There is no cow level

This is a silly article.
The content of this article is not part of official Warcraft lore, but has nevertheless become part of the World of Warcraft culture or community.

As a Saying

Blizzard has, for years, been denying allegations of hiding secret "cow levels" in their games, especially the original Diablo, where the rumours first began. 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 Blizz'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 was, actually, 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.

Curiously, the phrase bears resemblance to the perhaps most famous quote of a later movie, The Matrix. When the protagonist of the movie, Neo, meet a young boy with telekinetic abilities bending a spoon with his mind, the boy explains "There is no spoon." This phrase in turn has been interpreted as a reference to the Buddhist concept of dependent origination. There is no spoon, only Neo's idea of the spoon. Likewise, there is no cow level, only our imagination of it and maybe, by extension, of the game.

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.

Despite Blizzard's continued insistence that there is no cow level, it only seems to have increased the incidence of rumors, as seen below.

The Silver Cow Rumor

Side-Note: The following is the record of a rumor somebody made up. Blizzard denied it immediately with their patent saying. (See above) So please, don't waste any time actually hunting for this elusive cow.

There is a silver elite cow (rare spawn) that wanders around Elwynn forest east of Goldshire that when you spam /moo to (just like the chickens in Westfall with /chicken) gives you an escort quest.

It may only work with Tauren ... I have only managed to find this silver elite cow once as an alliance toon and some lame human rogue ganked it thinking it might drop l33t loot !

The escort is to guide the cow along the road eastwards through the crossroads section in west Redridge then turning down towards Darkshire. The road is still followed until a turnoff past a farmlet with undead and into a garden area with a waterfall. Once safely there the cow speaks and opens up a portal behind the waterfall. Entering the portal takes you to an area similar in appearance to Westfall but is un-named on the mini-map and pressing M to bring up the main map just brings up a world map (just like in an instance)

There are wandering groups of three cows, two lvl 63 elites (one that seems to have healing ability) and a lvl 64-66 elite that has a nature AoE.

The escort is reasonably hard to do as because the silver cow is such a low level it pulls aggro all along the path.

There are three ambushes with 4-6 lvl 45+ gnoll poachers along the path.

May have been introduced in patch 1.10 ... not seen that silver cow before then.

Enjoy !

The Burning Crusade

Rumors have surfaced regarding the possibility of a portal to the Cow Level being opened on Outland. Given that all portals (save the Dark Portal) are currently disabled and have no given destination yet, this is a very distinct possibility. More remains to be seen.

Hidden Tributes to the Cow Level in Wow?

There seems to be tributes to the cow level in the World of Warcraft. There is a BoE rare mace named Wirt's Third Leg. There is also an area in Elwynn Forest called Stone Cairn Lake. Say, you have a hearthstone and Wirt's Third Leg in a bag together, and go to Stone Cairn Lake, in the center of the island is a large stone with inscriptions on it. This is Similar to Diablo 2, for the fact that you need Wirt's Leg, A Book of Town Portal both in your Hiradric(spelling?) Cube and then you need to go to Stone Cairn area around the big circle of boulders and use your Town Portal Book to make the portal to The Cow Level. This is all Speculation and Interesting Facts for Entertainment purposes Only.