Favorite Environment

[Klingensturm]

Oh, hello. I did not notice you there. Well, now that you are here let us talk business. What I mean by favorite environment is whether you favor a warm, bright, and green landscape to a cold, fresh, white one, or perhaps mystical, dark, and colorful tickles your fancy. In World of Warcraft there are many different types of environments, there's one for everyone. I tend to enjoy Dun Morogh, Grizzly Hills, and Alterac Valley because I find Winter relaxing. What do you prefer? Thank you for reading, I hope for the best for you and your cats.

[Siberia]

Canadian here, diggin' those wintry places. Grizzly Hills gets my vote by a landslide, although Storm Peaks is a close second.

[Yig]

The biggest impressions on me were Teldrassil, the gloomy transition from there to Darkshore, and then the journey to Ironforge as a Night Elf required to get to Stormwind after sailing to Menethil from Auberdine, which altogether was at it's most impactful when I left the mountain tunnel for the first time from Loch Modan, noticed my character's breath was frosting, and suddenly felt plunged into something like the computer animated world of the movie Ice Age while stepping out into Dun Morogh. The stylized fat white snow caked pines and spruce, the frosted sheen of the morning sun on the crusted smooth surface of the pristine snowfall, the glimmering frost on the paving stones of the road, the music,... I'm partial to that sort of thing. Grizzly Hills and Howling Fjord did a lot to remind me of that.

That was the first time in a videogame I ever literally felt like I was on a journey across a simulated fantasy world right out of a novel. I wonder if anything will ever compare. It was a time of paradigm shifts in gaming, where once the land in MMOs were just huge vast fog bordered voids with the same basic tree model stamped side by side ad nauseam, they had an almost random terrain editor feel to everything, and then suddenly Blizzard came along and decided they would have an artist place every single tuft of grass and tree stump and slanted tree by hand with the eye of a person building a vast diorama. You only saw that in action games back then, with a convenient fence on the road to keep you from leaving it and the epic vistas being only paintings on a 2d skybox just out of reach. To think we used to dream of being able to hop that fence and actually walk to the far away vista in real time without any loading zones, and see it transition naturally. And now we have people threatening to quit over flying mounts being restricted :P

Back to the topic, Teldrassil though is almost spiritual in it's depth of nostalgia. I guess it's the "most favorite" along with Ashenvale.

But the whole journey thing was also the same with the Stonetalon Mountains. As I picked my way along the southern borders of Ashenvale looking for the Talondeep Path the quest giver described to me ( because back then there were no quest markers and you had to actually "quest" for things) avoiding those pesky dangerous bears and then seeing the stepping stones leading into a tunnel right out of the worlds I imagined while playing table top games like Warhammer Quest or reading about Moria in the Lord of the Rings. I'll never forget when that song from the Barrens soundtrack kicked in while I walked through the subterranean passage and could almost smell the dark soil, Ashenvale's giant root systems crawling down the walls, then coming out to the dry and dusty red rocks and haze of the Stonetalon Mountains. A moment in time forever frozen on replay in my brain. AND NO LOAD TIME SCREENS!!!

[Abstieg]

I dig desolate areas, or areas with a sense of mystery.

Old Desolace was great, Duskwood was awesome, old Stranglethorn had some interesting mysteries in it, Felwood, all great zones.

[Biggles Worth]

I really digged Grizzly Hills and Howling Fjord.

[Ragashii]

I love the stormpeaks so much that it's my screen saver. It plays the music and everything. There's more on the website too.
http://www.warcraftscreensavers.com/...e-storm-peaks/

[Deleted]

I like zones that feel warm and colorful, and I love forests, OLD Hillsbrad Foothills is my favorite zone in the game.

[mykro9]

I love forests, like Grizzly Hills, Jade Forest, Feralas, even Un Goro. I am not a fan of the dreary locations, they make me feel depressed. My favorite zones are the warm dry zones, like Durotar, and pre-Cata Barrens. I even liked Tanaris. I also like open plains, like Mulgore and Valley of the Four Winds.

[Deleted]

To be short: i usually like zones with normal sky and generally HATE bluish and dark zones like Dread Wastes, Netherstorm, Deepholm etc. (duskwood is exception!) I will hate Shadowmoon Valley in WoD.

