Top 10 Worst Leveling Zones in WoW 

Can agree on that. In wow classic, the only reason why we go there was because us Horde players (and later Alliance players) needed to traverse through a long pilgrimage from Stranglethorn Vale to Duskwood and to Deadwind Pass to reach the Swamp of Sorrows.

I'm guessing he left it out because it was never marketed as a leveling zone, I don't think it even has any quests in Classic. A few leveling quests at least take you to Crystalsong.

I remember Deadwind Pass as my guild had imploded and my warlock didn't have good enough gear to raid and so became the place where I grinded my last three levels.

Deadwind pass was my reliable source of income for a good part of classic. The Deadwind Warlock ogres in the caves have the +9str to bracers enchant formula, i sold a few hundreds of them over the time of classic. aswell as getting a mountain load of cloth and major mana potion and scrolls.

It was a max level zone though not a leveling zone

Its 100% my favorite zone in all of wow. Had fun leveling there when it came out. Didnt run into pvp there since it seems a lot avoided it on launch.

Ive always wondered when people complained about having to level in vashjir. I was always like "hell i wish I could level there again" its really unique and so beautiful.

Agreed

same, but i also went thru it first on a druid so that may have helped

True. I forgot the slow start with restrictions on movement before you got the mount. Still was an interesting zone imo. Also my fave secret spots have always been the underwater caves etc.

I leveled several classes there, ranged and melee, and it was perfectly fine for me. The little combat problems were trivial. Fuck the whiners.

Like it too will put it in my interactive RU-vid wow game one day hopefully

I do love the idea and I can understand why there is some people enjoy the zone but it wasn't fun at all it gived me stresse whille playing it

Absolutely.

And thats the reason why i leveled through vashjir like 4 times

You liked it cuz it was like you, lonely and desolate. It fits very well

I really don't like how every single square inch of every zone in Old World is now crammed with content. Although, probably because I grew up with the game in the old state. It really had more of a "pioneer" feel to it back then.

My thoughts exactly. I always enjoyed leveling there

@@Zeralop damn, I couldn't have come up with something similar myself. Deep.

I agree with this, its the same reason I enjoyed silithus.

I think it was worse back then since melee didn't have the ranged options it has today

It's not fun to pan your camera around 360 degrees to scan for threats or look for objectives. It also made map markers annoying becuase there was no real depth to the mini map or the map, no pun intended. But yeah it was cool for the first hour or so, very pretty

Vash is my favorite zone tbh. I never struggled with underwater combat and it was so pretty to look at

Vashj'ir is an absolutely stunning zone, and I love it. But I always hated the questing there, especially coz there were and are so many bugs. A couple of years ago I set myself the goal, that I would try the few races/classes, I hadnt gotten around to despite playing WoW since early 2005, as well as try the new starting zones, fx. I hadnt levelled a gnome since Vanilla, so I wanted that experience too. Well, I took 1 of those new chars to Vashj'ir, coz its just so dang beautiful, and guess what, all the old annoyances were still there, including the bugs, in fact the 1 at the end with the submarine was so bad, that when finally a GM came back to me after 5 days of waiting, I got lucky and got a really good GM, who played himself from early on and really knew the game, and he tried for 1½ hours to make it work and had me do all kinds of things and log, so he could try all kinds of things, and none of it helped. At the end, he gave up and had to have me log off, so he could mark the quest as completed and manually give me the next quest. And thats why I love Vashj'ir, but also hate Vashj'ir. Its 1 thing to spend time on quests and going back and forth, but so much time wasted on stupid bugs like that, that they havent been able or willing to fix after 10 years? Nope, no such bugs in Mount Hyjal, so sadly once again, bye-bye Vashj'ir.

Most of the people who hated the Vashj'ir content are just a buncha keyboard turning, button clicking clods. Yet, they never realized thier biggest mistake, was playing Cata in the first place.

I think it's a very 'hate it or love it' zone. I really like it too. I think it might also depend on the class you play.

It was an amazing experience.

I liked it too, once you remember that: up = out, the zone is cake.

It was dope AF

i think its as this, people who enjoy leveling loved vashjr, people who not like leveling dislike vashjr. in vashjr you could not rush through so the zone is bad for them.

I'm guessing you (would) love Subnautica. Most recent addition to my favourite games (base one, not Below Zero). If I buy new PC or just new SSD it installs on it immediately. Can recommend.

Vashj'ir was good, it was the first zone of its kind and set up the expansion nicely, i could also say the same about blades edge mountains but it got boring to look at since it was all brown

@@PredictiveMotion Vashj'ir overall was not good coz' of getting from 1 subzone to another. Doing quests and stuff from fine, but getting around in the WHOLE zone was bad imo. I still like it tho.

I find deep waters unsettling, and the zone captures the feeling well, which is interesting to say the least.

