Graveyard

For the Warcraft III building, see Graveyard (Warcraft III). For the instance wing of the Scarlet Monastery, see the Scarlet Monastery Graveyard.

Desecrated Graveyard in Hearthstone

Graveyards (also named cemeteries, burials, catacombs, tombs and crypts), are places where the remains of dead people are buried. In World of Warcraft, they are special locations usually, but not always, located near towns where the ghost of the dead character appears alongside a Spirit Healer.

Lore

A Spirit Healer in Hearthstone.

“One must be careful when burying a warlock, lest the gravesite become corrupted.”

— Justicar Nimzi Banedrizzle

The Forgotten Hill is known as one of the largest cemeteries on Azeroth.^[1]

The caretakers, acting as morticians, are in charge of the surveillance and maintenance of the cemeteries.

The Spirit Healers encountered at a graveyard after death are kyrian Watchers, they are called to evaluate souls within the Veil. If they deem the soul ready, they will call forth a kyrian Bearer to bring them to the Shadowlands. If they aren't ready, the Watchers return them to life.^[2]^[3]

[Grave Moss] can often be found around graveyard areas, while [Gravebloom] was used for ages by the caretakers of Barrowknoll Cemetery to commune with the dead.^[4]

Most human graveyards have the symbol of the Church of the Holy Light on their graves. Their paladins and priests are often sent there to purge and exorcise the undead and spirits.^[5]^[6]

It is a tradition that a small memento be buried on top of a Gilnean's graveyard, beneath the shallow earth.^[7]

In Duskwood, the Council of Darkshire was responsible for ordering death sentences by beheading those who sold the bodies from cemeteries in the region.^[8]

Known graveyards

In-game

In faction zones, there are usually three or more graveyards. In contested territories there are usually only one or two graveyards. In battlegrounds, there is a Spirit Healer who resurrects all ghosts in the graveyard every 30 seconds. This only works if your side actually controls that graveyard.

Two graveyards in the game world are designated as "default"^[10]: the Sentinel Hill graveyard for Alliance players and the Crossroads graveyard for Horde players. They are a safety net, used as spawn points where the player will spawn if the game cannot, for whatever reason, spawn them at a location that would make more sense. Most such instances indicate bugs in the game.

Some actions that can cause a player to spawn at a default graveyard:

Logging out in an area that becomes inaccessible to the character before the next login — for example, in an expansion-restricted area after the free trial for that expansion expires.
Falling through a hole in the world.
Dying in a bugged location not bound to any graveyards. Before patch 4.0.3a revamped the old world to make it more seamless, that included many unimplemented zones intended to be inaccessible.
Dying at the edge of a map (normally impossible, as fatigue would kill the player before reaching the edge).
Dying in an instance, such as a dungeon or battleground, and then having the normal release mechanics malfunction, usually due to lag.

Trivia

In the World of Warcraft alpha demo shown at ECTS 2001, characters could bind themselves to one of various "Bind Points" across the land. On death, the character would return to their Bind Point's location.^[11] This system was likely a precursor to graveyards.