What WoW zone do you always make sure to level a new character through, no matter what?

I’ve fallen back into World of Warcraft Classic thanks to the announcement of Hardcore realms coming on August 24, but instead of rolling a character on the PTR to give Hardcore a try, I decided to roll another Night Elf Druid and start from scratch. I absolutely love the Teldrassil starting zone but that love drops off once I reach level 10-11 and need to go to Darkshore. Instead, I made my way across the world to the Eastern Kingdoms and continued to level there. I’ve just reached level 21, which means I can now survive and level through my favorite zone in Classic — Duskwood.

When I first started playing retail World of Warcraft, I accidentally stumbled through Duskwood on my way to another zone and instantly became intrigued — the cartoonishly creepy music and dark ambience drew me in, and I blasted through each quest in less than a day. Knowing that WoW went through a bunch of changes between its release when I started playing it, I often wondered what the vanilla experience in the zone was like. I was (kind of) able to get my wish when Classic released, even though Classic and vanilla WoW are considered different enough games. Regardless of this difference, I enjoyed being able to experience this zone in Classic as opposed to its retail counterpart so much that it became a leveling staple for each of my Classic characters.

As opposed to my retail WoW roster consisting of mostly Elves, the handful of characters I’ve rolled across WoW Classic and Burning Crusade/Wrath of the Lich King Classic vary across the race and class spectrum. I did this because I truly wanted to go through the different starting zones and early levelling experiences for different classes — but I always find myself going back to level through Duskwood once my characters hit level 21 or 22. I’m not sure it’s something I’ll ever change for new characters I roll and to be honest, I’ll probably go through it again if I choose to roll a Hardcore character.

I’d love to hear about any zones you always level through, regardless of race or class, in World of Warcraft or World of Warcraft Classic. Which zones are they? What about them draws you to them?