@@e.l.2734 Thalassaphobia perheps? I'm lucky, I'm not scared of it, I find it fascinating. If I was a kid/teen now, maybe I'd go for marine biologist. In Vashj'ir I can ignore the invonvinience of traveling from subzone to subzone, because I just love the atmosphere of it.

Well considering back then at least players weren't loaded in from Dalaran while just in the zone, had to be close enough

This one.

Yeah I wish he fact checked like half the stuff he says in videos. Swamp of Sorrows didn’t remove the Broken Draenei in TBC either, nor did the rivers dismount you (that’s Dustwallow)

Yes and thats exactly the problem with bladesedge mountains. you had to ride on your mount up and down and down an up, corpseruns we annoying af and even with the slow flying mount it was super annoying to be there. not mentioning the canons that would shoot you down if you were un aware, making your green equipted corpse lay in the middle of elite demons. you revive, get killed or shot down again and then killed :D

@@krampuz1192 I think I spent about 10 minutes trying to level in bladesedge and then was like NOPE when I saw how long the corpse run was haha.

@@kylexile87 YH I remeber me as a teen trying to be smart, jumping of a cliff thinking it woukd be faster to do a corpserun insteat of actually going there. but nope. I ended up dying on a spike high above the ground, with the graveyard in the middle of a grey area of the map. I ran to my corpse but couldnt reach it so I had to run back to the ghosthealer. I even found a gryphon there but it wasnt connected to anywhere. my heartstone also was on cd so yeah bladesegde made me even log off for the rest of the day :D

The old versions had this ominous feeling of danger and the unknown in lack of better descriptors. I don't like that Blizz decided to "kiddy-fi" the old zones and make them more "friendly".

I wish they would do Classic Plus and finally fix Azshara. It's one of those mystical zones that deserve more pre Cata lore. With Hyjal, the Naga and the Waterlords nearby, alongside certain nearly unknown areas like the Sea Giant's Temple and the presumed entrance to the Battleground, there's a lot of room for content ^^ I wish they would add content that sends you exploring the furbolgs and the naga, leading through long questchains over the last 10-15 levels. Kinda similar to Yehkina's Quests for Zul Farak, Sunken Temple and BRD.

I didn't like any of the Cata revamped zones all the questlines turned into puns and memes, even the new zones questlines were cringe, and I waited forever to get Uldum and Hyjal and what I got was garbage, because WoW turned into a caracature of itself and didn't take it's lore seriously anymore.

Yea, i couldn't get past that either. Forgot all about that.

Azshara I really enjoyed. You could tell they had plans and then cut them short. So many interesting ruins etc.

+1 for calling out the long-term, gradual growth of the silithid threat across multiple zones. There was such a great sense of mystery, discovery, and revelation about them that I loved.

I am more heartbroken that Vashj'ir was unfinished. An entire Raidtier planned and just mot implemented, a (literally) dead zone in the west of the map, Neptulon just being abducted with literally 0 conclusion to it, the Naga we followed throughout the entire questchain never having an ending. Vashj'ir was my favorite Cataclysm zone, but they really could have made so much more with it.

I liked it a lot too but you can tell that the combat system wasn’t designed to handle it.

@@jamesgoines4635 The little combat problems were so trivial. I leveled several classes, melee and ranged, and it was fine.

@@ChinnuWoW The zone is very fun. I do wish it was received better. That water raid would have been fun.

@@jamesgoines4635 I totally agree. Btw there was that underwater fight in the Eternal Palace raid in BFA with the glowy fish that you need to grab and swim over the dark water. Great bossfight with great atmosphere.

Agreed, and there's also the matter of lore quests always representing a risk to the lore itself. I don't mind that Blizzard doesn't act like every zone needs to be lore heavy.

Got my first pvp gear there outside the portal to highlands back in the day.

He may have been talking from an Alliance perspective; I know as Horde that there were a lot of quests there so I don't see why it would be considered a bad leveling zone for it. Never played Alliance there so there may not have been as much content.

True, I took my druid there to level and it's actually pretty decent zone, although I still don't like the ambiance as a whole

It always amuses me how people try to put down the experience of others :D Why not let people play how they want instead of being condescending?

Best zone in wod and quite possibly a top 10 zone overall imo

gorgrond is one of my favs

O

i came down to the comments to find this after he said gorgrond. easily one of the best leveling zones

Pre-flight, it was THE most annoying zone, bar none (other than Nagrand, which I skipped after doing it once). Constant aggro by the 10 million trash mobs (the ones that have no nameplates) that give almost no Xp and no loot is just ridiculous. They put way too much of that crap in the zone, reminded me of Valley of the Four Winds, that area with the ten thousand tiny vermin attacking you constantly. that crap got old, fast.

The Priestess of C'Thun questline remains in my mind to this day.

Best zone ever.

