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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.ย. 2024
- The Zone WoW Players Hated
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In WoW there are many zones both good and bad, however in Classic WoW one zone which many players believe is the worst zone in the game is Desolace. In this video we will explore this infamous zone and looking at its details and why some people dislike it.
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My biggest complaint about zones after WOTLK is that many of them (not all) but many, stopped having wide open spaces of nothing. A great many were very dense or had SOMETHING around every corner... they were simply too busy and too cluttered to give that grand and lonely sense of scope needed for a believable world. Zones like Mulgore, Desolace, Barrens, Tanaris, Dragonblight... those zones have something special, their emptiness contribute to an identity and atmosphere.
Very true it makes you feel vastness :)
They started doing this with zones again in dragonflight but unfortunately dragonriding kinda negates the sense of scale you would get from it (the azure span is the biggest zone in the game)
THIS! And it’s so easy to fix the problem, just space everything out with nothing lol
This comment isn't getting enough attention for how bad it is
Wanting less content in your open world game is literally the worst take you could possibly have
Shame. Everyone should boo you
cataclysm shifted zone design into a linear theme park, a shift that is still present today.
The magic of classic WoW is in the variety of zones. Emptiness serves a purpose as it creates contrast and makes the world feel coherent.
That's one of the things forgotten in modern WoW
@@PootisPenserPow While the zone's aesthetic was nice, the quests, mob placements, and especially the rewards were very poorly designed. Very little reward for the ridiculous amount of work you had to do to get anything done in there, whether it's fighting ridiculous amounts of aggro, ludicrous amounts of travel time (and quests designed specifically to waste as much time travelling as possible) or quests that give terrible rewards, or having to grind for hours upon hours for centaur rep to do half the quests in there. The zone just plain stunk Pre-Cata.
@@Dhalin Retail mentality "muh rewards per minute"
@@Dhalin Just skip the quests you don't enjoy, and take in the zone's atmosphere. That's what I did recently on Turtle WoW and I loved it.
@@GitGudFox Wanting some kind of usable reward for 3 hours of work is somehow "muh rewards per minute"? Really? When you have to kill elite enemies, spend 3 hours travelling between NPCs, and at the end you only get to choose between 3 items, none of which can even be used by your class, you're supposed to enjoy that and feel that's fair compensation for 3 hours spent? Or you do a long quest chain that involves 30 minutes+ of swimming over the entire quest chain and you get like 2 gold for the entire quest chain at Level 40 something, that's supposed to be reasonable? Oi.
I actually have fond memories of fishing on the desolace coast during sunset. The skybox in that zone with the naga ruins is very atmospheric.
I loved Desolace it feels so empty
desolace
desolate
*WOAHHHHHHHHH*
just like you
When I first played this game I swam around the edges of the continents exploring, and Desolace reminded me of the map editor of Age of Mythology when I came across its shoreline with the columns and ruins with desolate greenery
you should play retail any map besides the current expansion is completely empty.
I always quested in Decolace, and I played Alliance in vanilla. I also loved Felwood. Was one of my favorite zones.
In TurtleWoW they added a few more quests for the centaur factions (one of which offers 2 trinkets to choose from, one of which increases non-mounted run and swim speed), and a quartermaster with about 20 items. A lot of the quarter master items are actually several levels higher than the level bracket for desolace, incentivizing you to return later to grind the last tier of rep with a level advantage.
On Desolace in general I really like the atmosphere, but having to repeatedly run from Nijel's Point to the south part of the zone without a mount gets pretty tedious.
Fun bit of trivia: in the eastern part of the zone, behind the Magram camps, there's another base of Legion cultists that according to some quest text have some sort of agreement with the Magram. In the base they have a stable filled with felsteeds, which was originally going to be the location for a class quest for Warlocks to get their class mount.
During vanilla, wife and I trying to enter Nijel's Point...by climbing up the hill...not knowing there was a path up. LOL, good times!
You missed the giant creepy snake monster skeletons in the south of the zone. Coming across those back in the day freaked me out. Still don't think there is any explanation for them.
I just figured they were giant Naga. Everything else in WoW seems to get huge when they’re super powerful, including some Naga’s we face. Seemed fitting to me. Or maybe some lore from Warcraft 3 would shed light on it.
