I prefer the classic,bc wotlk,and MOP zone design. I find the zones are too busy now and don’t feel as living. Before we would get large zones with multiple towns that just felt lived in. Now we get large zones with something cramed in every corner and no towns. Yes the zones look way way better now then before but honestly the new packed zones just lack soul.
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Welcome to WoW Disney World. The new zones are just receptacles for world quests. Pretty sad when Classic Westfall has more character than most of the new zones in the game. Suramar was pretty good though. I will give them that one.
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I’m not sure why they didnt make Suramar a proper city. I suppose its not mud hut enough. God forbid the Horde have anything nice.
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I don’t think is an unpopular opinion. Without flight, these things are more noticeable, and man oh man do Blizzard throw things in your way.
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What is wrong with Silvermoon?
To be fair, the Shadowlands have an excuse in that they are a separate plane of existence, with different physical laws or whatever.
BfA definitely did not have that excuse. Legion gets a pass because it was super vertical.
They should do a mixture of both.
hellfire peninsula is one of my favorite looking zones, because it captures that dead, barren look
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I think modern WoW zones could do with a bit more “empty space”.
I think each zone has tons of interesting locations, they’re just squashed in such close proximity to one another.
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Oh yea. Nothing compares to how lively and living Borean Tundra is.
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I love Silvermoon… needs an update.The blood elves are still giving tours to the classic horde races and speaking about joining the Horde.Theyve been on that tour for over a decade. I’m pretty sure they know the place by now.
SMC is so out of the way and there is no incentive to go there. Made much more inconvenient without Undercity. I wish the developers would actually develop the Blood elf story.
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It’s great IMO, more lively than say Westfall or the Barrens. These zones to me feel like a new world almost, to explore etc that thematically fit the expansion.
It’s fine if you dislike it but compared to Legion or BFA, this is miles better.
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wish they would populate the old maps with treasure chests and sparkly treasure like they do now.
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I do see the appeal of the old, big zones. When I played through the old zones I still felt like stuff was too close together. In some cases, I felt like the Alliance and Horde could hear each other sneezing, lol. I think a variety of space use is best.
Likely the new zones are just so much more graphic intensive that smaller just helps them run better.
I also generally prefer older zones (they definitely felt more real and less like themeparks) but I think some of the newer ones are great as well. I loved Azsuna for example; it’s certainly busy but I think it feels fairly large (probably because of the open area around the academy in the center) and generally realistic within the setting.
I’m not a big fan of the zones in Shadowlands so far. I guess the “special” setting is partly to blame for this but the zones feel more disjointed and themepark-like than ever. My least favourite is Maldraxxus, which came as a surprise since I love the Scourge aesthetics. In my humble opinion, Maldraxxus is everything wrong with modern zone design. It’s divided into way too many blatant “subzones” packed with too much stuff and conveniently placed quest hubs consisting of a handful of quest givers and a flight path. It just ends up feeling much smaller than it really is. The art style also looks a bit off to me, like everything is made of plastic for some reason. It really feels like a cheap Disney world knockoff of the Plaguelands.
5 Likes
starter expansion zones generally are pretty good, the zones that come in patches tend to be dreadfull, awful flight path placement, not enough grave yards, way to many monsters, horribly traversal but SL so far is easily the worst of any new expansion, the zones while they look beautiful are painful, terrible flight path placements not really enough flight paths, the dungeons are in awful locations, no whistle etc makes doing WQs an absolute nightmare idk who is doing the zones but SL ranks up there as one of the worst.
Would it kill them to add one zone with a sort of classic feel with a nice wide open low stress chill zone? I like the super dense content rich areas and all but want more chill places too.
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is that an unpopular opinon?
Personally I disagree. Going through the new zones I felt any hostile areas were pretty spread out. Rather than cramming a story, into every inch of the map you can ride through vast areas with only neutral mobs, or the odd wild life that may be hostile (which makes sense). I feel the environment is much more natural rather than previous expansions.
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Nagrand from BC is and probably always will be my favorite zone. The open plains, the buffalo, the grindy quests and even the node farming. It was all spot on for me.
All four are some of my favorite zones in the game. I like more exotic and fantasy based areas. BFA and even most of Legion were very pedestrian and boring. Even the "yet another magic forest’ zone is almost alien while being very familiar.