Real Estate in WoW - What's Hot and What's Not!

by on Jun 11, 2006

<h1><strong>Real Estate in WoW &ndash; What&rsquo;s Hot&hellip; and What&rsquo;s Not!</strong></h1>

Real Estate in WoW – What’s Hot… and What’s Not!

In real life, when we look at real estate of any kind, we ask ourselves this key question:

“What is appealing to me about this particular location?”

And when we think about the answers to that question, we consider several factors, such as:

Appearance – Does it look good? Convenience – Will life here be easy or difficult? Location – Is it near all the amenities I want? Design – Is it well planned and laid out? Enjoyability – Will I enjoy living here?

In the World of Warcraft, it’s not much different! We all want to be near our trainers, vendors, flight masters and quest givers. We all want the areas we play in to look good and lend themselves to hassle free questing and adventuring. And of course, we all want to enjoy ourselves during our adventures in Azeroth!

In this article, I’ll give my opinion on what I feel to be the best (and worst) designed zones, cities and instances in the game! I’ll also be outlining my reasons for my choices! Note that these reflect only my opinion, and you may well have different thoughts than me on the subject! Also, this article is written from the perspective of a casual player whose raid dungeon experience is very limited, so I’ve kept this article limited to areas in which you play up to level 60.

So, here it is… my guide to what locations are hot… and those that are not!

WHAT’S HOT

Best Zone – The Barrens

Other than Barrens chat, I can’t think of much that is wrong with this zone! It’s centrally located, with plenty of quests in the 11-25 level range, and also 3 different instances! It looks very good, with a mixture of open plains, hills and ridgelines and the oases for a splash of extra colour! Because Crossroads (the main settlement in the zone) is also a hub of the Horde transport network, there are characters of all levels passing through, should you ever need to ask a favour or do a little trade. And of course, there is Ratchet, one of the links to the Eastern Kingdoms (and a neutral settlement) meaning that Alliance can get easily into the zone too. So the Crossroads (even on PvE servers) is always ripe for some PvP action!

Questing here is easy, with clear sightlines, and no place being particularly difficult to access. Finding your way around this zone is quite simple, and there are many quests that can be done at the same time in the same general area, so it’s easy to complete 2,3 or even 4 quests at once!

With 2 Horde settlements (both with flight masters) travel to and from this zone is easy! Add to that the neutral port of Ratchet, and you’ve got a link to the Eastern Kingdoms, as well as being able to get to a bank without having to go to a capital! In patch 1.11, there will be flight paths added to Ratchet for both the Horde and the Alliance. This will be a handy addition, especially for the Alliance who will now be able to fly there from other outposts in Kalimdor! This will add to the excitement of PvP in the area!

There is good access to vendors and some profession trainers in this area as well!

Overall, this zone has plenty to do and is a pleasure to quest in while you are in the level range of 11-25! But with 2 higher level instances, plus the good chance of world PvP, there are still attractions to bring back your higher level characters from time to time, adding to the variety and colour of this zone!

Best City – Thunder Bluff

OK, so I think Native American architecture and motifs look cool! But I’m not alone in this opinion, I believe! Also, having the city on a series of bluffs high below rolling green plains was a very interesting idea. Yes, you do have to watch your step crossing the bridges! Yes, if you are careless you can travel to Mulgore the fast (and frequently fatal!) way! But this whole idea adds colour and atmosphere, and unless you are lazy and like to use auto-run a lot, then crossing the bridges is not that big a deal!

Aside from what I believe to be one of the most pleasant and attractive looking cities in the game, I think it is also well laid out. The central rise has 3 levels, which can be reached by either going up the ramp in the central tower, or following paths that wind around the bluff. Each of the 3 secondary rises connects to the central rise in 2 places with bridges, so accessing anywhere in the city is not difficult. Also, the flight master is centrally located at the top of the central tower.

Now that the trade channels have been joined between all cities, and auction houses added, I often like to just do my trade and training from here when I want to chill out a bit, as the city is less hectic than Orgrimmar.

The lifts can sometimes be a bit annoying, but unless you are a low level Tauren, soon you’ll always be coming to this city by wind rider so they won’t bother you for long. Also, being in an out of the way location makes it not that easy to attack in PvP, as it’s hard to get a lot of people up those lifts at one time!

Now if only they’d add some more attractive female specimens…. Oh yes, that’s what the Blood Elves are for!

 Best instance – Scarlet Monastery

The Scarlet Monastery has one of the widest level ranges of any instance the game to date, with enemies from high 20’s elite up to 43 elite in the Cathedral. So there is something to do here for charcters from level 30 – 45, which is a wide level range for an instance!

The main aspect of the design I really like is the idea of having wings, so you don’t have to grind your way from the start to the end challenges all the time, as you have to in most instances! Instead, you can play the parts you want to! Characters in the lower 30s can warm up on a Graveyard run and collect some decent loot, then move onto the Library in the mid to high 30s, complete some quests and also pick up the Scarlet Key to access the higher level areas. Then once in the high 30s – low 40s, you will be running the Armory and the Cathedral, to defeat the main bosses and pick up the best loot! This idea is also used in the design of Dire Maul, and will be used in one of the expansion instances – Hellfire Citadel – so it is obviously popular with many players!