I always loved Desolace. There's less players around so you don't get as much competition for mobs. Lots of humanoids if you need to grind cloth, beasts for skinning and gathering spots for herbs and ore. It's decent for leveling fishing too. The major downside is there's not as many quests, and you go there pre 40 so if your class doesn't have an ability like travel form you spend a bit more time traveling.
But that's a good thing. Having zones in an MMO that are impractical in some ways makes them less popular, but that also means a smaller group of players will value those zones even more because they offer something unique. Every time I leveled a class with good mobility I leveled in zones like Desolace because going there meant less competition for mobs and gathering nodes. Plus I didn't need to be as paranoid about turning a corner and finding a squad of gankers.
I really liked Desolace back in vanilla. It was the first zone that felt intimidating to me by the time I reached it, and I found the warring centaur tribes to be very interesting. It nailed a certain vibe for me, anyway.
Desolace is a good zone for grinding humanoids for cloth and raw silver if you're into that. However the level range of quests usually requires you to go to STV or somewhere else to get a few so that you can get them all done. Of course large level gaps in quests is quite common in Classic.
On Horde side, if you want, you can do Desolace, Arathi, Hillsbrad and Altaric and skip STV altogether, which is not that bad considering there are way to many level 60 rogues ganking there.
Zone hopping ftw. Ive playing, since WoW was a few months old. Ive never understood those ppl, who say, they have to grind out lvls regularly due to the large lvl gaps in quests, Ive always had more than enough quests to lvl to 60 without ever going into Silithus or Eastern Plaguelands, often not even finishing Winterspring.
But I have also always zone hopping from very early lvls, so I miss as few quests as possible, taking a chance at the Wetlands run at very low lvl, so I could already exploit most of Teldrassil/Dun Morogh/Elwynn, or the much easier Barrens run for Mulgore/Durotar/Tirisfal.
I still do it in Classic. I constantly zone hop between at least 3 different zones at any time. Sometimes it gets a bit tricky to get all the quests done, b4 they go gray! But I abhor grinding, I find it soooo boring, its much more of a challenge to me to get the puzzle of zone hopping together, and it has the added advantages, that after lvl10 Im almost always doing green quests. Sure a little less kill xp, but u get the same xp and rep from quests, and u can do the quests much quicker that way. And u never run out of quests.
I think the bad part about Desolace is mainly that you don't have a mount when it makes sense to be questing there. The zone is pretty nice with a mount.
I remember when I came back to WoW in WoD after only playing vanilla. As soon as I got my flying unlocked I went and explored the differencies and I got so mad when I saw that they had put a lush field in Desolace. It didn't suit the theme at all. And the sunken isle in Feralas, the removal of faction wars in Tarren Mill and Ashenvale, plus the flooding of Thousand needles. Plus the change of Brill into a Frankenstein's Lab and the revamp of Pyrewood Village... They all made my blood boil. Blizzard should have phased the entire world through an NPC rather than forced the change.
Also, I loved the Shimmering Flats. Was decimated by Cata.
I guess you can say there was a.....CATACLYSM *badum tsssss*, but for real that shit pissed me off too lol
One of the big things about Desolace from an Alliance perspective is that while it had a decent number of quests to do, many of those quest chains either started in totally different zones (one was in Ironforge iirc) or at obscure places out in the zone itself. So if you rock up to Nijel's Point unprepared, you'll only find a handful of quests to do and be left wondering why you're even bothering to stick around in Desolace instead of heading over to STV or whatever instead.
I enjoyed questing there with my very first char back in the day. Actually had no idea it's so unpopular.
I always wanted to quest here but could never get to it. Back in the day with no info on Google. Finding the way in just now in sod I realised what I missed 😢
Atmosphere-wise both Desolace and Dustwallow are just fine, they make a nice addition to the original WoW set of landscapes.
And I simply love the Shadoprey Village coast and Maraudon.
Yet all the running without mount makes questing there real pain in the ass. Plus the "desolate" nature of the zone makes it pretty hard to find a group for some of the more difficult quests.
