Disclaimer:
If you have the knowledge and experience, access to genuine clients remember that it's always best to explore on the proper builds, this release is purely for convenience.
Downporting is not a 1-to-1 thing, a lot of rendering functionality is absent compared to the later expansions, upported assets were generated with outdated/unfinished tools etc.
Welcome to the museum!
This release is in part a culmination of several months of work on restoring the original Development Land, as well as a collection of developer,
prototype, unreleased, secret maps and assets from the earliest 0.5.3 Alpha to 9.2.5 Shadowlands that I have accumulated.
All necessary assets are downported to 3.3.5.
The museum is showcased in a video of mine Prototypes Unseen and Forgotten.
Also enjoy a little preview of the exhibits made by Dovah.
Link to the museum on MEGA.
Now has alternative google drive links for the main assets patch.
Contents:
1. Development Land.
A map that is beloved by the exploration community, considered by some to be one of the coolest maps to ever exist, with an interesting story behind it. Originally leaked in a Cata PTR in 2011 and then quickly deleted, only a handful of broken parts of it were gathered. The map was later revealed and released by MoD on Ownedcore. The map that we got was broken, some zones were missing terrain, _obj, _tex files or usually all 3 of them. Over the years people tried to get around this in a few ways in order to explore it, but the map was still broken. I had an idea of recreating terrain for it from the heightmap stored in the WDL file, with the help of schlumpf that was achieved. Thanks to him as well, textures were somewhat restored with an image to vertex tool using the cata minimap as a source. This is a custom fix, by no means it comes close to the original that we never got, it is still broken, but this is the best we have now.
2. Misc developer maps.
LevelDesignLand-DevOnly - one of the WoD developer maps, around 50 early garrison variations, unreleased arenas, bgs, locations, wod intro prototypes, it has it all.
Propland-DevOnly another WoD map, housing a copy of Shadowmoon Burial Grounds, with the way m2s render inside a wmo it's best explored in noggit or another external renderer.
Expansion5QAModelMap houses a big chunk of assets built for WoD, also early graybox wmos for the moving parts of Grimrail Depot can be found here.
2168 - BfA level design map, houses 4 prototype parts of Kultiras.
3. Scenarios and Island prototypes.
AkazamarakHatScenario - unreleased scenario, not very interesting on 3.3.5 since it's missing the npc and gameobjects, but fully functional on live (cred. Dovah).
IllidansRock - a map where you were supposed to interact with Illidan while he was jailed in Legion.
TheMawofNashal, AssassinsScenarioDRU, DKMountScenario, WarfrontsDarkshoreAlliance, GorgrondOrcs all early/unreleased versions of different scenarios, featuring placeholder or alpha models.
8BoostExperienceHorde - a prototype for a boost location, which is itself an early version of Seething Shore, in Shadowlands Blizzard decided to reuse the map and added an untextured Northrend with a blockout of ICC.
Artifact-Warrior Fury Acquisition - a unreleased version of early Helheim.
AcquisitionHavoc - this map has unreferenced tiles with what looks like pre-alpha parts of Suramar planing. unused - not much is known about this map.
TanaanLegionTest - an early version of Tanaan Jungle.
Warlockarea - a map that later became the warlock orderhall during Legion, this is its early prototype from MoP.
ThePurgeOfGrommarScenario - a cut scenario from WoD.
Artifact-PortalWorldAcqusition is an early version of the scenario by the same name, though the scenery in this one is drastically different due to some assets that were cut down the line.
Islands_7VR_Swamp_Prototype2, Islands888 Josh, Islands666 Katalina, Islands9 Sinkhole, Islands420 Wonderland, Islands803 Mesa, Islands805 Cursed are unreleased prototypes of island expeditions, they vary in the level of polish, but undoubtedly strong contenders for the coolest unreleased maps.
HearhstoneTavern - an unreleased scenario that first appeared in game files in BFA, regarded by some as the most detailed interior in wow.
4. Dungeons, Raids, BGs, Arenas.
AbyssalMaw - a well known unreleased dungeon from Cata, this particular version is raised above the deathline.
Legion Dungeon - also a well known unreleased dungeon.
DungeonBlockout - prototype Arcway, made of versatile "lego" m2 blocks.
SnakeCave - one of the first versions of Temple of Sethraliss, though with a very different layout.
PirateTownDungeon - early Freehold with an interesting top part added to it, the unreferenced tile to the top left is also of interest.
