he blessed the raids down in Africa

Shamus explores the Barrens. The whole zone is so clearly African savannah themed, that everytime I go there the Toto song plays in my head.

And now, so will all of you! But I assume that the game designers were well aware of this possible connection when designing the quests. Look at the lyrics:

I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She’s coming in 12:30 flight
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation
I stopped an old man along the way
Hoping to find some old forgotten words or ancient melodies
He turned to me as if to say, “Hurry boy, it’s waiting there for you”

CHORUS:
It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I blessed the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had

The wild dogs cry out in the night
As they grow restless longing for some solitary company
I know that I must do what’s right
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti
I seek to cure what’s deep inside, frightened of this thing that I’ve become

CHORUS

Hurry boy, she’s waiting there for you

It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I blessed the rains down in Africa, I blessed the rains down in Africa
I blessed the rains down in Africa, I blessed the rains down in Africa
I blessed the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had

The Barrens has old men, wild dogs, mountains rising above the plains… and it even rains there from time to time. But anyone who has leveled there on foot know, “Gonna take some time to do the things we never had” indeed.

5 thoughts on “he blessed the raids down in Africa”

  1. i heart the Barrens because unlike most other zones, you can actually climb the mountains. And hyenas make great hunter pets!

  2. One odd thing the barrens has is a monument to a developer that died sometime during game development. However, I haven’t figured out how to get there since they fixed wall walking (it used to be possible to creep up a wall if you were careful and persistent). It’s on a hill to the southwest of Crossroads; IIRC, you’ll see it if you fly into Crossroads from Stonetalon.

  3. ahh, the wailing caverns. i have a pretty strange wow-history. i started after BC and spent the whole first year building alli twinks. Twink culture was amazing. Twinks were hypergeared battlegound toons that lvl capped 60’s started building in vanilla. There were fierce protocols for gearing BIS by lvl 19….enchant exploits and illegal gear glitches. My 19 bracket holy priest had the quest shoulders from WC and the fishing hat and trinket from stranglethorn. Twinking also worked for 13 yearolds that had mad skills but couldn’t get into a raiding guild until age 16. Twink guilds ruled WSG.
    Blizz boosted the best of twink culture for Cata and the ranked battlegrounds and 10 man hard bg teams…and pretty much killed off twinks with xp in the battlegrounds and ranked battle groups and twink on twink fighting.
    But those were the days of glory. We had our own WSG weekends where we crushed the horde with our premade plows all weekend and then partied in stormwind afterwards. I slept on the floor of the warroom or in cutthroat alley so’s not to get xp.
    Cata will be just as fun. Twinks will roam the bgs again…..they will just be lvl 80 twinks.
    😉

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