Tanaris and Winter Springs , freaking fantastic area in the wester side of Azeroth Pre Cata... when I play current retail , the game literally stop the player at level 30 in Azeroth , So lame of Blizzard , Dragonflight not that important or impressive compared too the old school zones .
"pain in the ass"? You mean you are upset that you need to actually spend time in the game? You have more important things to attend to perhaps?
I love Desolace, I always came to this zone, but I never help any clans here, I don't want to participate on their conflict.
Hey, my favorite part of the Warcraft Avengers assemble moment was the quest right after where we blew the horn to rally the troops and they had Rexxar fighting alongside Bain, Rohkan and Chen Stormstout. That was a great touch. It was corny as hell, but I loved the fact they grouped those four up together.
What quest is that? I wanna do it. It sounds epic
@@kyubeycoobie3568 It's at the very end of the Emerald Dream campaign questline in Dragonflight. The questline only takes about an hour and you can do it immediately after turning 70 just go to Valdrakken and it will automatically prompt you to start it. Don't skip the in game cut scenes to see it all. I loved it, a lot of players thought it was corny but it totally fit the theme of the expansion. Dragonflight was all about not only uniting the dragonflights but also the factions of Azeroth to fight together. I think that plot point is going to be very important in the next few expansions.
i love those kind of zones, desolace, shimmering flats, silithus. i just love the vibe
I had no idea people disliked Desolace. I always wanted to go to Desolace. I liked the extreme environment regions.
Desolece is one of those places where it’s about the journey, not the destination
Also as alliance there are some orc outposts with interesting quests, like extraction from a heavy fortified bastion - perfect mission for a rogue as well as an island with naga's (giant humanoid snakes) in the sea behind the big tower ruins, with a mini boss spawn and a secret quest as well
Desolace long before the Cataclysm was already a interesting zone. I just wish Retail WoW would bring back the old zones of vanilla.
Join us in Classic... we're waiting for you, and somebody probably has bags for ya
Yeah old school Vanilla Azeroth , million times better then current Retail WoW . Retail try too drive the player outta Azeroth by level 30 nowadays, so lame .
@@PootisPenserPow Pfft. Go to Classic, and play an unbalanced, broken mess of a game where half of the classes are not viable, and half the quests give you no usable rewards, and the game tries to waste as much of your time as possible forcing you to travel miles back and forth, or worse that stupid turtle camera quest that has you going to both ends of both continents, for very little reward.
The War Within expansion is bringing us back to the old world.
No not you. you stay please. @@Dhalin
Man, I always liked the Desolace, it genuinely felt, well, desolate. That and the fact there was rarely any players here, it was heaven on PvP servers.
I liked Desolace for several reasons, one being that there wasn't anyone else there most of the time. I also loved Thousand Needles at night, especially the Shimmering Flats. I miss that zone the way it was.
shimmering flats at night does have a vibe
Desolace's big problem is that It's Another Damned Wasteland On Kalimdor. Durotar, Barrens, Dustwallow, Stonetalon, Desolace, Thousand Needles, Tanaris, Silithus and, to a degree Winterspring are all just awful same-looking hellscapes.
How can you be like "oh boy, more of Blizzard's bare stone and grit texture pack, this time with a green tint!"
The reason why I hated Desolace, is because of PTSD from Vanilla WoW. Whether it is the asinine escort quests that are just plain over-tuned for anybody who can't heal themselves or a hunter that has a pet that can be healed, or the plethora of areas that have way too high hostile mob densities, to those stupid quests requiring you to swim 50 miles out to an island and back several times trying to avoid ridiculous amounts of naga aggro. Oh, and the Centaurs, where you had to pick one faction over the other, and then kill 500+ of them to get your rep high enough to do any quests was just eyeroll. And if you did actually do all of that? The reward just wasn't worth it, at all. Then you had the demon area, again, high mob density, lots of mobs that were tough, I remember trying to get through that with my arms warrior... everything was immune to bleeds, etc. It just wasn't a good time.
I’ll never forget leveling in desolace when I made my first guildmate friend. Hope you’re doing well out there nate E.
I liked the Desolace when I leveled up. I found the kodo graveyard a fun detour, and as a warlock, I had a few minutes of fun taking control of the big demon hanging out there.
