HUMOR: Tribute to Captain Placeholder

Isra has brought to my attention a lovely ->tribute page to Captain Placeholder<- containing a picture of said hero and a beautiful tribute song. She says she's going to put it as one of my links and has requested that I explain the story of dear Captain Placeholder, as he was before many of your times.

There was an extended period several months after the birth of the retail version of World of Warcraft wherein there was no boat between Menethil and Darkshore. There were docks, but the boat was non-existent. It never came. As a quick and supposedly temporary fix for this buggy boat the good people at Blizzard decided to allow teleportation between the docks in Menethil and Darkshore while they worked on solving the problem. This teleporation was achieved by speaking to an NPC either on the Auberdine dock or the Menethil dock. The one on the Menethil side was faithful Captain Placeholder. Simply a word to him and you'd find yourself instantly on the pier in Darkshore, ready to quest on.

Weeks went by and the boat had still not been fixed. Captain Placeholder and his Darkshore counterpart soon became integrated members of Azerothian society and the convenient jump between Menethil and Auberdine became the norm. Several months it seems like went by in this fashion. Faithful Captain Placeholder was always there for you, ready to cheerfully greet you and send you on your way. But one day a fateful patch was implemented, finally fixing the boat we had all but forgotten about, and our friends Captain Placeholder and the Darkshore teleporter had vanished without so much as a by-your-leave.

Where are you now, stalwart captain? Keeping watch on some lonely dock on some forgotten shore where no boats care to stray, helping lost travelers get home? I hope to meet with thee again someday.

Isra: Still confused? ->Wikipedia is your friend!<- Link leads to a site where you can download the lament. Sing along.