World of Warcraft Classic’s Hardcore servers are hard enough without having to worry about ambushes from underground, but that’s exactly what’s happening to unsuspecting low-level players in the game’s Stonetalon Mountains zone.
The recent patch 1.15.9 introduced various quality-of-life updates to WoW Classic, including improvements to raid frames, nameplates, and even the introduction of the modern game’s UI edit mode. Unfortunately, as detailed by players on Reddit and a PSA on Wowhead, it seems the patch also introduced a bug that is teleporting enemies from other Kalimdor zones underneath one spot in particular in Stonetalon Mountains.
For normal WoW Classic players, that’s not too much of an issue. But on WoW Classic’s permadeath server, a group of dozens of high-level enemies hiding underground in the zone’s Boulderslide Ravine area is a deathtrap. There are a handful of Horde quests that take players through the area, meaning any hardcore player on their leveling journey through the zone will likely walk right by this potentially character-ending situation.
While players can’t exactly strike the foes from underground, the mobs seem more than capable of assassinating unsuspecting players, as shown in a clip from Reddit user Party-Signature-8700 where they narrowly avoid dying to a high-level crocodile enemy from an entirely different zone, Dustwallow Marsh. In the video, another player’s dead body can be seen nearby, confirming that these enemies mean business.
What is causing this particular bug is unknown, but players are theorizing that since the Boulderslide Ravine area is the 0, 0, 0 coordinates for the continent, the game is for whatever reason mistakenly teleporting enemies to that specific location. This can sometimes happen to players as well, such as when disconnecting while on a flight path on another part of the continent, only to find themselves in Stonetalon Mountains at this particular location when logging back in.
Blizzard is no doubt aware of the issue, and should your Hardcore character happen to die due to this bug, there is potentially a chance the developer could restore them back to life. It’s happened before when entire raids of players have been disconnected and killed due to DDoS attacks or other server issues, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility here. However, it’s probably for the best to just stay clear of the Stonetalon Mountain entirely, lest an underground killer gator end your journey to level 60 prematurely.
As for what’s next for WoW Classic, players are anticipating a major reveal at this year’s BlizzCon. Many believe it will be the long-fabled Classic+, a new version of the old-school MMORPG that will be continually updated a la Old School Runescape. A codename, Camelot, recently appeared in a WoW Classic datamine and was also discovered to be in a once-dismissed Warcraft leak, adding more evidence that something big is coming on the WoW Classic front. Whatever it is, players will have to wait until BlizzCon’s opening ceremony on September 15 to find out more.