I vaguely remember following a little convoy of kodos too, though I don't think it was that quest.
I loved desolace. It was empty and you could peacefully grind there all day without disruption. The undersea quests off the shore with the nagas were interesting as well.
Most of the quests were ass but I never bothered with them much, I just went to the centaur camps and valley of bones and killed centaurs and skeletons endlessly on my rogue for XP. That and watch people fail at the dowsing rod quests in valley of bones that was always a good time.
There was also a kick ass fishing rod that was a rare drop from the lobster traps. The underwater lock boxes were also fun and a great way to raise picking.
I remember having to do Desolace to get a warlock minion. I actually miss how we used to go through all the different zones while leveling and had to do specific areas or dungeons for our classes. I wish they would separate the expansions in terms of leveling so people could do1-60 in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms and hit all of the quests again. Then each expansion area would be a separate 0-10. Any character who has played all of the expansions (completing storylines) would be marked as 10 for each, but new players to the game would start at 0 in each zone and get to experience it. Basically I want timewalking to work in the opposite direction -- I want new characters to have to opt out of starting at zero in each expansion.
I had no idea you got to meet Rexxar and Misha in desolace. Now that I really think about it I know more about BC moving forward lore and story wise than I do classic, and I played through both warrant 3 and the expac. Plating through now as a hunter and it's a mix of 'I really do not want to do this again' and 'this brings me back to times I'd rather never remember.' Honestly kinda sad considering I have Honestly playing since the game release in 04...
there is a quest line that makes you kill the demons there and the drop rate is the worst for like 6 things. good grind but really annoying
Oh my god I remember that from years ago. I remember being so annoyed by the drop rates lol.
I like desolace and idek why. Prolly rexxar, the night elf light house thing, the centaur beef and the burning legion presence. I think the burning legion have been there since before wc3
People who dislike Desolace are nitpicking and biased. Desolace is in fact one of the best zones
i absolutely loved the atmopshere and feel of desolace. it also feels comfy grinding xp on the animals there
This zone is great for Alliance, has lot of quests around 33+ also people complain about tedious questing in Desolace while killing tons of the same wild life in STV. There is so many cool sub zones in Desolace while STV is just one giant stretch of the same looking jungle dotted with copy paste Troll ruins. Desolace has the Sytur Ruins, the Demon ridge, the Naga area, the Orc camp, and then two separate Centaur camps, the undead trail, so much variety. Coming from the lust forested lands of the Alliance, the Desolace wastes is a refreshing mix up. And of course Maraudon is one of my favorite classic dungeons just because of its sheer size and scale and three different ways to come in it.
I learned to love zones like Desolace, Tanaris, Felwood and Silithus. Every zone served a purpose in vanilla, even if they weren't all equally fleshed out and polished on release. Winterspring, Azshara, Silithus, Blasted Lands, were all places that were so out of the way and didn't initially have any real draw to them besides variety and a handful of quests, but I still fell in love with their atmosphere and aura. I didn't stick around for the release of Cata, and from everything I've watched and read, it lacked the magic of these old areas, and I didn't miss anything that I would've enjoyed personally.
I found Desolace had many things going for it but it seemed to me there was something missing to tie it all together to make it a great zone. When levelling characters sometimes I skipped it and sometimes I didn't.
Desolace was a gift during classic launch on a pvp server, STV was so swamped but being able to quest and grind a little bit relatively undisturbed was awesome.
I solo leveled here as a night elf priest for a couple levels. The best thing about wow was feeling like you were in the middle of fuckin nowhere while adventuring into the dangerous wild and this definitely fit the bill.
I always consider it a grim place that i don't want to go to when levelling, but when I get there I find myself resonating with the emptiness and desolation endup really enjoying my time there.
I leveled like 10 characters and I always did this zone. Once you do it a couple of times, you realize you can do most of the quests by circling around the zone about 3 times, as long as your sequencing is correct.
I have no idea where you got the idea that nobody likes this place, there were always people leveling with me there.
