World of Warcraft: Retail, Classic and Private

[Boontaker]

If you were wondering where I disappeared too last year it was a string of WoW private servers. First I found a waiting guild for Project Epoch which was a colossal disaster and waste of time, however I found some cool people there and we formed a guild to try Project Ascension private server Bronze beard when it launched. I had convinced myself that private server players were better than retail normies and I wouldn't have to suffer the normal MMORPG consequences by playing with these new (to me) players. I was wrong.

Private servers have their own unique problems compared to retail wow. Class im-balance, guild collusion, cliques all still exist, but reputation elitism, social misfits (long since banned from retail), and worse 3rd world free to play players get added into the mix. I found myself once again in a leadership position in a guild full of nostalgia chasers, white supremacists, and monkeys who couldn't press a sequence of buttons correctly more than once per 4 hours.

After rerolling multiple times to meta chase we dragged our guild into the 3rd tier of difficulty for the current content (mythic) which added additional mechanics to bosses and required coordination and new strategies. This is where the cracks in social cohesion began to widen. The guild I had joined was formed by a long time private server player named Valafar, a self proclaimed white supremacist who worked at a bank and was married to a jewess(he's ashkenazi at best). This man showed me the true depth of narcissism and ultimately caused our guild to implode. Myself and the other raid leader had done our research on how to tackle the increased difficulty of the bosses in mythic raids, this would require new strategies and practice but would certainly work. However the guild narcissist couldn't accept anything that threatened his reputation as the best player in the guild, so only his strategies were allowed and every attempt at ours ended in a shouting match of insults.

After a final blowout and after weeks of getting messages from raiders who refused to play with Valafar anymore, as he would viciously mock anyone who failed a mechanic or die. The core raid team left and formed our own guild which successfully completed mythic tier on the raid content released. But the damage was done our enthusiasm to play was crippled by the reality of **** in our environment. After a few more raid lockouts people wanted to move on, now most of the guild is playing blizzards anniversary TBC server and wishing it was WOTLK. Personally I'm done with MMOs, the amount of stress dealing with a narcissist NOT EVEN IN PERSON! Was just too much for so little a reward. At least I made some new friends and got to enjoy some nostalgia.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Generally, private servers have far too many issues with them for me to invest a significant amount of time in them.

They don't have the new up to date zones, races, classes, features, QoL, etc, of the retail game. WoW servers in particular tend to be locked to Vanilla through WotLK, which to me is bland old stuff I have already seen a thousand times before and I don't want to ever do it again. I don't want to see Blackrock Mountain or Deadmines ever again. Even the private server "original content" is usually asset reuse of old stuff I have seen too many times before like 2004 furbolgs. I just don't want to do that. I don't want do that for years or decades on end. I want to go truly new (and good looking) stuff.

Private servers are generally very volatile. They usually only last for a brief moment in the life of the owner when he has a lot of passion and free time (read: in college or unemployed and hasn't run out of money yet). This situation never lasts, and eventually the owner either loses interest or loses the time to develop, manage, and grow the server, and thus the server begins to decay. MMOs are a humongous time investment, and I generally do no want to invest a humongous amount of time only for it to almost certainly go down the drain. I do not want to hop from server to server having to spend countless hours farming for the same armors and transmogs again and again. I want to do it once and keep it forever. I do not expect the official retail version of any of the big MMOs that have survived up until now to suddenly close.

And then you have the unprofessionalism of the private server staff. First, you have the actual running of the server itself. I remember being very frustrated with Ascension in how they would keep restarting the server every 30 minutes. It was never ever stable and in a state where they could just reboot the server on Tuesday or Thursday and just let not touch again for another week. And then you have the staff. These private servers usually require you to join their discord, which ofcourse attracts all of the power hungry leftists who took over the moderation teams of internet forums and reddit. They are often unhelpful when asking questions for game information and are likely to take offense if you criticize how things are being run, not to mention all of the alphabet brigade ideology that gets shoved down your throat and the performative news post pings.

[mynameismortis]

Private servers are really a business nowadays(maybe in the past they were passion projects?) , almost all servers have behind the scenes gold selling services or just complete p2w shop( looking at you warmane). Most of the "new" ones that were released in the last few years are just stock cores that were modified. The scene is filled with really narcistic guys who think they can earn some quick money and do better than blizzard but really fail because not knowing how to fix bugs is really big problem. Also for ascension watch this(its old yeah but its still relevant because these same guys still run the server)
ACTUAL, State of Ascension #1 - 100% Quality Server Review

[Oyster Sauce]

One time I successfully cold-called and summoned a bunch of 60s in Stormwind come help kill Thunderaan so a guildmate could get Thunder fury. I wish people tried to rile up bored semi-AFKers more. Think we did it a few times to have meatshields when the DMF was in Mulgore too.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Midnight season 1 of M+ seems to be easy. I got 2,000 rating on the second day doing 6s and 7s having never set foot in these dungeons before no problem. It seems like it is mainly because of the ease of acquiring champion tier gear by doing tier 8+ delves and nightmare prey hunts, so I was already ilevel 254 and quite powerful by the time I went in.

The last time I did M+ was when Dragonflight season 3 came out, when the best gear you get by soloing was veteran. I didn't achieve keystone master (2,000 rating) until a week after it launched, and I had to do some climbing up the ranks and gearing.

There also seems to be a little less complexity. A peeve I had with Dragonflight seasons 2 and 3 was that there were 200+ boss mechanics you had the memorize across the raid and the 8 M+ dungeons and their bosses. When I typed up mechanics list to copy paste and teach other people, it would be quite lengthy. But here in Midnight season 1, most stuff here is intuitive (drop puddles at edge of the arena) and doesn't really need an explanation, and the handful of stuff that does need an explanation doesn't need a lot (for Skyreach, stand in the laser beams). I think only the last boss of Windrunner Spire had a lot of stuff to remember (the three different types of arrows).

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I am flying around the Voidstorm at high altitude and get a warning to descend, and then AHHHHHHHH

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Gotta kill time until the last part of the story and the third raid releases on Tuesday.

Here is my thorough review of every WoW city:

► Show Spoiler

Stormwind City

Until Boralus came along, this was the most immersive, realistic feeling city in the game. There are bridges going over canals, and many narrow streets winding through the districts. A lot (though not all) of the buildings can be entered. However, I am not fond of the rather generic aesthetic. The basic stone walls, the basic white wattle and daub houses, etc. Boralus would take the general concept of Stormwind, but apply more interesting texturework, modelling, etc.




There are a few squadrons of gryphon riders flying overhead, which helps add more movement, and a sense of power, that this an important place. Oddly, there are no airships in sight, despite the Alliance having many airships in questlines and using them to deploy their armies across the globe.




The plaza in the Cathedral District was the go-to spot for RP up until the new Lion's Rest park was added in Legion, which then became the new main hotspot.




Lion's Rest has an open air view of the harbor and the ocean, which looks quite nice. But it draws attention to how old and ugly the skybox is. This view would tremendously benefit from having a painted cloudscape in the background like newer expansion cities have.




The king's castle is very lackluster and uniconic, despite having been the palace of the main city of the game for almost two decades. Sunfury Spire, the Violet Hold, Icecrown Citadel, Grommash Hold, the Great Pyramid, the Seat of the Aspects, etc, look far more stunning and iconic despite having come out after.





Ironforge

In Vanilla, this was the main capital of the Alliance due to it being the only Alliance city to have an auction house (before the AH was added to the other cities, and then Blizzard began piling utilities onto Stormwind). The main city being not a generic human medieval city, but an underground dwarven city was pretty unique. Sadly, without a lot of players, the plazas and the streets feel conspicuously large and unpopulated. There would need to be a lot more crowd NPCs like what we see in recent expansions to fill it.








Unfortunately, the execution of the city does not realize the potential it could have. There is not much verticality to the interior compared to Shadowforge City inside Blackrock Mountain, or Moira and Erebor as depicted in LotR.






There was an unfinished area called Old Ironforge that had some verticality, but it was locked off during Vanilla when Ironforge was relevant. It was opened up in Cataclysm but not expanded, and there reason to visit it now. The exterior mountain is also pathetically small by the standards of grandiose modern WoW mountains like the one Valdrakken is built on.







Darnassus

The exterior entrance looks like a medieval Korean fortress with the stone base and the wooden structure on top, and the tiled roof. Surrounded by the magical forest, it looks quite nice. Inside the actual city itself is also more wooden structures that look neat. Unfortunately, after Darnassus and Ashenvale, Night Elf zones in WoW tend to just amount to boring grey stonework reminiscent of the Greeks or the Romans, which to me is very boring. It is fortunate that the Night Elf set for the new Housing system emphasizes the woodwork over the stone.




The "city" is overall rather small, and doesn't feel like a real city. It's not that great of a place to hang out at. I remember it more for the intense "A Flicker of Hope" quest at the end of the War of Thorns campaign where you have a hopeless mission of saving 900 citizens in 3 minutes before the entire tree is consumed in flame. You will only save 60 at best. That was a pretty powerful motivator for me to also go through BFA as Alliance and see the Horde get their comeuppance.









Orgrimmar

Mixed bag. Aesthetically and conceptually, I quite love this city. It is probably the most iconic city in WoW to me and one of the things that really differentiates WoW from other fantasy properties, with the main city being a collection of mud huts and iron towers built in the shadow of tall canyon walls in the middle of an orange desert, populated by ugly stinking beastmen. I cannot think of any other audiovisual fantasy property with that as the main city. It also gives off a sense of ferocity and grit.






I have fond memories of lining up in front of the barracks in the Valley of Honor as a member of the Kor'Kron Legion or the Horde Vanguard before we marched out to an RP campaign. I think VoH became the go-to Horde military RP hotspot because 1. there weren't non RPers running around there like in front of the Grommash Hold, and 2. it had a bit more visual variety with the stream and the waterfall. I wonder if VoH might also be popular because of the open air feel, rather than being nestled between high canyon walls.








Unfortunately, the city has issues in execution. The skybox is pretty bad. The actual playable area is also very small compared to Stormwind. There are only two routes or streets through the city, as opposed to Stormwind which has a dozen. This is just much less realestate here, which means that Orgrimmar has never been an ideal place for city RP.




The Horde also had Thunder Bluff and Undercity, but they were not that great alternative cities for Horde RP either. So the Horde never had a flourishing city RP scene like the Alliance did. Which has numerous times led to Alliance players checking out Orgrimmar, not seeing RP, and declaring that Horde side RP is dead. Unaware that there is a very Horde active RP scene, but it is organized behind closed doors by guilds and on discord servers. Orgrimmar could definitely benefit from a remake, but given nuBlizzard's tastes and art direction, I am worried that they would wash out the grit.





Vanilla Orgrimmar also looked inviting at night. The warm, colorful starry sky helped a lot.





Thunder Bluff

A very picturesque core Horde city. Unfortunately, it is 1. very small in terms of playable space, and 2. the city is high up in the air, but the skybox is ugly. The city would greatly benefit from a painted cloudscape the likes you would see in Boralus, Valdrakken, etc. The tents also have orange skins, which do not look that great in the evening light when you have more orange being cast on them.





The layout of the city also squanders the verticality by having the streets and the plaza be located inward, with tents obfuscating the view of the valley below. Thunder Totem would later rectify this by having the promenade along the outer circumference of the city, so you get to look down at valley below.




One issue is that the buildings and their interiors are all rather samey. Most of the buildings tend to be small, which is not ideal for RP campaigns if you need to cram a few dozen people from different guilds in there.







The Undercity

Actually overall fine. The central chamber where the bank is located is bleh, but the outer ringway of green goop and the vertical gates is very nice. The alchemist lab and the factory that produces the abominations is also neat to look at.




Unfortunately, the "city" sucks at portraying an inhabited city, as we don't see any residences. Even if the Forsaken are dead and might not need to sleep, I'd imagine that people would like to have their own rooms for privacy, reading books, playing with their dog, rest, writing diaries, etc. The lack of common buildings might also be why this city never really flourished as a hub for Horde RP beyond just Forsaken.




Of the three cities that have been destroyed, this one had a flaccid end. The destruction of Teldrassil was the end goal of a spectacular zone-length questline and had an amazing quest on the Alliance side. Dalaran had an okay scenario but a cool pre-rendered cutscene where it explodes.

For the Undercity, there was little build up or emotional investment in its destruction. The Horde forces are evacuated offscreen, so there is no tension, and the Alliance player was not trying to destroy Undercity. The villainess Sylvanas just gasses it herself, and it doesn't look spectacular like a cave in.





The Exodar

The exterior is vaguely intriguing with a tall crystal in the middle of the woods, but there is little else of note outside.




Inside, the interior layout is not that well thought out, IMO. It mainly comprises four huge cavernous space, but there are nowhere near enough NPCs to make the place feel populated. The four rooms are also not effectively subdivided or filled with houses, so it doesn't really feel like a city or a colony that lots of people live in.




The caverns are also a little confusing with how they are samey huge circular rooms with similar coloration (aside from the yellow room). The gold gilding and the purple energy and the crystals is a unique aesthetic, but the layout just isn't that fun to be in. Probably the least popular city in the game (unless you count Ashran).







Silvermoon City (The Burning Crusade)

The city is not very good. There are almost no residences. It suffers from big block syndrome. Not much detail. The actual playable area is pretty small. Etc. However, the relatively narrow streets winding through tall buildings you cannot see over does give off of the sense that you are in a city much larger than it actually is. Russell Brower's sweeping, romantic music also does a lot of heavy lifting here in making the city out to be more appealing than it actually is.










The Sunfury Spire has a pretty iconic design with the flared wings. It is odd that the current artists at Blizzard chose to replace it in the remade SMC as the seat of power by a less memorable domed pavilion.




To the West is a park area that is quite scenic. Sadly in the new version, the park is nowhere to be found. It's all flat, bland concrete/stone now.





Shattrath (The Burning Crusade)

The weird, curvy Draenei architecture is mildly interesting. Unfortunately, most of the city just looks bad. There is not enough detail to the buildings, and they somewhat meld into the rubble rather than looking distinct from it. There is not enough detail or doodads placed around. Despite taking up a lot of space, there is not much subdivision to the layout. There are too few buildings, so it overall just feels like a large, poorly optimized space. The only thing really memorable about it is the chandelier angel in the center.









Dalaran (Wrath of the Lich King)

I suspect I will ruffle some feathers here, but I have always held a low opinion of Dalaran. Yes, it looks good on approach, a flying city juxtaposed against the mountains, the black evil tower of Icecrown, and the starry sky with the auroras. But the actual so-called city itself is an embarrassment. It looks like a little girl's doll playhouse. It's just one street wrapped around a small courtyard, a bunch of overly large blocks pretending to be multiple houses, a tower, and that's it.






It is neat that you can jump into the well down into an underground area, but that too is also very small and undetailed.









Gilneas City

There is not much here. There is not that many details or doodads placed in the streets, so you have oddly large, wide open flats. Most buildings cannot be entered. However, Gilneas is unique in that it has some cellar doors that you enter and go down below.













Temple of the Jade Serpent

Not formally a city, but I thought this was cooler and more alive than the small Shrines. The towers of the temple can be seen from across the zone. The complex is quite large and is subdivided into a few different very large courtyards, with dragonriders tending to their steeds in one, students meditating in another, a line of houses and shops, etc. There is a seat of power that looks formidable. There are formations of dragonriders flying overhead, which not even the Shrines got.











Shrine of Two Moons/Shrine of Seven Stars

I am torn on Shrine. On the one hand, I appreciate how Pandaria feels closer to the American Midwest than to a China clone. When I think of China, I think of scholars, universities, heavy buercracy, huge cities with very high population density, lots of paddy fields everywhere to support those cities, an emperor with multiple palace and a harem, etc.

Pandaria thankfully is not a blaise expy of that. It has pandas, kung fu, noodle dragons, china mountains, the asian roofs, but otherwise the cultural is rural America. There are no tax collectors, no universities, no government offices, no imperial city, no emperor and his harem, etc. The Valley of the Four Winds, Kun-Lai, and the Vale are incredibly spacious with most the land being unclaimed. People instead do their own thing. Etc. So having a "city" might infringe on that.




On the other hand... the Shrines are disappointingly small. They have neat, ornate interiors (especially with the statue of Lei Shen), but the exteriors are laughable. It does kind of make me wish that the a grandiose castle like Mogu'shan Palace or Throne of Thunder or the Temple of the Jade Serpent, etc, was the capital. The Shrines are also totally hidden within their small valley and cannot be seen from far away.




Also, during MoP, the Shrines were unpopular capitals. Most people after doing their dailies would just run to the portal room and go to Stormwind/Orgrimmar. It was only on MoP remix where players were confined to Pandaria that I ever saw a ton of people here (in the room where all of the Remix NPCs were located).





The Temple of Karabor

During the development of Warlords of Draenor, Karabor and Bladespire were going to be the capital cities. Due to development troubles (the WoW dev team doubling in size during this time, requiring the veterans to stop working and to teach the new hires how to use the tools. And a development reboot with zones and questlines being scrapped and made a second time because the original expansion had "too much orc"), the capitals were unfinished, and so the utilities were placed at camps on the PvP island of Ashran quickly thrown together with reused assets. Ashran was extremely unpopular, so most people either stayed at their garrison or only went through Ashran on the way to Stormwind/Orgrimmar.

Karabor looks good on approach. The skybox does a lot of heavy lifting with the cloudscape, the starry sky, and the big moon in the background behind Karabor. The interior of the temple was unfinished and is closed. Outside, there are nice waterfalls and gardens.







Bladespire Citadel

The other cut capital city from WoD. It is a gigantic ogre sized fort built by slaves of the ogres. The city looks good on approach, jutting out of snowy wastes along with the other jagged black rocks, with a tiny little shanty town hiding in its shadow. Most rooms are empty.











Ashran (Stormshield/Warpsear)

We do not talk about Ashran.

Okay okay, it's a generic military encampment using copypasted garrison buildings. The gravel/sand pit in the Horde plaza and campfire area is neat.









Shattrath (Warlords of Draenor)

More cut content. There was going to be a Shattrath patch and raid in the middle of the expansion where you repel the siege, but that patch was axed and the story hopped straight to the ending. This city looks MUCH more appealing than the ugly TBC version. The colorful trees help make the look pop, as opposed to the original which looked uniformly desaturated. The buildings have been scaled down to more sensible sizes, and a lot more have been placed. There is more subdivision with the walls of trees and planters. It gives the illusion that this actually might be some sort of inhabited settlement.





Dalaran (Legion)

Dalaran returns from WotLK, having floated from Northrend to Karazhan in the Southern East Kingdoms, and then teleported to the Broken Isles. It is almost identical to the WotLK version. Same model, same layout, etc, but with some better textures and some additional doodads placed here and there. The only signifcant change is that Tirion's statue in the central plaza has been ripped out and replaced by a new tower called the Chamber of the Guardian. This seems pretty redundant as the Violet Citadel was right over there and is bigger. The interior detailing of the new tower looks neat, though.










The Violet Citadel also got an additional new interior with the mage class order hall, called the Hall of the Guardian (confusing!). The library room in it is also neat.









Thunder Totem

The Highmountain Tauren's capital fixes the basic layout mistakes that Thunder Bluff had (having the traversable area be on the circumference of the plateau instead of walled in the middle), but is less ambitious with only one plateau. The platform is oddly devoid of stuff, be it residences or little details and doodads, and comes off as a large empty flat. The interior chamber has a very thick grey haze that muddies the image. Overall not much to write home about here.















Suramar

This city is a first (or a second) for WoW, being a city as a high level questing zone with lots of enemies to fight and quests to do. (There was also Shadowforge city in Vanilla, but it didn't have anywhere near as many quests, and was only accessible in the lower Blackrock Depths megadungeon). It suffers from the usual problem of there being a lot of large blocks with multiple doors slapped on them, posing as multiple different houses (rather than there actually being multiple separate house buildings). Most buildings cannot be entered. The only part I kind of like about it are the canals, and the foilaige.









