The Storm Peaks - make more zones like this.

[Niwes]

My personal focus was more on the flying part, than the ice part. The shape of the zone. It doesn't have to be an ice/winter world at all.

To answer your question: I expect a bunch of creative minded individual start throwing out ideas of how they would imagine future zones to be like

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I'm sorry you find the thread useless. The point was actually to hear about people's personal taste for what they like in a zone (potentially a flying zone).

It is really a subjective topic. I don't expect any facts.

Ok, no offense here.

I just not get what you saying or what the special flying thing in Storm Peaks is.

Maybe after 15 years i just play this game way too long and therefore just missunderstood.

I really not get what we really talk about here. But on the other side i do not just wanna critizize this thread out of nothing.

So i say sorry here and do what good mmoc buddies should do: If the thread isnt for you (in this case: for me): Shut the fuck up and just dont post.

Sorry! Was not meant to offend here.

[Beet]

thats the perfect example for the uselessness of this thread. you go like „in WotLK it was Storm Peak, in Cata Deepholme, in Legion Suramar...“

know what ? not for me. not in the slightest. thats just your personal taste and i see no metric why these zones should be special and should reflect that oppinion by thousands or millions out there. i personally think Suramar was a giant copy paste Zone that give max level chars endless useless quests to give them something to do, by the cheapest way possible. do it again on 1 alt (even today) and it is the best in game „feature“ to get you vomit.

look: in cata for me the most special zone was Vashjir. and, in contrast to many others, i loved it. what we can say here is:
- objectively it was special, because first underwater zone in game.
- subjectively for me it was great.
- subjectively for others it sucked.

now, what does this say, objectively about your Cata Deepholm Zone ?
Nothing.

This thread is imho completely useless.

Jesus Christ dude. It’s to have a discussion. If you’re finding it useless just leave. I don’t understand this mindset.

“Oh I don’t see the point so everyone should shut the fuck up”

We’re giving our opinion. And I feel OP is right. He’s not asking for every zone to be like this. But they should give one per expansion. It’s nice when the zone feels like you have so much to explore. Not so nice when you feel you’ve seen the entire zone after one hour in it.

[cuafpr]

agree only because flying should be part of the game....

[Nork]

Here's a hint: the poster did not use two commas like you did, there. You'd have noticed that if you tried to select the quotation mark.

Here's another hint: different keyboard layouts and different keyboard languages exist.

What the hell are you talking about? Please, tell me a language where you use quotation marks like this: ,,". If you don't know what you're talking about, please just don't say anything. It's better that way.

[Soon-TM]

Just leveled through The Storm Peaks. It was awesome. It feels like a Giant Ice World and the way that flying is integrated into the zone is amazing. Blizzard should in my opinion make more zones like The Storm Peaks based on flying.

Agree.. disagree?

Completely agree. SP, along with Zul'drak, are imo the top places in all of WotLK, topping even other high points such as Grizzly Hills or good ol' Howling Fjord. Deepholme in Cata was the only new zone that didn't make my eyes roll, it feels cool when an important feature like flight is integrated into the game, instead of being merely tolerated and timegated to hell and back.

[Eapoe]

I just want to take a minute or two to point something out:
The OP is not saying Storm Peaks is an amazing zone. He/she is saying how amazing it is with flying being integrated into it.
Basically, this is a thinly veiled “flight should be in game all the time and zones designed with it in mind” thread.
That said, the OP is wrong. Flight was not integrated into the zone as a necessity. Almost the entire zone, barring a few quests, could be done without flight. The same thing as Icecrown. If you didn’t have flight, most quests provided a taxi service or way to get around. For example, Storm Peaks has the goblin cannon or backpack (if I remember right) that launched you up to the Vrykul area. From there it was a lot of open space. There were drakes in quests that would take you from place to place. In Icecrown, there was a signal flare you could use to have a Gryphon rider bring you back to the airship, as well as a quest that takes you from the Ebon Blade HQ to the high point area at the southwest of the map. Even further to the west was a quest line that provides taxi service to and from the island. Storm Peaks and Icecrown weren’t zones designed to have flight for the majority of the area.
Deepholm, on the other hand, was; yet, no one is praising that zone. You know what else had flight-style mechanics integrated into it that it seems most people hate? Vash’jir. Yeah, the place with all the swimming that allows you to move around faster almost 100% of the time. It had quests that lead you to various height range platforms. It included combat that could be done on all levels of the plane, vertically and horizontally. I never see anyone talking about how great that zone is.

[thebelltolleth]

This thread is imho completely useless.

Thus you use the precious, useful minutes of your life on uselessness.

Check...