Stonetalon was literally boring and I couldn't stay in that zone for more than 2 minutes.

What you mean dog? Stonetalon had tons of ok quests, some good pvp moments and wasn't that out of the way. There was a fp in the middle of the zone and you could get there pretty fast from Crossroads?

Well, every opinion is different. As for me, Stonetalon is one of my favorite zones, both versions. Vanilla mostly for the atmosphere, being on the border of foresty Kalimdor and deserty Kalimdor, as well as the Horde and Alliance areas. And the Cata version has an awesome story, engaging on both sides.

Ally stonetalon kinda sucks with the layout and less quests, horde have it pretty good. That is in its classic version at least

@@shadowpane70 yeah i played it on horde and loved it.

I love Thousand Needles, such a cool unique zone.

One of the best things about Classic for me was a return to grindy quests. So relaxing to just kind of zone out and kill stuff.

the worst part of dustwallow is the damned canopy of trees that would block your camera unless you had it parallel to the ground or super zoomed in

@@GriffinPrather ha I was gonna say the same thing. I actually cursed at the screen a time or 2 because of that lol.

I actually dropped classic for along time after i got to this zone. but tbf, its also at the point where leveling slows down alot

Also not really a big fan of the soundtrack from that place and Maraudon due to its disturbingly eerie theme.

Dustwallow before, what, 2.3 was trash. Once they revamped it, it was okay. Better questing for either faction.

Yeah, which is why the Blade´s Edge was so fucking annoying. With a flying mount, it´s kind of OK, but without one, I thought I was going to hang myself every time I had to travel within the zone.

@@jirkazalabak1514 Don’t swear

@@rasmusa9415 Shut up, you are not his parent. Plus, you're on a WoW video, you should be old enough and mature enough to swear. If you're not, you probably shouldn't be here.

@@sarkaztik3228 that’s a report for you

@@rasmusa9415 Snowflake, much?

Yeah. Yeah, the last bit is something you can see again amd again whenever anything new is introduced.

I do remember getting absolutely lost because sometimes you had to go into a cave that was covered in coral and the entrance was completely obscured. they didn't have any good systems for finding where you needed to go back then

Yeah, I really liked the story and the playstyle of vashjir. It was unique and different

Not just that, but it's also one of the big moments where we see Blizzard say one thing before the expansion is out and do another. We were told multiple times about the Abyssal Maw Raid, only for them to scrap it and leave the entire story of the zone up in the air.

@@AsbestosMuffins Addons existed back then and you could absolutely find everything with zero issues.

I get the the same vibes from Azshara.

I did give it 2 chances. Still hated it.

I liked Thousand Needles as well for the same reasons, and I remember seeing a shadow of a massive teetering rock at the top of a butte and wondering if there was a glitch, but then I aimed my camera up and and saw they actually programmed it that way. I thought that was cool and gave the illusion of wind very high up.

As ally the racetrack was something special to do at 30. A real big grind that got annoying after a few times but got you a ton of xp and most of them leading into chains that sent you all around the world.

This can still happen in retail, had a guildi that died inside a raid and he ended up in sentinel hill

I died recently going afk in the sea near grizzly hills and was revived in westfall too. Just seems like the place to be 😂

Yea it was supposed to have quests, sadly it didn't make it. If you go to the zone there is a Sunreaver outpost and a Silver Covenant outpost too. Those were supposed to be quest hubs for horde and alliance players respectively but there's literally no interaction at all with the npcs there.

Originally the Argen Crusade Tournament grounds were supposed to be in Crystalsong. That's why some of the dailies still send you to Crystalson to collect items.

I think if you include Crystalsong Forest you include Moonglade, both essentially empty levelling zones, maybe the only 2 in the game

I remember that developers had to leave crystalsong a lot emptier than originally planned, because Dalaran was causing issues with framerates. Dalaran would have been an issue on other populated zones as well, so quiet crystalsong was the only place they could locate it.

@@Ferreneh I remember taking an average of 5 whole minutes just to finish loading up Dalaran. And that's pretty fast from what I know

I loved vanilla Azshara! And the fact that fewer people were there also enhanced the lonely vibe. I also liked Desolace because the espionage quests with the centaurs were funny and unique, albeit repetetive after a bit of time.

💯 this. Vanilla Azshara was a mood

@@akaroth7542 azshara was a great place to farm mutiple things for gold. Made thousands there

Got a horde axe off a spider in Aszhara that shouldn't have dropped for an ally player. People used to ask me where i got it all the time.

@@akaroth7542 Azshara was also a betifull zone. can´t say the same thing for desolate. and the quest there the centaurs quest felt like it was more running back and forth then actually questing and as the zone was always dead meant that you couldn´t chat whit people like you did in the Barren.

I always got lost there before the water

Yeah, lol. Ofc it was nearly impossible soloing Stromgarde quests, they were all elite quests that you needed to group for in order to complete. Some of my fondest memories of WoW are from my experiences there.

