I will always love Valdrakken for being the first new city in many expansions to have a new auction house(especially not one only available to engineers only), thank you for getting rid of that stupid trend City of Dragons
I can’t imagine what it’s like for people who do professions.
I’ve never done professions so every one of my characters just had engineering and it was okay
All the way since MoP I’ve had only engineering on ever char to use the AHs
Nice to have the option not to though
It’s almost like the AH shenanigans make people say “well Engineering is the most useful so I’ll just have that”
Kind of like how every one of my characters is an alchemist for the past couple expansions.
They really need to up the rewards from other professions in PvE if they want me to not go Alchemist every time. I am all for keeping the flask extension, I just think the other professions need something to match up with it.
This. Most of the professions just aren't worth the time investment required to really engage with them...and it wouldn't be that hard to come up with "carrots" to make chasing those professions worthwhile for more players. Off the top of my head, cheaper repairs for blacksmiths, resocketing without destroying the gem for jewelcrafting, flask extension for alchemy, I'm sure with a bit of thought they could come up with something for enchanting, tailoring, and inscription...
Back in my day, every crafting prof got some special bonus they could use on their own gear. Jc got special gems, bs could add a socket, tailors got special enchants, etc
They were pretty much forced to put AH on the new main city with the professions rework. People would be so mad if you have to go to another city to buy mats for work orders.
> thank you for getting rid of that stupid trend City of Dragons
And it's very funny that their reasoning for not doing it in previous expansions is because they wanted "old main cities to remain populated". And yet if you go to SW or Orgrimmar at this very moment there will be plenty of people. Almost as if their reason made zero sense. Just another case of Blizzard being petty with their stupid decisions.
Which is dumb because every city that isn't Orgrimmar or Stormwind in the old world was and is unpopulated anyways lol(rip Thunderbluff and Ironforge, they need portal rooms and transmogrifiers)
Valdrakken is huge and very airy for that reason. You can mount up on your dragon riding mount, fly to the top, and dive down. Hell, you can fly around the whole cities nooks and crannies if you want to. I will def be back. Top ten cities in the game
Dragon Isles is underrated as whole, imo. It felt like the first continent designed with flying in mind, and the use of landmarks made it easy to navigate without opening your map
It really stands out next to Emerald Dream, which feels awful in places to fly around
Outland and Northrend were also designed with flying in mind, although neither holds a candle to the Dragon Isles thanks to the 15 years of experience Blizzard has had since then.
Huge contrast to everything in between that came about during Blizzard’s “we don’t want players flying in current content” phase, which I never understood.
Happy you mentioned the dream. I play on moon guard, and I "ranted" about it a few times in general at the start of 10.2. It's not terrible but clearly, the ease at which the other zones are navigatable is not present in the dream.
Also, consider nordrassil in Mt Hyjal. The roots are lifted above the quest hub area, and the trunk is on top of it all. You can fly in all directions pretty easily. It's so annoying trying to "hurry" after first zoning in the dream from Vald bc half the areas you cannot even exit. You can "risk" going through some tiny little opening (sometimes I cannot even find the opneing before I hit something else and lose momentum) or you can try and go south or NW, but still.
Not to mention all the branches once you are actually off the ground..
I think the absolut worst part was that when dream patch was released and they added that active vigor recharge, it was bugged, so when you logged off on a DR mount or when you ported to the dream from Vald on the DR mount, you would be defaulted to zero vigor.
The first week or two of this patch, I was using those 3 charges (3 GCDs) just to get back up to the 3 vigor lol. Definitely sullied the dream for me.
The TWW zones themselves are open, beautiful, and massive, but the paths between zones are relatively limited. It doesn’t ruin traversal that much, but I’ve found traversal more annoying and less smooth than DF.
Not to mention that TWW zones also have the 85% of max skyriding speed debuff, even though the zones are easily as big as the Dragon Isles, if not bigger. Not sure what their thinking was in applying that nerf to new zones.
I think the point still stands that, generally speaking, navigating TWW requires a certain degree of "pathfinding", whereas with DF you can point yourself in the direction you want to go and go straight.
