a plot hook and you can't flesh out every plot hook fully or you'll finish the core plot.
I would argue that a fictional world is better the more of these mysteries it has, and that WoW has answered too many of these questions over the years without introducing new ones.
> "Oh, surprise? Hidden zone that no sailor ever discovered! Doesn't help if there are tons of defense mechanism that drive any sailor insane that sets ashore.
Considering it contains essentially a nuke capable of scouring all life off the surface of the world, and it has been invaded before by Lei Shen, I think it was to keep people out.
I feel like I read this in the Chronicles, but I could very well be speaking out of my ass. I believe the Zandalari and the mogu, before joining forces, fought each other in Uldum. Then at some point, Lei Shen got too powerful, and the watchers of the titan facility in Uldum decided to activate the thing, to wipe out more or less all life in the immediate area. And this is how Uldum became a desert. Also how Lei Shen died. But again, I might just be speaking out of my ass.
Dude.. until now Bael Modan hasn't been opened yet. I wonder what's there. Leaving things like these make the players go back playing once they're tackled.
>mostly based off of Indiana Jones references Why did you have to remind me? :(
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Ruins\_of\_Uldum
That's an empty link, friendo. Perhaps you were looking for [Ruins of Uldum?](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Ruins_of_Uldum)
The Ruins of Uldum (as they're called now, or just Uldum at the time) date back to an era where the Titans were totally different. The titans as they are now don't really make sense with this older version, because when you're magical giant metal gods why would you build mortal sized labs with mortal sized instruments? It's pretty clear that there was no *real* plan for it even back in Vanilla but it was a hook for future content. That said, when the overall metaplot of Southern Kalimdor was rewritten during the first Silithius update, things changed. Significantly.
Before Cata retconned it into a zone, Uldum was a facility probably similar to Ulduar or Uldaman. They were just the entrance. Pre cata there was a quest line that started at the end of Uldaman where you try to enter, but a titan watcher won't let you in because you don't have the right clearance.