Argus

This city is entirely carried by the stunning skybox painted by Philip Zhang, showing the rest of the cityscape extending into the distance. The actual playable area of the zone has very low density of residences.





Boralus

This is probably the best city in WoW. It is definitely the most immersive. It takes the concept of Stormwind - of a realistic medieval city with many districts separated by canals, and many narrow streets winding through the residences - but executes it much better. The texturing, modelling, and art direction is way better. Rather than the generic look of Stormwind, here the walls are beige, the roofs are corrugated and somewhat rusty, there is a nautical slant to give it identity, etc. There are canal tunnels beneath the city which make it feel more multilayered. There are also WAY more details and doodads placed around. Also, the backdrop looks really good, with better sculpted and painted mountains, and ofcourse the painted cloudscape in the skybox.




There is also A LOT more NPCs to populate the city, with rowboats and bargemen travelling to and fro, and vignettes such as public executions.




I only have two complaints with Boralus. 1. there is no movement or activity overhead like air patrols or airships, and 2. during the expansion, all of the utilities were concentrated in a corner of the city. So once you had done the story once on any character, you never had any reason to travel out into the other districts again.






























Dazar'alor

This city has a great opening shot from when you arrive at the docks. The pillars and the Great Pyramid towering before you, and then having to climb up the stairs makes the place feel immense. Unfortunately, once you finish the introductory tour, you unlock a pterodactyle flight from the top of the pyramid down to the docks, so you never make the climb that makes Dazar'alor feel so impressive again.




This was the crafter's terrace. I liked coming to this point to look at this view across the river at the jungle. The mix of dark and red brickwork, the verdant foliage, and the water is very appealing to look at.




The Great Pyramid also looks amazing when viewed from across the bridge, but unfortunately all of the utilities are located inside, or on the crafter's terrace on the near side of the bridge. So you have to go out of your way to get this view of the waterfalls.






Further out into more city districts, there is some dinotopia inspiration with huge brutosaurs walking the streets, which was cool. Again however, all of the utilities are located within the pyramid or right outside it at the crafter's terrace, so there is no reason to come here once you finish the story.





Oribos

I thought Oribos was visually imaginative, being a citadel floating in a sky dimension with these streams of magic flowing out from the city from through the stargates and into wormholes in the distance. I also liked the hyperspace flightpaths. It is quite unfortunate that the Dragonflight prepatch broke the exterior skybox, making it always brown (the item to revert the skybox doesn't work anymore either).




What I liked most was the interior with the ornate embellishments in the thick stonework. It was a rich fantasy place I wanted to be.




My only complaints are 1. that it is not really inhabited by any people that I particularly like, and 2. the layout is uniformly circular with no obvious differentiation between the sectors at a glance.








I also liked the golden kintsugi fillings in the stone.





Valdrakken

Fantastic positioning and exterior view, being perched half way up the mountain. The view of the towers when on approach is iconic. The painted cloudscapes in the skyboxes also do a lot of heavy lifting here. Unfortunately, you set your hearthstone to Valdrakken and spawn there and flight out from Valdrakken, and rarely fly back to Valdrakken, so you usually don't get to appreciate this view.




The towers are a little fat, which I am not too fond of.




The actual walking area and plazas are quite neat, with stonework, plants, and a dash of cherry trees and gold gilding at the crafter's terrace. My only complaint is that the stone buildings are little too uniformly grey.









One neat thing about Valdrakken is that there are dozens of (unclickable) background dragons flying around in the sky, which gives off the idea that this place is a high traffic hub on Azeroth. Other major cities would greatly benefit from this effect (not a handful of wind riders flying over Orgrimmar).



Dornogal

Dornogal is a mixed bag. Pleasant open air location with the cloudscape and the mountains in the back and the nice harp music playing.




But the immediate actual city area is a lot of boring grey stone blocks. The streets a little too wide for how little people there are populating them, making the place feel empty. The floorwork is unattractive.




I am also conflicted, because this is our second dwarf capital city. This was an opportunity to fully realize what an underground dwarf city could be like. Execute Ironforge, but better like how Boralus executed Stormwind but better. On the other hand, an open air surface city does differentiate it from Ironforge. But again it has to compete with all of these other scenic open air cities. So overall I am lukewarm on Dornogal.



Dornogal - Music of WoW: The War Within



Mereldar

The approach into Hallowfall is ofcourse fantastic. One of the best in fantasy, period. Unfortunately, the approach is deceiving, because you think that the grandiose castle on the right is going to be a part of the city, but no. It is a selfcontained PvP area and dungeon full of hostile mobs, and utterly disconnected from the rest of the interactable civilization around it. The actual town area on the left is smaller than the CGI cinematic advertised.






The town area is neat, but does not have the same level of detail as Boralus with all of the doodads placed around. I quite like the color palette of the greens, the azures, the brown woods, and the golds. The architecture is also a little more whimsical, which helps make it not bland like Stormwind. I like the crystals on top of the buildings, acting as lighthouses. The concept art for Mereldar shows more steampunk/magitek infrastructure incorporated into the buildings, which I wish was reflected ingame. (The concept art also shows far more verticality)








I wish Mereldar had been the capital of TWW and Boralus sized. Though in retrospect, if Mereldar was actually the capital, then people would just hearthstone straight into it and rarely get to see the stunning view of it on approach.




Adam Burgess' music for Mereldar is amazing.

Hallowfall - Music of WoW: The War Within



Azj-Kahet

This is the second (or fourth, if you count Boralus and Dazar'alor because of certain districts) city in WoW that is a high level questing zone. As a city, it is a mixed bag, and a little disappointing. The key art and loading screen image for this expansion depicted Azj-Kahet as a city suspended over a bottomless abyss. That would have been so cool. Instead, the ingame execution is just a conventional city built on a short plateau.






The background lore also describes how the city of webs is multilayered, with this being like eighth or ninth latest city built upon layers and layers of old ruined cities below. But you do not see that when flying around in the zone. It also does not make that much sense for these spider people who can climb walls or up webs to be walking around and overall very horizontal city, the likes you would see humans make.




However, there was some neat flavor in here. I liked that the Nerubians have poor eyesight, and mainly detect/differentiate others through the use of pheromones. So by having Vizier synthesize pheromones and applying them on you, you can make yourself smell like a Nerubian, they wouldn't know the difference. It was neat walking around the city and seeing the different strains of Nerubian, like the servant/worker class, the cattle haulers, the new Skyrazors, etc. It was also neat seeing some of their day-to-day stuff, like sucking bloodwine from live captives in a cage, or using spindles of silk as a cash register full of money. I wish the devs had gone further.




The Suramar-esque sneaking around gameplay does not work when you can just summon your dragon out of thin air in front of an incoming guard, takeoff, no alarm is sounded or interceptors deployed or web shot at you, fly elsewhere in the city, land, dematerialize your dragon, and continue walking around just like that.



Undermine

The city is overall fine. Actually, it is overall pretty good. I think I am more disappointed with the story and how that affects the flavor (basically all of the cartel leaders are now nice guys) than with the actual modelling of the city. Much of the buildings can be entered! It would have been nice if the city had been larger, though, and that the underground factory/lab sections were bigger too. It also would have been nice if you could have entered the Gallagio and gone gambling.







Taza'vesh

This was a megadungeon from the Shadowlands 9.1 patch that was reused and placed in the 11.2 K'aresh zone. It a Broker Ethereal city (Brokers were retconned to just be Ethereals wearing sturdy space suits to protect them from Shadowlands radiation). As a city, this one is very disappointing, as almost all of the buildings cannot be entered, and the ones that can have rather sparse interiors.




Despite being the mobile spaceship city for intergalactic, transdimensional traders, there are little novelties of note here. Azj-Kahet felt more exotic. Boralus felt like it had more actual trading activity and economy going on with all of the infrastructure throughout the city for the construction of ships, the loading and unloading of goods from rowboats and barges on the canals, and then transportation of goods by wagon and storage in warehouses, etc.










Brokers/Ethereals apparently sleep in big public rooms without privacy.





Silvermoon (Midnight)

The approach down the main road towards the front gate with golden forests on either side is quite neat. The energy from the Sunwell on Quel'danas blasting the Voidstorm in the sky is also a striking visual. Unlike Valdrakken, you will actually probably see this view regularly due to the bifurcated nature of Midnight's zones. Eversong Woods and Zul'aman are adjacent to each other in the Eastern Kingdoms, so if you are doing your world quests, or prey hunts, you will likely complete the ones in Eversong and Zul'aman before your hearthstone comes off of cooldown, meaning you will have to fly back to Silvermoon to then take the portal to Harandar and the Voidstorm.




The actual city however has a lot of problems. There are a lot of "big blocks" with little detailing on them. These buildings clearly cannot be entered. They feel fake, like a Disneyland facade. There are also clearly not enough residential buildings for all of the NPCs walking the streets, which adds to the fakeness.




On the ground floor, there are huge plazas with very little in them, which feels conspicuous. There are some background NPCs, but it's nowhere near enough to fill up the volume. Strangely, the artbook for Midnight shows concept art for a Silvermoon market that is crammed with high density details, but no such market made into this ingame city.




The "city" is also mostly huge, open air plazas, which undoes the strength of the original SMC which used the tight narrow streets surrounded by high walls to give the illusion that there is a greater city beyond what you are currently seeing. Even Murder Row has suffered, with the width of the street becoming very large while the height of the surrounding buildings has been reduced, breaking the illusion.

Oddly, the iconic Sunfury Spire has been moved to the side and made into an inconsequential private residence for Lor'themar. The new capitol building is a domed pavilion that has an unremarkable silhoutte.




The city does not seem to be effective as an expansion capital in congregating players together, like with Valdrakken and Dornogal. The central plazas of those two cities were always packed with players throughout the whole expansion. Whereas a month after launch, there is usually only a half dozen people in front of the Sanctum of Light in SMC. The server population of Moon Guard cannot have suddenly fallen off a cliff within the last 30 days, as Dornogal was still packed during the last few days of TWW. Where they went, I don't know.

Rankings:

• S Boralus
• A (Great) Orgrimmar, Dazar'alor, Valdrakken
• B (Good) Stormwind, Ironforge, Dornogal, Mereldar, Undermine
• C (Okay) Thunder Bluff, Shrines, Karabor, Argus, Oribos, Azj-Kahet, Silvermoon Midnight
• D (MEH) Darnassus, Undercity, Silvermoon TBC, Dalaran (both versions), Bladespire Citadel, Shattrath WoD, Thunder Totem, Suramar
• E (BAD) Exodar, Shattrath TBC, Gilneas, Ashran, Taza'vesh
• F

There are actually four other cities in WoW (Gnomeregan, Shadowforge City, Ulduar, and Mechagon), but they are exclusive to dungeon instances and are not available out in the open world. We know that the next expansion, The Last Titan, will involve Ulduar and a Northrend revamp of some sort. The current theory is that Ulduar will become the next expansion city.

The Hearthstone feature (or any MMO that allows easy teleportation straight into a city) undermines/diminishes the artist's time and effort invested into making a city that looks great on approach.

[mynameismortis]

I hope they make Gilneas city a real capital someday, always liked the gloomy vibes of it also, Val i think you forgot the new night elven capital from dragonflight

[buttfucker 3000]

Gotta kill time until the last part of the story and the third raid releases on Tuesday.

Here is my thorough review of every WoW city:

► Show Spoiler

Stormwind City

Until Boralus came along, this was the most immersive, realistic feeling city in the game. There are bridges going over canals, and many narrow streets winding through the districts. A lot (though not all) of the buildings can be entered. However, I am not fond of the rather generic aesthetic. The basic stone walls, the basic white wattle and daub houses, etc. Boralus would take the general concept of Stormwind, but apply more interesting texturework, modelling, etc.




There are a few squadrons of gryphon riders flying overhead, which helps add more movement, and a sense of power, that this an important place. Oddly, there are no airships in sight, despite the Alliance having many airships in questlines and using them to deploy their armies across the globe.




The plaza in the Cathedral District was the go-to spot for RP up until the new Lion's Rest park was added in Legion, which then became the new main hotspot.




Lion's Rest has an open air view of the harbor and the ocean, which looks quite nice. But it draws attention to how old and ugly the skybox is. This view would tremendously benefit from having a painted cloudscape in the background like newer expansion cities have.




The king's castle is very lackluster and uniconic, despite having been the palace of the main city of the game for almost two decades. Sunfury Spire, the Violet Hold, Icecrown Citadel, Grommash Hold, the Great Pyramid, the Seat of the Aspects, etc, look far more stunning and iconic despite having come out after.





Ironforge

In Vanilla, this was the main capital of the Alliance due to it being the only Alliance city to have an auction house (before the AH was added to the other cities, and then Blizzard began piling utilities onto Stormwind). The main city being not a generic human medieval city, but an underground dwarven city was pretty unique. Sadly, without a lot of players, the plazas and the streets feel conspicuously large and unpopulated. There would need to be a lot more crowd NPCs like what we see in recent expansions to fill it.








Unfortunately, the execution of the city does not realize the potential it could have. There is not much verticality to the interior compared to Shadowforge City inside Blackrock Mountain, or Moira and Erebor as depicted in LotR.






There was an unfinished area called Old Ironforge that had some verticality, but it was locked off during Vanilla when Ironforge was relevant. It was opened up in Cataclysm but not expanded, and there reason to visit it now. The exterior mountain is also pathetically small by the standards of grandiose modern WoW mountains like the one Valdrakken is built on.







Darnassus

The exterior entrance looks like a medieval Korean fortress with the stone base and the wooden structure on top, and the tiled roof. Surrounded by the magical forest, it looks quite nice. Inside the actual city itself is also more wooden structures that look neat. Unfortunately, after Darnassus and Ashenvale, Night Elf zones in WoW tend to just amount to boring grey stonework reminiscent of the Greeks or the Romans, which to me is very boring. It is fortunate that the Night Elf set for the new Housing system emphasizes the woodwork over the stone.




The "city" is overall rather small, and doesn't feel like a real city. It's not that great of a place to hang out at. I remember it more for the intense "A Flicker of Hope" quest at the end of the War of Thorns campaign where you have a hopeless mission of saving 900 citizens in 3 minutes before the entire tree is consumed in flame. You will only save 60 at best. That was a pretty powerful motivator for me to also go through BFA as Alliance and see the Horde get their comeuppance.









Orgrimmar

Mixed bag. Aesthetically and conceptually, I quite love this city. It is probably the most iconic city in WoW to me and one of the things that really differentiates WoW from other fantasy properties, with the main city being a collection of mud huts and iron towers built in the shadow of tall canyon walls in the middle of an orange desert, populated by ugly stinking beastmen. I cannot think of any other audiovisual fantasy property with that as the main city. It also gives off a sense of ferocity and grit.






I have fond memories of lining up in front of the barracks in the Valley of Honor as a member of the Kor'Kron Legion or the Horde Vanguard before we marched out to an RP campaign. I think VoH became the go-to Horde military RP hotspot because 1. there weren't non RPers running around there like in front of the Grommash Hold, and 2. it had a bit more visual variety with the stream and the waterfall. I wonder if VoH might also be popular because of the open air feel, rather than being nestled between high canyon walls.








Unfortunately, the city has issues in execution. The skybox is pretty bad. The actual playable area is also very small compared to Stormwind. There are only two routes or streets through the city, as opposed to Stormwind which has a dozen. This is just much less realestate here, which means that Orgrimmar has never been an ideal place for city RP.




The Horde also had Thunder Bluff and Undercity, but they were not that great alternative cities for Horde RP either. So the Horde never had a flourishing city RP scene like the Alliance did. Which has numerous times led to Alliance players checking out Orgrimmar, not seeing RP, and declaring that Horde side RP is dead. Unaware that there is a very Horde active RP scene, but it is organized behind closed doors by guilds and on discord servers. Orgrimmar could definitely benefit from a remake, but given nuBlizzard's tastes and art direction, I am worried that they would wash out the grit.





Vanilla Orgrimmar also looked inviting at night. The warm, colorful starry sky helped a lot.





Thunder Bluff

A very picturesque core Horde city. Unfortunately, it is 1. very small in terms of playable space, and 2. the city is high up in the air, but the skybox is ugly. The city would greatly benefit from a painted cloudscape the likes you would see in Boralus, Valdrakken, etc. The tents also have orange skins, which do not look that great in the evening light when you have more orange being cast on them.





The layout of the city also squanders the verticality by having the streets and the plaza be located inward, with tents obfuscating the view of the valley below. Thunder Totem would later rectify this by having the promenade along the outer circumference of the city, so you get to look down at valley below.




One issue is that the buildings and their interiors are all rather samey. Most of the buildings tend to be small, which is not ideal for RP campaigns if you need to cram a few dozen people from different guilds in there.







The Undercity

Actually overall fine. The central chamber where the bank is located is bleh, but the outer ringway of green goop and the vertical gates is very nice. The alchemist lab and the factory that produces the abominations is also neat to look at.




Unfortunately, the "city" sucks at portraying an inhabited city, as we don't see any residences. Even if the Forsaken are dead and might not need to sleep, I'd imagine that people would like to have their own rooms for privacy, reading books, playing with their dog, rest, writing diaries, etc. The lack of common buildings might also be why this city never really flourished as a hub for Horde RP beyond just Forsaken.




Of the three cities that have been destroyed, this one had a flaccid end. The destruction of Teldrassil was the end goal of a spectacular zone-length questline and had an amazing quest on the Alliance side. Dalaran had an okay scenario but a cool pre-rendered cutscene where it explodes.

For the Undercity, there was little build up or emotional investment in its destruction. The Horde forces are evacuated offscreen, so there is no tension, and the Alliance player was not trying to destroy Undercity. The villainess Sylvanas just gasses it herself, and it doesn't look spectacular like a cave in.





The Exodar

The exterior is vaguely intriguing with a tall crystal in the middle of the woods, but there is little else of note outside.




Inside, the interior layout is not that well thought out, IMO. It mainly comprises four huge cavernous space, but there are nowhere near enough NPCs to make the place feel populated. The four rooms are also not effectively subdivided or filled with houses, so it doesn't really feel like a city or a colony that lots of people live in.




The caverns are also a little confusing with how they are samey huge circular rooms with similar coloration (aside from the yellow room). The gold gilding and the purple energy and the crystals is a unique aesthetic, but the layout just isn't that fun to be in. Probably the least popular city in the game (unless you count Ashran).







Silvermoon City (The Burning Crusade)

The city is not very good. There are almost no residences. It suffers from big block syndrome. Not much detail. The actual playable area is pretty small. Etc. However, the relatively narrow streets winding through tall buildings you cannot see over does give off of the sense that you are in a city much larger than it actually is. Russell Brower's sweeping, romantic music also does a lot of heavy lifting here in making the city out to be more appealing than it actually is.










The Sunfury Spire has a pretty iconic design with the flared wings. It is odd that the current artists at Blizzard chose to replace it in the remade SMC as the seat of power by a less memorable domed pavilion.




To the West is a park area that is quite scenic. Sadly in the new version, the park is nowhere to be found. It's all flat, bland concrete/stone now.





Shattrath (The Burning Crusade)

The weird, curvy Draenei architecture is mildly interesting. Unfortunately, most of the city just looks bad. There is not enough detail to the buildings, and they somewhat meld into the rubble rather than looking distinct from it. There is not enough detail or doodads placed around. Despite taking up a lot of space, there is not much subdivision to the layout. There are too few buildings, so it overall just feels like a large, poorly optimized space. The only thing really memorable about it is the chandelier angel in the center.









