Strange World; the dino crate in Netherstorm and the lost ship in the Twisting Nether

Netherstorm in Outland is kind off a strange place itself, with the gigantic domes, Area 52 and all the dinosaurs! But I want to show you two other strange things in this zone:

Isn't it awesome?! A crate formed as a dinosaur, when seen from above! 

The location of the dinosaur crate shown on the map of Netherstorm

The Twisting Nether is the nowhere-zone all around Outland, and if you wanna fly from Hellfire Peninsula to Netherstorm, you're flying right through it, right through nothing! There isn't even a map when you have entered the Twisting Nether, but it isn't entirely empty actually...

A map of Outland surrounded by the Twisting Nether

A lost ship in the middle of nowhere, 

how on earth, I mean how on Azeroth did that end up out here? 

The easiest way to find the lost ship is to fly out from Kirin'Var Village

Strange World; the book in Ebon Hold

When you start a Death Knight you are awakened by the Lich King in Acherus: The Ebon Hold. In the upper floor near the runeforge that is closest to the merchants, you can find a most interessting book titled "The Death Knights of Acherus".

This book seems to be some kind of listing over the various Death Knights that dwell in Ebon Hold, when you open it there's a fun animation of an eye that pops out of the book and scans the Acherus, as if it observes every Death Knight within the necropolis.

Looks pretty regular at first 

Watch out! It scans you too!

The book have several pages listing death knights with their name, status and a comment, some of these are rather funny! On the last page your own name shows up with the comment: "Needs more cowbell", reffering to a Saturday Night Live skit with Christopher Walken (just search for needs more cowbell on youtube if you haven't seen it already).

Strange World; the secret room in Orgrimmar

I thought this would be great start for this new section on the blog, a real secret place in the middle of one of the bussiest places ingame, the horde capital of Orgrimmar!

Skadd inside the secret room in Orgrimmar

Of course I didn't discover this on my own, I first learned about this on this amazing blog; Syrco Owl, and with these directions it was quite easy to manage my way to this secret room.
There isn't really much more to it than what you see in the picture, a small room, with a single candle on the floor and a big plate on the wall with the initials WKM, and a shaft for entering/exit.

The room itself is inside a giant stone pillar between the Valley of Honor and the Drag, as far as I have learned nobody knows what WKM stands for, it is most likely a shrine in memory of someone (Blizzard have done this before in memory of employees that have passed away) or maybe it's just a game designer that wanted to make this for fun, just to make us wonder why it's there? After all it's good to have some mysteries left, even after Cataclysm!

Inside the rock on the top of this pillar is the secret room

The pillar shown on the map

What a long, strange trip it's been...

Indeed!
I think the name of an achievement never have been more apropriate, cause this have been one h**l of a long trip!!

Finally!

When I first startet playing World of Warcraft, I loved the world events for the content itself, when I discovered this achievement, with this amazing PRIZE, I got obsessed doing them all!
I started playing in the fall of 2008, so it took awhile before I could do every achievement, but in the spring of 2010, all I had left to do was For the Children, then the Violet Protodrake would be mine!! From the 2009 Children's Week I was just missing two small achievements, Hail to the King, Baby and to assault a flag in Arathi Basin of the School of Hard Knocks, but I only had a few days left and the queues to get into Arathi Basin was ridiculously long, so I never got to finish the two last objects back in 2009, I had to wait another whole year...

The thing about my style playing WoW, is that I play rather intense in some periods, rather casual in some periods and not at all in periods too. For some strange reason the last years I have had a non-playing period in the spring, so I have missed Children's week every year, and never had the chance to finish my What a long, strange trip it's been achievement, and it has been so frustrating!! Especially with my mount obsession, I have really been dreaming of getting this wonderful protodrake! So I missed my chance in 2010 due to mye non-playing period, the same happened in 2011 and 2012 too...

So, this year I was determined to finish up this achievement! Since PvP is not my favorite thing to do in WoW I was dreading the last bit of the School of Hard Knocks (I have to admit that my brother in law helped me out with the three other objects), but I actually got it done within the first 5 minutes of the battleground, now I only had to pay King Ymiron in Utgarde Pinnacle a little visit!

I think I've never been happier in WoW!

So no I can relax and enjoy flying around on my absolutely stunning Violet Protodrake!