Tonight, I found myself bored in WoW. Not that I don’t have a ton to do, but just that I was in between “things”. I mentioned that I was bored in guild chat, and one of my new guildies offered to give me 1,000 gold if I could figure out a scavenger hunt! Neat! She said I could use Google, but I didn’t want to. That seemed like it would spoil the fun. [Note: I just discovered that she has a blog! Read it!]
So, I was tasked with finding a giant sea serpent skeleton in Dragonblight, so I got a mage port and starting flying around in search of it. I asked a Wind Rider Master, but he wasn’t much help. Actually, he told me that I should look on the coast, because why would a sea creature be on land? Silly me.
So, I flew along the coast looking for this skeleton, and naturally, I got distracted by a fishing pool. I can’t let a pool go unfished, sheesh!
I had thought that I found it, because I was looking for a creature and forgot the important word “Serpent”. This sad whale made me almost cry, so I kneeled before it and gave it some respect before flying off again in search of the prize.
Could it be this? Alas, not, for this is a dragon stuck on a rock. Not too dissimilar, but not quite what I was looking for….
I flew around searching, and eventually needed a hint. I was told that it’s not on land or shore, and that I needed to fly higher to find it.
Finally, I flew high enough and saw what I was after! There is actually an enormous sea creature under the water, and from high up you can tell that it’s a serpent or dragon of some sort. If you dive down it doesn’t look as impressive, but from above it is really neat! You can even see it on your minimap, but I wasn’t looking there of course….
So having found the first one, I was off to find the Nova Shrine, which I was told was in Netherstorm. Now, I have to admit, during The Burning Crusade I completely skipped questing here, so I wasn’t too familiar. I’m lucky I even had a flight path there! But Serane told me that it was in the little pieces surrounding the main areas of the map, so I started exploring.
Aha! I actually got really lucky with this one and found it pretty quick! It turns out that this is an homage to the game Starcraft: Ghost, which was never released. NOVA is the name of a character in it, and the shrine actually flashes the letters N,O,V and A. Super cool!
Finally, the last place to go was the Shrine of the Fallen Warrior, in the Barrens. I barely remembered this place, but I knew I’d been there a long time ago when Treetopsy was just a spring chicken, long before the Shattering. I didn’t know if it was Northern or Southern Barrens, but I took a guess and went to Northern Barrens because I thought it was close to the Crossroads. And it was! I flew around a bit and eventually found the hilltop where the monument stands.
The story behind this is that Michel Koiter, a Blizzard employee, passed away during WoW’s development. There is an orc laying memorialized, and it is modeled after Koiter’s character, “twincruiser”. It’s a very special place, and I’m so happy that Serane reminded me of its existence.
All in all, this was a ton of fun. I told Serane she should definitely do a guild-wide version of this, because it’s so awesome to give respect to the little things that make World of Warcraft special. I appreciate things like this a lot. Serane gave me 975 gold (I needed a big hint on the sea creature, so she deducted some) and I actually felt bad taking it. She made my night fun, if anything I should be paying her. I hope I can repay her with some fun experience like this in the future. I had a great time exploring the world and can’t wait to do this again. 🙂
CuppyVille 
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