Dalaran (Wrath of the Lich King)

I suspect I will ruffle some feathers here, but I have always held a low opinion of Dalaran. Yes, it looks good on approach, a flying city juxtaposed against the mountains, the black evil tower of Icecrown, and the starry sky with the auroras. But the actual so-called city itself is an embarrassment. It looks like a little girl's doll playhouse. It's just one street wrapped around a small courtyard, a bunch of overly large blocks pretending to be multiple houses, a tower, and that's it.






It is neat that you can jump into the well down into an underground area, but that too is also very small and undetailed.









Gilneas City

There is not much here. There is not that many details or doodads placed in the streets, so you have oddly large, wide open flats. Most buildings cannot be entered. However, Gilneas is unique in that it has some cellar doors that you enter and go down below.













Temple of the Jade Serpent

Not formally a city, but I thought this was cooler and more alive than the small Shrines. The towers of the temple can be seen from across the zone. The complex is quite large and is subdivided into a few different very large courtyards, with dragonriders tending to their steeds in one, students meditating in another, a line of houses and shops, etc. There is a seat of power that looks formidable. There are formations of dragonriders flying overhead, which not even the Shrines got.











Shrine of Two Moons/Shrine of Seven Stars

I am torn on Shrine. On the one hand, I appreciate how Pandaria feels closer to the American Midwest than to a China clone. When I think of China, I think of scholars, universities, heavy buercracy, huge cities with very high population density, lots of paddy fields everywhere to support those cities, an emperor with multiple palace and a harem, etc.

Pandaria thankfully is not a blaise expy of that. It has pandas, kung fu, noodle dragons, china mountains, the asian roofs, but otherwise the cultural is rural America. There are no tax collectors, no universities, no government offices, no imperial city, no emperor and his harem, etc. The Valley of the Four Winds, Kun-Lai, and the Vale are incredibly spacious with most the land being unclaimed. People instead do their own thing. Etc. So having a "city" might infringe on that.




On the other hand... the Shrines are disappointingly small. They have neat, ornate interiors (especially with the statue of Lei Shen), but the exteriors are laughable. It does kind of make me wish that the a grandiose castle like Mogu'shan Palace or Throne of Thunder or the Temple of the Jade Serpent, etc, was the capital. The Shrines are also totally hidden within their small valley and cannot be seen from far away.




Also, during MoP, the Shrines were unpopular capitals. Most people after doing their dailies would just run to the portal room and go to Stormwind/Orgrimmar. It was only on MoP remix where players were confined to Pandaria that I ever saw a ton of people here (in the room where all of the Remix NPCs were located).





The Temple of Karabor

During the development of Warlords of Draenor, Karabor and Bladespire were going to be the capital cities. Due to development troubles (the WoW dev team doubling in size during this time, requiring the veterans to stop working and to teach the new hires how to use the tools. And a development reboot with zones and questlines being scrapped and made a second time because the original expansion had "too much orc"), the capitals were unfinished, and so the utilities were placed at camps on the PvP island of Ashran quickly thrown together with reused assets. Ashran was extremely unpopular, so most people either stayed at their garrison or only went through Ashran on the way to Stormwind/Orgrimmar.

Karabor looks good on approach. The skybox does a lot of heavy lifting with the cloudscape, the starry sky, and the big moon in the background behind Karabor. The interior of the temple was unfinished and is closed. Outside, there are nice waterfalls and gardens.







Bladespire Citadel

The other cut capital city from WoD. It is a gigantic ogre sized fort built by slaves of the ogres. The city looks good on approach, jutting out of snowy wastes along with the other jagged black rocks, with a tiny little shanty town hiding in its shadow. Most rooms are empty.











Ashran (Stormshield/Warpsear)

We do not talk about Ashran.

Okay okay, it's a generic military encampment using copypasted garrison buildings. The gravel/sand pit in the Horde plaza and campfire area is neat.









Shattrath (Warlords of Draenor)

More cut content. There was going to be a Shattrath patch and raid in the middle of the expansion where you repel the siege, but that patch was axed and the story hopped straight to the ending. This city looks MUCH more appealing than the ugly TBC version. The colorful trees help make the look pop, as opposed to the original which looked uniformly desaturated. The buildings have been scaled down to more sensible sizes, and a lot more have been placed. There is more subdivision with the walls of trees and planters. It gives the illusion that this actually might be some sort of inhabited settlement.





Dalaran (Legion)

Dalaran returns from WotLK, having floated from Northrend to Karazhan in the Southern East Kingdoms, and then teleported to the Broken Isles. It is almost identical to the WotLK version. Same model, same layout, etc, but with some better textures and some additional doodads placed here and there. The only signifcant change is that Tirion's statue in the central plaza has been ripped out and replaced by a new tower called the Chamber of the Guardian. This seems pretty redundant as the Violet Citadel was right over there and is bigger. The interior detailing of the new tower looks neat, though.










The Violet Citadel also got an additional new interior with the mage class order hall, called the Hall of the Guardian (confusing!). The library room in it is also neat.









Thunder Totem

The Highmountain Tauren's capital fixes the basic layout mistakes that Thunder Bluff had (having the traversable area be on the circumference of the plateau instead of walled in the middle), but is less ambitious with only one plateau. The platform is oddly devoid of stuff, be it residences or little details and doodads, and comes off as a large empty flat. The interior chamber has a very thick grey haze that muddies the image. Overall not much to write home about here.















Suramar

This city is a first (or a second) for WoW, being a city as a high level questing zone with lots of enemies to fight and quests to do. (There was also Shadowforge city in Vanilla, but it didn't have anywhere near as many quests, and was only accessible in the lower Blackrock Depths megadungeon). It suffers from the usual problem of there being a lot of large blocks with multiple doors slapped on them, posing as multiple different houses (rather than there actually being multiple separate house buildings). Most buildings cannot be entered. The only part I kind of like about it are the canals, and the foilaige.









Argus

This city is entirely carried by the stunning skybox painted by Philip Zhang, showing the rest of the cityscape extending into the distance. The actual playable area of the zone has very low density of residences.





Boralus

This is probably the best city in WoW. It is definitely the most immersive. It takes the concept of Stormwind - of a realistic medieval city with many districts separated by canals, and many narrow streets winding through the residences - but executes it much better. The texturing, modelling, and art direction is way better. Rather than the generic look of Stormwind, here the walls are beige, the roofs are corrugated and somewhat rusty, there is a nautical slant to give it identity, etc. There are canal tunnels beneath the city which make it feel more multilayered. There are also WAY more details and doodads placed around. Also, the backdrop looks really good, with better sculpted and painted mountains, and ofcourse the painted cloudscape in the skybox.




There is also A LOT more NPCs to populate the city, with rowboats and bargemen travelling to and fro, and vignettes such as public executions.




I only have two complaints with Boralus. 1. there is no movement or activity overhead like air patrols or airships, and 2. during the expansion, all of the utilities were concentrated in a corner of the city. So once you had done the story once on any character, you never had any reason to travel out into the other districts again.






























Dazar'alor

This city has a great opening shot from when you arrive at the docks. The pillars and the Great Pyramid towering before you, and then having to climb up the stairs makes the place feel immense. Unfortunately, once you finish the introductory tour, you unlock a pterodactyle flight from the top of the pyramid down to the docks, so you never make the climb that makes Dazar'alor feel so impressive again.




This was the crafter's terrace. I liked coming to this point to look at this view across the river at the jungle. The mix of dark and red brickwork, the verdant foliage, and the water is very appealing to look at.




The Great Pyramid also looks amazing when viewed from across the bridge, but unfortunately all of the utilities are located inside, or on the crafter's terrace on the near side of the bridge. So you have to go out of your way to get this view of the waterfalls.






Further out into more city districts, there is some dinotopia inspiration with huge brutosaurs walking the streets, which was cool. Again however, all of the utilities are located within the pyramid or right outside it at the crafter's terrace, so there is no reason to come here once you finish the story.





Oribos

I thought Oribos was visually imaginative, being a citadel floating in a sky dimension with these streams of magic flowing out from the city from through the stargates and into wormholes in the distance. I also liked the hyperspace flightpaths. It is quite unfortunate that the Dragonflight prepatch broke the exterior skybox, making it always brown (the item to revert the skybox doesn't work anymore either).




What I liked most was the interior with the ornate embellishments in the thick stonework. It was a rich fantasy place I wanted to be.




My only complaints are 1. that it is not really inhabited by any people that I particularly like, and 2. the layout is uniformly circular with no obvious differentiation between the sectors at a glance.








I also liked the golden kintsugi fillings in the stone.





Valdrakken

Fantastic positioning and exterior view, being perched half way up the mountain. The view of the towers when on approach is iconic. The painted cloudscapes in the skyboxes also do a lot of heavy lifting here. Unfortunately, you set your hearthstone to Valdrakken and spawn there and flight out from Valdrakken, and rarely fly back to Valdrakken, so you usually don't get to appreciate this view.




The towers are a little fat, which I am not too fond of.




The actual walking area and plazas are quite neat, with stonework, plants, and a dash of cherry trees and gold gilding at the crafter's terrace. My only complaint is that the stone buildings are little too uniformly grey.









One neat thing about Valdrakken is that there are dozens of (unclickable) background dragons flying around in the sky, which gives off the idea that this place is a high traffic hub on Azeroth. Other major cities would greatly benefit from this effect (not a handful of wind riders flying over Orgrimmar).



Dornogal

Dornogal is a mixed bag. Pleasant open air location with the cloudscape and the mountains in the back and the nice harp music playing.




But the immediate actual city area is a lot of boring grey stone blocks. The streets a little too wide for how little people there are populating them, making the place feel empty. The floorwork is unattractive.




I am also conflicted, because this is our second dwarf capital city. This was an opportunity to fully realize what an underground dwarf city could be like. Execute Ironforge, but better like how Boralus executed Stormwind but better. On the other hand, an open air surface city does differentiate it from Ironforge. But again it has to compete with all of these other scenic open air cities. So overall I am lukewarm on Dornogal.



Dornogal - Music of WoW: The War Within



Mereldar

The approach into Hallowfall is ofcourse fantastic. One of the best in fantasy, period. Unfortunately, the approach is deceiving, because you think that the grandiose castle on the right is going to be a part of the city, but no. It is a selfcontained PvP area and dungeon full of hostile mobs, and utterly disconnected from the rest of the interactable civilization around it. The actual town area on the left is smaller than the CGI cinematic advertised.






The town area is neat, but does not have the same level of detail as Boralus with all of the doodads placed around. I quite like the color palette of the greens, the azures, the brown woods, and the golds. The architecture is also a little more whimsical, which helps make it not bland like Stormwind. I like the crystals on top of the buildings, acting as lighthouses. The concept art for Mereldar shows more steampunk/magitek infrastructure incorporated into the buildings, which I wish was reflected ingame. (The concept art also shows far more verticality)








I wish Mereldar had been the capital of TWW and Boralus sized. Though in retrospect, if Mereldar was actually the capital, then people would just hearthstone straight into it and rarely get to see the stunning view of it on approach.




Adam Burgess' music for Mereldar is amazing.

Hallowfall - Music of WoW: The War Within



Azj-Kahet

This is the second (or fourth, if you count Boralus and Dazar'alor because of certain districts) city in WoW that is a high level questing zone. As a city, it is a mixed bag, and a little disappointing. The key art and loading screen image for this expansion depicted Azj-Kahet as a city suspended over a bottomless abyss. That would have been so cool. Instead, the ingame execution is just a conventional city built on a short plateau.






The background lore also describes how the city of webs is multilayered, with this being like eighth or ninth latest city built upon layers and layers of old ruined cities below. But you do not see that when flying around in the zone. It also does not make that much sense for these spider people who can climb walls or up webs to be walking around and overall very horizontal city, the likes you would see humans make.




However, there was some neat flavor in here. I liked that the Nerubians have poor eyesight, and mainly detect/differentiate others through the use of pheromones. So by having Vizier synthesize pheromones and applying them on you, you can make yourself smell like a Nerubian, they wouldn't know the difference. It was neat walking around the city and seeing the different strains of Nerubian, like the servant/worker class, the cattle haulers, the new Skyrazors, etc. It was also neat seeing some of their day-to-day stuff, like sucking bloodwine from live captives in a cage, or using spindles of silk as a cash register full of money. I wish the devs had gone further.




The Suramar-esque sneaking around gameplay does not work when you can just summon your dragon out of thin air in front of an incoming guard, takeoff, no alarm is sounded or interceptors deployed or web shot at you, fly elsewhere in the city, land, dematerialize your dragon, and continue walking around just like that.



Undermine

The city is overall fine. Actually, it is overall pretty good. I think I am more disappointed with the story and how that affects the flavor (basically all of the cartel leaders are now nice guys) than with the actual modelling of the city. Much of the buildings can be entered! It would have been nice if the city had been larger, though, and that the underground factory/lab sections were bigger too. It also would have been nice if you could have entered the Gallagio and gone gambling.







Taza'vesh

This was a megadungeon from the Shadowlands 9.1 patch that was reused and placed in the 11.2 K'aresh zone. It a Broker Ethereal city (Brokers were retconned to just be Ethereals wearing sturdy space suits to protect them from Shadowlands radiation). As a city, this one is very disappointing, as almost all of the buildings cannot be entered, and the ones that can have rather sparse interiors.




Despite being the mobile spaceship city for intergalactic, transdimensional traders, there are little novelties of note here. Azj-Kahet felt more exotic. Boralus felt like it had more actual trading activity and economy going on with all of the infrastructure throughout the city for the construction of ships, the loading and unloading of goods from rowboats and barges on the canals, and then transportation of goods by wagon and storage in warehouses, etc.










Brokers/Ethereals apparently sleep in big public rooms without privacy.





Silvermoon (Midnight)

The approach down the main road towards the front gate with golden forests on either side is quite neat. The energy from the Sunwell on Quel'danas blasting the Voidstorm in the sky is also a striking visual. Unlike Valdrakken, you will actually probably see this view regularly due to the bifurcated nature of Midnight's zones. Eversong Woods and Zul'aman are adjacent to each other in the Eastern Kingdoms, so if you are doing your world quests, or prey hunts, you will likely complete the ones in Eversong and Zul'aman before your hearthstone comes off of cooldown, meaning you will have to fly back to Silvermoon to then take the portal to Harandar and the Voidstorm.




The actual city however has a lot of problems. There are a lot of "big blocks" with little detailing on them. These buildings clearly cannot be entered. They feel fake, like a Disneyland facade. There are also clearly not enough residential buildings for all of the NPCs walking the streets, which adds to the fakeness.




On the ground floor, there are huge plazas with very little in them, which feels conspicuous. There are some background NPCs, but it's nowhere near enough to fill up the volume. Strangely, the artbook for Midnight shows concept art for a Silvermoon market that is crammed with high density details, but no such market made into this ingame city.




The "city" is also mostly huge, open air plazas, which undoes the strength of the original SMC which used the tight narrow streets surrounded by high walls to give the illusion that there is a greater city beyond what you are currently seeing. Even Murder Row has suffered, with the width of the street becoming very large while the height of the surrounding buildings has been reduced, breaking the illusion.

Oddly, the iconic Sunfury Spire has been moved to the side and made into an inconsequential private residence for Lor'themar. The new capitol building is a domed pavilion that has an unremarkable silhoutte.




The city does not seem to be effective as an expansion capital in congregating players together, like with Valdrakken and Dornogal. The central plazas of those two cities were always packed with players throughout the whole expansion. Whereas a month after launch, there is usually only a half dozen people in front of the Sanctum of Light in SMC. The server population of Moon Guard cannot have suddenly fallen off a cliff within the last 30 days, as Dornogal was still packed during the last few days of TWW. Where they went, I don't know.

Rankings:

• S Boralus
• A (Great) Orgrimmar, Dazar'alor, Valdrakken
• B (Good) Stormwind, Ironforge, Dornogal, Mereldar, Undermine
• C (Okay) Thunder Bluff, Shrines, Karabor, Argus, Oribos, Azj-Kahet, Silvermoon Midnight
• D (MEH) Darnassus, Undercity, Silvermoon TBC, Dalaran (both versions), Bladespire Citadel, Shattrath WoD, Thunder Totem, Suramar
• E (BAD) Exodar, Shattrath TBC, Gilneas, Ashran, Taza'vesh
• F

There are actually four other cities in WoW (Gnomeregan, Shadowforge City, Ulduar, and Mechagon), but they are exclusive to dungeon instances and are not available out in the open world. We know that the next expansion, The Last Titan, will involve Ulduar and a Northrend revamp of some sort. The current theory is that Ulduar will become the next expansion city.

The Hearthstone feature (or any MMO that allows easy teleportation straight into a city) undermines/diminishes the artist's time and effort invested into making a city that looks great on approach.

Suramar is still my favorite city. The Nightborne aesthetic has always appealed to me. Do you think Suramar will ever be relevant again, or is it just going to sit there collecting dust? Also are you planning to review the upcoming pride event?

[Reichspepe]

Gotta kill time until the last part of the story and the third raid releases on Tuesday.

Here is my thorough review of every WoW city:

► Show Spoiler

Stormwind City

Until Boralus came along, this was the most immersive, realistic feeling city in the game. There are bridges going over canals, and many narrow streets winding through the districts. A lot (though not all) of the buildings can be entered. However, I am not fond of the rather generic aesthetic. The basic stone walls, the basic white wattle and daub houses, etc. Boralus would take the general concept of Stormwind, but apply more interesting texturework, modelling, etc.




There are a few squadrons of gryphon riders flying overhead, which helps add more movement, and a sense of power, that this an important place. Oddly, there are no airships in sight, despite the Alliance having many airships in questlines and using them to deploy their armies across the globe.




The plaza in the Cathedral District was the go-to spot for RP up until the new Lion's Rest park was added in Legion, which then became the new main hotspot.




Lion's Rest has an open air view of the harbor and the ocean, which looks quite nice. But it draws attention to how old and ugly the skybox is. This view would tremendously benefit from having a painted cloudscape in the background like newer expansion cities have.




The king's castle is very lackluster and uniconic, despite having been the palace of the main city of the game for almost two decades. Sunfury Spire, the Violet Hold, Icecrown Citadel, Grommash Hold, the Great Pyramid, the Seat of the Aspects, etc, look far more stunning and iconic despite having come out after.





Ironforge

In Vanilla, this was the main capital of the Alliance due to it being the only Alliance city to have an auction house (before the AH was added to the other cities, and then Blizzard began piling utilities onto Stormwind). The main city being not a generic human medieval city, but an underground dwarven city was pretty unique. Sadly, without a lot of players, the plazas and the streets feel conspicuously large and unpopulated. There would need to be a lot more crowd NPCs like what we see in recent expansions to fill it.








Unfortunately, the execution of the city does not realize the potential it could have. There is not much verticality to the interior compared to Shadowforge City inside Blackrock Mountain, or Moira and Erebor as depicted in LotR.






There was an unfinished area called Old Ironforge that had some verticality, but it was locked off during Vanilla when Ironforge was relevant. It was opened up in Cataclysm but not expanded, and there reason to visit it now. The exterior mountain is also pathetically small by the standards of grandiose modern WoW mountains like the one Valdrakken is built on.







Darnassus

The exterior entrance looks like a medieval Korean fortress with the stone base and the wooden structure on top, and the tiled roof. Surrounded by the magical forest, it looks quite nice. Inside the actual city itself is also more wooden structures that look neat. Unfortunately, after Darnassus and Ashenvale, Night Elf zones in WoW tend to just amount to boring grey stonework reminiscent of the Greeks or the Romans, which to me is very boring. It is fortunate that the Night Elf set for the new Housing system emphasizes the woodwork over the stone.




The "city" is overall rather small, and doesn't feel like a real city. It's not that great of a place to hang out at. I remember it more for the intense "A Flicker of Hope" quest at the end of the War of Thorns campaign where you have a hopeless mission of saving 900 citizens in 3 minutes before the entire tree is consumed in flame. You will only save 60 at best. That was a pretty powerful motivator for me to also go through BFA as Alliance and see the Horde get their comeuppance.









