Anyone visiting the Twilight Grove of World of Warcraft should take a moment. Because there is something there that has never been in the game again.
World of Warcraft is huge. Not only does the game world have a size that can hardly be found in any other MMORPG, but there are also countless little secrets to discover. Sometimes you stand in front of an object, not even realizing how special it actually is. This can happen to you, for example, in the Twilight Grove – whether in Classic or the modern Retail version. Because there you will find an object that has never existed in this form again.
The Entrance of Darkshire
What kind of object is that? We are talking about the archway of the city of Darkshire in the Twilight Grove. It is the only object of its kind that you can find in the game, because it has a special feature: readable text.
Because on the archway you can read the word “Darkshire”, so the English name for the town of Dunkelhain.
It is the only town in the game whose name is written out in Latin letters in the game world:
Why has that never happened again? This is because the various localization teams back then in the Vanilla version of Classic asked whether there would also be localized assets – that is, objects in the game – to provide a consistent player experience. After all, all other texts in the game, such as on world maps or the descriptions of items and tooltips, have also been translated into multiple languages.
However, Blizzard decided not to localize actual in-game objects in the environment. Instead, text would henceforth always be represented by various cryptic runes, as is known from the billboards of Dalaran.
Were there any other objects of this kind? Yes, also in the human area during the Vanilla time. On a signpost, one could read the word “Westfall”. However, in the modern version of the game, this has been replaced, as with all signposts. There is no longer any readable text on the plaques, and only if you hover your mouse over the signpost do you see the name of the area you are being directed to in the tooltip.
But perhaps we have also missed another object of this kind. Do you know of any in-game asset where Latin letters can be found in WoW?
By the way: It does happen that even game assets are localized. Especially StarCraft II had a number of items that were, for example, labeled with German texts in the German version. For World of Warcraft, however, a different style seems to have been chosen – but this fits a little better with a fantasy world filled with magical runes and lots of fantastic races.
The developers of World of Warcraft are currently in a difficult position. Because many now have to worry for a year about whether they will be laid off.
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