DevMapG - the Motherlode, also has some unreferenced tiles.
MechagnomeIsland - early Mechagon prototype.
Argus 1 - early Argus, has several technical prototypes for the locations and the raid.
Nagadungeon - the top unreferenced tile is an early Eye of Azshara.
DefenseOfTheAleHouseBG - the unreleased Dota BG.
WarcraftHeroes - another BG we didn't get to see.
SmallBattlegroundA - a collection of prototype arenas from WoD.
SilithusBG - Seething Strand, a version of the azerite bg but located in Silithus, never released.
AzeriteBG1 - early Seething Shore BG.
ValsharahArena - early versions of the arena housed in unreferenced tiles.
TheGreatWall and EastTemple are early versions of Gate of the Setting Sun and Temple of the Jade Serpent which have some pre-alpha tiles from MOP development.
Argus_Rifts and early version of invasions, most of these are now unreferenced in game files, what appears to be a part of early Vol'dun can also be found here.
UnderrotDungeon - very early underrot, still with design and planning markings.
AITestMap8 is a modified version of the Arathi Basin with ships as starting point, most points of interest on the map are swapped to small cave wmos.
Firelands1 - it's hard to pinpoint a particular patch or time-frame for this, but this was acquired by combining partial 4.0.0 Firelands with incremental PTR patches, the result is an early mock-up version of the retail Firelands raid, massive thank you to Marlamin and RIdPEF for their archives.
Abandonedmines appears to be an unreleased expedition set in a mining town.
Robodrome - layout prototypes for the retail arena.
9devland2 houses one of six wmos that were spotted on that map during the 2019 design panel at Blizzcon.
Nzoth - prototype Nazjatar that was shipped by mistake in 8.3.0, compared to the retail version there's an additional part of the zone present - Nzoth himself.
GMdungeon2 is an unofficial name for a dev/gm wmo that houses a few testing areas.
ExteriorTest - originally a developer map with some terrain work, the version here adds some of the unused wmos and m2s from the gamefiles (raid/dungeon blockouts, greyboxes etc.).
ScarletSanctuaryArmoryAndLibrary - an early version of the updated scarlet monastery from MoP Beta that has what seems to be a layout/draft of Pandaria.
MantisDungeon, MantisRaid - early prototypes of Siege of Niuzao and Heart of Fear.
OrgrimmarRaid - the earliest public PTR version of the raid.
Nazjatar - a piece of the first version of the map with a level design kit that was used for promotional materials during Blizzcon.
Torghast - the earliest version of the torghast map with many modular prototypes.
5. Earliest Contintents.
0.5.3 Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor and some alpha wmos have been added. Terrain files for 0.5.5 Kalimdor. 2.0.0 Outland and 3.0.1 Northrend with their respective wmos are also now present, 4.0.0 Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, Deepholm, 6.0.1 Draenor and 8.0.1 KulTiras.
6. Through the Years.
This section has a selection of early maps throughout their development, every version (available to me) that had meaningful changes is included. As of now there are: Ahn'Kahet, Alterac Valley, Arathi Basin, Azshara Crater, Black Temple, Emerald Dream, Kalidar, Old Outland, Onyxia's Lair, Plains of Snow, Ulduar, ICC, Violet Hold and Zul'Aman.
7. Extra.
A single patch with the earliest WMOs from 2.0.0, 3.0.1, 4.0.0, 5.0.1, 6.0.1, 7.0.1, 8.0.1.
Three 8.3 Epsilon patches with AbandonedMines, Nazjatar (level design kit), Nzoth.
Please take a look at the instructions file inside the museum. Every patch has coordinates and links to their minimaps on wow.tools. If you have any questions, problems you can message me on discord (implave#7038), if you want to post some screenshots, feel free to do that in the Exploration Discord.
Special thanks
A massive thank you to Schlumpf for writing the wdl -> adt tool, modifying paintwow, making the filedata adt converter, his work on noggit, helping me along the way. Thank you to Marlamin for his work on wow.tools, help, archives and in general being awesome. Thank you to Dovah, Nyarly, Fean and others for helping me test/acquire files for this release. Thank you to Ayahne for his time and conversions of post-8.3 wmos. Thank you to Reznik for providing a worldmap for the development and his wiki. Thank you to MoD for releasing the files for the development way back when. Thank you to Adspartan, Barncasle, Gamh, Mjolna for their tools, archives. Thank you to the exploration community in general for inspiration.
Take it slow, enjoy, have fun and happy exploring!