Orgrimmar

Mixed bag. Aesthetically and conceptually, I quite love this city. It is probably the most iconic city in WoW to me and one of the things that really differentiates WoW from other fantasy properties, with the main city being a collection of mud huts and iron towers built in the shadow of tall canyon walls in the middle of an orange desert, populated by ugly stinking beastmen. I cannot think of any other audiovisual fantasy property with that as the main city. It also gives off a sense of ferocity and grit.






I have fond memories of lining up in front of the barracks in the Valley of Honor as a member of the Kor'Kron Legion or the Horde Vanguard before we marched out to an RP campaign. I think VoH became the go-to Horde military RP hotspot because 1. there weren't non RPers running around there like in front of the Grommash Hold, and 2. it had a bit more visual variety with the stream and the waterfall. I wonder if VoH might also be popular because of the open air feel, rather than being nestled between high canyon walls.








Unfortunately, the city has issues in execution. The skybox is pretty bad. The actual playable area is also very small compared to Stormwind. There are only two routes or streets through the city, as opposed to Stormwind which has a dozen. This is just much less realestate here, which means that Orgrimmar has never been an ideal place for city RP.




The Horde also had Thunder Bluff and Undercity, but they were not that great alternative cities for Horde RP either. So the Horde never had a flourishing city RP scene like the Alliance did. Which has numerous times led to Alliance players checking out Orgrimmar, not seeing RP, and declaring that Horde side RP is dead. Unaware that there is a very Horde active RP scene, but it is organized behind closed doors by guilds and on discord servers. Orgrimmar could definitely benefit from a remake, but given nuBlizzard's tastes and art direction, I am worried that they would wash out the grit.





Vanilla Orgrimmar also looked inviting at night. The warm, colorful starry sky helped a lot.





Thunder Bluff

A very picturesque core Horde city. Unfortunately, it is 1. very small in terms of playable space, and 2. the city is high up in the air, but the skybox is ugly. The city would greatly benefit from a painted cloudscape the likes you would see in Boralus, Valdrakken, etc. The tents also have orange skins, which do not look that great in the evening light when you have more orange being cast on them.





The layout of the city also squanders the verticality by having the streets and the plaza be located inward, with tents obfuscating the view of the valley below. Thunder Totem would later rectify this by having the promenade along the outer circumference of the city, so you get to look down at valley below.




One issue is that the buildings and their interiors are all rather samey. Most of the buildings tend to be small, which is not ideal for RP campaigns if you need to cram a few dozen people from different guilds in there.







The Undercity

Actually overall fine. The central chamber where the bank is located is bleh, but the outer ringway of green goop and the vertical gates is very nice. The alchemist lab and the factory that produces the abominations is also neat to look at.




Unfortunately, the "city" sucks at portraying an inhabited city, as we don't see any residences. Even if the Forsaken are dead and might not need to sleep, I'd imagine that people would like to have their own rooms for privacy, reading books, playing with their dog, rest, writing diaries, etc. The lack of common buildings might also be why this city never really flourished as a hub for Horde RP beyond just Forsaken.




Of the three cities that have been destroyed, this one had a flaccid end. The destruction of Teldrassil was the end goal of a spectacular zone-length questline and had an amazing quest on the Alliance side. Dalaran had an okay scenario but a cool pre-rendered cutscene where it explodes.

For the Undercity, there was little build up or emotional investment in its destruction. The Horde forces are evacuated offscreen, so there is no tension, and the Alliance player was not trying to destroy Undercity. The villainess Sylvanas just gasses it herself, and it doesn't look spectacular like a cave in.





The Exodar

The exterior is vaguely intriguing with a tall crystal in the middle of the woods, but there is little else of note outside.




Inside, the interior layout is not that well thought out, IMO. It mainly comprises four huge cavernous space, but there are nowhere near enough NPCs to make the place feel populated. The four rooms are also not effectively subdivided or filled with houses, so it doesn't really feel like a city or a colony that lots of people live in.




The caverns are also a little confusing with how they are samey huge circular rooms with similar coloration (aside from the yellow room). The gold gilding and the purple energy and the crystals is a unique aesthetic, but the layout just isn't that fun to be in. Probably the least popular city in the game (unless you count Ashran).







Silvermoon City (The Burning Crusade)

The city is not very good. There are almost no residences. It suffers from big block syndrome. Not much detail. The actual playable area is pretty small. Etc. However, the relatively narrow streets winding through tall buildings you cannot see over does give off of the sense that you are in a city much larger than it actually is. Russell Brower's sweeping, romantic music also does a lot of heavy lifting here in making the city out to be more appealing than it actually is.










The Sunfury Spire has a pretty iconic design with the flared wings. It is odd that the current artists at Blizzard chose to replace it in the remade SMC as the seat of power by a less memorable domed pavilion.




To the West is a park area that is quite scenic. Sadly in the new version, the park is nowhere to be found. It's all flat, bland concrete/stone now.





Shattrath (The Burning Crusade)

The weird, curvy Draenei architecture is mildly interesting. Unfortunately, most of the city just looks bad. There is not enough detail to the buildings, and they somewhat meld into the rubble rather than looking distinct from it. There is not enough detail or doodads placed around. Despite taking up a lot of space, there is not much subdivision to the layout. There are too few buildings, so it overall just feels like a large, poorly optimized space. The only thing really memorable about it is the chandelier angel in the center.









Dalaran (Wrath of the Lich King)

I suspect I will ruffle some feathers here, but I have always held a low opinion of Dalaran. Yes, it looks good on approach, a flying city juxtaposed against the mountains, the black evil tower of Icecrown, and the starry sky with the auroras. But the actual so-called city itself is an embarrassment. It looks like a little girl's doll playhouse. It's just one street wrapped around a small courtyard, a bunch of overly large blocks pretending to be multiple houses, a tower, and that's it.






It is neat that you can jump into the well down into an underground area, but that too is also very small and undetailed.









Gilneas City

There is not much here. There is not that many details or doodads placed in the streets, so you have oddly large, wide open flats. Most buildings cannot be entered. However, Gilneas is unique in that it has some cellar doors that you enter and go down below.













Temple of the Jade Serpent

Not formally a city, but I thought this was cooler and more alive than the small Shrines. The towers of the temple can be seen from across the zone. The complex is quite large and is subdivided into a few different very large courtyards, with dragonriders tending to their steeds in one, students meditating in another, a line of houses and shops, etc. There is a seat of power that looks formidable. There are formations of dragonriders flying overhead, which not even the Shrines got.











Shrine of Two Moons/Shrine of Seven Stars

I am torn on Shrine. On the one hand, I appreciate how Pandaria feels closer to the American Midwest than to a China clone. When I think of China, I think of scholars, universities, heavy buercracy, huge cities with very high population density, lots of paddy fields everywhere to support those cities, an emperor with multiple palace and a harem, etc.

Pandaria thankfully is not a blaise expy of that. It has pandas, kung fu, noodle dragons, china mountains, the asian roofs, but otherwise the cultural is rural America. There are no tax collectors, no universities, no government offices, no imperial city, no emperor and his harem, etc. The Valley of the Four Winds, Kun-Lai, and the Vale are incredibly spacious with most the land being unclaimed. People instead do their own thing. Etc. So having a "city" might infringe on that.




On the other hand... the Shrines are disappointingly small. They have neat, ornate interiors (especially with the statue of Lei Shen), but the exteriors are laughable. It does kind of make me wish that the a grandiose castle like Mogu'shan Palace or Throne of Thunder or the Temple of the Jade Serpent, etc, was the capital. The Shrines are also totally hidden within their small valley and cannot be seen from far away.




Also, during MoP, the Shrines were unpopular capitals. Most people after doing their dailies would just run to the portal room and go to Stormwind/Orgrimmar. It was only on MoP remix where players were confined to Pandaria that I ever saw a ton of people here (in the room where all of the Remix NPCs were located).





The Temple of Karabor

During the development of Warlords of Draenor, Karabor and Bladespire were going to be the capital cities. Due to development troubles (the WoW dev team doubling in size during this time, requiring the veterans to stop working and to teach the new hires how to use the tools. And a development reboot with zones and questlines being scrapped and made a second time because the original expansion had "too much orc"), the capitals were unfinished, and so the utilities were placed at camps on the PvP island of Ashran quickly thrown together with reused assets. Ashran was extremely unpopular, so most people either stayed at their garrison or only went through Ashran on the way to Stormwind/Orgrimmar.

Karabor looks good on approach. The skybox does a lot of heavy lifting with the cloudscape, the starry sky, and the big moon in the background behind Karabor. The interior of the temple was unfinished and is closed. Outside, there are nice waterfalls and gardens.







Bladespire Citadel

The other cut capital city from WoD. It is a gigantic ogre sized fort built by slaves of the ogres. The city looks good on approach, jutting out of snowy wastes along with the other jagged black rocks, with a tiny little shanty town hiding in its shadow. Most rooms are empty.











Ashran (Stormshield/Warpsear)

We do not talk about Ashran.

Okay okay, it's a generic military encampment using copypasted garrison buildings. The gravel/sand pit in the Horde plaza and campfire area is neat.









Shattrath (Warlords of Draenor)

More cut content. There was going to be a Shattrath patch and raid in the middle of the expansion where you repel the siege, but that patch was axed and the story hopped straight to the ending. This city looks MUCH more appealing than the ugly TBC version. The colorful trees help make the look pop, as opposed to the original which looked uniformly desaturated. The buildings have been scaled down to more sensible sizes, and a lot more have been placed. There is more subdivision with the walls of trees and planters. It gives the illusion that this actually might be some sort of inhabited settlement.





Dalaran (Legion)

Dalaran returns from WotLK, having floated from Northrend to Karazhan in the Southern East Kingdoms, and then teleported to the Broken Isles. It is almost identical to the WotLK version. Same model, same layout, etc, but with some better textures and some additional doodads placed here and there. The only signifcant change is that Tirion's statue in the central plaza has been ripped out and replaced by a new tower called the Chamber of the Guardian. This seems pretty redundant as the Violet Citadel was right over there and is bigger. The interior detailing of the new tower looks neat, though.










The Violet Citadel also got an additional new interior with the mage class order hall, called the Hall of the Guardian (confusing!). The library room in it is also neat.









Thunder Totem

The Highmountain Tauren's capital fixes the basic layout mistakes that Thunder Bluff had (having the traversable area be on the circumference of the plateau instead of walled in the middle), but is less ambitious with only one plateau. The platform is oddly devoid of stuff, be it residences or little details and doodads, and comes off as a large empty flat. The interior chamber has a very thick grey haze that muddies the image. Overall not much to write home about here.















Suramar

This city is a first (or a second) for WoW, being a city as a high level questing zone with lots of enemies to fight and quests to do. (There was also Shadowforge city in Vanilla, but it didn't have anywhere near as many quests, and was only accessible in the lower Blackrock Depths megadungeon). It suffers from the usual problem of there being a lot of large blocks with multiple doors slapped on them, posing as multiple different houses (rather than there actually being multiple separate house buildings). Most buildings cannot be entered. The only part I kind of like about it are the canals, and the foilaige.









Argus

This city is entirely carried by the stunning skybox painted by Philip Zhang, showing the rest of the cityscape extending into the distance. The actual playable area of the zone has very low density of residences.





Boralus

This is probably the best city in WoW. It is definitely the most immersive. It takes the concept of Stormwind - of a realistic medieval city with many districts separated by canals, and many narrow streets winding through the residences - but executes it much better. The texturing, modelling, and art direction is way better. Rather than the generic look of Stormwind, here the walls are beige, the roofs are corrugated and somewhat rusty, there is a nautical slant to give it identity, etc. There are canal tunnels beneath the city which make it feel more multilayered. There are also WAY more details and doodads placed around. Also, the backdrop looks really good, with better sculpted and painted mountains, and ofcourse the painted cloudscape in the skybox.




There is also A LOT more NPCs to populate the city, with rowboats and bargemen travelling to and fro, and vignettes such as public executions.




I only have two complaints with Boralus. 1. there is no movement or activity overhead like air patrols or airships, and 2. during the expansion, all of the utilities were concentrated in a corner of the city. So once you had done the story once on any character, you never had any reason to travel out into the other districts again.






























Dazar'alor

This city has a great opening shot from when you arrive at the docks. The pillars and the Great Pyramid towering before you, and then having to climb up the stairs makes the place feel immense. Unfortunately, once you finish the introductory tour, you unlock a pterodactyle flight from the top of the pyramid down to the docks, so you never make the climb that makes Dazar'alor feel so impressive again.




This was the crafter's terrace. I liked coming to this point to look at this view across the river at the jungle. The mix of dark and red brickwork, the verdant foliage, and the water is very appealing to look at.




The Great Pyramid also looks amazing when viewed from across the bridge, but unfortunately all of the utilities are located inside, or on the crafter's terrace on the near side of the bridge. So you have to go out of your way to get this view of the waterfalls.






Further out into more city districts, there is some dinotopia inspiration with huge brutosaurs walking the streets, which was cool. Again however, all of the utilities are located within the pyramid or right outside it at the crafter's terrace, so there is no reason to come here once you finish the story.





Oribos

I thought Oribos was visually imaginative, being a citadel floating in a sky dimension with these streams of magic flowing out from the city from through the stargates and into wormholes in the distance. I also liked the hyperspace flightpaths. It is quite unfortunate that the Dragonflight prepatch broke the exterior skybox, making it always brown (the item to revert the skybox doesn't work anymore either).




What I liked most was the interior with the ornate embellishments in the thick stonework. It was a rich fantasy place I wanted to be.




My only complaints are 1. that it is not really inhabited by any people that I particularly like, and 2. the layout is uniformly circular with no obvious differentiation between the sectors at a glance.








I also liked the golden kintsugi fillings in the stone.





Valdrakken

Fantastic positioning and exterior view, being perched half way up the mountain. The view of the towers when on approach is iconic. The painted cloudscapes in the skyboxes also do a lot of heavy lifting here. Unfortunately, you set your hearthstone to Valdrakken and spawn there and flight out from Valdrakken, and rarely fly back to Valdrakken, so you usually don't get to appreciate this view.




The towers are a little fat, which I am not too fond of.




The actual walking area and plazas are quite neat, with stonework, plants, and a dash of cherry trees and gold gilding at the crafter's terrace. My only complaint is that the stone buildings are little too uniformly grey.









One neat thing about Valdrakken is that there are dozens of (unclickable) background dragons flying around in the sky, which gives off the idea that this place is a high traffic hub on Azeroth. Other major cities would greatly benefit from this effect (not a handful of wind riders flying over Orgrimmar).



Dornogal

Dornogal is a mixed bag. Pleasant open air location with the cloudscape and the mountains in the back and the nice harp music playing.




But the immediate actual city area is a lot of boring grey stone blocks. The streets a little too wide for how little people there are populating them, making the place feel empty. The floorwork is unattractive.




I am also conflicted, because this is our second dwarf capital city. This was an opportunity to fully realize what an underground dwarf city could be like. Execute Ironforge, but better like how Boralus executed Stormwind but better. On the other hand, an open air surface city does differentiate it from Ironforge. But again it has to compete with all of these other scenic open air cities. So overall I am lukewarm on Dornogal.



Dornogal - Music of WoW: The War Within



Mereldar

The approach into Hallowfall is ofcourse fantastic. One of the best in fantasy, period. Unfortunately, the approach is deceiving, because you think that the grandiose castle on the right is going to be a part of the city, but no. It is a selfcontained PvP area and dungeon full of hostile mobs, and utterly disconnected from the rest of the interactable civilization around it. The actual town area on the left is smaller than the CGI cinematic advertised.






The town area is neat, but does not have the same level of detail as Boralus with all of the doodads placed around. I quite like the color palette of the greens, the azures, the brown woods, and the golds. The architecture is also a little more whimsical, which helps make it not bland like Stormwind. I like the crystals on top of the buildings, acting as lighthouses. The concept art for Mereldar shows more steampunk/magitek infrastructure incorporated into the buildings, which I wish was reflected ingame. (The concept art also shows far more verticality)








I wish Mereldar had been the capital of TWW and Boralus sized. Though in retrospect, if Mereldar was actually the capital, then people would just hearthstone straight into it and rarely get to see the stunning view of it on approach.




Adam Burgess' music for Mereldar is amazing.

Hallowfall - Music of WoW: The War Within



Azj-Kahet

This is the second (or fourth, if you count Boralus and Dazar'alor because of certain districts) city in WoW that is a high level questing zone. As a city, it is a mixed bag, and a little disappointing. The key art and loading screen image for this expansion depicted Azj-Kahet as a city suspended over a bottomless abyss. That would have been so cool. Instead, the ingame execution is just a conventional city built on a short plateau.






The background lore also describes how the city of webs is multilayered, with this being like eighth or ninth latest city built upon layers and layers of old ruined cities below. But you do not see that when flying around in the zone. It also does not make that much sense for these spider people who can climb walls or up webs to be walking around and overall very horizontal city, the likes you would see humans make.




However, there was some neat flavor in here. I liked that the Nerubians have poor eyesight, and mainly detect/differentiate others through the use of pheromones. So by having Vizier synthesize pheromones and applying them on you, you can make yourself smell like a Nerubian, they wouldn't know the difference. It was neat walking around the city and seeing the different strains of Nerubian, like the servant/worker class, the cattle haulers, the new Skyrazors, etc. It was also neat seeing some of their day-to-day stuff, like sucking bloodwine from live captives in a cage, or using spindles of silk as a cash register full of money. I wish the devs had gone further.




The Suramar-esque sneaking around gameplay does not work when you can just summon your dragon out of thin air in front of an incoming guard, takeoff, no alarm is sounded or interceptors deployed or web shot at you, fly elsewhere in the city, land, dematerialize your dragon, and continue walking around just like that.



Undermine

The city is overall fine. Actually, it is overall pretty good. I think I am more disappointed with the story and how that affects the flavor (basically all of the cartel leaders are now nice guys) than with the actual modelling of the city. Much of the buildings can be entered! It would have been nice if the city had been larger, though, and that the underground factory/lab sections were bigger too. It also would have been nice if you could have entered the Gallagio and gone gambling.







Taza'vesh

This was a megadungeon from the Shadowlands 9.1 patch that was reused and placed in the 11.2 K'aresh zone. It a Broker Ethereal city (Brokers were retconned to just be Ethereals wearing sturdy space suits to protect them from Shadowlands radiation). As a city, this one is very disappointing, as almost all of the buildings cannot be entered, and the ones that can have rather sparse interiors.




Despite being the mobile spaceship city for intergalactic, transdimensional traders, there are little novelties of note here. Azj-Kahet felt more exotic. Boralus felt like it had more actual trading activity and economy going on with all of the infrastructure throughout the city for the construction of ships, the loading and unloading of goods from rowboats and barges on the canals, and then transportation of goods by wagon and storage in warehouses, etc.










Brokers/Ethereals apparently sleep in big public rooms without privacy.





Silvermoon (Midnight)

The approach down the main road towards the front gate with golden forests on either side is quite neat. The energy from the Sunwell on Quel'danas blasting the Voidstorm in the sky is also a striking visual. Unlike Valdrakken, you will actually probably see this view regularly due to the bifurcated nature of Midnight's zones. Eversong Woods and Zul'aman are adjacent to each other in the Eastern Kingdoms, so if you are doing your world quests, or prey hunts, you will likely complete the ones in Eversong and Zul'aman before your hearthstone comes off of cooldown, meaning you will have to fly back to Silvermoon to then take the portal to Harandar and the Voidstorm.




The actual city however has a lot of problems. There are a lot of "big blocks" with little detailing on them. These buildings clearly cannot be entered. They feel fake, like a Disneyland facade. There are also clearly not enough residential buildings for all of the NPCs walking the streets, which adds to the fakeness.




