The new zones are too small and too stacked

Is it just me or are the zones from recent expansions too small but too stacked in terms of buildings, mountains, structures etc.

I personally liked the classic, BC and Wotlk zones much better. They were huge but there was a lot of open field and hostile NPC’s were spread out far more. Now you just get aggro by 5 mobs no matter where you run…

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I actually agree. There is a general sense of “over-detailing”, where zones are so detailed and windy and full of things that the world starts actually feeling shrunk down instead of feeling expansive.

I think Argus was the most egregious example of this - especially the Antoran Wastes.

This is what you get if you google landscape wastes:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Wastes+landscape&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi5zqym1uDgAhVnAWMBHakKAagQ_AUIDigB&biw=1920&bih=1064

Wastes are vast open plains with nothing useful on them that seem to go on forever in all directions. So when I heard we were going to the Antoran Wastes, I naturally assumed it’d be a huge burnt and almost abandoned, ruined world. That would’ve made sense, and it would’ve been cool as hell. That’s not what we got. Instead we got this crampled, claustrophic, annoying to navigate thing that doesn’t give quests and objectives and stories the landscape surface area they need to breathe.

BfA is a little better, but it’s still too detailed. It feels like every single spot of surface has something on it.

I also think this tendency to make annoyingly windy roads and difficult to navigate terrain, instead of just having reasonable distances, is making people long for flying mounts far more, because due to this, flying mounts are unreasonably powerful.

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All the above, so much.

This cramped feeling and overfussiness by the artists ("Look at all my beautiful details. LOOK AT THEM! LOOK!!! ") is present in too many recent zones.

This is a significant part of why I actually don’t enjoy spending time in many areas of the last three expansions, compared to earlier ones. I could rattle around anywhere up to and including Mists forever, and happily, but that’s not reliable since. To be fair, there certainly are zones, like Voldun, and areas within zones, that are less cluttered, but I’d like to see more. Maybe Blizzard could contract Marie Kondo for some consultancy? :slight_smile:

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Har-harr :stuck_out_tongue:

I think the issue is just that Blizzard have so many talented and productive artists at this point, and yet they don’t want to make the playing space too large, so everyone is getting an incredibly large amount of time to build very tiny areas.

I think the time would be better spent updating existing content. The levelling experience needs a massive overhaul, so instead of putting 200 people on developing a landscape 1/6th the size of the classic map which was made by like 10 people (no wonder it’s so overdetailed and cramped!), it might be an idea to try using these people’s talents to update the world and keep it fresh.

NO! Keep them away. From everything I’ve seen in the last 5 years, and what horrible things they have done already when let near existing art, I fear what their drive for ego-boo would push them to do in screwing up older, better work.

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I very, very strongly disagree with this. The work they do is just fine, they just do too much of it in a small area.

The new work they do is fine. Their insistence on changing the character of the work of their predecessors when they replace instead of upgrade, not so much.

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Well they are quite small but they are beautiful and well designed at least for Alliance zones.

I loved WOD Zones they were large with a lot of details and beautiful! Legion zones were fine depending the zone loved Suramar and Val’sharah, the others less.

Would love to see old zones updated with current graphics and details (BC particularly) Pandaria too since now I feel graphics and details are quite old in Pandaria.

I agree with this. For me every changed old area is something lost in bond with me and wow. After cataclysm wow lost something for me on affection area, old bond with old areas, how they looked, where quests were, all was gone. Little bit same thing happened with new character models. Not saying new areas are not not nice or new character models (except human females with they fish hook liften eyebrows…) are bad, but changing old thing instead of just creating new stuff breaks mental bonds to game for me.

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Disagree. Most vanilla zones there was like 1 mob per 1000 meters. I like it more now, where everything is tighter.

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Actually I would prefer variation… stacked zones can serve a purpose and create a good atmosphere in a jungle, whereas a desert should be open and barren… but yes, the mob density is sometimes just silly… making me hate the fact that I get knocked off of my mount so much.

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I agree.
I played in vanilla and TBC, my favourite class was the Hunter.

When I came back, to play legion … I was in for a bad surprise …

I found that most of the times I didn’t had open spaces to navigate, plan and attack.
One of my favourite quest zones while leveling is Ashenvale.

In Suramar I just felt tight no space to maneuver, where ever I tried to maneuver I would aggro even more mobs …

Argus was the final nail on the coffin for my hunter.
Absolutely no where to travel without aggroing something.

Today I play this character, no matter what happens, if I get dismounted, I don’t have to kite, run or get away, I just kill it …

Cheers.

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This is a fair point, and variation is good, but let’s tease apart the different meanings of “stacked” and “crowded”.

In Vanilla terms, you could contrast say Stranglethorn and Silithus for mob density and placement, but neither had the “stacking”, as I would use the word, of Spires or Stormheim, where arbitrary verticality kept making journeys on the ground meaninglessly longer. They have at least backed off this a lot in BfA, which is some relief.

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This post is edited

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Some zones are ok but the problem is again blizzard has no middle ground. And like you said now everything is tighter.

I personally like more open zones that are larger the new zones for couple of expansions now have been too tightly filled with mobs and the zones while beautiful i miss places like mulgore, old barrens, nagrand and valley of the four winds.

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They should like take a good grip on edges of the new areas and just stretch them to all directions without adding mobs or trees or damn albatrosses and we would have nice and working areas. So we would not back into next mob when stepping back 2 steps from first one to avoid some random cleave.

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It’s the vast amount of yellow ground clutter mobs that annoy me. I’m clearly hitting x target, not the dozens of crabs/seals/gulls etc 10 ft from a target. Aggro what I’m attacking, not everything else that happens to be in the immediate area.

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I agree that it feels like they are focusing too hard on making content that they slack on world building, and just jamming so much into the zones making them feel cramped. i havent done it on the horde side yet ( waiting for flying because i absolutely hate jungles and desert areas), but vol’dun actually has some pretty open spaces, wich reminded me a bit of old tanaris

In Legion the zones were very badly designed with mountains and obstacles everywhere. BFA though I’m not finding so bad. I don’t really see the point in huge zones with lots of empty space, they just look empty and create a lot more pointless running around.

I think this started with Cataclysm, someone thought “The barrens is too big” so they cut it in half. I think the same happened with thousand needles too.