TYDKaWoW #017 | The Ship wasn't supposed to be in the Deadmines

[T]he Defias Brotherhood has taken up residence and turned the dark tunnels into their private sanctum. It is rumored that the thieves have conscripted the clever goblins to help them build something terrible at the bottom of the mines - but what that may be is still uncertain.

It's a ship. With giant cannons. Every player in Azeroth knows that. The Deadmines is one of the most known instances in the game, I would say, if not the most well known. But the Ending on the ship in the massive cave didn't always look this way. Early art of the instance only shows it as a big thieve lair with the only ship part being a lookout as a bridge part?

Original concept art for the Deadmines. (©The Art of World of Warcraft)

The Juggernaut, which is the official name of the ship monstrosity, was actually located outside at first. Blizzard hasn't shared the reason behind this move, but my guess would be, that they didn't want the ship visible in the outside version of Westfall. It would have meant, that they also had to address it on the outside in any capacity, because such a big ship will get big attention.

What Blizzard has shared though - once again for the 10 year celebration of World of Warcraft - is an early ingame image and the paintover concept art for the cave version. It's an interesting look inside the design process of the instance. You can clearly see that the cave version uses the original image, as the trees are still visible at many points in the image.

Concept art for the juggernaut inside the Deadmines. (© Blizzard)

Now they only needed to fix one plot hole they created; how did the ship get there? or how is it supposed to get out? And they did so with a giant doorway on the inside of the instance, although you might not even notice it that much on ground level in the dark cavern. And the exit is actually visible in most northern mountain side in Stranglethorn Vale.

The gate to Stranglethorn Vale inside the Deadmines.

The gate to the Deadmines in Stranglethorn Vale.

And that is how the ship got into the bottle, or something.

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