As the levels where Scarlet Monastery is in play are also the levels when we are all slaving away to get gold for our mounts, it is excellent that this instance is a rich source of cash and loot. With the vast majority of the MOBs being humanoid, plenty of cash is dropped here, and there are plenty of chests, both locked and unlocked, with all manner of goodies! Even the weapon crates in the Armory yield vendor junk that’s worth quite a bit! Because there are plenty of good mid-range magic items dropped here, not only is this a good place to get gear upgrades in the mid levels, but it can be a good farming ground for a couple of level 60s who want to twink some alts or maybe level enchanting!

Each wing is laid out in an easy to navigate manner, but to make things interesting there are many side rooms and alcoves which can hold not only extra items, but also enemies you must keep on your toes for. Add to that the high number of linked MOBs and several patrols, and this instance is quite challenging in its level range!

Overall, I think Scarlet Monastery has a great balance of good clear design, challenging encounters across a wide level range and good loot and rewards! It is one of the few pre-60s instances I will run multiple times, and I’m not alone in this opinion!

WHAT’S NOT

Worst zone – Ashenvale

Just because the imagery from this zone is used as a backdrop on the official World of Warcraft website does not make it well designed or enjoyable! In fact, although its looks are rather beautiful, it’s about all the zone has going for it in my opinion! Otherwise, it’s poorly laid out, with a lack of clear sightlines or simple pathing between locations.

Now I will accept that not all zones should be as laid out as simply as The Barrens is! But Ashenvale is simply too complicated. Locations that are actually quite near each other are separated by steep ridgelines or impassable forest, requiring lengthy detours. This is just annoying! I could live with this if it was a higher level zone where you are adventuring with a mount to increase your travel speed. But because it’s only a level 20-30 zone, those questing here are not mounted, so there is too much time wasted on getting from place to place! To make things worse, very few quests share a location, so you have to run from place to place to do a quest, go for a roundabout trip to the next quest and so on!

In addition, on your way from place to place, there is just too much pointless grinding through bears, wolves and spiders which are not a part of any quest. They can be farmed for some things, but when you don’t want to be farming you are forced to by the layout of this zone!

As the Alliance entrance to Warsong Gulch is in this zone, for Horde players (especially on PvP servers) this just adds an extra thing to worry about when the zone is already annoying enough!

The complicated and annoying travel around this zone negates any advantages of the admittedly tranquil scenery, and also makes getting back to towns difficult. Add to that that a number of the quest rewards are not that appealing for the amount of work you must put in, and it adds up to a zone that not many people spend time in.

Worst city - Stormwind

When I was playing with some Alliance characters (yes although I am a Horde fanatic I have gone to the “dark side” in the past!) I was doing the Defias Brotherhood quests, and I found the office of the City Architect (after much searching!) I immediately made the comment over general chat that the quest should have read that we killed Edwin Van Cleef not because of his links to the Defias, but because he did such a crap job in planning the city! This generated plenty of laughs!

It would seem that I’m not the only Alliance player to dislike the poorly planned and downright confusing mess that is the human capital. Quite simply, there are too many alleyways, and the system of canals the city is built around make navigating through the city a painful process! It is the only capital where I have to stop and open my map to find out where I’m going!

Also, important facilities like the Flight Master and Bank are not located in the center of the city, and this is about the only capital where this is the case!

Each of the quarters has side alleyways and buildings tucked away in semi-hidden corners, and the narrow alleyways and closely-clustered buildings just make keeping track of all the various signs a difficult job! Quest givers are tucked away in all places in this lab rat maze (I mean – a master assassin being the proprietor of a cheese shop?!) and the same applies to profession and class trainers. Give me Ironforge any day – dwarves and gnomes might be vertically challenged, but at least they have some idea of how to design and build things!

Worst instance – Razorfen Kraul

It’s a bit of shame that the best zone in the game is also the home to some of the worst designed instances! Wailing Caverns, Razorfen Kraul and Razorfen Downs are all rather confusing in their winding layouts. But in the end, I settled on Razorfen Kraul being the worst instance, as at least the others have either good level appropriate loot or good quests within them.

Not only is RFK a winding series of pathways through the brambles, but in several places it is too easy to start walking along the brambles, get taken up to another level and get separated from the rest of your group! It’s also a rather colourless and dull instance, with a lack of variety both in scenery and also types of enemies. It seems there are only big bats and a collection of crazed quilboars!

And as for the quests…. Well if the best Blizzard could come up with was collecting bat crap and waiting for a stupid gopher to sniff out buried tubers, then their creative guys must have been having an off day! One thing the game needs is another instance or two in the low 30s range, and although RFK fits in this level range, the fact that there are not enough quests in it (and what quests they have are poor both in enjoyability and end rewards) and that it is a frustrating place to navigate at times means many players tend to skip it! I only know about it because I had to take my warrior alt in there to get a component for his class quest, and I did it once out of cuiosity with my main! I honestly don’t think I could be bothered ever heading into the dark, thorny dump again!

 

So there they are, my thoughts on the best and worst real estate in World of Warcraft! Of course, these are only my opinions! If you have any comments or suggestions, please fell free to e-mail me at doogmeister@tentonhammer.com  

   


Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016