On the ground floor, there are huge plazas with very little in them, which feels conspicuous. There are some background NPCs, but it's nowhere near enough to fill up the volume. Strangely, the artbook for Midnight shows concept art for a Silvermoon market that is crammed with high density details, but no such market made into this ingame city.




The "city" is also mostly huge, open air plazas, which undoes the strength of the original SMC which used the tight narrow streets surrounded by high walls to give the illusion that there is a greater city beyond what you are currently seeing. Even Murder Row has suffered, with the width of the street becoming very large while the height of the surrounding buildings has been reduced, breaking the illusion.

Oddly, the iconic Sunfury Spire has been moved to the side and made into an inconsequential private residence for Lor'themar. The new capitol building is a domed pavilion that has an unremarkable silhoutte.




The city does not seem to be effective as an expansion capital in congregating players together, like with Valdrakken and Dornogal. The central plazas of those two cities were always packed with players throughout the whole expansion. Whereas a month after launch, there is usually only a half dozen people in front of the Sanctum of Light in SMC. The server population of Moon Guard cannot have suddenly fallen off a cliff within the last 30 days, as Dornogal was still packed during the last few days of TWW. Where they went, I don't know.

Rankings:

• S Boralus
• A (Great) Orgrimmar, Dazar'alor, Valdrakken
• B (Good) Stormwind, Ironforge, Dornogal, Mereldar, Undermine
• C (Okay) Thunder Bluff, Shrines, Karabor, Argus, Oribos, Azj-Kahet, Silvermoon Midnight
• D (MEH) Darnassus, Undercity, Silvermoon TBC, Dalaran (both versions), Bladespire Citadel, Shattrath WoD, Thunder Totem, Suramar
• E (BAD) Exodar, Shattrath TBC, Gilneas, Ashran, Taza'vesh
• F

There are actually four other cities in WoW (Gnomeregan, Shadowforge City, Ulduar, and Mechagon), but they are exclusive to dungeon instances and are not available out in the open world. We know that the next expansion, The Last Titan, will involve Ulduar and a Northrend revamp of some sort. The current theory is that Ulduar will become the next expansion city.

The Hearthstone feature (or any MMO that allows easy teleportation straight into a city) undermines/diminishes the artist's time and effort invested into making a city that looks great on approach.

Suramar is still my favorite city. The Nightborne aesthetic has always appealed to me. Do you think Suramar will ever be relevant again, or is it just going to sit there collecting dust? Also are you planning to review the upcoming pride event?

Suramar is among my favourite memories in WoW, great zone and atmosphere. Perfect for those hours long ambience music videos on YT as well

[Breathe]

I am flying around the Voidstorm at high altitude and get a warning to descend, and then AHHHHHHHH

Why do they give you that message? It would much cooler if they didn't tell you and just let you find out what happens when you fly high.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

► Story

With Quel'danas having been captured by Xal'atath, the characters finally begin considering asking other countries and organizations for help. Why didn't you send a messenger through the portal room to Orgrimmar and ask the Horde for help from the get go?

What is truly puzzling is the choice of help. You would think the characters would call in the world's two dominant superpowers, the Horde and the Alliance, with their huge, highly mobile armies transported by portals or airships or naval fleets that can apparently speed across the ocean to Dornogal in a few days rather than the months it took to reach Pandaria. Call upon the class order halls too. The Ebon Blade and their flying necropolis are right next door to the South. Maybe even call the Dragonflights too. Just two expansions ago, Alexstraza just loved saying over and over "the Red Dragonflight will protect this world". Maybe it's time for them to make do on that promise?

But no, for some odd reason, Arator (and then Lor'themar) apparently just decide that other elves are the only ones they should call for help. There is no rationale for this. Most of the Night Elf civilization was wiped out in the War of Thorns march through Ashenvale and Darkshore, and then incinerated. If you are going to call what little remains of the Night Elves, then why not call the huge Alliance they are apart of too? The same goes for trying to recruit the Silver Covenant, who were always portrayed as a small group in WoW.




It is also odd that Arator is at this conference of leaders. You have the king and his generals, and ofcourse Azeroth's influential hero who is exalted with dozens of nations, connected to everyone, the champion and general of the Alliance, leader of his class organization, etc. But Arator is not an appointed general, organization leader, or really a big deal. Arator is not the Highlord of the Silver Hand, and he can't sub in for dad as High Exarch or Regent Lord. Without any troops at his disposal, he has nothing to risk, no skin in the game. The voice direction and writing does not help either. This scene sounds like a teenager with no skin in the game telling these mature nation leaders what their policies should be.






We go to the new island of the Night Elves, Bel'ameth. However, the portrayal of Bel'ameth works against the story, as the island is small and has few buildings on it. The questing has you run around and gather a dozen night elf soldiers and wake up three ents, and that's supposed to be the "army" that the Night Elves send. It is pitiful. Why did we come here? Why are we not in Stormwind or Orgrimmar or rallying the Argent Crusade right now? Now if Bel'ameth was portrayed as a capital city like Darnassus with multiple districts, aerial squadrons flying overhead, and many provincial towns like the other villages on Teldrassil and across Darkshore and Ashenvale, etc, then it would be plausible that the Night Elves would have relevant forces to contribute.






Maiev's voice sounds bad.

We then go to the Silver Covenant, who have about three dozens NPCs camping in the far South-Eastern corner of Eversong. Blizzard is doing the WoD stunt again where the faction mount that the Silver Covenant elves use is a cash shop mount rather than something you can obtain ingame. "Want to RP a member of the Silver Covenant? Buy this $25 mount!". It also breaks the lore of the Sylverian Dreamer and its model, which is either a one off magical creation from a painter, or a breed unique to the Shadowlands. Did the Silver Covenant travel to Ardenweald in the Shadowlands en masse and tame a bunch of dragons and ride them back to Azeroth?




We then get yet even more infuriating historical revisionism. In the story of patch 5.1, the Sunreavers (an organization of Horde affiliated Blood Elf mages who were allowed to reside at Dalaran and have an embassy) used Dalaran and its portals to smuggle the Divine Bell for the Horde to be wielded against the Alliance. Could you imagine if Axis or Soviet scientists residing in Iceland used Iceland's infrastructure to smuggle weapons of mass destruction through Iceland back to the Axis/Soviets to be used against the US/Allies? That is what we are talking about here. Ofcourse you are going to get rid of these enemy agents! Some quest text scapegoats Garrosh as if he was the only perpetrator in this. Aethas takes zero responsibility despite having been the one who oversaw the operation.

ONCE AGAIN, we have our hero (in this case, Vereesa) who has to stop and be apologetic and feel bad about things she is not responsible for.




You are leaving out a significant part of the story there buddy. Don't try to make Jaina out as if she was going door to door like the gestapo killing innocents in their homes. What happened as that all of the suspects were placed under arrest and detained in the Violet Hold. Those who violently resisted arrest were killed (surprise!).




Goodness. What bold faced lies. It was YOU and your Sunreavers who drew first blood! YOU and your men took a Dalaran portal to Darnassus and then assassinated Night Elf guards aka the brothers in arms of the Silver Covenant to grab the Divine Bell before taking it back to Dalaran and then to the Horde.






Continuing to misrepresent what happened. Screw off dude.




My sympathy for Quel'thelas is rapidly plummeting. It's the exact same issue with the historical revisionism over the war in Trails, the whitewashing of Crossbell and Calvard, and the memoryholing of everything they did.

I find it incredulous that some cult could infiltrate Suramar's government on a mass scale, totally undetected. There are many, many quests where Stormwind and Orgrimmar unearth infiltrators in the city. At the end of the Forbidden Reach starting zone, regent Turalyon orders Shaw to have the guards' updated on how to detect Dracthyr impersonating people. Suramar is a nation of mages. Surely the populace would have an even higher likelihood of being able to detect impersonators than regular humans, particularly when these impersonators are ogres/humans/tauren/etc. The Twilight's Blade have been portrayed as not to be taken seriously as a threat in the prepatch questline. The rank and file impersonators are probably not skilled archmages.

Why is this Arator the one leading the army, giving speeches and handing out orders? I am sure the armies and people of Quel'thelas will be more inspired by some kid than their king.








It is ridiculous that we - just five guys - push up the bridge alone, rather than pushing with our army.




Well, that was more war than in all of "The War Within". But it did not feel threatening or intense like other war scenarios in WoW such as the WoD intro, the War of Thorns campaign, etc. The army is succeeding every step of the way, you never hear about any units being wiped out, no officers are injured, etc. The WoD intro scenario had that very memorable moment where you emerge from the underground room where you freed Gul'dan, and find the dead bodies of most of the named NPCs you had gone through the portal with.

Where is Malfurion?

► Midnight raid #3: March on Quel'danas

Unfortunately, there are only two bosses.

There is a neat, FF14-esque part where the raid has split up into two separate groups and kill two minibosses at the same time to progress, though it is sadly for just one short segment.






The first boss is a Voidlight phoenix. It is is similar to Immerseus from Siege of Orgrimmar in that his real HP bar is not the regular one that you DPS down in phase 1, but is the energy bar that you burst down during the limited time second phase before it loops back to the first phase. So if everyone just holds their CDs for the second phase, they can kill the boss in just two loops.




The difficulty is getting that far, because certain people kept getting the soak and popping their movement abilities to run way, way out of the way to the far edge of the arena so that nobody else could catch up to them before the soak goes off. The puddles left behind by the soak are cleared every time the boss enters phase 2, and the arena is huge, so it's not like we need to carefully conserve space here.




The second boss is L'ura, Alleria's dark Naaru that was stolen by Xal'atath. The high pitched choral music before you pull does make it feel more suspenseful, and his voice actor is decent.




L'ura has a simon says mechanic where he will manifest three letters in sequence, and then cast those three letters on three random players. A few seconds later, L'ura will then channel a laser beam and spin clockwise. The players must make sure that the laser beam touches the letters in the order that he displayed them, otherwise he deals massive raid wide damage. Pretty easy. Unless you are a healer apparently, looking at people's HP bars instead of the game world.




The third phase is a copypaste of the Fyrakk fight from the end of Dragonflight, where a few players have to pick up seeds crystals and the rest of the raid stacks on top of it for protection, with the bearers having to press the extra action button to expend the seeds crystals to save the raid from fatal raid wide AoEs.




Unfortunately, as the final boss of Midnight's base storyline, his fight is a little disappointing. I was expecting a more grandiose end to the story, like killing Xal'atath.




How did Suevanas miss? What happened to her Jailer chain magicks that she used to beat the Lich King?






It is very unenjoyable that the villain keeps escaping over and over again.




Annnd we have to wait another week to see the ending. This is the most timegated base story of a WoW expansion yet.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

i think you forgot the new night elven capital from dragonflight

Bel'ameth is not a city. It is a handful of wooden buildings scattered around the island. It is not comparable to any of the other cities in this game. It's like if Shadowglen (the Night Elf starter village) had /trade chat.

Gotta kill time until the last part of the story and the third raid releases on Tuesday.

Here is my thorough review of every WoW city:

► Show Spoiler

Stormwind City

Until Boralus came along, this was the most immersive, realistic feeling city in the game. There are bridges going over canals, and many narrow streets winding through the districts. A lot (though not all) of the buildings can be entered. However, I am not fond of the rather generic aesthetic. The basic stone walls, the basic white wattle and daub houses, etc. Boralus would take the general concept of Stormwind, but apply more interesting texturework, modelling, etc.




There are a few squadrons of gryphon riders flying overhead, which helps add more movement, and a sense of power, that this an important place. Oddly, there are no airships in sight, despite the Alliance having many airships in questlines and using them to deploy their armies across the globe.




The plaza in the Cathedral District was the go-to spot for RP up until the new Lion's Rest park was added in Legion, which then became the new main hotspot.




Lion's Rest has an open air view of the harbor and the ocean, which looks quite nice. But it draws attention to how old and ugly the skybox is. This view would tremendously benefit from having a painted cloudscape in the background like newer expansion cities have.




The king's castle is very lackluster and uniconic, despite having been the palace of the main city of the game for almost two decades. Sunfury Spire, the Violet Hold, Icecrown Citadel, Grommash Hold, the Great Pyramid, the Seat of the Aspects, etc, look far more stunning and iconic despite having come out after.





Ironforge

In Vanilla, this was the main capital of the Alliance due to it being the only Alliance city to have an auction house (before the AH was added to the other cities, and then Blizzard began piling utilities onto Stormwind). The main city being not a generic human medieval city, but an underground dwarven city was pretty unique. Sadly, without a lot of players, the plazas and the streets feel conspicuously large and unpopulated. There would need to be a lot more crowd NPCs like what we see in recent expansions to fill it.








Unfortunately, the execution of the city does not realize the potential it could have. There is not much verticality to the interior compared to Shadowforge City inside Blackrock Mountain, or Moira and Erebor as depicted in LotR.






There was an unfinished area called Old Ironforge that had some verticality, but it was locked off during Vanilla when Ironforge was relevant. It was opened up in Cataclysm but not expanded, and there reason to visit it now. The exterior mountain is also pathetically small by the standards of grandiose modern WoW mountains like the one Valdrakken is built on.







Darnassus

The exterior entrance looks like a medieval Korean fortress with the stone base and the wooden structure on top, and the tiled roof. Surrounded by the magical forest, it looks quite nice. Inside the actual city itself is also more wooden structures that look neat. Unfortunately, after Darnassus and Ashenvale, Night Elf zones in WoW tend to just amount to boring grey stonework reminiscent of the Greeks or the Romans, which to me is very boring. It is fortunate that the Night Elf set for the new Housing system emphasizes the woodwork over the stone.




The "city" is overall rather small, and doesn't feel like a real city. It's not that great of a place to hang out at. I remember it more for the intense "A Flicker of Hope" quest at the end of the War of Thorns campaign where you have a hopeless mission of saving 900 citizens in 3 minutes before the entire tree is consumed in flame. You will only save 60 at best. That was a pretty powerful motivator for me to also go through BFA as Alliance and see the Horde get their comeuppance.









Orgrimmar

Mixed bag. Aesthetically and conceptually, I quite love this city. It is probably the most iconic city in WoW to me and one of the things that really differentiates WoW from other fantasy properties, with the main city being a collection of mud huts and iron towers built in the shadow of tall canyon walls in the middle of an orange desert, populated by ugly stinking beastmen. I cannot think of any other audiovisual fantasy property with that as the main city. It also gives off a sense of ferocity and grit.






I have fond memories of lining up in front of the barracks in the Valley of Honor as a member of the Kor'Kron Legion or the Horde Vanguard before we marched out to an RP campaign. I think VoH became the go-to Horde military RP hotspot because 1. there weren't non RPers running around there like in front of the Grommash Hold, and 2. it had a bit more visual variety with the stream and the waterfall. I wonder if VoH might also be popular because of the open air feel, rather than being nestled between high canyon walls.








Unfortunately, the city has issues in execution. The skybox is pretty bad. The actual playable area is also very small compared to Stormwind. There are only two routes or streets through the city, as opposed to Stormwind which has a dozen. This is just much less realestate here, which means that Orgrimmar has never been an ideal place for city RP.




The Horde also had Thunder Bluff and Undercity, but they were not that great alternative cities for Horde RP either. So the Horde never had a flourishing city RP scene like the Alliance did. Which has numerous times led to Alliance players checking out Orgrimmar, not seeing RP, and declaring that Horde side RP is dead. Unaware that there is a very Horde active RP scene, but it is organized behind closed doors by guilds and on discord servers. Orgrimmar could definitely benefit from a remake, but given nuBlizzard's tastes and art direction, I am worried that they would wash out the grit.





Vanilla Orgrimmar also looked inviting at night. The warm, colorful starry sky helped a lot.





Thunder Bluff

A very picturesque core Horde city. Unfortunately, it is 1. very small in terms of playable space, and 2. the city is high up in the air, but the skybox is ugly. The city would greatly benefit from a painted cloudscape the likes you would see in Boralus, Valdrakken, etc. The tents also have orange skins, which do not look that great in the evening light when you have more orange being cast on them.





The layout of the city also squanders the verticality by having the streets and the plaza be located inward, with tents obfuscating the view of the valley below. Thunder Totem would later rectify this by having the promenade along the outer circumference of the city, so you get to look down at valley below.




One issue is that the buildings and their interiors are all rather samey. Most of the buildings tend to be small, which is not ideal for RP campaigns if you need to cram a few dozen people from different guilds in there.







The Undercity

Actually overall fine. The central chamber where the bank is located is bleh, but the outer ringway of green goop and the vertical gates is very nice. The alchemist lab and the factory that produces the abominations is also neat to look at.




Unfortunately, the "city" sucks at portraying an inhabited city, as we don't see any residences. Even if the Forsaken are dead and might not need to sleep, I'd imagine that people would like to have their own rooms for privacy, reading books, playing with their dog, rest, writing diaries, etc. The lack of common buildings might also be why this city never really flourished as a hub for Horde RP beyond just Forsaken.




Of the three cities that have been destroyed, this one had a flaccid end. The destruction of Teldrassil was the end goal of a spectacular zone-length questline and had an amazing quest on the Alliance side. Dalaran had an okay scenario but a cool pre-rendered cutscene where it explodes.

For the Undercity, there was little build up or emotional investment in its destruction. The Horde forces are evacuated offscreen, so there is no tension, and the Alliance player was not trying to destroy Undercity. The villainess Sylvanas just gasses it herself, and it doesn't look spectacular like a cave in.





The Exodar

The exterior is vaguely intriguing with a tall crystal in the middle of the woods, but there is little else of note outside.




Inside, the interior layout is not that well thought out, IMO. It mainly comprises four huge cavernous space, but there are nowhere near enough NPCs to make the place feel populated. The four rooms are also not effectively subdivided or filled with houses, so it doesn't really feel like a city or a colony that lots of people live in.




The caverns are also a little confusing with how they are samey huge circular rooms with similar coloration (aside from the yellow room). The gold gilding and the purple energy and the crystals is a unique aesthetic, but the layout just isn't that fun to be in. Probably the least popular city in the game (unless you count Ashran).







Silvermoon City (The Burning Crusade)

The city is not very good. There are almost no residences. It suffers from big block syndrome. Not much detail. The actual playable area is pretty small. Etc. However, the relatively narrow streets winding through tall buildings you cannot see over does give off of the sense that you are in a city much larger than it actually is. Russell Brower's sweeping, romantic music also does a lot of heavy lifting here in making the city out to be more appealing than it actually is.










The Sunfury Spire has a pretty iconic design with the flared wings. It is odd that the current artists at Blizzard chose to replace it in the remade SMC as the seat of power by a less memorable domed pavilion.




To the West is a park area that is quite scenic. Sadly in the new version, the park is nowhere to be found. It's all flat, bland concrete/stone now.





Shattrath (The Burning Crusade)

The weird, curvy Draenei architecture is mildly interesting. Unfortunately, most of the city just looks bad. There is not enough detail to the buildings, and they somewhat meld into the rubble rather than looking distinct from it. There is not enough detail or doodads placed around. Despite taking up a lot of space, there is not much subdivision to the layout. There are too few buildings, so it overall just feels like a large, poorly optimized space. The only thing really memorable about it is the chandelier angel in the center.









Dalaran (Wrath of the Lich King)

I suspect I will ruffle some feathers here, but I have always held a low opinion of Dalaran. Yes, it looks good on approach, a flying city juxtaposed against the mountains, the black evil tower of Icecrown, and the starry sky with the auroras. But the actual so-called city itself is an embarrassment. It looks like a little girl's doll playhouse. It's just one street wrapped around a small courtyard, a bunch of overly large blocks pretending to be multiple houses, a tower, and that's it.






It is neat that you can jump into the well down into an underground area, but that too is also very small and undetailed.









Gilneas City

There is not much here. There is not that many details or doodads placed in the streets, so you have oddly large, wide open flats. Most buildings cannot be entered. However, Gilneas is unique in that it has some cellar doors that you enter and go down below.