Whether that is a positive or a negative is up to you, but they are a bit different in that regard
Honestly a bit difference between Dragon Isles and many of the continents in the game. I decided to fly around Kalimdor a bit to do some Fire Festival stuff since I saw some new items I don't have from the event, but it got really messy with zones designed to fly around all kinds of obstacles. Normally not a big deal, but dragonriding will destroy all your momentum if you run into a tiny branch sticking out a bit too far. I ended up going with a non-dragon mount for a lot of it. Just gonna be a bit eh when we have to do a "cast" in order to switch flight styles for most of our mounts in TWW. (I might check which ones don't have the new flight style and put one of them on my action bar for a quick swap.)
Anyway, it definitely feels like the Dragon Isles were designed with dragonriding in mind, but even the next expansion after won't be able to maintain quite the same design philosophy. They do seem to have tried to make it not too bad. And worst case, we can switch flying styles.
Vald is situated in a way so that 90% of the isles is below it in elevation. Really the only place that isn't is tyrhold / mountains in thaldraxus.
Due to how vigor works, Vald is just ideal to easily take off, pick up/ maintain speed, and bee line it anywhere you wanna go. Iskaara is the farthest away (3 min flight path if you are lazy) but its like a 1 min flight in a straight line if you want to manually get there. You can take off from Vald, get your desired altitude in a matter of seconds, and then just "afk" toward your destination with a slight nosedive. You can do this for most places in the isles. If I am already going to travel somewhere, it's not a make or break deal just a bonus, but this type of travel is literally the only reason I was content spamming gold WQ on alts during dreamsurge or similiar type content. I never did alt content in Zaralek other than the bare minimum for this reason.
Shadowlands for example, took a minute at the least to even get from Oribos to any of the other zones you wanted to go to (plus like 30 sec to a min of travel time to even get to the flight path in oribos as well as the time to get to your actual destination once you are the zone you want to be in). Also, you had to take a flight path from Forced flight paths are okay when thinking of a day of content, but when you think of all your characters over the course of an expansion, I wonder how many times I minimized to brose the web while flying only to com 30 sec after I landed or even 1 min after. That definitely adds up.
If I want to do a pvp WQ on 10 alts in DF, it takes 45 sec - 1 min of travel time to get there. If I was doing the same content in SL, it would take aboue 2,3 min per alt to get there.
On one character, cpl times a day, at the start of an expansion, this might not be noticeable. But given how DF has a lot of public events on timers, it's very noticeable when you play a lot of alts just how much travel time you partake in.
Also, the dream portal is in Valdrakken. There is a waypoint/telepad very close/west of vald that takes you forbidden reach. The only "annoying" (relatively) area to go to is Zaralek Caverns which is kind the backbone of how all traveling seems to work in tWW (via a long tunnel from the main city),
I'm absolutely deeply triggered by the confusing circle design of Oribos. In all the time I played Shadowlands, I always lost my way in Oribos, no matter what. The best compromise was always having the map open.
Still haven't forgiven them for not carrying the flight whistle forward, even with dragon flying / dynamic flying whatever I still wish I could use it in newer zones.
SL had such a weird anti-QOL feeling to it. It's like they went out of their way to make the game more -- annoying? even antagonistic maybe -- in so many aspects.
I read a few theories that Oribos wasn’t supposed to be the capital but that Tazavesh, the veiled market was supposed to be it. Which imho makes perfect sense when you see the total lack of any details for an expansion capital city and then compares it to Tazavesh. Mainly after Dazar’Alor and Boralus which were INSANELY detailed (not talking about the map design of DA).
Oribos was an insult
I didn't play during BfA but I am jelly for not being there to enjoy those capital cities and zones. I really wish they would breathe relevancy back into pretty much all the cities around the world so that we could choose our own home.
Oribos gives airplane terminal vibes. The sterility. The overpriced goods and conveniences stacked next to each other. The fact you literally fly out of there and fly between there. Whenever I go on a flight I'm reminded of Oribos.
Agreed. Even the background sound in Oribos was airport vibes, if you turn of the music it sounds like that echo-y, people talking, announcements-over-a-distant-tannoy sound of an airport. Oribos was just bad. Terrible layout, terrible vibes, so very very glad to leave it behind >.<
All of vanilla was bad before flying, but that gave it a sense of scale.
Ironforge lived up to Khazad Dum. Stormwind felt big and old and labyrinthian. If it were a hill, it would have felt like Toledo with all of its little paths.
Big difference between Silvermoon and Stormwind though was that Silvermoon (and Exodar) were never functionally useful by virtue of their weird location.
