Zul'Gurub

[Leshy]

(All screenshots have been resized to 800x600 to prevent my bandwidth from keeling over completely.)

This tale starts in Stranglethorn Vale. I was merrily killing of some Basilisks for a quest, when I suddenly found myself unable to charge into, or hit, one of the creatures. The game was telling me that I wasn't close enough, or whatever. I figured the mob was bugged, or I was out of sync - it happens occasionally.

I looked around, didn't see any other Basilisks and figured that I couldn't really be arsed killing them anyway, so hopped onto my mount, and went north to hunt some Geologists at the Venture Co. Base Camp. When I arrived there, there was not a single mob in sight. I was a bit bestranged by this, but for some reason no alarm bells went off - as the chat channel was still happily scrolling along with tales of wonder and joy of my fellow Goons. I figured that perhaps someone else had just cleared out this area, so I rode around somewhat, and suddenly found myself on a path upwards.

A path that had earlier contained two level ?? guards that made me decide that I should really be moving along now. It was empty now.



I curiously approached, and discerned an instance portal.



An instance? Here in Stranglethorn Vale? But there isn't... oh hay! This must be the big Troll City that I've heard rumours about and such. Oh well, let's check it out, it probably won't work anyway.



It does :cool:

On my trusty mount, I have just run into Zul'Gurub. I'll let the rest of the images speak for themselves, it's very pretty at any rate. And looks pretty big.







In the above screenshots, on the right pillar, you can see some texture oddity. They might still be working on that, I did experience some flickering textures as I was riding through, with discoloration as above.

In the second shot you can see how great and high the trees look. Also, this structure looks like some sort of throne - perhaps we can expect the first miniboss there. For now, however, my Troll heritage allows me to peruse it ;)

[Leshy]

Looking out over what is now my domain!



Two closer shots of the island you can see in the background of the picture above, where I'm lording over all of Zul'Gurub.






Yup, definitely Troll architecture! At this point, it seems the game finally caught up with me, as I suddenly got attacked... by the Basilisk I had been attempting to fight at the start of this tale. Since I couldn't hit back or do anything, I knew my time was limited. I switched to Defensive Stance, donned my shield and even guzzled a potion to extend my stay for as long as possible. I managed to find one more path upstairs.




Which is where I finally died. My corpse was located down in Stranglethorn where I first encountered the Basilisk, and knowing that I was now fully back in sync with the server, the guardians would again be at Zul'Gurub and the Instance Portal wouldn't work.

So, there you have it, a glance of the upcoming instance, which looks absolutely amazing - these screenshots don't do it justice at all. And disclaimer in case Blizzard or whomever reads this: I didn't use any illegitimate tactics or whatever to get here. It was a random, but very long, out-of-sync, during which I also coincidentally found myself on the path into Zul'Gurub.

(I just wanted my Basilisk quest out of the way :()

[Boutros]

Very cool. Hopefully it wil be more fun than Zul'Farrak.

A similar desync happened to me yesterday, but it happened while I was under ground so I couldn't mount up. If I had been thinking I would have checked out Mount Hyjal (it happened in the Winterspring Yeti cave).

[Sabra]

Awesome post, Leshy. Really remarkable to see it and I'm so glad you took the time to share it. Thank you so much.

[DarkCrown]

Nice stuff - thank you very much for the screenshots.

A bit of exploring info for those that don't know it: You can get into unfinished instances as a ghost. If you turn off the death effect you can even get nice screenshots. I've done this to look at the Caverns of Time in Tanaris, Hylial (sp?) west of Winterspring, and Old Ironforge (take a left through the large door as you enter the throne room).

If you want to risk angering the filet o' fish, you can die if front of an instance door and accept the rez prompt inside. This lets you explore in your regular form, but I haven't had the guts to try it myself.

-DC

[Treesh]

A bit of exploring info for those that don't know it: You can get into unfinished instances as a ghost. If you turn off the death effect you can even get nice screenshots. I've done this to look at the Caverns of Time in Tanaris, Hylial (sp?) west of Winterspring, and Old Ironforge (take a left through  the large door as you enter the throne room). 

If you want to risk angering the filet 'o fish, you can die if front of an instance door and accept the rez prompt inside.  This lets you explore in your regular form, but I haven't had the guts to try it myself.

-DC
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1. There's a bug (maybe hopefully today's patch fixed it? Hah, right) where you cannot turn off death effects now. Yeah, you can click the little box to turn it off, but it doesn't actually doing it. Although I haven't tried turning it off while I was alive. Maybe it's only a problem if you try to turn it off while you're still a ghost? /shrug

2. I don't know if they are still doing this or not, but for a while there if you did use the death trick to get inside places you aren't supposed to, you had your account either suspended or banned. Maybe they've lightened up on that a bit, but if you do explore unfinished areas and find yourself teleported out without warning, don't go back in. :)