I remember spending so much time in Desolace in my vanilla days. I'd put on smooth jazz radio and just grind for hours. Also got ganked quite a lot to the point that I nearly broke my desk in anger. Ah, those were the days.
I actually enjoyed Desolace when I played back in Vanilla. I ended up on a PvP server and it was fine until I got to STV and was constantly camped by the horde. A guild mate suggested I try leveling in Desolace instead. It was pure bliss being alone and not having to worry about dying every few minutes from an enemy player.
I played this zone last year for the first time in WotLK. I swear I got there too early from Redridge Mountains and it was legit scary. I then came when I was a bit overleveled, did all the quests and actually had a pretty nice time. I liked mining there as well
I love desolace because i feel like I'm alone. And sometimes, I'm in WoW to feel alone. I find someone and I PvP, them I keep staying alone. With the WoW music and doing quests, like in the old days. There are a couple places which are not great in WoW, and definetly Desolace is not one of them for me. =)
Immediately went through my reddit history and was shocked to find that the first reddit post at 0:02 belonged to me.
Still true 5 years later, Descolace sucks ass.
The Kodo graveyard is based on IRL Elephant graveyards, just in case you didn't know. You said some fun facts earlier in the video but didn't mention that fact.
Frustrating when people are that unworldly isn't it.
While i was a complete noob, i loved the sense of a remote frontier Desolace gave me. So away from anything and anyone else. Just me, the sky, the wasteland, and lots of centaurs to kill to grind. As i was afraid of extensive pvp, i was also felt safer down there as a Horde player, given that side of Kalimdor is notoriusly annoying for Alliance players to reach and thus more easily skipped by them while leveling.
Rexxar was so annoying. Anytime you're in Desolace while leveling you see him all over the place. When you need him to turn in a quest for the Ony attunement, it suddenly takes half an hour. The one upside of the zone is that it had the most Grave Moss nodes which made for decent farming.
one of the things i've always loved about Desolace is that it has that specific Conan fantasy vibe.
Classic Desolace felt somewhat half-finished. I mean - the quests where ok, but there was no "greater" Questline. I merely used it to farm materials and xp rather than questing
Off-shore there are islands with a special quest, sunken ships and rogue chests for upgrading your lockpicking skills.
I level'd lock pick back in the day, the old school way.
@@josephthornton8560 I played some Classic recently and relived the rogue grind. Ah, the good ole' days!
Moonglade least favorite? Are you nuts?
That was one of the coolest ideas, that one class, the only class that can only be learnt by one race of each side, has their own home.
If anything they shouldve went even harder with that idea and gave the druids more incentives to go there.
I actually have very good memories of Desolace, going as far as it call it my favorite old world-zone.
The wide open space and the general vibe give a peaceful, but hostile vibe. It really feels like the end of the world, and I honestly wish modern day WoW had more zones like it.
The Cataclysm classic pre-patch will be a sad day for me, like a decade and a half ago.
The only thing that deso realistically needed was. FP for central deso for the horde, and a southern FP for alliance tbh. The quests on both sides are (mostly) in two spots: the northern shore/island, and the central/bottom of the zone. The complaints people have mostly come from the lack of visual interest- with so much back tracking back and forth for the bread crumb quests.
That all being said, if you do it proper, this zone is actually still fairly fast to level in. You can sneak a free 2 levels very uncontested.
Go in, get your central hub quests finished with the goblin/start your centaur quest line. Grab the horde side or alliance hubs quests, almost all of them are telling you to go to the northern reef. Grab your quests at the towers. Do a clean up of that area in one push, come back and do the thunderaxe drop quest + chain. And you’re effectively done. Anything past that isnt necessary, doing the satyr quest is a bonus if needed, you dont necessarily need the escorts or final closing the portal quests. You’re in and out in about 2.5 hours at most and you go from 34-36 or 35-37 fairly quickly.
And it’s nice to have that 2 level buffer too, that 4 level range is. Bit arbitrary otherwise. Your options are scarlet farming, or doing quests that are likely orange/red in STV if you started STV too early, or sprawled out between arathi, hillsbrad, alterac, STV, etc. it sets you up nicely to do dustwallow right after, which can net you from 35-37.5ish, or 37-39, and opens the door for quick alterac quests and finishing out northern /middle of STV nicely with plenty of BB quests to last you deep into 41-43 or so. Which sets you up nicely for tanaris, etc.