[Kralljin]

I just want to take a minute or two to point something out:
The OP is not saying Storm Peaks is an amazing zone. He/she is saying how amazing it is with flying being integrated into it.
Basically, this is a thinly veiled “flight should be in game all the time and zones designed with it in mind” thread.
That said, the OP is wrong. Flight was not integrated into the zone as a necessity. Almost the entire zone, barring a few quests, could be done without flight. The same thing as Icecrown. If you didn’t have flight, most quests provided a taxi service or way to get around. For example, Storm Peaks has the goblin cannon or backpack (if I remember right) that launched you up to the Vrykul area. From there it was a lot of open space. There were drakes in quests that would take you from place to place. In Icecrown, there was a signal flare you could use to have a Gryphon rider bring you back to the airship, as well as a quest that takes you from the Ebon Blade HQ to the high point area at the southwest of the map. Even further to the west was a quest line that provides taxi service to and from the island. Storm Peaks and Icecrown weren’t zones designed to have flight for the majority of the area.
Deepholm, on the other hand, was; yet, no one is praising that zone.

The basic premise of your argument is basically: Storm peaks could be done without flying because Blizzard added mechanics around it that "did" the flying for you.
Ignoring the fact that Blizzard even provided a free flying mount that specifially worked in Icecrown, Sholazar & Storm peaks if you didn't have flying, which is a pretty huge hint that they did consider flying mounts that relevant to hand out free ones.

And most of these "skips" were barely used by people who already had flying (especially epic flying), because it was *faster* to fly.

As counter, you present Deepholm, where Blizzard could have done the exact same thing, but didn't bother to do it because at this point, most people most likely acquired their flying mount.
The only thing that really changed is that Blizzard didn't gave any "free rides" anymore because everybody had the means to flying already.

You could reach almost any place in Deepholm without flying (besides the Air ship) relevant for questing, flying just made it faster to get to.

Vash’jir. Yeah, the place with all the swimming that allows you to move around faster almost 100% of the time. It had quests that lead you to various height range platforms. It included combat that could be done on all levels of the plane, vertically and horizontally. I never see anyone talking about how great that zone is.

Because flying is not equal to swimming.

In Vashj'ir you constantly had to deal with "where is the fucking cave i have to enter" because the marker were obviously only placed on 2D Elements (such as Maps).
With flying, you can use the ground very often as reference, in Vashj'ir, that flew out of the window, you constantly also had to deal with enemies that were also were far above the ground.

Not to mention that all the other issues that come with water mechanics such as certain spells (mostly AoE) not really working.

Flying is a means of travel, swimming is not solely a means of travel, it's the MO for everything in an underwater level.

[Niwes]

What the hell are you talking about? Please, tell me a language where you use quotation marks like this: ,,". If you don't know what you're talking about, please just don't say anything. It's better that way.

dont know exactly whats going on here. just can tell that in germany, for example, the first/start qm („) are lower, the second/end qm are upper (“).

example: „hello world“.

i typed this on an ipad, set to german language. and the keyboard automatically do this with 1 qm key (ios detects the start and the end of the sentence and lower and upper the qm accordingly, since there is only 1 key for qm).

this is totally normal for german text.

dont know if this helps here in any way.

[SunspotAnims]

I was recently thinking about how, if/when Blizz ever does an expansion set in the Dragon Isles, it should be a continent built entirely around flight, with some sort of flight-centric mechanic as a major feature (I'd enjoy personal airships).

I don't think every zone from here on out should be built for flight, if not solely because that limits the options for what types of zones can be made, but I do think it's something that should be explored more.

[Ielenia]

What the hell are you talking about? Please, tell me a language where you use quotation marks like this: ,,". If you don't know what you're talking about, please just don't say anything. It's better that way.

This is incredibly ironic.

But, just to educate you: Some neighboring regions adopted the German curved marks tradition with lower–upper alignment, while others made up a variant with the closing mark pointing rightward like the opening one, „…”.

Perhaps, next time, „If you don't know what you're talking about, please just don't say anything. It's better that way.”

[ohwell]

Just leveled through The Storm Peaks. It was awesome. It feels like a Giant Ice World and the way that flying is integrated into the zone is amazing. Blizzard should in my opinion make more zones like The Storm Peaks based on flying.

Agree.. disagree?

Completely disagree because Storm Peaks was a pretty bad questing zone. It was too spread out and was a time sink basically. They integrated flying as a time sink.

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I just want to take a minute or two to point something out:
The OP is not saying Storm Peaks is an amazing zone. He/she is saying how amazing it is with flying being integrated into it.
Basically, this is a thinly veiled “flight should be in game all the time and zones designed with it in mind” thread.
That said, the OP is wrong. Flight was not integrated into the zone as a necessity. Almost the entire zone, barring a few quests, could be done without flight. The same thing as Icecrown. If you didn’t have flight, most quests provided a taxi service or way to get around. For example, Storm Peaks has the goblin cannon or backpack (if I remember right) that launched you up to the Vrykul area. From there it was a lot of open space. There were drakes in quests that would take you from place to place. In Icecrown, there was a signal flare you could use to have a Gryphon rider bring you back to the airship, as well as a quest that takes you from the Ebon Blade HQ to the high point area at the southwest of the map. Even further to the west was a quest line that provides taxi service to and from the island. Storm Peaks and Icecrown weren’t zones designed to have flight for the majority of the area.
Deepholm, on the other hand, was; yet, no one is praising that zone. You know what else had flight-style mechanics integrated into it that it seems most people hate? Vash’jir. Yeah, the place with all the swimming that allows you to move around faster almost 100% of the time. It had quests that lead you to various height range platforms. It included combat that could be done on all levels of the plane, vertically and horizontally. I never see anyone talking about how great that zone is.