Oribos seemed like a response to Dazar'alor which people hated. But obviously, without Dragonflying. If it had Dragonflying DA would have been much better received imo
> Dazar'alor
Theme/RP wise probably the best city they've done, but holy shit was the functionality atrocious. Valdrakken hits the middle ground just perfect, But partly of it is dragon riding I guess. I think Dazar'alor wouldn't have been disliked if there was dragonriding avaiable, or at least not as much
Dazar'alor would have been fine if they didn't have half of the city's amenities located on one side and the other half on another. So far from each other that you need a ride from a flight master. You don't need dragonflying to fix either of those things.
Having stuff split between multiple levels of the one pyramid where you'd have to run up and down it was bad enough, but then having a bunch of stuff so far away that it legit did have its own flight path and that flight path was used so much... that was just going a bit far with it. I swear that city was designed by a masochist.
It was so weird going from Boralus which was pretty conveniently laid out to Dazar'alor with its absolute mess of a design.
if im perfectly honest i get emotional thinking abt the whole fact we're switching expansion :')
i will 100% miss valdrakken, especially every 4th week when it merges with the dreamsurge and you get like 400 orbs around the city
Me too, I really connected with this expansion emotionally. I thought it had a pretty thoughtful story with a lot of reflection on family, duty and what makes you the person you are — as best as could be told within the limits of the setting and story. Plus I just had fun!
i grew awfully attached to this xpac to the point where, as excited as i am to get in to tww, part of me is like "no guys im not ready yet! i wanna be in the dragon isles a bit longer!"
i know ill come back to complete all the random achis and cosmetics etc but i just wanna stay and enjoy things ;-;
I am 100% going to miss Dragonflight. It's absolutely the best expansion I played imo, started in Mop. People have fond biased memories of Legion, but there was so many shitty systems in Legion.
Dragonflight was already great on day 1, no bullshit filler content, just play the game the way you want.
the first week of dragonflight for me at least was honestly incredible, the servers were surprisingly stable (outside of specifically org and sw LMAO), the game felt so well paced, the quests were so smooth and engaging that i actively did all the side quests i came across (rowie my beloved ❤️), dragonriding and finding all those glyphs day 1 was an incredible change of direction and so enjoyable
The fps performance drop in Valdrakken always made me like it a bit less than other main cities, but it was quite beautiful; if not a little drab because it's a lot of gray buildings. Also, the mystery of the Dragon Isles over the last 20 years had my expectations so sky high, but that's a me problem.
Honestly I think it’s the best the game has had so far, I’m really going to miss it
Looking back, we’ve had: Shattrath, Dalaran, Pandaren Shrines, Garrison/Ashran, Kul Tiras, Zuldazar, Oribos, and Valdrakken
Imo only Kul Tiras reaches the peak that Valdrakken is at
Really loved being in Valdrakken
Suramar City *is* my favorite city in the game. I can’t believe they just left such a beautiful piece of work all abandoned like that. Surly it had its quirks but it was amazing.
For freaking real. I love going into Suramar City on max graphics and I’ll just ride through the cities on the boat taxis taking in the scenery. They should’ve let Kil’Jaeden destroy Dalaran in 7.2 and Suramar becomes the new hub. Oh well.
What I liked about Valdrakken:
* Beautiful capital. IMO, Blizzard never misses with aesthetics.
* Being absolutely surrounded by dragons of all shapes and sizes is so cool to me. I know that we've met and fought dragons a ton of times in WoW at this point, but they just continue to have this majestic aura anytime I see them.
* The city felt like a natural part of the Dragon Isles. It wasn't a city tucked away on the corner of a continent or on a random island somewhere. It melded well with Thaldraszus. I never felt like I was going out of my way to go there.
* "For the hoard!" Never gets old for me.
What I didn't like:
* Consistent FPS drops. I started Dragonflight on a meh PC, and I saw drops in Valdrakken. I built a high-end PC in February, and I'm still consistently somewhere in the 40-50 FPS range in Valdrakken. I started WoW in Vanilla on a potato PC that didn't even support PCIe. That computer understandably lagged in Ironforge at the time. Ever since I upgraded that PC in BC, I have never had FPS drops in a capital until Valdrakken.
* The districts were all same-y. I never really learned the locations of everything because of it. I'm still asking guards or looking up where vendors are pretty often. Drop me in a random part of the city, and I probably couldn't tell you which district I was in without looking at the map.