Very slept on zone
My last bit about it- you can cheese the back track on this a fair bit too by timing hearthstones out or having friend summons with warlocks if you’re in a guild to major cities. Alliance have it a bit rougher, where the hearth is a commitment that realistically doesn’t save much time (sure it saves you a back walk, maybe 2, but you’ll need to head to IF to finish out some of your quest lines IIRC, so your hearth is best to be kept at menethil here so you can take that to IF, or option select to just go straight to theramore. Darn isn’t as viable in this regard). But having thunderbluff so close to deso is actually very nice since you’re just a mage port from org, and you’re able to get the ball rolling from TB into RFD quests or again, option select to dustwallow, or ratchet/mage port to org for grom gol, etc.
Deso is just one of those zones that on paper is kind of ass but you can genuinely slam out that place really quick.
3:23 That's how me and my classmate were usually communicating during class without talking, about whether after classes we gonna play 🎮
Yeah but y’know it actually has quests unlike Silithus
My only vague memory of Silithus had something to do with leveling Cooking.
One of the best mid game tanking trinkets, that will last up to the early part of end game, can be found in southern desolace. A centaur gives you a quest to go into mara to assemble the pendant of the khans and upon completion gives you a trinket that has a 2% chance to proc +25 to all stats when struck in combat.
yeah Mark of the Chosen has a lot of staying power. The proc lasts for a full minute and will stay on your character even if you unequip the trinket. Crazy that a) it's a green item and b) it's available so early.
A common thing tanks did in Vanilla Classic to min/max or parse was to have MotC equipped in time to get a proc on taking damage from the "rage mob" (last trash mob before a boss pull), and then once you got the proc and killed the mob and exited combat you'd swap the trinket out for a different one. The buff stayed on you, so for the first minute of the boss fight you'd have +25 to all stats without having to sacrifice a trinket slot. A ton of boss fights in Vanilla Classic were shorter than a minute, so it was like having a third trinket (or an extra set of consumables) active on you
Gotta admit that Desolace was one of my favorites in OG leveling to 60. Any leveling zone on your first trip through 30's would probably feel awesome though.
4:10 fun fact: also Elephants follow the same habit. when they are about to die, they go to a certain place where others have went there and died. it's cool.
Weird. Ive always done Desolace when lvling. Sure, its very harsh and barren, but its a break from the previous zones, and since theres never a lot of ppl, hardly any, around, u can get to it quite efficiently, no fighting over quest mobs, no constant waiting for respawns. Only the escorts can be tricky.
Im talking old Desolace ofc. Been doing it again in Classic WoW. Its become a sport over the years to constantly try to improve my questing through, to work around unnecessary mobs, avoid getting trapped, go for only the needed mobs/items. Its actually been good preparation for hardcore, I was surprised, when I tried out hardcore just for fun, to see just how much my own competing with myself over the years had prepared me, and how far I got without even getting in trouble.
I was actually sad, when they changed Desolace. It wasnt as good for me any more, but then again u can lvl without it, since u no longer need anywhere near all zones to get lvld up. And if its not for u in Classic, u can still skip it. Ive never understood those, who insist, that they have to grind out a few lvls here and there, coz "theres just not enough quests". Ive never had that problem. I started slowly back in Vanilla, coz I was working a lot back then, so I often relaxed by fully exploring each new zone, as I got there, so I always found those hidden away quests. There really is no need to grind, theres plenty of quests. Ive always hit 60 b4 even getting to Silithus, often hardly doing anything in Eastern Plaguelands. Tho sometimes Ive switched around a bit so as not to always skip the same zones.
There's this treasure chest quest here that made me cry 'cause of the low droprate of the key. I think it drops from the crabs near the beach. I went here in my warrior before going for other zones. I remember this place fondly 'cause it was here that I got some armor from a passing high-level character.
Only ever played alliance and there's not a lot of hooks going to that zone aside from class quests which you usually get and then get out to finish it.