Temple of the Jade Serpent

Not formally a city, but I thought this was cooler and more alive than the small Shrines. The towers of the temple can be seen from across the zone. The complex is quite large and is subdivided into a few different very large courtyards, with dragonriders tending to their steeds in one, students meditating in another, a line of houses and shops, etc. There is a seat of power that looks formidable. There are formations of dragonriders flying overhead, which not even the Shrines got.











Shrine of Two Moons/Shrine of Seven Stars

I am torn on Shrine. On the one hand, I appreciate how Pandaria feels closer to the American Midwest than to a China clone. When I think of China, I think of scholars, universities, heavy buercracy, huge cities with very high population density, lots of paddy fields everywhere to support those cities, an emperor with multiple palace and a harem, etc.

Pandaria thankfully is not a blaise expy of that. It has pandas, kung fu, noodle dragons, china mountains, the asian roofs, but otherwise the cultural is rural America. There are no tax collectors, no universities, no government offices, no imperial city, no emperor and his harem, etc. The Valley of the Four Winds, Kun-Lai, and the Vale are incredibly spacious with most the land being unclaimed. People instead do their own thing. Etc. So having a "city" might infringe on that.




On the other hand... the Shrines are disappointingly small. They have neat, ornate interiors (especially with the statue of Lei Shen), but the exteriors are laughable. It does kind of make me wish that the a grandiose castle like Mogu'shan Palace or Throne of Thunder or the Temple of the Jade Serpent, etc, was the capital. The Shrines are also totally hidden within their small valley and cannot be seen from far away.




Also, during MoP, the Shrines were unpopular capitals. Most people after doing their dailies would just run to the portal room and go to Stormwind/Orgrimmar. It was only on MoP remix where players were confined to Pandaria that I ever saw a ton of people here (in the room where all of the Remix NPCs were located).





The Temple of Karabor

During the development of Warlords of Draenor, Karabor and Bladespire were going to be the capital cities. Due to development troubles (the WoW dev team doubling in size during this time, requiring the veterans to stop working and to teach the new hires how to use the tools. And a development reboot with zones and questlines being scrapped and made a second time because the original expansion had "too much orc"), the capitals were unfinished, and so the utilities were placed at camps on the PvP island of Ashran quickly thrown together with reused assets. Ashran was extremely unpopular, so most people either stayed at their garrison or only went through Ashran on the way to Stormwind/Orgrimmar.

Karabor looks good on approach. The skybox does a lot of heavy lifting with the cloudscape, the starry sky, and the big moon in the background behind Karabor. The interior of the temple was unfinished and is closed. Outside, there are nice waterfalls and gardens.







Bladespire Citadel

The other cut capital city from WoD. It is a gigantic ogre sized fort built by slaves of the ogres. The city looks good on approach, jutting out of snowy wastes along with the other jagged black rocks, with a tiny little shanty town hiding in its shadow. Most rooms are empty.











Ashran (Stormshield/Warpsear)

We do not talk about Ashran.

Okay okay, it's a generic military encampment using copypasted garrison buildings. The gravel/sand pit in the Horde plaza and campfire area is neat.









Shattrath (Warlords of Draenor)

More cut content. There was going to be a Shattrath patch and raid in the middle of the expansion where you repel the siege, but that patch was axed and the story hopped straight to the ending. This city looks MUCH more appealing than the ugly TBC version. The colorful trees help make the look pop, as opposed to the original which looked uniformly desaturated. The buildings have been scaled down to more sensible sizes, and a lot more have been placed. There is more subdivision with the walls of trees and planters. It gives the illusion that this actually might be some sort of inhabited settlement.





Dalaran (Legion)

Dalaran returns from WotLK, having floated from Northrend to Karazhan in the Southern East Kingdoms, and then teleported to the Broken Isles. It is almost identical to the WotLK version. Same model, same layout, etc, but with some better textures and some additional doodads placed here and there. The only signifcant change is that Tirion's statue in the central plaza has been ripped out and replaced by a new tower called the Chamber of the Guardian. This seems pretty redundant as the Violet Citadel was right over there and is bigger. The interior detailing of the new tower looks neat, though.










The Violet Citadel also got an additional new interior with the mage class order hall, called the Hall of the Guardian (confusing!). The library room in it is also neat.









Thunder Totem

The Highmountain Tauren's capital fixes the basic layout mistakes that Thunder Bluff had (having the traversable area be on the circumference of the plateau instead of walled in the middle), but is less ambitious with only one plateau. The platform is oddly devoid of stuff, be it residences or little details and doodads, and comes off as a large empty flat. The interior chamber has a very thick grey haze that muddies the image. Overall not much to write home about here.















Suramar

This city is a first (or a second) for WoW, being a city as a high level questing zone with lots of enemies to fight and quests to do. (There was also Shadowforge city in Vanilla, but it didn't have anywhere near as many quests, and was only accessible in the lower Blackrock Depths megadungeon). It suffers from the usual problem of there being a lot of large blocks with multiple doors slapped on them, posing as multiple different houses (rather than there actually being multiple separate house buildings). Most buildings cannot be entered. The only part I kind of like about it are the canals, and the foilaige.









Argus

This city is entirely carried by the stunning skybox painted by Philip Zhang, showing the rest of the cityscape extending into the distance. The actual playable area of the zone has very low density of residences.





Boralus

This is probably the best city in WoW. It is definitely the most immersive. It takes the concept of Stormwind - of a realistic medieval city with many districts separated by canals, and many narrow streets winding through the residences - but executes it much better. The texturing, modelling, and art direction is way better. Rather than the generic look of Stormwind, here the walls are beige, the roofs are corrugated and somewhat rusty, there is a nautical slant to give it identity, etc. There are canal tunnels beneath the city which make it feel more multilayered. There are also WAY more details and doodads placed around. Also, the backdrop looks really good, with better sculpted and painted mountains, and ofcourse the painted cloudscape in the skybox.




There is also A LOT more NPCs to populate the city, with rowboats and bargemen travelling to and fro, and vignettes such as public executions.




I only have two complaints with Boralus. 1. there is no movement or activity overhead like air patrols or airships, and 2. during the expansion, all of the utilities were concentrated in a corner of the city. So once you had done the story once on any character, you never had any reason to travel out into the other districts again.






























Dazar'alor

This city has a great opening shot from when you arrive at the docks. The pillars and the Great Pyramid towering before you, and then having to climb up the stairs makes the place feel immense. Unfortunately, once you finish the introductory tour, you unlock a pterodactyle flight from the top of the pyramid down to the docks, so you never make the climb that makes Dazar'alor feel so impressive again.




This was the crafter's terrace. I liked coming to this point to look at this view across the river at the jungle. The mix of dark and red brickwork, the verdant foliage, and the water is very appealing to look at.




The Great Pyramid also looks amazing when viewed from across the bridge, but unfortunately all of the utilities are located inside, or on the crafter's terrace on the near side of the bridge. So you have to go out of your way to get this view of the waterfalls.






Further out into more city districts, there is some dinotopia inspiration with huge brutosaurs walking the streets, which was cool. Again however, all of the utilities are located within the pyramid or right outside it at the crafter's terrace, so there is no reason to come here once you finish the story.





Oribos

I thought Oribos was visually imaginative, being a citadel floating in a sky dimension with these streams of magic flowing out from the city from through the stargates and into wormholes in the distance. I also liked the hyperspace flightpaths. It is quite unfortunate that the Dragonflight prepatch broke the exterior skybox, making it always brown (the item to revert the skybox doesn't work anymore either).




What I liked most was the interior with the ornate embellishments in the thick stonework. It was a rich fantasy place I wanted to be.




My only complaints are 1. that it is not really inhabited by any people that I particularly like, and 2. the layout is uniformly circular with no obvious differentiation between the sectors at a glance.








I also liked the golden kintsugi fillings in the stone.





Valdrakken

Fantastic positioning and exterior view, being perched half way up the mountain. The view of the towers when on approach is iconic. The painted cloudscapes in the skyboxes also do a lot of heavy lifting here. Unfortunately, you set your hearthstone to Valdrakken and spawn there and flight out from Valdrakken, and rarely fly back to Valdrakken, so you usually don't get to appreciate this view.




The towers are a little fat, which I am not too fond of.




The actual walking area and plazas are quite neat, with stonework, plants, and a dash of cherry trees and gold gilding at the crafter's terrace. My only complaint is that the stone buildings are little too uniformly grey.









One neat thing about Valdrakken is that there are dozens of (unclickable) background dragons flying around in the sky, which gives off the idea that this place is a high traffic hub on Azeroth. Other major cities would greatly benefit from this effect (not a handful of wind riders flying over Orgrimmar).



Dornogal

Dornogal is a mixed bag. Pleasant open air location with the cloudscape and the mountains in the back and the nice harp music playing.




But the immediate actual city area is a lot of boring grey stone blocks. The streets a little too wide for how little people there are populating them, making the place feel empty. The floorwork is unattractive.




I am also conflicted, because this is our second dwarf capital city. This was an opportunity to fully realize what an underground dwarf city could be like. Execute Ironforge, but better like how Boralus executed Stormwind but better. On the other hand, an open air surface city does differentiate it from Ironforge. But again it has to compete with all of these other scenic open air cities. So overall I am lukewarm on Dornogal.



Dornogal - Music of WoW: The War Within



Mereldar

The approach into Hallowfall is ofcourse fantastic. One of the best in fantasy, period. Unfortunately, the approach is deceiving, because you think that the grandiose castle on the right is going to be a part of the city, but no. It is a selfcontained PvP area and dungeon full of hostile mobs, and utterly disconnected from the rest of the interactable civilization around it. The actual town area on the left is smaller than the CGI cinematic advertised.






The town area is neat, but does not have the same level of detail as Boralus with all of the doodads placed around. I quite like the color palette of the greens, the azures, the brown woods, and the golds. The architecture is also a little more whimsical, which helps make it not bland like Stormwind. I like the crystals on top of the buildings, acting as lighthouses. The concept art for Mereldar shows more steampunk/magitek infrastructure incorporated into the buildings, which I wish was reflected ingame. (The concept art also shows far more verticality)








I wish Mereldar had been the capital of TWW and Boralus sized. Though in retrospect, if Mereldar was actually the capital, then people would just hearthstone straight into it and rarely get to see the stunning view of it on approach.




Adam Burgess' music for Mereldar is amazing.

Hallowfall - Music of WoW: The War Within



Azj-Kahet

This is the second (or fourth, if you count Boralus and Dazar'alor because of certain districts) city in WoW that is a high level questing zone. As a city, it is a mixed bag, and a little disappointing. The key art and loading screen image for this expansion depicted Azj-Kahet as a city suspended over a bottomless abyss. That would have been so cool. Instead, the ingame execution is just a conventional city built on a short plateau.






The background lore also describes how the city of webs is multilayered, with this being like eighth or ninth latest city built upon layers and layers of old ruined cities below. But you do not see that when flying around in the zone. It also does not make that much sense for these spider people who can climb walls or up webs to be walking around and overall very horizontal city, the likes you would see humans make.




However, there was some neat flavor in here. I liked that the Nerubians have poor eyesight, and mainly detect/differentiate others through the use of pheromones. So by having Vizier synthesize pheromones and applying them on you, you can make yourself smell like a Nerubian, they wouldn't know the difference. It was neat walking around the city and seeing the different strains of Nerubian, like the servant/worker class, the cattle haulers, the new Skyrazors, etc. It was also neat seeing some of their day-to-day stuff, like sucking bloodwine from live captives in a cage, or using spindles of silk as a cash register full of money. I wish the devs had gone further.




The Suramar-esque sneaking around gameplay does not work when you can just summon your dragon out of thin air in front of an incoming guard, takeoff, no alarm is sounded or interceptors deployed or web shot at you, fly elsewhere in the city, land, dematerialize your dragon, and continue walking around just like that.



Undermine

The city is overall fine. Actually, it is overall pretty good. I think I am more disappointed with the story and how that affects the flavor (basically all of the cartel leaders are now nice guys) than with the actual modelling of the city. Much of the buildings can be entered! It would have been nice if the city had been larger, though, and that the underground factory/lab sections were bigger too. It also would have been nice if you could have entered the Gallagio and gone gambling.







Taza'vesh

This was a megadungeon from the Shadowlands 9.1 patch that was reused and placed in the 11.2 K'aresh zone. It a Broker Ethereal city (Brokers were retconned to just be Ethereals wearing sturdy space suits to protect them from Shadowlands radiation). As a city, this one is very disappointing, as almost all of the buildings cannot be entered, and the ones that can have rather sparse interiors.




Despite being the mobile spaceship city for intergalactic, transdimensional traders, there are little novelties of note here. Azj-Kahet felt more exotic. Boralus felt like it had more actual trading activity and economy going on with all of the infrastructure throughout the city for the construction of ships, the loading and unloading of goods from rowboats and barges on the canals, and then transportation of goods by wagon and storage in warehouses, etc.










Brokers/Ethereals apparently sleep in big public rooms without privacy.





Silvermoon (Midnight)

The approach down the main road towards the front gate with golden forests on either side is quite neat. The energy from the Sunwell on Quel'danas blasting the Voidstorm in the sky is also a striking visual. Unlike Valdrakken, you will actually probably see this view regularly due to the bifurcated nature of Midnight's zones. Eversong Woods and Zul'aman are adjacent to each other in the Eastern Kingdoms, so if you are doing your world quests, or prey hunts, you will likely complete the ones in Eversong and Zul'aman before your hearthstone comes off of cooldown, meaning you will have to fly back to Silvermoon to then take the portal to Harandar and the Voidstorm.




The actual city however has a lot of problems. There are a lot of "big blocks" with little detailing on them. These buildings clearly cannot be entered. They feel fake, like a Disneyland facade. There are also clearly not enough residential buildings for all of the NPCs walking the streets, which adds to the fakeness.




On the ground floor, there are huge plazas with very little in them, which feels conspicuous. There are some background NPCs, but it's nowhere near enough to fill up the volume. Strangely, the artbook for Midnight shows concept art for a Silvermoon market that is crammed with high density details, but no such market made into this ingame city.




The "city" is also mostly huge, open air plazas, which undoes the strength of the original SMC which used the tight narrow streets surrounded by high walls to give the illusion that there is a greater city beyond what you are currently seeing. Even Murder Row has suffered, with the width of the street becoming very large while the height of the surrounding buildings has been reduced, breaking the illusion.

Oddly, the iconic Sunfury Spire has been moved to the side and made into an inconsequential private residence for Lor'themar. The new capitol building is a domed pavilion that has an unremarkable silhoutte.




The city does not seem to be effective as an expansion capital in congregating players together, like with Valdrakken and Dornogal. The central plazas of those two cities were always packed with players throughout the whole expansion. Whereas a month after launch, there is usually only a half dozen people in front of the Sanctum of Light in SMC. The server population of Moon Guard cannot have suddenly fallen off a cliff within the last 30 days, as Dornogal was still packed during the last few days of TWW. Where they went, I don't know.

Rankings:

• S Boralus
• A (Great) Orgrimmar, Dazar'alor, Valdrakken
• B (Good) Stormwind, Ironforge, Dornogal, Mereldar, Undermine
• C (Okay) Thunder Bluff, Shrines, Karabor, Argus, Oribos, Azj-Kahet, Silvermoon Midnight
• D (MEH) Darnassus, Undercity, Silvermoon TBC, Dalaran (both versions), Bladespire Citadel, Shattrath WoD, Thunder Totem, Suramar
• E (BAD) Exodar, Shattrath TBC, Gilneas, Ashran, Taza'vesh
• F

There are actually four other cities in WoW (Gnomeregan, Shadowforge City, Ulduar, and Mechagon), but they are exclusive to dungeon instances and are not available out in the open world. We know that the next expansion, The Last Titan, will involve Ulduar and a Northrend revamp of some sort. The current theory is that Ulduar will become the next expansion city.

The Hearthstone feature (or any MMO that allows easy teleportation straight into a city) undermines/diminishes the artist's time and effort invested into making a city that looks great on approach.

Suramar is still my favorite city. The Nightborne aesthetic has always appealed to me. Do you think Suramar will ever be relevant again, or is it just going to sit there collecting dust?

The part of Midnight's story that I just did took me to Suramar, though only for about 5 minutes before going into the new delve that takes place there, and then teleporting back to Silvermoon.

There might be short questlines placed there like the heritage questlines or what just happened in the story, but I don't think any of the expansion cities will get meaningfully revisited or prominence again unless Blizzard decides to blow them up as the inciting event of a new expansion storyline. I think only the Vanilla cities have a chance at getting a substantial amount of new content, namely if Orgrimmar or Stormwind were remade and districts in them were turned into new high level questing areas like with Boralus and Dazar'alor.

Also are you planning to review the upcoming pride event?

I might make a post describing what you do in it if it is novel, but I do not expect it to be anything substantial. Aside from the Dragonriding cups, Plunderstorm, and the two Remixes, "events" in WoW tend to be lackluster or forgettable. I think I remember Trial of Style in a trailer being made out to be a bigger deal than it actually was.

[buttfucker 3000]

i think you forgot the new night elven capital from dragonflight

Bel'ameth is not a city. It is a handful of wooden buildings scattered around the island. It is not comparable to any of the other cities in this game. It's like if Shadowglen (the Night Elf starter village) had /trade chat.

Gotta kill time until the last part of the story and the third raid releases on Tuesday.

Here is my thorough review of every WoW city:

► Show Spoiler

Stormwind City

Until Boralus came along, this was the most immersive, realistic feeling city in the game. There are bridges going over canals, and many narrow streets winding through the districts. A lot (though not all) of the buildings can be entered. However, I am not fond of the rather generic aesthetic. The basic stone walls, the basic white wattle and daub houses, etc. Boralus would take the general concept of Stormwind, but apply more interesting texturework, modelling, etc.




There are a few squadrons of gryphon riders flying overhead, which helps add more movement, and a sense of power, that this an important place. Oddly, there are no airships in sight, despite the Alliance having many airships in questlines and using them to deploy their armies across the globe.




The plaza in the Cathedral District was the go-to spot for RP up until the new Lion's Rest park was added in Legion, which then became the new main hotspot.




Lion's Rest has an open air view of the harbor and the ocean, which looks quite nice. But it draws attention to how old and ugly the skybox is. This view would tremendously benefit from having a painted cloudscape in the background like newer expansion cities have.




The king's castle is very lackluster and uniconic, despite having been the palace of the main city of the game for almost two decades. Sunfury Spire, the Violet Hold, Icecrown Citadel, Grommash Hold, the Great Pyramid, the Seat of the Aspects, etc, look far more stunning and iconic despite having come out after.





Ironforge

In Vanilla, this was the main capital of the Alliance due to it being the only Alliance city to have an auction house (before the AH was added to the other cities, and then Blizzard began piling utilities onto Stormwind). The main city being not a generic human medieval city, but an underground dwarven city was pretty unique. Sadly, without a lot of players, the plazas and the streets feel conspicuously large and unpopulated. There would need to be a lot more crowd NPCs like what we see in recent expansions to fill it.








Unfortunately, the execution of the city does not realize the potential it could have. There is not much verticality to the interior compared to Shadowforge City inside Blackrock Mountain, or Moira and Erebor as depicted in LotR.






There was an unfinished area called Old Ironforge that had some verticality, but it was locked off during Vanilla when Ironforge was relevant. It was opened up in Cataclysm but not expanded, and there reason to visit it now. The exterior mountain is also pathetically small by the standards of grandiose modern WoW mountains like the one Valdrakken is built on.







Darnassus

The exterior entrance looks like a medieval Korean fortress with the stone base and the wooden structure on top, and the tiled roof. Surrounded by the magical forest, it looks quite nice. Inside the actual city itself is also more wooden structures that look neat. Unfortunately, after Darnassus and Ashenvale, Night Elf zones in WoW tend to just amount to boring grey stonework reminiscent of the Greeks or the Romans, which to me is very boring. It is fortunate that the Night Elf set for the new Housing system emphasizes the woodwork over the stone.




