Fav City: Oribos
Dungeon: Grimrail.
Fav feature: garrison, torghast.
Fav bg: Strand of the ancients.
Eversong Woods leading on into Ghostlands.
I just never tire of it even though both are very dated now.
People are going to say I’m crazy but I generally stick to the old style of leveling.
1-20 I pick cata chromie time and go:
Elwynn - Westfall - Redrigde - STV (fav zone)
Then I hearth back to SW and change to Outland and go through all the zones.
I love Outland.
In no real order, I like:
Drustvar
Eversong Woods/Ghostlands (as Puny just mentioned)
TBC Nagrand
Zangarmarsh (I like those 2 zones for just being able to load up on tons of quests at the same time and do them all at once, plus they look cool)
Tirisfal Glades
Un’goro Crater
Shoutout to the Barrens and Thousand Needles in classic too, I have a soft spot for them. Old Thousand Needles is a lot better than the Cataclysm one and that’s a hill I’m willing to die on.
Duskwood, Ghostlands, Drustvar, Eversong Woods, Zangarmarsh, Netherstorm, Shadowmoon Valley, Western Plaguelands and Eastern Plaguelands (Classic).
All pandaria.
As for old world i would say the shires near stormwind (dark and lake) plus the 2 plaguelands and barrens (the old one ofc so out of contest)
BC: nagrand and netherstorm
Wotlk: grizzly hills
BFA i would say any zone.
Pretty much all of the WotLK zones. Whenever I go there for any reason I get flashbacks to leveling in there years ago with my brother while vibing to Linkin Park without a care in the world besides feeling guilty for not doing my homework.
Both of the TBC starting zones were quite immersive
Hm, it’s difficult to pinpoint one zone as the exact all-time favorite, but when it comes to leveling (as a whole journey to max level) vanilla Stormwind Kingdom (as a whole) was easily the best experience storywise.
The Defias Brotherhood, a simple gang of thugs attacking a vineyard in Northshire Valley turned out to be so much more, an organization spanning the entire kingdom, with its reach extending as far as Menethil Harbour and even Dustwallow Marsch. They had connections among Stormwind nobles, the sotryline was not purely fighting enemy faction, but also espionage, and intrigue - all that all the way back in vanilla! I loved how the story that started in Northshile only ended when we killed Onyxia at 60.
No other race had so extensive and far reaching sotry. When I created my first Orc character I thought that The Burning Blade storyline would be the Horde equivalent of this, but it ended shortly after finishing Ragefire Chasm.
When it comes to leveling, vanilla Kingdom of Stormwind is my favorite experience.
In the days Blizz could be bothered to make a proper starting zone for races, rather than parking them in a corner of Org or SW, I always made a character to try them out. The best in my opinion is Goblin. Neat original quests and story, along with Pandaria, always loved that expansion.
Starting zone:
- Gilneas - The best starting zone I’ve been to so far. Good story, the map dynamically changes as you go through it, cool staff mog, head off to Teldrassil on the 100 quests achiev. Absolute top.
- Classic Teldrassil - Gone through it many times on hardcore. The outdated aesthetic gives it a vibe of the first Harry Potter game for me, it’s cozy.
Leveling zone:
- Vashj’ir - Probably the most unique zone in the game. Good and dark story. Great ambience and music.
- Nazjatar - It seems I have a thing for sunken elven temples. Again, great aesthetic and music. Also, Epicus Maximus.
- Deepholm - Also deserves a mention, among the max fantasy zones.
Best looking xpac as whole:
- Legion - Recently went back there to hunt a mog and started taking screenshots again. Eredath might have the best skybox I can remember.
Dragonflight:
- Zaralek Cavern
I love a lot about Outland as well, Zangarmarsh is beautiful and another great zone for questing but I’ll always have a soft spot for Netherstorm as well, I’ll never forget hitting level 68 and being able to fly over the area in my non epic druid flight form and thinking ‘wow, this is like nothing I’ve seen in the game so far’ as far as visuals went for the time, it was spectacular. Still my favourite of all the expansions.
They actually made the creepiest in SL, the maw.
And I liked it a lot, especially early Sl when you had the system to not overfarm it.
Early thorghast too, it was hard n creepy, but at the end ppl cried that hard it became i walk on a park
Grizzly Hills, Loch Modan, Stormsong Valley
The vibe is simply outstanding , and I find it tragic that they removed the option to go straight to stormsong while lvling, now you need to be a specific lvl, can’t remember which one though.
It depends how you access BfA. If you go with a trial or Exile’s Reach character it locks you into Zuldazar/AllianceEquivalent without the option to do one of the other zones first. Chromie Time (I think) or non-spesific timeline can still choose the other zones, like Stormsong. I think those are the rules at least, I have done fresh BfA campaign after Dragonflight release, but not recently.
Oh that’s actually really good to know, I’ll check it out.
Thanks for the info
Teldrassil, the entirety of Kul Tiras(turn that music on.). Mount Hyjal turned out to be pretty fun to play through recently. The goblin starter, Gilneas(Seriously, cataclysm allowed itself to have so much fun!), the eversong woods, vale of the four winds There might be more but even just these are awesome
Its lvl 15-25. I’m not sure which. But yeah, I’d love to go to vol’dun as a vulpera at 10 rather than run around zandalar before that for example.
Human lands. I spent a lot of time there in vanilla mainly because I sucked at levelling and kept starting again, also found the Nelf lands too hard and Dwarf lands boring. I loved how they did it in Cata and Elwynn Forest is a favourite because it is so sunny and green. Also, Goldshire is rather nice when you aren’t on Argent Dawn. Completely empty!
old hillsbrad
new silverpine
ghostlands and eversong
valsharah
stormheim
Duskwood (classic)
Stranglethorn Vale (classic)
Plaguelands (classic)
The Barrens (classic)
Northrend, all zones.
Just thinking about the zones makes me want to play Classic again, but only for leveling not for the endgame.