A wisp is a special ghost form available to night elves based on a racial ability that allows faster travel when dead to get to their corpse. A wisp looks like a misty, glowing ball of light, with a vaguely discernible Night Elf face, that floats some distance above the ground.
The term also applies to friendly fey nature spirits who build night elf structures and gather resources for them (in Warcraft games previous to World of Warcraft). These wisps also have the power to detonate, causing a backlash of mana, and can become Ancients. Several thousand of them, known as the Ancestral Spirits gathered at the call of the Horn of Cenarius to Nordrassil to destroy Archimonde.
A Spirit of Summer
Non-Combat Pet
- Main article: Spirit of Summer
During the Midsummer Fire Festival in 2006, players could complete a quest (A Light in Dark Places) which rewarded the player with a captured flame, which could be used to activate a non combat pet called Spirit of Summer which had the appearance of a red wisp.
A Wisp
April Fool's
- Main article: Wisp (April Fool's)
In late March 2006, Wisps were announced to be the new race for the Alliance in the upcoming expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. The announcement, however, was a prank orchestrated by Blizzard Entertainment to fool their gaming community. The prank consisted of a racial info page which explained the lore behind the new race and included several of the upcoming racial traits such as Detonate, Permanent Death, and Treeform (with increased vulnerability to axes). Character customization consisted of a wide variety of colors and facial hair. In early April 2006, it was announced that the Wisp race was nothing more than a joke created by the Blizzard Joke Squad™ and the racial page was removed from the the official expansion website. The real new Alliance race was eventually announced as the Draenei.