The "city" is overall rather small, and doesn't feel like a real city. It's not that great of a place to hang out at. I remember it more for the intense "A Flicker of Hope" quest at the end of the War of Thorns campaign where you have a hopeless mission of saving 900 citizens in 3 minutes before the entire tree is consumed in flame. You will only save 60 at best. That was a pretty powerful motivator for me to also go through BFA as Alliance and see the Horde get their comeuppance.









Orgrimmar

Mixed bag. Aesthetically and conceptually, I quite love this city. It is probably the most iconic city in WoW to me and one of the things that really differentiates WoW from other fantasy properties, with the main city being a collection of mud huts and iron towers built in the shadow of tall canyon walls in the middle of an orange desert, populated by ugly stinking beastmen. I cannot think of any other audiovisual fantasy property with that as the main city. It also gives off a sense of ferocity and grit.






I have fond memories of lining up in front of the barracks in the Valley of Honor as a member of the Kor'Kron Legion or the Horde Vanguard before we marched out to an RP campaign. I think VoH became the go-to Horde military RP hotspot because 1. there weren't non RPers running around there like in front of the Grommash Hold, and 2. it had a bit more visual variety with the stream and the waterfall. I wonder if VoH might also be popular because of the open air feel, rather than being nestled between high canyon walls.








Unfortunately, the city has issues in execution. The skybox is pretty bad. The actual playable area is also very small compared to Stormwind. There are only two routes or streets through the city, as opposed to Stormwind which has a dozen. This is just much less realestate here, which means that Orgrimmar has never been an ideal place for city RP.




The Horde also had Thunder Bluff and Undercity, but they were not that great alternative cities for Horde RP either. So the Horde never had a flourishing city RP scene like the Alliance did. Which has numerous times led to Alliance players checking out Orgrimmar, not seeing RP, and declaring that Horde side RP is dead. Unaware that there is a very Horde active RP scene, but it is organized behind closed doors by guilds and on discord servers. Orgrimmar could definitely benefit from a remake, but given nuBlizzard's tastes and art direction, I am worried that they would wash out the grit.





Vanilla Orgrimmar also looked inviting at night. The warm, colorful starry sky helped a lot.





Thunder Bluff

A very picturesque core Horde city. Unfortunately, it is 1. very small in terms of playable space, and 2. the city is high up in the air, but the skybox is ugly. The city would greatly benefit from a painted cloudscape the likes you would see in Boralus, Valdrakken, etc. The tents also have orange skins, which do not look that great in the evening light when you have more orange being cast on them.





The layout of the city also squanders the verticality by having the streets and the plaza be located inward, with tents obfuscating the view of the valley below. Thunder Totem would later rectify this by having the promenade along the outer circumference of the city, so you get to look down at valley below.




One issue is that the buildings and their interiors are all rather samey. Most of the buildings tend to be small, which is not ideal for RP campaigns if you need to cram a few dozen people from different guilds in there.







The Undercity

Actually overall fine. The central chamber where the bank is located is bleh, but the outer ringway of green goop and the vertical gates is very nice. The alchemist lab and the factory that produces the abominations is also neat to look at.




Unfortunately, the "city" sucks at portraying an inhabited city, as we don't see any residences. Even if the Forsaken are dead and might not need to sleep, I'd imagine that people would like to have their own rooms for privacy, reading books, playing with their dog, rest, writing diaries, etc. The lack of common buildings might also be why this city never really flourished as a hub for Horde RP beyond just Forsaken.




Of the three cities that have been destroyed, this one had a flaccid end. The destruction of Teldrassil was the end goal of a spectacular zone-length questline and had an amazing quest on the Alliance side. Dalaran had an okay scenario but a cool pre-rendered cutscene where it explodes.

For the Undercity, there was little build up or emotional investment in its destruction. The Horde forces are evacuated offscreen, so there is no tension, and the Alliance player was not trying to destroy Undercity. The villainess Sylvanas just gasses it herself, and it doesn't look spectacular like a cave in.





The Exodar

The exterior is vaguely intriguing with a tall crystal in the middle of the woods, but there is little else of note outside.




Inside, the interior layout is not that well thought out, IMO. It mainly comprises four huge cavernous space, but there are nowhere near enough NPCs to make the place feel populated. The four rooms are also not effectively subdivided or filled with houses, so it doesn't really feel like a city or a colony that lots of people live in.




The caverns are also a little confusing with how they are samey huge circular rooms with similar coloration (aside from the yellow room). The gold gilding and the purple energy and the crystals is a unique aesthetic, but the layout just isn't that fun to be in. Probably the least popular city in the game (unless you count Ashran).







Silvermoon City (The Burning Crusade)

The city is not very good. There are almost no residences. It suffers from big block syndrome. Not much detail. The actual playable area is pretty small. Etc. However, the relatively narrow streets winding through tall buildings you cannot see over does give off of the sense that you are in a city much larger than it actually is. Russell Brower's sweeping, romantic music also does a lot of heavy lifting here in making the city out to be more appealing than it actually is.










The Sunfury Spire has a pretty iconic design with the flared wings. It is odd that the current artists at Blizzard chose to replace it in the remade SMC as the seat of power by a less memorable domed pavilion.




To the West is a park area that is quite scenic. Sadly in the new version, the park is nowhere to be found. It's all flat, bland concrete/stone now.





Shattrath (The Burning Crusade)

The weird, curvy Draenei architecture is mildly interesting. Unfortunately, most of the city just looks bad. There is not enough detail to the buildings, and they somewhat meld into the rubble rather than looking distinct from it. There is not enough detail or doodads placed around. Despite taking up a lot of space, there is not much subdivision to the layout. There are too few buildings, so it overall just feels like a large, poorly optimized space. The only thing really memorable about it is the chandelier angel in the center.









Dalaran (Wrath of the Lich King)

I suspect I will ruffle some feathers here, but I have always held a low opinion of Dalaran. Yes, it looks good on approach, a flying city juxtaposed against the mountains, the black evil tower of Icecrown, and the starry sky with the auroras. But the actual so-called city itself is an embarrassment. It looks like a little girl's doll playhouse. It's just one street wrapped around a small courtyard, a bunch of overly large blocks pretending to be multiple houses, a tower, and that's it.






It is neat that you can jump into the well down into an underground area, but that too is also very small and undetailed.









Gilneas City

There is not much here. There is not that many details or doodads placed in the streets, so you have oddly large, wide open flats. Most buildings cannot be entered. However, Gilneas is unique in that it has some cellar doors that you enter and go down below.













Temple of the Jade Serpent

Not formally a city, but I thought this was cooler and more alive than the small Shrines. The towers of the temple can be seen from across the zone. The complex is quite large and is subdivided into a few different very large courtyards, with dragonriders tending to their steeds in one, students meditating in another, a line of houses and shops, etc. There is a seat of power that looks formidable. There are formations of dragonriders flying overhead, which not even the Shrines got.











Shrine of Two Moons/Shrine of Seven Stars

I am torn on Shrine. On the one hand, I appreciate how Pandaria feels closer to the American Midwest than to a China clone. When I think of China, I think of scholars, universities, heavy buercracy, huge cities with very high population density, lots of paddy fields everywhere to support those cities, an emperor with multiple palace and a harem, etc.

Pandaria thankfully is not a blaise expy of that. It has pandas, kung fu, noodle dragons, china mountains, the asian roofs, but otherwise the cultural is rural America. There are no tax collectors, no universities, no government offices, no imperial city, no emperor and his harem, etc. The Valley of the Four Winds, Kun-Lai, and the Vale are incredibly spacious with most the land being unclaimed. People instead do their own thing. Etc. So having a "city" might infringe on that.




On the other hand... the Shrines are disappointingly small. They have neat, ornate interiors (especially with the statue of Lei Shen), but the exteriors are laughable. It does kind of make me wish that the a grandiose castle like Mogu'shan Palace or Throne of Thunder or the Temple of the Jade Serpent, etc, was the capital. The Shrines are also totally hidden within their small valley and cannot be seen from far away.




Also, during MoP, the Shrines were unpopular capitals. Most people after doing their dailies would just run to the portal room and go to Stormwind/Orgrimmar. It was only on MoP remix where players were confined to Pandaria that I ever saw a ton of people here (in the room where all of the Remix NPCs were located).





The Temple of Karabor

During the development of Warlords of Draenor, Karabor and Bladespire were going to be the capital cities. Due to development troubles (the WoW dev team doubling in size during this time, requiring the veterans to stop working and to teach the new hires how to use the tools. And a development reboot with zones and questlines being scrapped and made a second time because the original expansion had "too much orc"), the capitals were unfinished, and so the utilities were placed at camps on the PvP island of Ashran quickly thrown together with reused assets. Ashran was extremely unpopular, so most people either stayed at their garrison or only went through Ashran on the way to Stormwind/Orgrimmar.

Karabor looks good on approach. The skybox does a lot of heavy lifting with the cloudscape, the starry sky, and the big moon in the background behind Karabor. The interior of the temple was unfinished and is closed. Outside, there are nice waterfalls and gardens.







Bladespire Citadel

The other cut capital city from WoD. It is a gigantic ogre sized fort built by slaves of the ogres. The city looks good on approach, jutting out of snowy wastes along with the other jagged black rocks, with a tiny little shanty town hiding in its shadow. Most rooms are empty.











Ashran (Stormshield/Warpsear)

We do not talk about Ashran.

Okay okay, it's a generic military encampment using copypasted garrison buildings. The gravel/sand pit in the Horde plaza and campfire area is neat.









Shattrath (Warlords of Draenor)

More cut content. There was going to be a Shattrath patch and raid in the middle of the expansion where you repel the siege, but that patch was axed and the story hopped straight to the ending. This city looks MUCH more appealing than the ugly TBC version. The colorful trees help make the look pop, as opposed to the original which looked uniformly desaturated. The buildings have been scaled down to more sensible sizes, and a lot more have been placed. There is more subdivision with the walls of trees and planters. It gives the illusion that this actually might be some sort of inhabited settlement.





Dalaran (Legion)

Dalaran returns from WotLK, having floated from Northrend to Karazhan in the Southern East Kingdoms, and then teleported to the Broken Isles. It is almost identical to the WotLK version. Same model, same layout, etc, but with some better textures and some additional doodads placed here and there. The only signifcant change is that Tirion's statue in the central plaza has been ripped out and replaced by a new tower called the Chamber of the Guardian. This seems pretty redundant as the Violet Citadel was right over there and is bigger. The interior detailing of the new tower looks neat, though.










The Violet Citadel also got an additional new interior with the mage class order hall, called the Hall of the Guardian (confusing!). The library room in it is also neat.









Thunder Totem

The Highmountain Tauren's capital fixes the basic layout mistakes that Thunder Bluff had (having the traversable area be on the circumference of the plateau instead of walled in the middle), but is less ambitious with only one plateau. The platform is oddly devoid of stuff, be it residences or little details and doodads, and comes off as a large empty flat. The interior chamber has a very thick grey haze that muddies the image. Overall not much to write home about here.















Suramar

This city is a first (or a second) for WoW, being a city as a high level questing zone with lots of enemies to fight and quests to do. (There was also Shadowforge city in Vanilla, but it didn't have anywhere near as many quests, and was only accessible in the lower Blackrock Depths megadungeon). It suffers from the usual problem of there being a lot of large blocks with multiple doors slapped on them, posing as multiple different houses (rather than there actually being multiple separate house buildings). Most buildings cannot be entered. The only part I kind of like about it are the canals, and the foilaige.









Argus

This city is entirely carried by the stunning skybox painted by Philip Zhang, showing the rest of the cityscape extending into the distance. The actual playable area of the zone has very low density of residences.





Boralus

This is probably the best city in WoW. It is definitely the most immersive. It takes the concept of Stormwind - of a realistic medieval city with many districts separated by canals, and many narrow streets winding through the residences - but executes it much better. The texturing, modelling, and art direction is way better. Rather than the generic look of Stormwind, here the walls are beige, the roofs are corrugated and somewhat rusty, there is a nautical slant to give it identity, etc. There are canal tunnels beneath the city which make it feel more multilayered. There are also WAY more details and doodads placed around. Also, the backdrop looks really good, with better sculpted and painted mountains, and ofcourse the painted cloudscape in the skybox.




There is also A LOT more NPCs to populate the city, with rowboats and bargemen travelling to and fro, and vignettes such as public executions.




I only have two complaints with Boralus. 1. there is no movement or activity overhead like air patrols or airships, and 2. during the expansion, all of the utilities were concentrated in a corner of the city. So once you had done the story once on any character, you never had any reason to travel out into the other districts again.






























Dazar'alor

This city has a great opening shot from when you arrive at the docks. The pillars and the Great Pyramid towering before you, and then having to climb up the stairs makes the place feel immense. Unfortunately, once you finish the introductory tour, you unlock a pterodactyle flight from the top of the pyramid down to the docks, so you never make the climb that makes Dazar'alor feel so impressive again.




This was the crafter's terrace. I liked coming to this point to look at this view across the river at the jungle. The mix of dark and red brickwork, the verdant foliage, and the water is very appealing to look at.




The Great Pyramid also looks amazing when viewed from across the bridge, but unfortunately all of the utilities are located inside, or on the crafter's terrace on the near side of the bridge. So you have to go out of your way to get this view of the waterfalls.






Further out into more city districts, there is some dinotopia inspiration with huge brutosaurs walking the streets, which was cool. Again however, all of the utilities are located within the pyramid or right outside it at the crafter's terrace, so there is no reason to come here once you finish the story.





Oribos

I thought Oribos was visually imaginative, being a citadel floating in a sky dimension with these streams of magic flowing out from the city from through the stargates and into wormholes in the distance. I also liked the hyperspace flightpaths. It is quite unfortunate that the Dragonflight prepatch broke the exterior skybox, making it always brown (the item to revert the skybox doesn't work anymore either).




What I liked most was the interior with the ornate embellishments in the thick stonework. It was a rich fantasy place I wanted to be.




My only complaints are 1. that it is not really inhabited by any people that I particularly like, and 2. the layout is uniformly circular with no obvious differentiation between the sectors at a glance.








I also liked the golden kintsugi fillings in the stone.





Valdrakken

Fantastic positioning and exterior view, being perched half way up the mountain. The view of the towers when on approach is iconic. The painted cloudscapes in the skyboxes also do a lot of heavy lifting here. Unfortunately, you set your hearthstone to Valdrakken and spawn there and flight out from Valdrakken, and rarely fly back to Valdrakken, so you usually don't get to appreciate this view.




The towers are a little fat, which I am not too fond of.




The actual walking area and plazas are quite neat, with stonework, plants, and a dash of cherry trees and gold gilding at the crafter's terrace. My only complaint is that the stone buildings are little too uniformly grey.









One neat thing about Valdrakken is that there are dozens of (unclickable) background dragons flying around in the sky, which gives off the idea that this place is a high traffic hub on Azeroth. Other major cities would greatly benefit from this effect (not a handful of wind riders flying over Orgrimmar).



Dornogal

Dornogal is a mixed bag. Pleasant open air location with the cloudscape and the mountains in the back and the nice harp music playing.




But the immediate actual city area is a lot of boring grey stone blocks. The streets a little too wide for how little people there are populating them, making the place feel empty. The floorwork is unattractive.




I am also conflicted, because this is our second dwarf capital city. This was an opportunity to fully realize what an underground dwarf city could be like. Execute Ironforge, but better like how Boralus executed Stormwind but better. On the other hand, an open air surface city does differentiate it from Ironforge. But again it has to compete with all of these other scenic open air cities. So overall I am lukewarm on Dornogal.



Dornogal - Music of WoW: The War Within



Mereldar

The approach into Hallowfall is ofcourse fantastic. One of the best in fantasy, period. Unfortunately, the approach is deceiving, because you think that the grandiose castle on the right is going to be a part of the city, but no. It is a selfcontained PvP area and dungeon full of hostile mobs, and utterly disconnected from the rest of the interactable civilization around it. The actual town area on the left is smaller than the CGI cinematic advertised.






The town area is neat, but does not have the same level of detail as Boralus with all of the doodads placed around. I quite like the color palette of the greens, the azures, the brown woods, and the golds. The architecture is also a little more whimsical, which helps make it not bland like Stormwind. I like the crystals on top of the buildings, acting as lighthouses. The concept art for Mereldar shows more steampunk/magitek infrastructure incorporated into the buildings, which I wish was reflected ingame. (The concept art also shows far more verticality)








I wish Mereldar had been the capital of TWW and Boralus sized. Though in retrospect, if Mereldar was actually the capital, then people would just hearthstone straight into it and rarely get to see the stunning view of it on approach.




Adam Burgess' music for Mereldar is amazing.

Hallowfall - Music of WoW: The War Within



Azj-Kahet

This is the second (or fourth, if you count Boralus and Dazar'alor because of certain districts) city in WoW that is a high level questing zone. As a city, it is a mixed bag, and a little disappointing. The key art and loading screen image for this expansion depicted Azj-Kahet as a city suspended over a bottomless abyss. That would have been so cool. Instead, the ingame execution is just a conventional city built on a short plateau.






The background lore also describes how the city of webs is multilayered, with this being like eighth or ninth latest city built upon layers and layers of old ruined cities below. But you do not see that when flying around in the zone. It also does not make that much sense for these spider people who can climb walls or up webs to be walking around and overall very horizontal city, the likes you would see humans make.




However, there was some neat flavor in here. I liked that the Nerubians have poor eyesight, and mainly detect/differentiate others through the use of pheromones. So by having Vizier synthesize pheromones and applying them on you, you can make yourself smell like a Nerubian, they wouldn't know the difference. It was neat walking around the city and seeing the different strains of Nerubian, like the servant/worker class, the cattle haulers, the new Skyrazors, etc. It was also neat seeing some of their day-to-day stuff, like sucking bloodwine from live captives in a cage, or using spindles of silk as a cash register full of money. I wish the devs had gone further.




The Suramar-esque sneaking around gameplay does not work when you can just summon your dragon out of thin air in front of an incoming guard, takeoff, no alarm is sounded or interceptors deployed or web shot at you, fly elsewhere in the city, land, dematerialize your dragon, and continue walking around just like that.



Undermine

The city is overall fine. Actually, it is overall pretty good. I think I am more disappointed with the story and how that affects the flavor (basically all of the cartel leaders are now nice guys) than with the actual modelling of the city. Much of the buildings can be entered! It would have been nice if the city had been larger, though, and that the underground factory/lab sections were bigger too. It also would have been nice if you could have entered the Gallagio and gone gambling.







Taza'vesh

This was a megadungeon from the Shadowlands 9.1 patch that was reused and placed in the 11.2 K'aresh zone. It a Broker Ethereal city (Brokers were retconned to just be Ethereals wearing sturdy space suits to protect them from Shadowlands radiation). As a city, this one is very disappointing, as almost all of the buildings cannot be entered, and the ones that can have rather sparse interiors.




Despite being the mobile spaceship city for intergalactic, transdimensional traders, there are little novelties of note here. Azj-Kahet felt more exotic. Boralus felt like it had more actual trading activity and economy going on with all of the infrastructure throughout the city for the construction of ships, the loading and unloading of goods from rowboats and barges on the canals, and then transportation of goods by wagon and storage in warehouses, etc.










Brokers/Ethereals apparently sleep in big public rooms without privacy.





