My First Blog Challenge

I was recently pointed to a weekly challenge blog, Z & Cinder’s Blog Challenge, and I thought it would be fun to jump in and give it a try. So, without further explanation, here it goes!

What is your favorite pop culture reference or easter egg in the World of Warcraft?

What a great question!

Over the last 14 years, WoW has incorporated a great deal of silly references into their world. It’s easy to run into one or two along the way and sometimes you miss them completely!

I can’t just list one. I can’t.

So I’m going to list three instead.

1. The Treacherous Stallions

Legion brought us a lot of great content. One of the best easter eggs, and one that I got to personally run across during my game time without spoilers, was the rare spawn labeled as the Treacherous Stallions. When you find them, you’ll see two rare unicorns (Sunrunners) and a third unicorn that is dead on the ground. The three NPC creatures are named as follows:

• Devious Sunrunner
• Sinister Leyrunner
• Charlie

If you kill the living unicorns, you’ll get a lovely piece of loot:

• Enchanted Sunrunner Kidney

This entire experience is a beautiful reference to “Charlie the Unicorn“, a 2005 Flash animated comedy short film and viral video created by Jason Steele.

Charlie the Unicorn is a character still referenced in our home to this day. Finding this in Legion was a real pleasure.

2. Bloodgulch

Back in the day (2004), a “machinima” web series filmed by a talented group of friends, using only Halo for their visuals and a closet to record their dialogue, was taking the internet by storm. Red vs. Blue: The Bloodgulch Chronicles was the first content released by a small company known as Roosterteeth, which would grow into a popular animation studio.

When Cataclysm launched, Horde players quickly identified a conflicted zone in Twilight Highlands named “Bloodgulch”. This was almost a reference within a reference, as the Red vs. Blue series was named after the map Bloodgulch in Halo. It seemed safe to assume that the name might be a reference to the popular First Person Shooter (FPS) rather than Red vs. Blue… until they found the guest-giver named Griff. He’s a character on the red team… in Bloodgulch.

Much like Pvt. Dexter Griff, who is on the red team… in Bloodgulch.

Many laughs.

Okay, so this one is a bit more obscure, but it was a lot of fun to see it implemented in the game, especially when several of the Roosterteeth employees, who were big WoW players at the time, talked about it on their podcast.

3. The Hatch

I was a big fan of the series LOST. It was a show about people trapped on an island, which grew into a science-fiction phenomenon and pug ABC programming back on the map in 2004. It was a thrill ride, even if you didn’t like the way it turned out. The show had a lot of fans, so it didn’t take long after Wrath of the Lich King was released for fans to notice a small island in Bittertide Lake, complete with it’s own hatch.

At first you might think this is just a developer making a hatch, how is this really a LOST easter egg? Well, when you put your mouse over the hatch, the numbers “5 9 16 19 24 43” appear.

LOST also had a series of numbers etched into the hatch: “4 8 15 18 23 42”.

It’s a really fun and simple reference that everyone can get a good laugh from as they run around Northrend.

Any Others?

Over the years there are plenty of other references that have caught my eye, but these three will always hold a special place in my heart. I can’t wait to see what others have to show! If there are any readers out there that favor World of Warcraft, feel free to join me in this blog challenge experience!