Zones

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.

It's been a while since we had a linear leveling experience in World of Warcraft, where the game's story took you from Zone A to Zone B with no decision on your part. Warlords of Draenor had a single starting zone for each faction, but you could more or less decide which zone to go to next after that, while Legion and Battle for Azeroth both allowed you to pick and choose which zone you wanted to run.

With WoW Classic almost here, you may be planning your trip around Azeroth with zone levels in mind.

This doesn't have to be merely about new zones that we get during an expansion like Mechagon or Nazjatar, but what do you most enjoy or look forward to in a new zone?

I was running around Tiragarde today while leveling my Death Knight, and I realized I was taking way too long to do so.

Note, I don't specifically mean "Do we need another Vashj'ir" as in, do we need another underwater zone that was way too long.

With the Timewalking Black Temple coming in 7.2.5 and the recent change to scaling for mobs in the Broken Isles, I started thinking about how far we could go with scaling up old content.

So far I've run Val'Sharah and Highmountain and man, they really hammer home what I hated about some zones like Deepholm or Netherstorm -- the lack of variety.

One of the things I find fascinating is how open world zones are designed in World of Warcraft.