Silvermoon (Midnight)

The approach down the main road towards the front gate with golden forests on either side is quite neat. The energy from the Sunwell on Quel'danas blasting the Voidstorm in the sky is also a striking visual. Unlike Valdrakken, you will actually probably see this view regularly due to the bifurcated nature of Midnight's zones. Eversong Woods and Zul'aman are adjacent to each other in the Eastern Kingdoms, so if you are doing your world quests, or prey hunts, you will likely complete the ones in Eversong and Zul'aman before your hearthstone comes off of cooldown, meaning you will have to fly back to Silvermoon to then take the portal to Harandar and the Voidstorm.




The actual city however has a lot of problems. There are a lot of "big blocks" with little detailing on them. These buildings clearly cannot be entered. They feel fake, like a Disneyland facade. There are also clearly not enough residential buildings for all of the NPCs walking the streets, which adds to the fakeness.




On the ground floor, there are huge plazas with very little in them, which feels conspicuous. There are some background NPCs, but it's nowhere near enough to fill up the volume. Strangely, the artbook for Midnight shows concept art for a Silvermoon market that is crammed with high density details, but no such market made into this ingame city.




The "city" is also mostly huge, open air plazas, which undoes the strength of the original SMC which used the tight narrow streets surrounded by high walls to give the illusion that there is a greater city beyond what you are currently seeing. Even Murder Row has suffered, with the width of the street becoming very large while the height of the surrounding buildings has been reduced, breaking the illusion.

Oddly, the iconic Sunfury Spire has been moved to the side and made into an inconsequential private residence for Lor'themar. The new capitol building is a domed pavilion that has an unremarkable silhoutte.




The city does not seem to be effective as an expansion capital in congregating players together, like with Valdrakken and Dornogal. The central plazas of those two cities were always packed with players throughout the whole expansion. Whereas a month after launch, there is usually only a half dozen people in front of the Sanctum of Light in SMC. The server population of Moon Guard cannot have suddenly fallen off a cliff within the last 30 days, as Dornogal was still packed during the last few days of TWW. Where they went, I don't know.

Rankings:

• S Boralus
• A (Great) Orgrimmar, Dazar'alor, Valdrakken
• B (Good) Stormwind, Ironforge, Dornogal, Mereldar, Undermine
• C (Okay) Thunder Bluff, Shrines, Karabor, Argus, Oribos, Azj-Kahet, Silvermoon Midnight
• D (MEH) Darnassus, Undercity, Silvermoon TBC, Dalaran (both versions), Bladespire Citadel, Shattrath WoD, Thunder Totem, Suramar
• E (BAD) Exodar, Shattrath TBC, Gilneas, Ashran, Taza'vesh
• F

There are actually four other cities in WoW (Gnomeregan, Shadowforge City, Ulduar, and Mechagon), but they are exclusive to dungeon instances and are not available out in the open world. We know that the next expansion, The Last Titan, will involve Ulduar and a Northrend revamp of some sort. The current theory is that Ulduar will become the next expansion city.

The Hearthstone feature (or any MMO that allows easy teleportation straight into a city) undermines/diminishes the artist's time and effort invested into making a city that looks great on approach.

Suramar is still my favorite city. The Nightborne aesthetic has always appealed to me. Do you think Suramar will ever be relevant again, or is it just going to sit there collecting dust?

The part of Midnight's story that I just did took me to Suramar, though only for about 5 minutes before going into the new delve that takes place there, and then teleporting back to Silvermoon.

There might be short questlines placed there like the heritage questlines or what just happened in the story, but I don't think any of the expansion cities will get meaningfully revisited or prominence again unless Blizzard decides to blow them up as the inciting event of a new expansion storyline. I think only the Vanilla cities have a chance at getting a substantial amount of new content, namely if Orgrimmar or Stormwind were remade and districts in them were turned into new high level questing areas like with Boralus and Dazar'alor.

Also are you planning to review the upcoming pride event?

I might make a post describing what you do in it if it is novel, but I do not expect it to be anything substantial. Aside from the Dragonriding cups, Plunderstorm, and the two Remixes, "events" in WoW tend to be lackluster or forgettable. I think I remember Trial of Style in a trailer being made out to be a bigger deal than it actually was.

I'm glad Nightborne got their 5 minutes of screen time, now Blizzard can put them back in the cupboard and let them sit there like they have since they were introduced.

Why do you think Blizzard neglects them so much? They're one of the better looking races, especially the females, and they have rich lore, so it's always puzzled me.

And no, I wasn’t serious about the pride stuff lol. It’s more like morbid curiosity, the same instinct that makes you slow down to gawk at a wreck on the side of the highway.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I know you like Nightborne, but if I had to be honest, I did not think that their addition to the game was good. That goes for most allied races. They cannibalize the core races, and blur the lines between identities, diluting the racial fantasies of the game.

► Show Spoiler

Mag'har Orcs are just Orcs, but truer to the Orcish heritage (as seen in AU Draenor with the cool clans), so now Blizzard tends to default to using the Mag'har orcs instead of the actual greenskins that built the Horde and have been with us since the very beginning. Worse, the Mag'har come from an alternate timeline, rather than being the Warsong clan orcs from our timeline who we saw in Northrend. Brown skin and upright postures should have been added as a customization for regular orcs.

Mechagnomes are gnomes but gnomier. There is no meaningful difference between Gnomeragan and Mechagon. They mind as well be the same civilization. It's just redundant and the separation is arbitrary. The artificial limb stuff should have been a customization for regular gnomes.

Void Elves (as in the actual tentacle elves, not high elves) are literally just Blood Elves (as in the once envisioned in TBC who are amoral power hungry people tinkering with dangerous dark magicks). Except they get banned from Silvermoon for being... blood elves, and instead go to the good guy side, who initially rejected the blood elves because the blood elves were amoral people tinkering with dangerous dark magicks... it makes no sense. Void/tentacle elves should have been a customization for Horde blood elves.

Lightforged Draenei, Earthen, Haranir, etc. I think it's easier to count the allied races that don't botch racial identities like this (Kul'Tirans, Vulpera, fair skinned high elves, and maybe Dark Iron Dwarves).

Nightborne are another typical allied race, blurring the lines between night elves and blood elves and overall diluting all of them. They have night elf aesthetics and lore, but the mage centric civilization of the blood elves. And they are also Horde too, so they also compete with Blood Elves. It's just not good. I did not find their models to be appealing either, and I was never invested in them or their characters like I was with Malfurion, Tyrande, etc. So to me, Nightborne not getting more content is not a loss to me. Though I do feel bad when fans of other races don't get content, given that one of the main draws of the game is its focus on providing different faction/race/class identities.

As for why the Nightborne did not get more content, that is not an issue specific to them. That is a general WoW issue. Almost all races/cultures introduced in this game are forgotten about by Blizzard after their initial patch (or if they lucky, after their introductory expansion) is over. The Arrakoa were forgotten after TBC. The Vyrkul and the Drakkari were forgotten after WotLK. The Worgen and the Tolvir were forgotten after Cata. The Pandaren, Mantid, Mogu, Jinyu, Yaungol, etc, were forgotten after MoP. Etc. And this doesn't just happen with races, but also organizations like the Cenarion Circle, the Silver Hand, the Argent Crusade, the Kirin Tor, the Ebon Blade, the Shado-Pan, etc.

Only the core Horde/Alliance aesthetic continuously appears year after year (up until that stopped in Shadowlands), and only a small handful of races got to reappear once every few years like the Draenei or the Blood Elves.

[buttfucker 3000]

I know you like Nightborne, but if I had to be honest, I did not think that their addition to the game was good. That goes for most allied races. They cannibalize the core races, and blur the lines between identities, diluting the racial fantasies of the game.

► Show Spoiler

Mag'har Orcs are just Orcs, but truer to the Orcish heritage (as seen in AU Draenor with the cool clans), so now Blizzard tends to default to using the Mag'har orcs instead of the actual greenskins that built the Horde and have been with us since the very beginning. Worse, the Mag'har come from an alternate timeline, rather than being the Warsong clan orcs from our timeline who we saw in Northrend. Brown skin and upright postures should have been added as a customization for regular orcs.

Mechagnomes are gnomes but gnomier. There is no meaningful difference between Gnomeragan and Mechagon. They mind as well be the same civilization. It's just redundant and the separation is arbitrary. The artificial limb stuff should have been a customization for regular gnomes.

Void Elves (as in the actual tentacle elves, not high elves) are literally just Blood Elves (as in the once envisioned in TBC who are amoral power hungry people tinkering with dangerous dark magicks). Except they get banned from Silvermoon for being... blood elves, and instead go to the good guy side, who initially rejected the blood elves because the blood elves were amoral people tinkering with dangerous dark magicks... it makes no sense. Void/tentacle elves should have been a customization for Horde blood elves.

Lightforged Draenei, Earthen, Haranir, etc. I think it's easier to count the allied races that don't botch racial identities like this (Kul'Tirans, Vulpera, fair skinned high elves, and maybe Dark Iron Dwarves).

Nightborne are another typical allied race, blurring the lines between night elves and blood elves and overall diluting all of them. They have night elf aesthetics and lore, but the mage centric civilization of the blood elves. And they are also Horde too, so they also compete with Blood Elves. It's just not good. I did not find their models to be appealing either, and I was never invested in them or their characters like I was with Malfurion, Tyrande, etc. So to me, Nightborne not getting more content is not a loss to me. Though I do feel bad when fans of other races don't get content, given that one of the main draws of the game is its focus on providing different faction/race/class identities.

As for why the Nightborne did not get more content, that is not an issue specific to them. That is a general WoW issue. Almost all races/cultures introduced in this game are forgotten about by Blizzard after their initial patch (or if they lucky, after their introductory expansion) is over. The Arrakoa were forgotten after TBC. The Vyrkul and the Drakkari were forgotten after WotLK. The Worgen and the Tolvir were forgotten after Cata. The Pandaren, Mantid, Mogu, Jinyu, Yaungol, etc, were forgotten after MoP. Etc. And this doesn't just happen with races, but also organizations like the Cenarion Circle, the Silver Hand, the Argent Crusade, the Kirin Tor, the Ebon Blade, the Shado-Pan, etc.

Only the core Horde/Alliance aesthetic continuously appears year after year (up until that stopped in Shadowlands), and only a small handful of races got to reappear once every few years like the Draenei or the Blood Elves.

Bit of a tangent:

I’ve always seen Nightborne and Void Elves as tied together since they released at the same time - it was basically Blizzard saying, “Here’s Blood Elves for the Alliance,” and, to a lesser extent, “Night Elves for the Horde.” So it does make me a bit resentful when they’re the ones constantly getting glazed while the Nightborne rot away.

The fact that they gave Void Elves DH before Nightborne is the clearest proof, literally inventing lore for them to justify it, too. It’s honestly crazy how contrived and propped up Velfs are. Their entire existence is built on sand.

Anyways, I figured that in the “elf” expansion, we’d see more of the Nightborne. That said, I can agree with a lot of the points you brought up.

[Manny V]

fuckin april fool's ****, they had me initially

thought it was some jank private server fuckup or my account was banned or something

[LemonDemonGirl]

https://www.wowhead.com/news/midnight-p ... ght-381074
Lame

[buttfucker 3000]

Case in point: all the Elf leaders lined up in an Avengers-type shot, Nightborne nowhere to be found

[Finarfin]

Why the **** are the night elves even there? They don't really have any connection to the sunwell, right?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Case in point: all the Elf leaders lined up in an Avengers-type shot, Nightborne nowhere to be found

I am sure the king would be happy about his beloved wife being exposed on the frontline where she could be torn apart by shadow monsters.

That being said, yes the visual presentation of the battle was disappointing. Minimal Nightborne forces present is not a problem exclusive to them. I had expected that a battle for the fate of Quel'thelas backed up by a coalition of a few different races and kingdoms would have way, waaaaaaay more than about 100 NPCs. There are only the three ents, one or two dozen dragonriders, half a dozen horsemen at the end, three ships, etc. It just does not feel anywhere near as grandiose as it could have been, and does come off as if each side contributed a paltry token force.

It is odd that this battle happened in the same content drop that had the Isle of Quel'danas intro scenario at the start of the expansion, which did a much better job of conveying the idea of there being this overwhelming invasion with all of the jellyfish and dragons flying overhead, the kaijus offshore, and then the unending stream of void creatures on the ground at the end.

WoW in general tends to struggle with portraying huge war battles. I think only the War of Thorns campaign and the Battle for Lordaeron Scenario kind of painted the impression of a huge battle. And maaaaybe the Broken Shore and Quel'danas intro scenarios. I remember being pretty disappointed seeing how the battle of Karabor was advertised in the announcement trailer for WoD vs the actual final ingame result.

Why the **** are the night elves even there? They don't really have any connection to the sunwell, right?

Because Arator arbitrarily said that they should go recruit other elves, instead of other more sensible and capable factions and organizations.

[Finarfin]

Thanks Val. I really appreciate you doing this. Mainly because I stopped playing because the Pride Event was too much for me (also some story bits) Switched to ESO, atleast there I can always go back to Sotha Sil and talk to him or just run around in Morrowind.

[buttfucker 3000]

Case in point: all the Elf leaders lined up in an Avengers-type shot, Nightborne nowhere to be found

I am sure the king would be happy about his beloved wife being exposed on the frontline where she could be torn apart by shadow monsters.

That being said, yes the visual presentation of the battle was disappointing. Minimal Nightborne forces present is not a problem exclusive to them. I had expected that a battle for the fate of Quel'thelas backed up by a coalition of a few different races and kingdoms would have way, waaaaaaay more than about 100 NPCs. There are only the three ents, one or two dozen dragonriders, half a dozen horsemen at the end, three ships, etc. It just does not feel anywhere near as grandiose as it could have been, and does come off as if each side contributed a paltry token force.

It is odd that this battle happened in the same content drop that had the Isle of Quel'danas intro scenario at the start of the expansion, which did a much better job of conveying the idea of there being this overwhelming invasion with all of the jellyfish and dragons flying overhead, the kaijus offshore, and then the unending stream of void creatures on the ground at the end.

WoW in general tends to struggle with portraying huge war battles. I think only the War of Thorns campaign and the Battle for Lordaeron Scenario kind of painted the impression of a huge battle. And maaaaybe the Broken Shore and Quel'danas intro scenarios. I remember being pretty disappointed seeing how the battle of Karabor was advertised in the announcement trailer for WoD vs the actual final ingame result.

Why the **** are the night elves even there? They don't really have any connection to the sunwell, right?

Because Arator arbitrarily said that they should go recruit other elves, instead of other more sensible and capable factions and organizations.

You act like she is totally defenseless. Isn't she an incredibly powerful mage? Seems like someone you'd want at your side.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Case in point: all the Elf leaders lined up in an Avengers-type shot, Nightborne nowhere to be found

I am sure the king would be happy about his beloved wife being exposed on the frontline where she could be torn apart by shadow monsters.

That being said, yes the visual presentation of the battle was disappointing. Minimal Nightborne forces present is not a problem exclusive to them. I had expected that a battle for the fate of Quel'thelas backed up by a coalition of a few different races and kingdoms would have way, waaaaaaay more than about 100 NPCs. There are only the three ents, one or two dozen dragonriders, half a dozen horsemen at the end, three ships, etc. It just does not feel anywhere near as grandiose as it could have been, and does come off as if each side contributed a paltry token force.

It is odd that this battle happened in the same content drop that had the Isle of Quel'danas intro scenario at the start of the expansion, which did a much better job of conveying the idea of there being this overwhelming invasion with all of the jellyfish and dragons flying overhead, the kaijus offshore, and then the unending stream of void creatures on the ground at the end.

WoW in general tends to struggle with portraying huge war battles. I think only the War of Thorns campaign and the Battle for Lordaeron Scenario kind of painted the impression of a huge battle. And maaaaybe the Broken Shore and Quel'danas intro scenarios. I remember being pretty disappointed seeing how the battle of Karabor was advertised in the announcement trailer for WoD vs the actual final ingame result.

Why the **** are the night elves even there? They don't really have any connection to the sunwell, right?

Because Arator arbitrarily said that they should go recruit other elves, instead of other more sensible and capable factions and organizations.

You act like she is totally defenseless. Isn't she an incredibly powerful mage? Seems like someone you'd want at your side.

Powerful combatant yes, but to me it's just bizzare for a man to want his beautiful wife to also be in a dangerous situation with you, rather than at a safe location. Ideally where she is not having to face horrors or responsibility that men should confront. I romanced Towa in Trails of Cold Steel but always left her at base rather than take her into battle as a party member.

For Thalyssra, I'd imagine she would be providing support in the back behind the walls, like portalling in reinforcements or supplies or detecting for the enemies. Or at most, slinging spells from far away atop the battlements.

[methoxetamine]

Powerful combatant yes, but to me it's just bizzare for a man to want his beautiful wife to also be in a dangerous situation with you, rather than at a safe location. Ideally where she is not having to face horrors or responsibility that men should confront. I romanced Towa in Trails of Cold Steel but always left her at base rather than take her into battle as a party member.

[LemonDemonGirl]

God the way the UI (and everything) looks in Retail is soulless. Looks like something from a ***** game or a Mobile game

[buttfucker 3000]

I am sure the king would be happy about his beloved wife being exposed on the frontline where she could be torn apart by shadow monsters.

That being said, yes the visual presentation of the battle was disappointing. Minimal Nightborne forces present is not a problem exclusive to them. I had expected that a battle for the fate of Quel'thelas backed up by a coalition of a few different races and kingdoms would have way, waaaaaaay more than about 100 NPCs. There are only the three ents, one or two dozen dragonriders, half a dozen horsemen at the end, three ships, etc. It just does not feel anywhere near as grandiose as it could have been, and does come off as if each side contributed a paltry token force.

It is odd that this battle happened in the same content drop that had the Isle of Quel'danas intro scenario at the start of the expansion, which did a much better job of conveying the idea of there being this overwhelming invasion with all of the jellyfish and dragons flying overhead, the kaijus offshore, and then the unending stream of void creatures on the ground at the end.

WoW in general tends to struggle with portraying huge war battles. I think only the War of Thorns campaign and the Battle for Lordaeron Scenario kind of painted the impression of a huge battle. And maaaaybe the Broken Shore and Quel'danas intro scenarios. I remember being pretty disappointed seeing how the battle of Karabor was advertised in the announcement trailer for WoD vs the actual final ingame result.






Because Arator arbitrarily said that they should go recruit other elves, instead of other more sensible and capable factions and organizations.

You act like she is totally defenseless. Isn't she an incredibly powerful mage? Seems like someone you'd want at your side.

Powerful combatant yes, but to me it's just bizzare for a man to want his beautiful wife to also be in a dangerous situation with you, rather than at a safe location. Ideally where she is not having to face horrors or responsibility that men should confront. I romanced Towa in Trails of Cold Steel but always left her at base rather than take her into battle as a party member.

For Thalyssra, I'd imagine she would be providing support in the back behind the walls, like portalling in reinforcements or supplies or detecting for the enemies. Or at most, slinging spells from far away atop the battlements.

Do you think this was what the writers were thinking when they decided not to include her in a shot that has literally every other elf tribe represented?

Why do I even bother man, Nightborne are ****** anyway. Not too different from Drow, in terms of the degenerate matriarchal society.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Do you think this was what the writers were thinking when they decided not to include her in a shot that has literally every other elf tribe represented?

I wouldn't think about that one shot too hard. It was one of several, and the in-engine cutscenes here were of the lower effort kind rather than the higher effort ones with more thought put into them, storyboarding, etc. The Haranir and the Amani also got thrown in as an after thought, with Zul'jarra rolling up in a boat for 3 seconds and then that's the totality of the Amani's presence in the battle.

[mynameismortis]

Thanks Val. I really appreciate you doing this. Mainly because I stopped playing because the Pride Event was too much for me (also some story bits) Switched to ESO, atleast there I can always go back to Sotha Sil and talk to him or just run around in Morrowind.

Have they fixed the combat yet?

[Finarfin]

I dunno. What was your problem with the combat? They did overhaul the Dragonknight iirc, audio/visual and he plays a bit different now.