Awesome zones that blizzard wasted/ wish Blizzard made more use of

[Deleted]

I wish some of the oldschool zones would be relevant in general. All the newer zones there is always a huge worldwar going on and the terrain is super annoying. Old zones were flat and chill.

[Kaleredar]

I'd say Azjol'Nerub. One look at old kingdom and you can see that they spent a LOT of time designing... something... but had to cut it. It seemed like they tried to facade up as much as possible whenever they got a chance.

Uldum, bar none. It set the tone for Cata perfectly: Pissing all over piles of amazing lore and rich ground for new stories in favour of shitty memes and tired pop-culture bullshit.

As far as Uldum goes, it had plenty of quests. Now, people might take issue with some of those quests because they were "silly Indiana Jones quests," but frankly... at least Uldum was memorable. I can't remember a single quest from Hyjal, save for the one where you watch Thrall's wedding (let that sink in) and the one where whatseherface druid cops a feel on a harpy. Same with Deepholm, Vashj'ir and twilight highlands. Barely a single memorable quest about them. The quests were "serious" but ultimately... not very interesting.

Meanwhile, I'd say only about half of Uldum's quests were Indiana Jones related, but I remember like... all of them. The one where you have to jump in a box to survive a nuke, the one where you play tail gunner, the one where you restore the delta, the one where you open the coffer of promise, the one where you have to get the "nein" idols... I'd take silly but fun and memorable quests over the "serious and tense," but ultimately boring and run of the mill "fetch/kill 20 whatevers" quests.

you don't need the dragons for that quest chain.

While it's true that the nightmare dragons being removed was irrelevant to the quest chain, the quest chain itself was 100% removed during the cataclysm prepatch. So no, you cannot do scepter of the shifting sands, and have not been able to since wotlk.

[moremana]

Feralas hands down.

[McNeil]

The blood elf and draenei starting zones. After the quests there's just 0 reason to revisit these zones, and they look really cool imo. Crystalsong Forest also looks really neat and I wish the Argent Tournament could've been there instead, or that they atleast turned it into a proper questing zone. They do have some dailies that take place there though.

[logintime]

Alterac Mountains.

In Vanilla it was so underutilized that nearly every quest for the zone had to be picked up in Hillsbrad. Fast forward to Cataclysm, and Blizzard removes every single one of those quests, adds absolutely no new story content to the zone, and demotes it from an independent zone to a part of the Hillsbrad map. And proceeds to do nothing with it.

It's a shame. You'd think the fallen kingdom of Alterac would make for several great in-game stories, especially with the Forsaken beginning to encircle the territory and the Worgen appearing (lorewise, Alterac and Gilneas were close). But nope, Blizz couldn't be bothered to do anything with this zone to such an extreme extent that it's no longer even a zone. Just a completely unused corner of another map.

[Arrashi]

Vashj'ir, Townlong steppes, and to lesser degree netherstorm.

[Deleted]

All the old zones. Would be great to return someday even if it would be "rehashed content."

[Ferrair]

Isn't there a storyline of how C'thun spreading its influence and Un`goro was "stopping" the spread of its evil or something, like something was in the zone that is pure or whatever.

Nothing came out of it, or I haven't found out, would love for anyone to shed some light on this.

[DenniZ]

The Stone Core zone. Deep under the soil, man you could have an entire expansion in there.

[Lochton]

Vashj'ir and Uldum. As well as Un'guru, more the mountain section.

[Xirrohon]

Now that world quests are a thing in Legion, I feel like we get the full potential out of a zone and really get to enjoy them.

Prior to legion there have been so many awesome zones with wasted potential, that were only used for leveling.

I wish Blizzard used Uldum more, and utilized it's full potential. This zone is outstanding and beautiful, and the amount of work put into it is hardly used.

Which great zones do you feel Blizzard wasted and could have put more use to?

I read the subject and Uldum was the first thing that came to mind!

