Blizzard could resurrect WoW’s creepiest mystery in Season of Discovery

With the announcement of World of Warcraft: Season of Discovery at Blizzcon, the developer has the opportunity to finally confront one of the game’s most enduring mysteries.

As a game with a nearly 20-year history, WoW has a lot of secrets and exciting areas to uncover. From a Vanilla version of Northrend accessible via clever use of Darkmoon Firewater in Naxxramas to Darnassus’ hidden lake, there’s so much to Azeroth and beyond.

That’s all before unfinished areas are taken into account. As the name may suggest, these are zones that the developers started but scrapped before they were completed. Many of these can still be found and accessed in the live world via clever use of mechanics and clipping.

Now, with Season of Discovery on the immediate horizon, Blizzard has the chance to finish the most notorious and downright creepy of those – The Karazhan Crypts.

Season of Discovery could let players explore the Karazhan Crypts

Initially, the community could access the Karazhan Crypts by dying at the entrance and entering as a ghost. Once inside, it’s clear that this was designed to be a fully explorable area, most likely an instance. The rooms inside the crypts all have foreboding names like The Slough of Despair and The Pit of Criminals, but The Room of Upside-Down Sinners has become the most notorious.

The room is actually a reference to the John Carpenter movie Big Trouble in Little China and features corpses suspended upside-down from hooks and chains. Though the area became more well known after access was granted to the crypt as part of the Lucid Nightmare mount quest chain, it was never truly finished in conjunction with the other areas.

In the words of Josh Greenfield, Senior Game Producer for Season of Discovery, the development team is “leaving the door open to the possibility of completely new experiences and the prospects of exploring previously unfinished or unused locals for future raid and dungeon content.” With this in mind, the Karazhan Crypts seems like a prime candidate for this brave new version of the game.

With further hints at Blizzcon that this could end up being a reality, fans may not have long to wait to confront the denizens of Karazhan’s depths.