I think a huge reason why the Barrens are memorable is because nearly everybody horde-side filtered through there at one point or another. If your quests in other zones ran out? To the Barrens you go. And because you had three dungeons of varying levels connected to it, with Wailing Caverns having an especially wide range.
I myself have a couple of alts from back then who made it up to level 40 almost without leaving the Barrens through a combination of carries and sitting around to do its dungeons for EXP. Some of them still had their hearthstones set to Camp Taurajo during the transition from vanilla to Cata zones.
In a way, I think itâs because the leveling content was so poorly spread out that made the Barrens as memorable as they were. Iâm guessing Westfall couldâve been similarly remembered if, say, all of Loch Modon didnât exist so that youâd have more dwarf and gnome players filtering through human zones for content instead. And if Westfall had another dungeon attached.
Honestly I think it was the wretched vanilla era chat that made it so memorable. Which I suppose is a result of forcing so many people through the areaâŚ
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I somehow forgot to bring it up but yeah, that was what I actually meant to get at. Having so many players there made it an active group chat in a game thatâd otherwise only find such in the trade channel or in a guild. Level-capped characters would sometimes idle there to use it as a chatroom.
That kind of era for the internetâs largely over now, though.
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Yeah, Barrens wasnât notorious because it was a well crafted, beloved zone, it was notorious because the Horde levelling was set up so you basically had to go through it at one point, since even EK levelling wouldnât get you to your late 20s without some mindless grinding when quests ran out.
Barrens chat was notorious because a massive chunk of any givenâs horde online player base was there at any one time. because there were few other options.
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It feels like over time trade chat took up that role on most servers, since it is accessible in every city instead of a specific zone.
I was not a big Barrens chat fan back in the day, but Trade chat is nowhere near it
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Barrens Chat was so infamous that even alliance only players heard about it. Even the players who never left the EK