The OP said both actually. Storm Peaks leveling was amazing was stated as well as they loved the fact that you needed to fly in the zone. But yeah after reading your statement I do agree this is basically "Wahhhhh I want flying from the start of each expansion....hmmm if I trick people into thinking a flying zone would be good then maybe they'll HAVE to agree and do it."

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

The ship has sailed on flying. Wrath zones were made that way because they felt like Flying still had a permanent place in the game, but they don't feel that way any longer.

Can't have zones like that in a world of pathfinder, and I for one would prefer they keep the world on the ground first and allow flying to simply nerf it over time.

[Nork]

This is incredibly ironic.

But, just to educate you: Some neighboring regions adopted the German curved marks tradition with lower–upper alignment, while others made up a variant with the closing mark pointing rightward like the opening one, „…”.

Perhaps, next time, „If you don't know what you're talking about, please just don't say anything. It's better that way.”

Are we speaking German or English? Please tell me. I don't care how Germans quote, if you are speaking (typing) English you should use their grammar rules. End of the matter.

[Die]

There's a lot you can do with ice / snow zones that Blizzard hasn't really explored.

1. Actual BLIZZARDS. Can't see 5 feet in front of your face. Need to keep moving or you get stuck. Fall thru the ice into a cave and need to get out.
2. Avalanches. Maybe there are packs of unkillable mobs but you need to aggro them, draw them to a spot, then loosen a boulder and cause an avalanche to kill them. Or maybe you need to dodge them.
3. Ice floes. Maybe you have to hop on an ice floe and ride it down a stream. Or hop several of them to cross a river. Miss and into the river you go.

[Drish]

What the hell are you talking about? Please, tell me a language where you use quotation marks like this: ,,". If you don't know what you're talking about, please just don't say anything. It's better that way.

Are we speaking German or English? Please tell me. I don't care how Germans quote, if you are speaking (typing) English you should use their grammar rules. End of the matter.

I'm loving this. "How dare you do what I asked, let me feel superior end of discussion". English having germanic roots, and the latin alphabets history with the germanic language, makes this all the more hilarious to me.

On the matter, I wasn't fond of most WotLK zones but I do remember some specific quest lines so i'd assume that speaks to a positive interaction (as mentioned earlier the drake hopping, I fondly remember that). If we're talking about the zone itself, it was very eh to me, but i'd assume most vast zones to feel eh. I think they're fun to do once, but its something that could quickly lose its charm if repetition were to set in. Suramar is an example of something that was charming the first time, but having to deal with the quest chain on every alt made me despise it.

To the person complaining about Vash'jir being confusing, the caves are marked by the flora around them. It said it in one of the quests but I assume most people enter 'go-go-go' mode and skip quest text, I know I myself started doing that in Pandaria (Throne of Thunder era), and I only read them once i'm on alt #9 and wanna understand why I should care about what the snakes are doing.

I think my favorite zone in regards to flying not being allowed is Zuldazar, the random dirt paths that create shortcuts that you wouldn't notice if you weren't paying attention was nice, and kinda like Deepholme the main hub is centric, so even if some things are on the edge of the zone they don't feel like a huge trek has happened, but it still feels like a vast zone that (mostly) makes sense. I'm not sure how much more can be done with verticality than Hyjal did with random perches in places, unless you think swarms of birds or bugs attacking/demounting you is fun and exciting. Zuldazar does have mobs at sea level and mobs way above it while still being at ground level, but unless you want random mesas like in SP or thousand needles i'm unsure how they can do it without it feeling repetitious. The only idea I can garner is if something like the Mechagon dungeon final area was a flyable zone, or maybe that bug dungeon from WotLK, something thats cavernous and vast but a bit more intricate.

[Ielenia]

Are we speaking German or English? Please tell me. I don't care how Germans quote, if you are speaking (typing) English you should use their grammar rules. End of the matter.

How dense are you? He's typing in english, but his keyboard language is likely German. You do know that there are more languages than English around the world, right? And keyboard layouts and systems that accommodate such languages, right?

Your complain here is so arrogantly egotistical. You can understand full well what the poster is writing despite the different quotation mark, there is not a single misunderstanding, and yet you are literally being a "grammar nazi" here.

Once again, to showcase the immense irony of your posts:

If you don't know what you're talking about, please just don't say anything. It's better that way.

[Powerogue]

I mean all the cataclysm high level zones were designed with flying in mind. Vash'jir is still my favorite with the inky black potion.

[shoc]

An empty wasteland with nothing to actually do?

[Ticj]

Storm Peaks is the epitome of mediocre zone design though. Just sheer cliffs surrounding disjointed, generic flat areas.

I disagree with this, not every part of a zone needs to be interesting. Generic flat areas help separate things and adds a sense of scale, something that is severely lacking in newer zones.