2:30 Not just rewards for Exalted, but also it would be nice to have a way to grind to Exalted. You've only ever been able to grind up to Honored with either Centaur tribe, iirc.
Been playing F2P for about two months now (I highly recommend it!) and I can say Desolace is useless: both in new content (if you haven’t unlocked Horrific Visions of N’zoth - which you can’t at lvl 20) and if you visit it through the Timeline.
If you haven’t unlocked Visions then the zone is completely bereft of any quests or anything of note.
If you visit it through the Timeline then you’ll get some old school quests….but ultimately, not many. In fact, it took hardly no time at all to burn through the quests that were available and before I knew it, I’d completed the “story line” to Desolace.
The whole time, it felt like this was the last zone the developers had to work on and by that time, they were bored and tired.
I’m sure that’s not really the case but yeah, the zone sucks.
The Kodo Graveyard reminds me of The Elephant Graveyard. They feel that they're about to die of old age or diseases and feel drawn to that location. Idk if it's in their nature or their culture.
Desolace IS World of Warcraft.
The centaur clans feel entirely finished and that's what is GREAT ABOUT WOW. It feels like there's a mystery here, it'll keep you coming back to figure out what this place is about.
Having some sort of updated Cataclysm zone quests or coherency WOULD RUIN DESOLACE. It's a barren zone, isolated zone.
It should feel archaic and disconnected, the gear should be sub-par. If you went to a zone that's far off the beaten path... why would it have the best gear? It makes perfect sense the quest rewards should just be whatever they had to give you, the best they can do. Their supplies should be limited and hard to get. Shit, Desolace would probably even be better if there were no food or water vendors. That's what the WORLD of warcraft is.
Desolace is a great zone. The satyrs, centaurs and nagas are cool. Thunder Axe Fortress is sick with the missing night elves. The escort quests are awesome. Mara is great. In general not a ton of people were there, so it was a great place to grind for a couple levels. It was kinda empty, untouched and had a great ambiance. I loved the Scarlet Crusade/SM lore quests that took you there. And Horde had some good stuff there too. Overall probably 7/10 zone. Ambiance was 10/10.
Season of Discovery is the only Classic+ your ever going to get. They said they rather spend their time in retail development than splitting the content team. Desolate/Desolace, yeah is suppose to be that way. It an awesome mid 30s zone with plenty of quests, especially for alliance. People just don't give it enough credit.
One of my issues with Desolace is the fact that like half the damn quests send you into maurodon.
I think Desolace works well as a contrast to Stranglethorn Vale, which shares a similar level range. STV is a tropical jungle full of greenery, while Desolace is a barren grey desert. When I was leveling in Vanilla and Classic WoW, I would take a break from questing in STV to go level in Desolace, so neither zone got boring. Also, Desolace is where I'd retreat to for grinding in peace when there were too many gank squads in STV (pvp server). The zone is empty enough that it was very rare to encounter gankers.
Mauradon is pretty cool so that helps.
If you want to see more content in Desolace, then Turtle WoW has done some improvement in terms of Magram vs Gelkis by more quests and reputation dependant items 😉
Also some more quests, e.g., dryads by the Horde town. Pretty interesting addition to the lore and zone improvement😊
This is my favorite zone. I had no idea it existed and got to it in my classic leveling journey and it blew my mind. It was so dark and bleek that it just scratched this fantasy itch.
lol I never got that. I love Desolace; the story behind it, the contrast of the grey hills against the mossy beaches, the general openness of the area....
Blizzard while creating Alliance zones: Put everything in what we have.
Meanwhile, Horde zones are like: Make is all like the Barrens.
Desolace is a cool zone, I don't care what people say. Most WoW players clearly don't pay attention to the lore, or they would see it for what it is: a warning of what happens when the centaur are allowed to go unchecked. It is said by the Tauren - who used to live in the Desolace - that it once resembled a grassland like Mulgore only a few years prior, before the Centaur's aggressive expansionism.
Granted, it might have been more effective earlier in the game before you do several quests in the Barrens to kill centaur leaders there so you understand the seriousness of their encroachment and how drastically they alter and destroy the natural resources wherever they reside.
I think the biggest reason why I didn't like Desolace was that it was just another wasteland in a game that was already full of wastelands.