@@mestrejedi7669 Exactly. Storming Stromgarde was so much fun. I loved all the elite little fortresses scattered about in Classic, like Stromgarde, the Dwarf fortresses in Hillsbrad or the Barrens, and of course the amazing troll city in Hinterlands.

That's awesome.

Classic was/is just perfect for random places without much value except for experiencing the world and building character development if you’re an RPer it’s a paradise

@@willnox1 Not really? Character customization is very sparse, animations are stiff and often re-used, atleast the chat emote system works well. But saying WoW is "an RP paradise" is just so wrong xD

Yeah, the changes to Desolace were a mistake. I don't mind the changes to 1000 Needles as much because it makes sense, but there was no real reason to touch Desolace outside of maybe the extra Naga... but those Naga should have tied in more with the Centaurs instead of the nonsense they went with. It shouldn't even be called Desolace anymore, to be honest. It's no longer all that desolate, so really isn't deserving of the same name.

The first time i went through there from duskwood i almost chit myself.

Where is that info from? Exteel appears to have been developed by the Lineage II team, who were based out of Seoul. WoW did lose about half of its developers after its launch, a mix of burnout and a forced layoff from their parent company, but most of those stayed within the area and moved on to studios in/near Irvine (Carbine, Day 1, etc.). NCSoft did poach a large number of those developers, but it was for Carbine Studios who went on to develop WildStar. I do recall John Staats (a level designer) mentioning either in his WoW diary book (a fantastic book which covers vanilla's development) or in a subsequent podcast interview he did that Azshara was essentially abandoned shortly after the exterior level designer finished it because it didn't play very well and they didn't have the resources to have another go at it. Azshara crater was supposed to be a battleground, but Staats outright mentioned in an AMA that it was abandoned in favor of Arathi Basin and never gotten back to. As for Swamp of Sorrows, the WoW Diary specifically mentions it as being finished in October 2002, over a year before the team realized they had to delay anything pvp related for after launch because of how much work was still left to do for the game. There's no mention of it being a PvP zone, and no mention of developers leaving due to not sharing in the vision of the game. There was such a case for Warcraft III though, where the developers fought over whether it should focus more on being an RTS game or an RPG game. Rob Pardo won the fight, and those pushing for the RPG side (Mike O'Brien, Patrick Wyatt, and Jeff Strain) left Blizzard and formed ArenaNet, the studio behind Guild Wars.

@@Deshavyn a funny twist of fate that devs that left because of a lack of focus on rpg elements in favor of rts elements went on to create an entirely multiplayer focused game with more or less classic rts controls with completely irrelevant or inconsequential rpg/story elements

"third person fps" lol

@@intensellylit4100 ya looking back that is not the way to say it lul but the guy who I got the info from called it that so I just passed it on.

You also have to deal with the opposite faction A LOT.

well since Cata Revamps come into play in these rankings, it likely didnt make the list because Cata Stonetalon is oh so much better.

Is it the orange boring mountain with the Kapitalrisk in Kalimdor ? I play on french server so I'm not sure if that's its name in english

its perfectly fine as horde and one of the best revamped cata zones. nah, it doesnt a deserve a spot here at all.

@@DisastrousIntentionally I have been on Alliance at Classic Firemaw months before classic TBC. The half fun comes from the community. I am level 60 warrior

space goat

you have shit taste

Have to remember that he didn't play WOW back then. Just acts like he does

Agree about Vanilla Badlands. It's actually one of my favorite Cata revamps.

You should see a doctor

@@trixzify i like it too, maybe a doctor is a bit harsh

Up until I stopped playing wow early this year, Vashj'ir was always on my leveling path for new alts. Most issues were ultimately minor at worst, and I never felt very hampered by it. Most questing took place on the sea floor, and your usual ground level kit was fully functional. It really does boggle my mind how much people hated it.

I love Vashj'ir for the same reasons as u, but I hate the questing, coz it was and sadly still is full of bugs, especially that quest with the submarine towards the end, where u basically had a 50/50 chance of whether or not the game would bug or let u complete the zone. So love the visuals, but never go there to quest, even tho some of the questlines were actually pretty fun.

You ever get it?

@@willnox1 I finished Loremaster... Around the last week of February ;)

@@feli_esmeralder grats!!! Great accomplishment

@@willnox1 ty :D

Well, Vashj'ir is sadly very much dislike. I loved the zone, but yeah... players dun like change or innovation. Nor did Blizzard like the zone considering they abandoned it halfway through >.>

Melee was fine too ffs

Yeah, they could learn from Square Enix here for sure...

This. This is so true, and I so felt this. Silithus felt like a culmination of all these alien bug quests from Kalimdor, and it absolutely delivered, especially with the 2 raids.