The game might be afoot: WoW secret-finding community partially activates after potential clue found in patch 11.2.7

In the midst of the great Azerothian Real Estate Rush of patch 11.2.7, a possible clue has been discovered that has the World of Warcraft secret finding community dusting off their Monocles of Investigation. While there has been no official confirmation that there even is a new in-game secret and no further clues have been discovered, it is still worth looking at the big picture to understand why you might see players running all across Azeroth with Draenei ghost children in tow. And, no, we are not making this up.

Over the past decade there has been an increasingly complex and difficult series of in-game puzzles leading to secret mounts and pets like a green motorcycle and a tentacled cat. One of these secret adventures involved Uuna, a small Draenei apparition that could be summoned as a non-combat pet with a drop from a rare on Argus. A melancholy story plays out after you perform emotes and bring Uuna to various locations around Azeroth.

While Uuna’s tale is worth it just for experiencing the narrative of a secret quest line, finishing it “upgrades” her with the ability to periodically give you hugs when summoned. Completing this secret is also a prerequisite of later secret chains leading to the demonic battle pet, B’aal, and the exquisite pants retention system Waist of Time. But something has changed in patch 11.2.7.

Secret finding community member Alzor was the first to sound the alarm when they noticed Uuna exhibiting new behavior within minutes of the servers coming up on patch day. Instead of hugging the player, Uuna now sings part of a song: “Tulips’s sister, pure and humble! Seeks to…something…” It appears that she has forgotten the next line of the song, as she trails off into mumbling.

Such a subtle change in a new patch would be uneventful in a vast majority of cases, but it was enough to light the beacon of the secret finding community Discord and ping its vast army of members, activating the Hivemind (coincidentally, also another secret mount). The sheer size of Azeroth and the subtlety of the clues and puzzles in past secrets have required the entire community to work together to piece together each step’s solution.

By Wednesday evening, many theories had been put forward about what Uuna’s song could mean. In a Warcraft manga from 2008, Legends, there is a character named Tulip in the story Journey. Tulip has a sister named Rose, and the narrative involves their father volunteering to guide a force that seeks to take Andorhal back from the Scourge sometime after the Third War.

Other secret-seekers recalled that a promised continuation of Uuna’s story during the Shadowlands expansion never materialized, and are focusing on the “pure and humble” portion of the song by scouring Bastion in hopes that we are finally seeing her next chapter.

While the thrill of chasing secrets in real time is a unique feeling in World of Warcraft, one of the pain points recently has been the steep barrier to entry. The felcycle secret required quite a bit of previous secret-finding in order to complete. If you want to participate in the search for the rest of Uuna’s song, you’ll need to collect the drop on Argus and then complete the process of upgrading her (which is far from a trivial time commitment).

If you’re content with watching the sleuthing from the sidelines, don’t hold your breath. While many of Azeroth’s secrets have been solved by the community in hours or days, others have taken nearly a year to crack. Stay tuned to see if this mysterious clue leads to another collaborative wild goose chase across time and space.