Recently, some of the WoW designers have been posting photos of their oldest surviving design notes on the game for “throwback thursday.” Today, Alex Afrasiabi (Creative Director) posted up his ancient design notes for the hunter class quest in vanilla. This quest was truly an epic undertaking, and at the end you were rewarded with Rhok’delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers. The quest also rewarded you with a melee weapon, Lok’delar, Stave of the Ancient Keepers.
Little pre-#tbt love for the hunters. Rhok’delar laid out. pic.twitter.com/nh220m1iTw
— Alex Afrasiabi (@Abrosiabi) February 26, 2014
In order to start the quest, you needed to get the Ancient Petrified Leaf to drop in Molten Core. Unfortunately, this is no longer available in the game. It was removed in Cataclysm and I’m still kicking myself for not completing it when I could in Wrath. The problem was, back then I never would have thought we’d get transmog. Oh well. This quest took you to Felwood, where you were then sent to slay 4 demons across Azeroth. They all required specific strategies and you couldn’t have any help or else they’d despawn. Finally, you’d have to kill Onyxia before turning it in for your weapons. Frostheim also wrote a great article on the quest back when it was still available.
Are any of you lucky enough to still have this on your hunter?
I’m still kicking myself because I had the leaf, it dropped during a guild fun-run through MC during Wrath, but I didn’t know what it was and, at the time, hadn’t heard of of wowhead or other sites that would have helped me know what to do with it. Oh well.
Got it in vanilla. The demons where pretty hard at 60, even though I had MC gear.
I’m glad I’m a pack-rat so I never sold it, but my bank and void storage is full.
The memories! It was during Wrath, and when soloing old content, I came across the sinew and leaf. Kept them of course, and finally looked up what they were. I then started my journey to get it, fighting the demons, going to the trees in Felwood to talk to them, and it was going good! I stopped for a bit, then Cata came, and I figured I’d finish the last bit of it (maybe had one more demon?), so I went to the trees to continue the quest… but they didn’t spawn… and I found out it was removed. I still have the sinew, leaf, and the paper telling me what to do, but I couldn’t continue the quest. When I hear of this bow I shed a little tear :'[
That’s painful to read. I blame Deathwing.
I was lucky enough to grab it just before they pulled the quest. It’s such a fun weapon, and I’ve always liked bow more than guns. 🙂
Yep. Still use it as a transmog vanity piece. I’m hoping it doesn’t get revamped or made available in BMAH or something like that. A few items should stay exclusive to the era where they existed!
Even though I don’t have it myself, I agree. There should be rare stuff out there like this. Some of my most cherished items are stuff that can no longer be acquired.
I am lucky.. being a bit of a hoarder I could never bring myself to get rid of it. Thanx to transmog I sport it on my character at all times.