Both BC and Wrath hit it out of the park with zone ambiance. Terrokar sounds alien and mysterious, Dragonblight feels like crystalline icicles falling from trees and Storm Peaks sounds exactly like the theme of a heavenly lost civilization now only existing in ruins. Love both those scores
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I think theyâre both great. Why the heck do we always have to pick a side on old vs new?
Music, I agree with. Very disappointed with the zone musical themes and such.
As for the zones themselves. Gunna have to hard disagree, mostly. The only, only, zone that really doesnât do anything for me is Maldraxxus. And while I like the concept of the covenant weâve done the Scourge/Plague/Rot/Decay thing so many times, itâs lost its uniqueness.
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i fully agree with you on this
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Nothing really happened to WoW⊠itâs the people who changed. Weâve experienced so many new things that our bar keeps getting moved higher and higher. I doubt weâll ever have an experience like sailing into Howling Fjord for the first time ever again.
The music in Dragonblight always made me feel like I was actually in the cold snow. I always have to turn up the heat when Iâm there lol.
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Well put. I was mid reply with something very similar.
Itâs nostalgia. Remembering what was. It has changed. You can still go the same zones and experience the same things all over againâŠbut weâve changed since that time. It wonât hold the same effect over us that it did back then.
Itâs like motorcycles for me. Been riding them for 17 years now. I remember hitting 120mph for the first time ever and that kind of thrill was mind boggling. Now hitting 120mph is like a regular thing.
Itâs still there, I can still do it, but the first time experience isnât there any more. But I can still look back and remember it like it was yesterday.
Good ol nostalgia
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Removing the adjectives, you said âI liked WotLK betterâ.
So what? Do you have the insane idea that WoW has to always get better? That each new thing must be âbetterâ (in your opinion) than everything before it? Thatâs impossible! These are humans. There is no perfection here.
You personally prefer WotLK. Someone else prefers BFA. Lots of people prefer Vanilla. Some prefer SL. Who is ârightâ? Everyone is, including you.
Nothing in WoW will ever beat the feels of pandaria when you drink a inky black potion. It is beyond gorgeous.
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I miss the rain or the dust storms effects, also, since Legion, every single new zone is overcrowded and small.
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Barrens is better
Suramar was really good visually. I had went back there to get some raid xmogs and I forgot how good it looked.
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My favorite zone is still Dun Morogh. It was the first zone I was in way back when when my main was a little Gnome pup.
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Eh. Not sure I agree.
Even in BfA I still experienced a wow factor in the game. Seeing updated Darkshore and Arathi was amazing even if the experience was shallow. Boralus was insane my first time going through it. It was the first time in WoW a city actually felt like a city.
I just donât get any of that with Shadowlands. Sure, Revendreth is cool to look at and parts of Bastian are pretty but its not a compelling place or one that I feel connected too. Shadowlands gives off heavy alternative Draenor vibes to me. Its a throw away location we will probably never return to again so I struggle to really care about anything there.
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Eh, the state of the forums seems to indicate that both âsidesâ (even though itâs more of a spectrum) have significant points of discontent that didnât exist with prior versions of the game.
As for the rest of your post, the reason why is simple. In earlier xpacs, zones were sculpted by world designers before the quest team came through and wrote quests to fit it, but from Cataclysm onward this process was reversed â now the world is built to fit quests like a glove and have to meet an interest-points-per-square-foot metric.
The older way was flat-out better for creating a somewhat believable, living, atmospheric world, since it had parts that exist just to exist and donât compromise to fit density requirements or anything like that. Theyâre more organic feeling, where the newer design methodology produces zones that feel very artificial and game-y.
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I found Howling Fjord boring. Tundra isnât my thing. Vikings arent my thing. And the whole wotlk xpac was tundra, vikings, and ice.
I find WoD shadowmoon valley, BC Nagrand, and both bastion and ardenweald to be some of the best zones in the game. Especially when it comes to theme and aesthetic.
My Alliance Garrison / SMV is probably my favorite zone in the game.
Personaly I find SL ok, the convenant idea is just so bad IMO. Why the keran is the absolute best convonant for my DH. it just feel weird.
The whole convenant lore just do not make sense. They should have been at war since day 1.
torghast is a missed opotunity.
SL is just OK but it follow BFA, one of the worst xpack.
Because itâs too over the top and supernatural.
Howling Fjord is a semi-realistic and grounded place.
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Mostly agree, but somehow Bastion is just⊠off somehow. Maybe itâs the eternal midday the zone has, but it throws me off compared to the other zones in the list. BC Nagrand especially is soothing like few zones in the game are.
Funny enough the other 3 zones that I find soothing are also from TBC: Eversong, Ghostlands, and Zangarmarsh. The Belf zones in particular have a special zen to them, between their ambience, music, and slower pace of questing.
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