Old Ironforge
Behind a locked door in King Magni's throne room, a winding path leads down to a vast cavern with a ceiling of diamond. In the closed beta players could walk straight in. Then the door was shut, and for six years "Old Ironforge" was the most famous locked room in Azeroth.
The sealed door
During the closed beta a ramp led from Magni's chamber down into the cavern. It was sealed during the open beta, and in the years that followed players kept finding ways around the closed entrance anyway. Nobody knew what the place was for. Blizzard teased it more than once: in a test build of patch 3.1.0 the door in the throne room could be opened and the path down was visible behind an invisible wall, but the door was locked again before the patch went live.
Opened at last: Magni turns to diamond
The door finally opened in patch 4.1.0 in April 2011. The story behind it is told in the novel The Shattering: as the elementals grew restless before Deathwing's return, Magni opened the old city and attempted a titan ritual to become one with the earth. The ritual worked a little too well, and he was turned into a statue of solid diamond. In game you could walk down to Magni's Dais and find him there, guarded by Advisor Belgrum and Honor Guard Dunstad, with three great tomes around the chamber. During Children's Week, orphans asked to be taken to see him.
Magni stayed there until Legion: as the Burning Legion returned, Azeroth herself released him, and crystal shards from his awakening still litter the floor. Since Battle for Azeroth the path continues to Aegrim's Study, and in The War Within two earthen archivists from Khaz Algar came to study the tomes at the centre of the chamber.
WoW Forever: the Hall of Thanes
World of Warcraft: Forever, the new version of original Azeroth that launches on 4 November 2026 (the beta started on 17 September), takes the old idea in a different direction. In its Ironforge the chamber below the throne is the Hall of Thanes, the burial place of the dwarven kings, and it is a full dungeon: level 13 to 18, Alliance only, the counterpart to the Horde's Ragefire Chasm. Dark Iron dwarves have broken in, the dead are restless, and four bosses wait inside: Faldrim Anvilmar, Magmatus, Plunder and Durgen Dirgehammer.
The entrance is where explorers always looked for it: walk into the High Seat, take the cobweb-covered corridor on the left and follow the crumbling path down past the lava. The quest Old Ironforge Incursion starts in Dun Morogh with Earthseer Farsen and ends with Durgen Dirgehammer's head on Magni's table.
From the archive
Old Ironforge as players described it before anyone could get in, from the original Lost WOW:
"Old Ironforge" is just what the name says, the old IF. That is how the city looked until the All-Alliance push in the closed beta. Blizzard then rebuilt IF to make it easier on players' computers.
attyballz on Thottbot
I went down there today and took my chances with a GM ticket asking what the place was. The answer was that Old IF is meant for future content and that everything is already in place, just not working yet.
TommyTheCat, Blizzpub.net forums
Mira Duskwood is the pen name of the Lost WOW editorial team. Mira writes the secret walkthroughs and the history of the lost areas, and keeps them up to date when a patch changes something.
- How this page was made. Every step was checked against at least two independent sources (Warcraft Wiki, Wowhead and Icy Veins), and against the patch notes for anything that changed over time.
- Last updated . When a patch moves a step or breaks a puzzle, the page is corrected and the date changes.
- Spotted a mistake? Tell us and it gets fixed. Read the editorial policy.
Videos
More videos of the same place from YouTube, old and new.
