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This is a silly article This article is silly. Coming from a source other than the computer games, trading card game, novels, RPG, or manga, its content is not part of official Warcraft lore, but nevertheless has become part of the culture belonging to the World of Warcraft community. |
There is no cow level. Or is there?
As a saying
Blizzard has, for years, been denying allegations of hiding secret "cow levels" in their games, especially the original Diablo, where the rumors first began. (If you clicked a mysteriously-spawned cow several times, it opened a portal that led to a secret area, hence the name.) Descriptions vary from report to report of what exactly a "cow level" is, but they are generally accepted to be secret areas that contain significant numbers of bovines (sometimes including powerful, magic-wielding bovines) and little else. So prevalent were claims by fans to have found the "secret cow level" in any number of Blizzard's games that their repeated, pithy response became a common utterance for fans:
- There is no cow level.
The fact that, taken out of context, this comment just sounds bizarre and practically invites one to look for a cow level because someone felt it was important enough to deny something so bizarre has probably contributed a large part to its spreading as a saying among fans. And it's just damn funny to blurt out.
Not helping rumors is the fact that there actually was a Cow Level in Diablo II, and there have also been numerous other cow jokes and "there is no cow level" jokes hidden in Blizzard's other games. For example, it was the cheat code in StarCraft used to skip the current level. The line lives on in the hearts of long-time Blizzard fans and as an occasional loading screen tip in World of Warcraft. In Warcraft III, players were able to access a secret level by locating a number of flaming sheep and killing them.
Curiously, the phrase bears resemblance to a famous quote in the movie The Matrix. When the protagonist of the movie, Neo, meets a young boy with telekinetic abilities bending a spoon with his mind, the boy explains "There is no spoon." This is also a cheat in Warcraft III. This phrase in turn has been interpreted as a reference to the Buddhist concept of dependent origination. There is no spoon: what exists is only Neo's idea of the spoon.
In the hit PC shooter games Call of Duty and Call of Duty 2, to enable cheats one must use the command console to set the value of the variable 'ThereIsACow' to 1337.
The Blizzard Entertainment-only band L80ETC has composed a Diablo-inspired song named "Raise Some Hell", which features the phrase "There's no cow level".
Despite Blizzard's continued insistence that there is no cow level, it only seems to have increased the incidence of rumors, as seen below.
In Hearthstone, a Tavern Brawl aired 2017 named The Dark Wanderer contained an actual secret cow level as the opponent transforms into The Cow King if certain conditions were met.
Tributes to the cow level in World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft contains several tributes and references to the cow level:
- A rare BoE mace is named [Wirt's Third Leg].
- A rare BoE leather chest is named [Cow King's Hide].
- Mulgore, Thunder Bluff, and the entire tauren species can be interpreted as a tribute.
- One of Techbot's quotes in Gnomeregan is "There is no COW level... really! I repeat: there is no COW level. Well, maybe there is..."
In Legion
There was in fact, a cow level, specifically added for Diablo's 20th Anniversary event in Patch 7.1. This was a special phased version of the Yorgen Farmstead, in Duskwood, filled with 
Diabolic Bovine, Diabolic Tauren, and 
The Cow King. You could only get to this area via a Treasure Goblin [portal]. It was only availableJanuary 5 - 9, 2017.
References
See also
Edit to the right of the section title.External links
Edit to the right of the section title.
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