[RippedLife]

all of the legion zones are really bad sadly )

[Deleted]

Even if it is not a "over-world" zone, I think the Azjol-Nerub zone/instance is the single most wasted opportunity Blizzard have made, and ties in with the lackluster 3.2 patch and ToC raid.

For those who played WC:TFT, you probably know of the underground kingdom campaign level where you have to survive going through Azjol-Nerub. This shit was prime for a full raid tier in WotLK with Anub'arak as its end boss. Instead we went in and killed Anub'arak in a lackluster low-level 3-boss dungeon, only to have him resurrected and put at the end of the ToC. If the raid tiers of WotLK had been Naxx -> Ulduar -> Azjol-Nerub -> ICC, I have no doubt the expansion would have gone down as the best one ever raiding wise (though maybe still not because of Naxx).

[Allatar]

Crystalsong Forest did in fact have a stotyline attached to it in the WotlK early beta, the problem was the performance of the zone having players both inside it and floating above it in Dalaran was absolutely atrocious so they had to get rid if all for practical reasons.

[-Joker-]

Nagrand in Outland. As a Druid, I loved flying up to a floating rock with a tree, sitting out under the stars, and watching the waterfalls over Telaar.

[Gadzooks]

Now that world quests are a thing in Legion, I feel like we get the full potential out of a zone and really get to enjoy them.

Prior to legion there have been so many awesome zones with wasted potential, that were only used for leveling.

I wish Blizzard used Uldum more, and utilized it's full potential. This zone is outstanding and beautiful, and the amount of work put into it is hardly used.

Which great zones do you feel Blizzard wasted and could have put more use to?

Gilneas.

/thread

[Softbottom]

Feralas is a big one for me. I did a all the quests in that zone while leveling (the few that were there). It's a beautiful zone. I really loved the thousand needles racetrack/quests. There really was nothing else in that zone. It was a fun trek for alliance to get there. The zone stinks now after cata revamp.

[Arbs]

Still salty about no Farahlon

[Gadzooks]

As far as Uldum goes, it had plenty of quests. Now, people might take issue with some of those quests because they were "silly Indiana Jones quests," but frankly... at least Uldum was memorable. I can't remember a single quest from Hyjal, save for the one where you watch Thrall's wedding (let that sink in) and the one where whatseherface druid cops a feel on a harpy. Same with Deepholm, Vashj'ir and twilight highlands. Barely a single memorable quest about them. The quests were "serious" but ultimately... not very interesting.

Uldum had Gnomeageddon, one of the funniest and awesome quests of the expansion. I agree that too much of the story was behind the IJ stuff, but the story there was pretty on-point.

Hyjal had a couple I remember - the bouncing bears, the psychotic dryad (loved that character), and the end quest when you have to give the speech, were well written and fun quests. It was disjointed, in how it told the lore for that zone, but it was okay.

Deepholm had only one memorable quest, the one where you question the cult member, by hanging her/him over the propellors. I loathed Deepholm. Vasjir had the history of the naga quests, which were well done, and the ending - when the fucking sub worked - was pretty epic. I also think they handled the whole concept of shipwrecked under water, how do you survive? really well. I know the zone is universally hated, but I loved it.

Twilight highlands...meh. It's like they just didn't care. The entry quests for horde, at the island, were great - best zone entrance ever. Entry for Alliance...snore. The zone had promise, but I think they ran out of time. The end part, with Deathwing, is somewhat interesting, but overall, just get through it quickly.

- - - Updated - - -

You cannot do scepter of the shifting sands it was broke come Cataclysm as the key part the nightmare dragons were removed or killed off so no you did not do it post cata.

I could be wrong, but i think, if you have the quest, and are past a certain point, you can still do it. *I think*.

[Tack980]

Nearly every zone in WOD. No shattarath city, what was going to be capital areas being cut ( so wanted my home to be black temple of all things, instead turn into a spot where 3 quest happened.). Half of nagrand was a blood farm spot that's it. The Only good zone was spires, every location felt utilized for the quest there. And after BC i love beating the s*it out of those guys/ helping them at the same time)