Especially for Horde players half of their home continent was a wasteland to begin with.
And among all of those wastelands Desolace also had the least interesting story and the most boring quests.
We all know that Blizzard was cutting much effort when they struggled to get the game ready for launch. Desolace was the result.
I played a fairly popular private server a while back. And i quested in Desolace on my troll hunter.
I spent a _lot_ of time in Desolace. And its a zone i also had hated and avoided before, like most of Kalimdor.
But this server had a few changes with the centaur clans, and i guess the kodo meat was used for rep. Or maybe it was cooking, i dont know why, i just knew it sold great. A stack on the AH went for 10g, and at level 30ish, it was a fortune.
I spent a _lot_ of time in desolace and it earned a new unexpected appreciation from me lol. I grinded levels there until everything was grey in the kodo graveyard. And my LW skill didnt mind either
I loved classic Desolace
just looking there from Nijel's point balcony
darkness, the sound of desert wind
for hours
I always found the graveyard to be a beautiful place, not a depressing one.
It feels like these majestic beasts go there to die in peace and dignity within the company of their kind and lost ones. it manages to make me stop to think about something like death in a game thats basically about mindlessly killing everything and anything:
but then again, I always loved deserts and melancholy
It wasn´t one of the most popular zones, but i never got the impression that people hate it. I personally enjoyed going there, doing the quests and going to Maraudon. Dustwallow Marsh was also a zone i enjoyed and i never found it to be shit or boring.
I like Desolace actually - maybe because as Night Elf player it was my first experience with a Zone that wasn't a purple forest... (I mean discounting darkshore)
The desolace is one of my favorite zones because its so vast and open. We need more vast and open zones like Desolace. World of Warcraft should be a world first and a game second, so there should be open natural areas that don't contribute to quests or benefit players. I actually do have found memories of Desolace where one of my first WoW guilds would all meet at Nigel's Point and travel to Maraudon...... God I miss Vanilla.... I miss traveling .... and I miss open zones like Desolace.
Desolace gives the impression that they had ideas they wanted here and then something happened and all the staff working on it got dragged off to do something else, leaving many things loose ended.
Man your videos are amazing! I love these zone retrospectives so much..
desolace was always a must, at least to get that fishing pole in the waters at the horde town
Man some of my greatest memories was desolace. The pvp was brutal, theres no where to hide. It was a time of solititude but allowed for deep thinking. As corny as that sounds, it was just me, my sword and my power metal playlist for a day and I loved it lol.
The worst part about the zone was the number of escort quests and being constantly ganked while doing them.
Bad rep completely undeserved. It has beautiful music and a mysterious atmosphere you will only find in some vanilla WoW zones. The equally enigmatic dungeon Maraudon is hidden within it. I love this place.
People hate Desolace because once you ding 30 the questing path in general becomes a lot less well laid out. Desolace in particular doesn't have a whole lot for you. You'll make it to like 34 there and run out of viable content that isn't grinding mobs and have to move on because everything else has you trying to kill mobs in the 36-38 range.
People didn't like it because they didn't have all the info on quests. Also the maghar gelkis quests were some of my most memorable experiences
Admittedly, I was like 13 or 14 at the time, Desolace made me actually quit WoW until the start of Wrath back in the day. Can't say I remember why, aside from school being a problem too lol.
Eh, I mean wasn't too much of a special zone, it was many years ago when I cleaned the quests there.
But just because it's no one's favourite it doesn't mean it's bad. It also has quite some content and lore in it, but I suppose the main flavour for it is that it's a wasteland where Kodos go to die.
I feel like most horde players love desolace. A lot of running but the quests are still some of the most efficient in game
I'm not sure what you meant by 'if Classic Plus comes out' seeing as how that is what Season Of Discovery is.
I didn't avoid Desolace. I actually liked Desolace a lot. It was one of my favorite zones to level in back in vanilla.
Desolace is amazing imo. It's supposed to be this empty wasteland. It's not called DE-solace for no reason. The questing route there for Horde isn't bad either. For Alliance it's not a great zone XP-wise though.
I wish I lived in Shadowprey Village 😢 the sunsets there are beautiful