I’m curious as to which starting zones are people’s favorite, or the order they’d put them in.
I’d only be ranking the 14 you can actually quest in, so none from the allied races.
The order for me would be Worgen, Pandaren, Dracthyr, Tauren, Night Elf, Blood Elf, Undead, Draenei, Goblin, Gnome, Dwarf, Troll, Orc, and Human.
As much as I love Trolls, their starting zone is nice but short, and just connects to the same zone as Orcs. Gnomes, i dont enjoy playing them, but theirs is interesting, but has sorta the same problem of connecting right after into the Dwarves. I have a love of the zones that feel more disconnected from other stuff. This is just my personal taste, so I’m sure others will have different thoughts
I love Teldrassil, it brings me back to the days when it was my first time playing WOW.
3 Likes
Its a gorgeous zone. I just wound up liking the others i put above it a bit more. Cause Gilneas, the Wandering Isle, the Dracthyr’s zone (i admit i forget the name atm), and Thunder Bluff are so interesting. Plus after playing classic WoW, Thunder Bluff got knocked up a few spots cause of how it looked post-Cata, and the whole elevator of death thing XD
Draenei one is objectively the best because it is just blood elf slaughter from start to end. No other starting zone offers that.
2 Likes
I skip over them, though Exile’s Reach is my least favorite just because of how long and boring it is…
Yeah, i hate exile’s cause it’s just kinda become the default starting zone for new players. I don’t wanna run it whenever i want something new. I like the starting zones cause of lore, that’s just basically “tutorial island”
My favorites will always be Mulgore and Dun Morogh.
Close seconds would be Elwynn Forest and Durotan.
My favorite starting zones are Goblins, Worgen and DKs.
My favorites:
Pandaren
Worgen
Death Knights
Dracthyr
Night Elves
Undead
Teldrassil is somehow nostalgic even though I never mained a Night Elf and my first character wasn’t a Night Elf.
Elwynn (my first and most played starter zone) feels incredibly worn out in comparison.
The gnome zone stops being interesting basically as soon as you get out of Gnomeregan.
The dwarf zone is just more Dun Morogh, which is a boring zone.
Draenei zones are neat in that they’re the oldest starting zones left in the game (along with the Blood Elf zones), so they play very different from the others, but man, they’re a slog. I think if you just consider Azuremyst it’s fine, but if you do the whole set, it just gets tiresome.
Worgen is solid but kind of annoying to replay due to the amount of scripted stuff.
Pandaren is solid.
Dracthyr… I don’t know, it just doesn’t grab me. Nothing wrong with it. It’s fine. But I have no interest in it.
So…
- Pandaren
- Night Elf
- Worgen
- Human
- Dracthyr
- Gnome
- Dwarf
- Draenei (but right behind human if only Azuremyst)
- Exiles Reach
I don’t really Horde. Troll island is… fine but not particular interesting. I like that it has a finale. Some of the other similar quests don’t really feel the same. I’d probably put it above the Gnome/Dwarf/Draenei zones because of that but not above anything else. Blood Elf Zones are the same situation as Draenei so slap them side by side. Haven’t really done the others.
Tbh I don’t even really love the Pandaren starting zone. It’s just better put together as an experience than a lot of the others. It definitely benefits from just not being as old in some ways, I think.
Exiles Reach is an embarrassment despite being the newest other than Dracthyr though. Like, wow is it bad. It’s like 3x faster to get to 10 there than any other zone and I still can’t make myself choose it every time.
I feel that. I did it one time and found it so boring and bland and just uninteresting. I get its a tutorial zone for those new to the game, but it also robs new players of experiencing the starting zones for their chosen race. I like the fact each race has a unique starting zone (outside a few you did mention who just had a normal questing zone).
That’s the thing though, it doesn’t even really succeed in being a tutorial.
It shows players how to move, interact with NPCs, and hit stuff. That’s pretty much it.
Nothing about interrupts, nothing about group roles (you are DPS whether you like it or not in the tutorial dungeon), nothing about playing your class (there’s a basic combat tutorial and it tells shaman to switch to primal strike instead of lightning bolt when things get into melee range despite lightning bolt dealing literally like 15x more damage and primal strike being an outdated ability literally never used rotationally by any spec).
And yet it goes out of its way to introduce emotes. Apparently poorly, given that one of the most common newcomer chat things is people spamming wave into it because they’re trying to do the quest that makes you wave at an NPC.
It’s like it was designed (poorly) by someone who played a single player RPG and has never seen WoW.
And that’s not even touching on the story being told there. Generic is fine. It’s a tutorial. Weird mommy stuff? Not so much.
Gilneas (Worgen)
Scarlet Enclave (Death Knight)
Forbidden Reach(Dracthyr)
Kezan (Goblin)
Every other starting zone is pretty forgettable tbh.
nope terrokar forest best zone. offers great amount of draenei slaughter.,
My blood runs red for Gilneas! Anyway Gilneas will always be my favorite starting area just the feel and ambience mixed with the best soundtrack is just so hard to beat.
Oh, definitely doesn’t. I was just simplifying things. But its so terrible. When i got into the game back during WoD, it took me only a bit to learn all the basic controls, and then once i could do dungeons i learned about roles, and while doing dungeons i learned how to do ability rotations somewhat decently. The fact i can figure all that out, even though it took me time, just makes exile’s reach horrendous and obsolete. And yeah, why do you need to know how to emote? Why not instead throw in a profession trainer, lets you learn that you can pick professions. Or have an actual class tutorial besides just hitting the captain a bit, learn what abilities you have more properly. I’ve played shaman a long time, i made a tauren shaman to run that tutorial, and even i knew using lightning bolt was just way better than primal strike, but that’s cause i have experience. The lessons it teaches you are so bad, cause sometimes it doesn’t match with the “starting specialization” (which i know isn’t a thing but take shaman for example, you get your more elemental abilities over anything melee before you get to 10. Plus i use an add-on that lets me see how much better my gear is in a percentage, and it shows the quote, unquote starting profession like elemental is default for shaman, frost is default for mage, destruction is default for warlock, and so on)
My opinion:
Best (5/5)
- Teldrassil/Night Elf
- Tirisfal Glades/Forsaken
- Havenshire/Death Knight
- Gilneas/Worgen
Good (4/5)
- Durotar/Orc/Troll
- Chill Breeze Valley/Gnome
- Goblin/Kezan
- Azuremyst Isle/Draenei
Fair (3/5)
- Elwynn Forest/Human
- Dun Morogh/Dwarf
Poor (2/5)
- Mardum/Demon Hunter
Boring af (1/5)
- Eversong Woods/Blood Elf
Have either never tried or completed the others.