[The One Percent]

Thick forests or jungles. I liked Ashenvale, wish it had more smaller trees though and not just the huge ancient ones. Stranglethorn I also liked.

[Cimoreen]

I love any zones with giant trees that make me look up in wonder (Grizzly Hills, Ashenvale, and so on). I live near a Giant Sequoia forest, so it feels like home!

[Yig]

I love any zones with giant trees that make me look up in wonder (Grizzly Hills, Ashenvale, and so on). I live near a Giant Sequoia forest, so it feels like home!

Looking at the soil and bark colors and the flower meadows in Grizzly Hills, I think Blizzard intentionally used the Sequoia national forest as a basis for Grizzly HIlls. I've spent time regularly all my life in the Red Woods as well as the Hoh Rain Forest in Washington and other old growth forests, and while all of them feel similar, something about the Sequoias is absolutely nailed there, from the grass color, the color of the sunlight, to as I said the color of the soil and tree bark. Playing the Grizzly Hills soundtrack while driving through the Sequoias is especially surreal.

[Adam Jensen]

Storm Peaks for both environment and the music, oh gods the music.

Though it sucked without a flyer.

[jettzypher]

Storm Peaks, definitely my favorite zone. After that, old school Duskwood, with Bags and being third favorite.

[Torgal]

For me Duskwood beats it all, I love the dark & creepy forests.

[Al Gorefiend]

The biggest impressions on me were Teldrassil, the gloomy transition from there to Darkshore, and then the journey to Ironforge as a Night Elf required to get to Stormwind after sailing to Menethil from Auberdine, which altogether was at it's most impactful when I left the mountain tunnel for the first time from Loch Modan, noticed my character's breath was frosting, and suddenly felt plunged into something like the computer animated world of the movie Ice Age while stepping out into Dun Morogh. The stylized fat white snow caked pines and spruce, the frosted sheen of the morning sun on the crusted smooth surface of the pristine snowfall, the glimmering frost on the paving stones of the road, the music,... I'm partial to that sort of thing. Grizzly Hills and Howling Fjord did a lot to remind me of that.

That was the first time in a videogame I ever literally felt like I was on a journey across a simulated fantasy world right out of a novel. I wonder if anything will ever compare. It was a time of paradigm shifts in gaming, where once the land in MMOs were just huge vast fog bordered voids with the same basic tree model stamped side by side ad nauseam, they had an almost random terrain editor feel to everything, and then suddenly Blizzard came along and decided they would have an artist place every single tuft of grass and tree stump and slanted tree by hand with the eye of a person building a vast diorama. You only saw that in action games back then, with a convenient fence on the road to keep you from leaving it and the epic vistas being only paintings on a 2d skybox just out of reach. To think we used to dream of being able to hop that fence and actually walk to the far away vista in real time without any loading zones, and see it transition naturally. And now we have people threatening to quit over flying mounts being restricted :P

Back to the topic, Teldrassil though is almost spiritual in it's depth of nostalgia. I guess it's the "most favorite" along with Ashenvale.

But the whole journey thing was also the same with the Stonetalon Mountains. As I picked my way along the southern borders of Ashenvale looking for the Talondeep Path the quest giver described to me ( because back then there were no quest markers and you had to actually "quest" for things) avoiding those pesky dangerous bears and then seeing the stepping stones leading into a tunnel right out of the worlds I imagined while playing table top games like Warhammer Quest or reading about Moria in the Lord of the Rings. I'll never forget when that song from the Barrens soundtrack kicked in while I walked through the subterranean passage and could almost smell the dark soil, Ashenvale's giant root systems crawling down the walls, then coming out to the dry and dusty red rocks and haze of the Stonetalon Mountains. A moment in time forever frozen on replay in my brain. AND NO LOAD TIME SCREENS!!!

Teldrassil has the exact opposite impact on me and is no doubt my top 3 biggest pet peeves of WoW. It looks like a tall tree stump with trees growing in it, and looks nothing like a tree compared to what it should be, which is a second Nordrassil. Its literally a plateau with twigs sticking out and bark-colored siding.

I understand the physical limitations Blizz had during Vanilla, but they should have changed it during Cataclysm.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Mhm...hard to say. I like most of them.

I'd go with Grizzly Hills-Howling Fjord. Lots of details and varied terrain.