I know that boat has sailed a long time ago, but Echo Isles as portrayed in WC3 is much bigger than what we got in WoW. They really cut corners and scaled it waaaay down in classic/vanilla. Daelin Proudmoore must have done a great job trashing the place I guess. I always felt kind of robbed that we had the crappiest hometown of all the playable races. Even though gnomes were in the same boat of being refugees, Gnomeregan was at least big enough to be considered a city. I remember the jousting tournament in WotLK and being able to earn titles from our hometowns, and trolls got to claim the “of Sen’jin” title, which just felt pathetic. It didn’t even measure up to Theramore. It’s not even as good as Zabra’jin, which is a small nothing village on another planet, but it’s the largest holding the Darkspear have.
Then we retake Echo Isles, which is cool I guess. Cataclysm was a huge missed opportunity though. They wanted to give Horde more territory to even out that disparity between them and the Alliance. They also have a convenient plot device that allows them to justify massive changes to landscape, including the formation of new islands (like Tol Barad). They could have just said the cataclysm caused more land to raise above sea level, and we’d have a new questing zone that we didn’t have to take from the Alliance. And even if it would have been far from the Darkspear capital of my dreams, it would have given the Darkspear a proper home. Something like the Wandering Isle would have been awesome for us.
But what we got wasn’t even comparable to other stuff introduced in Cataclysm. Even Bilgewater Harbor is more of a city than what the Darkspear ended up with. And of course there is Gilneas, which is a cool city but the Gilneans haven’t been able to retake it until now, which really is long overdue and I’m happy for them.
But now that we’ve gotten several allied races (with arguably the best cities in the game), and Silvermoon, Gilneas, Amirdrassil, etc. are all getting updates, I can’t help but feel like it’s time the Darkspear’s home got a glow up as well. We have the worst hometown. We’ve always had the worst hometown.
Even when the Night Elves and Forsaken were considered homeless, they still had better secondary villages than the Darkspear’s main settlement. Feathermoon Stronghold or Vengeance Landing alone puts the Echo Isles to shame. Hell, the boat that comes in from Zandalar has three hammocks, which is more sleeping accommodations than the Darkspear have on the whole island. It’s all just platforms and fencing. The actual village consists of two tiny tents and one proper hut with no furnishings. I don’t know why the trolls even bothered making a fence when they don’t have anything worth protecting, aside from some rope bridges to nowhere and some pillars.
So Blizzard, if we are looking at the old world for things that could use a refresh, please consider sending some love to the Darkspear. The Echo Isles is in desperate need of a glow up.