The Shimmering Flats

The histories behind the world you explore.

Warcraft artwork relating to Thousand Needles, used as historical context for The Shimmering Flats
Warcraft artwork associated with Thousand Needles; a visual connection to the history of The Shimmering Flats. Not necessarily a depiction of this specific event or location.Image: © Blizzard Entertainment

Quick Overview

Gnome and goblin engineers turned the dry bed of the Shimmering Flats into a contest of speed. Rival workshops established the Mirage Raceway to decide whose inventions could endure the fiercest tests. Their competition brought a new, mechanical kind of rivalry to the edge of Thousand Needles.

Full History

The Shimmering Flats had once held water, but the exposed salt basin offered something unusual to the engineers of Kalimdor: a great, unobstructed stretch of ground. Goblins and gnomes, long rivals in invention, saw a chance to put their machines to a public test.

The goblin Pozzik and the gnome Fizzle Brassbolts established the Mirage Raceway and developed competing rocket-powered cars. Each side worked to improve its designs and recruited supporters, supplies and sponsorship. Their rivalry was not a war between the Alliance and Horde. It was a struggle for prestige between engineering traditions that often disagreed on how speed should be achieved and how much risk was worth taking.

The races transformed a remote salt flat into a meeting point for mechanics, drivers and backers drawn from different peoples. They also brought constant mechanical failures. The wreckage left by these experiments became part of the history of an ambitious enterprise built as much on rivalry as cooperation.

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