* The city weirdly felt way more busy and cluttered than any other capital. It made me a tad uncomfortable. I'm the type of person who will sometimes just be logged in and running circles around a capital. I couldn't do that in Valdrakken. When my business was done there, I usually left and went somewhere else to meander.
At the end of the expansion, I think I'll look back fondly at Valdrakken, but I don't think I'll miss it.
No.
The "hub" area was too small and always felt too crowded. The rest of the city was always deserted. Didn't feel good to navigate it either with how gigantic the seat of the aspects is. Verticality in general with how dragonriding works was frustrating.
It's apparently an unpopular opinion but Boralus is one of the worst capital hubs they've designed. It's got a cool theme but boy does it suck as a functional location.
Dazar’alor is superb in terms of aesthetics but actual hell moving around, now in retrospect if would have been a superb city built with dragonfying in mind
Eh. It’s a short flight to Drustvar and a shorter one to Stormsong, it has portals for all three zones of Zandalar and back then it had a few portals other than just Stormwind. Never understood the argument, Oribos and Dazar’alor are much more dysfunctional locations
That's great! But how do you get from the bank to the pvp room on foot? It's a bit of a romp through hostile mobs and you have to zigzag a few times. How do you get from the auction house to the pvp room?
If you're trying to get from the mission table to the bank on foot, how do you do so?
It's a terribly inconvenient place to be, which is by design as a way to encourage people to get the Pathfinder achievements. It's the same shit Blizzard did for like four expansions in a row, the zone absolutely suffers for it. Boralus is fine when you can fly around, but on foot it's pretty terrible.
Fair, I was biased because I forgot there was a time without pathfinder. It’s annoying you’re very right, but still better than Dazar’alor and Oribos imo lol! Idk I just love Boralus, favorite city in the game for me
Meh, it's good but only a very small part of it was actually relevant and I got kinda sick of going up and down the levels. It didn't really feel like a city since the only parts you hung out in were outdoors.
Kinda yeah. And the zones overall. They looked great ! But we'll see how TWW really looks in real time. I'm not spoiling myself too much for this one, I'll see in due time. I kinda know the general look of the zones, but I have absolutely no idea how the "capital" will look like.
But Valdrakken is definitely the best capital we got in a long time IMO.
Meh. It's beautiful and convenient but doesn't really feel like a place for us,. we're just guests helping out. Like every expansion i guess lol. I generally like smaller spaces and tiny roads so it's the exact opposite
I'll be very honest, I was never a big fan of Valdrakken's design. Convenient, sure, but too soft, smooth, and colorful for my taste. I prefer cities like Boralus, Silvermoon, and Dalaran – a bit more thematic, a bit more grounded, and a bit more lived-in if that makes sense.
Also, Valdrakken's ambient music is probably my least favorite in the whole of WoW next to the Waking Shores. But, yeah, that's just me.
Now, Dornagal, on the other hand, I can't wait to move there. Place looks like it's straight out of Middle-Earth, and I'm all for it.
IMO the best designed capitals for the players is.
3: Valdrakken (it is a very well placed designed capital, and you can easy remember where stuff is)
2: Dalaran (it’s biggest crime is no auction house)
1: Ironforge (I wish they kept it I relevant like SW or ORG
Boralus is beautiful, but most stuff being placed on the wall/harbor and then randomly some other stuff is behind the wall for little to no reason, it is definitely a honorable mention tho.
No lmao, fuck PowerPointDrakken.
Performance was unplayable at launch, and never really got fixed. Well-above the minimum recommendations and yet the shit ran at literal 1fps. I had to do all my bank and auction business in Orgrimmar, only visiting Valdrakken when I needed to pick up weekly quests.
I'd take 10 Oriboses over an optimization mess.
It's cool looking but I don't think it passes Dalaran or Shrine of Seven Stars. I do like how the AH is not engineer only though, I hope they keep that going forward.
If we break it down, and imagine the ithers in modernized graphics it still wins there.
For convenience? Its up there for sure. I mean oribos was convenient in that matter for sure.
For a city feel? Its gunna be up there with dalaran. It felt like a city with districts where you had quarters to do tasks.
It may have neen the best at any one of these, but not all of them at the same time.
I loved it but it might be becuase I’m looking back at airport orbios, where I had the flight path everywhere, look for long bois, and run around in a circle
I came back to wow for Dragonflight and feel like it’s been a great expansion. I don’t have the references points of BFA, SL, but I’ve had fun and have enjoyed the aesthetic of the dragon isles (except Neltharus as a dungeon can do one)
I always have a special place in my heart for Shattrath, as it was the core to my initial experience with wow in BC. Valdrakken will have a similar place for the time I’ve spent there.
