For people who didn’t play hardcore, there’s an addon called ‘deathlog’ which gives a heat map of where the most people died.
My guess is HC data can be used to work out some of the hard spots to place runes - both in terms of places with high death count and places that people avoided.
If you look at the map of Teldrassil on ‘deathlog’ (I play an alliance druid) there are three noticeably red areas where people died a lot.
The red spots are
The tree in the starting area (from people jumping off and dieing - falling was one of the highest causes of death in HC). This is not a likely rune location.
The cave where Lord Melanas lives. Lord Melanas caused the highest number of deaths in Teldrassil. A rune located at one of Lord Melanas spawn spots seems likely.
The circular cave / tunnels for The Relics of Wakening quest. There are a number of different spots in this cave network where runes could be hidden.
Most of the 1-25 zones are well documented as most deaths in hardcore occurred at these levels.
There’s a low level quest that gives you access to runes. The visual example I saw at Blizzcon was a chest on a rock. They also mentioned a typical rune could be a chest in a kobold cave.
Probably will be a quest chain and quest reward. If its just a Rune that spawns to a location (like a chest), expect a line of people stretching out across Azeroth. It’ll be interesting to see how they implement this.
I think runes will come from a bunch of sources, some quests, some raids/dungeons and i wouldnt be surprised if some are just straight hidden somewhere
In hardcore, swimming from menethil to westfall or vice versa at low levels to avoid being eaten by a wetlands crocodile was often done. There are a couple of structures on the shore that I never knew existed.
I’ve posted this theory on the warlock discord but:
We got a tidbit from blizzcon interviews that the Warlock metamorphasis form quest will be a multi zone encompassing affair, and a “long” quest chain.
So… my guess work is based on this:
Blizzard will want tank specs capable of tanking in time for RFC and WC (horde side) or their equivalents on alliance (stockades and Deadmines I think?)
Curse of recklessness first becomes available at 14. That spell is what converts into “taunt” for warlock tanks, and is probably “essential”… Searing pain is first available at 18 but might not be 100% essential.
There are warlock themed mobs in durotar (burning blade cultists), the barrens (dreadmist peak), and RFC dungeon
So my theory is that we will start the quest chain sometime in the 10-12 range, but likely be unable to complete it until 14… Some kind of starting quest in Org/UC that sends you to retrieve some items: One in durotar at a burning blade camp, and one from silverpine. I’m 50/50 on whether the next step would involve doing RFC once for a drop, but for horde side it would make sense, those are also burning blade cultists/warlock mobs in there. The end of the quest would involve some kind of ritual on Dreadmist peak in the barrens.
Skull Rock, Dreadmist Peak, The Hidden Path, and any Burning Blade camp I would think is a likely spot for warlock/shaman runes in Durotar. I’m sure somewhere deep within the hidden chambers of Undercity is some sort of runes.
your logic means that all the runes will be found at the bottom of each elevator in undercity and all around thunderbluff (so many horde died there). I bet for every 1 death by the pig crew 1,000 horde died by getting the shaft in the elevators lol