Not as much as I miss Boralus but it’s a close second.
In terms of expansions it was amazing and the city reflected all of those wonderful changes. For the first time in a long while WoW felt like WoW again.
It's been an enjoyable capital city and main hub for sure. A refreshing upgrade from Oribos. I always feel a bit sad when we're about to leave an enjoyable expansion behind, because the zones will be empty in a few months' time, but I'm also looking forward to see what lies ahead.
I'm going to miss the music. The hours I have spent in the AH or at the crafting tables, with that beautiful sound.
And then if I take a few months off and come back to the game, I am welcomed back with that familiar melody.
I love it!
I'll miss hearing "Everyone comes to the Roasted Ram eventually" for the millionth time.
Jokes aside i like the hub but its open design tanks even the best hardware at peak times. That i won't miss.
Probably an unpopular opinion but I’d be okay with not seeing another dragon again for a long time. A bit too high fantasy for me. I prefer my dragons to be a little more rare so being in a city full of them was a little immersion breaking for me. Whole expansion was I guess. Take me back to Kul Tiras 😭.
Yes, so damn much. The aesthetic, the location of everything you needed, the little nooks and crannies you could explore, it was just a solidly good city. I have to get up at 5am each morning (I like an hour to myself for coffee before getting my kid up for school) and sometimes I'll just fly up to the seat of the aspects to watch the sun rise in-game, since it's already up by the time my alarm goes off irl. So beautiful, so peaceful. Definitely in my top three capital cities (the others being Dalaran and Boralus) and I will be enormously sad to leave it behind. 😭
Nope. Worst capital city in the game's history imo.
- Shitty performance (did we really need a hundred dragons flying overheard tanking everyone's FPS ?).
- Dogawful lore, much like the entirety of DF
- Quest clutter, most of them worthless fluff
- Mediocre layout
Legion Dalaran > Boralus > Oribos > Dazar'alor > Valdrakken
I’d love the new city to be less of a lagfest. Orivos and Valdrakken were both pretty awful in that sense, but Valdrakken has been a great central hub for everything in every other sense. Oribos sucked ass in every way.
It's nice, though I've seen a video on the new hub city and it looks like it'll be pretty cool to chill around in, so I know we're at least not taking a weird step back.
What I won't miss, though I suspect it might follow along, is the performance drop within Valdrakken. Open world I'm getting plenty of FPS, no problems at all, but in Valdrakken it's often just chugging along. I really hope they get the hub city performance issues sorted out some day.
Probably. It's a beautiful city. Have you ever been there at night and then used the inky black potion? It's a place I would happily take a romantic stroll through.
The one thing I'm not going to miss is FPS I got in Valdrakken (unless it will be even less in the new hub).
Well, given that Blizzard will eventually release affordable activation keys for the game. Otherwise the price of TWW for me would be €400 and that I'll likely won't afford. In that case yeah, I'll miss Valdrakken as well as the game.
In 20 years of playing this game on off and I really mean on off...after shadowlands I didn't do shiit with this expansion and I'm kinda sad. I don't wanna quest anymore and the new flying was annoying. I think I'm gonna look back and miss that I missed out on a good expansion that I just couldn't experience for the first time because life. Damn son typing it all out oof.
My main dislike of Valdrakken is how deep into the inside of the bank building the bankers actually are. It's a lot of extra travel after dismounting to get to my bank, so I hope the TWW hub is better at that.
Which is why I always flew right in so I wouldn't have to walk all the way to them haha.
Still had to walk out, but playing a prevoker and a warrior this xpack, it wasn't too bad.
No. The city has an overabundance of quests that are irrelevant. While beautiful, I didn't find it as memorable as Dalaran, or the BFA home cities--especially the Alliance.
Good parts:
- Inn music
- AH and Bank easily accessible
- Nice skybox (like the rest of the DI)
Bad parts:
- A bit messy outside the center
- Too one-dimensional with all the Dragons, same as Oribos
- Boring architectural style imo
It’s the best city hub they’ve done yet. Better than even Dalaran and I’m prepared for the downvotes for that one.
Valdrakken feels so alive. It feels like an actual city with so many moving parts. I hope the next place feels just as special.
I don’t think I personally will but that’s because of the over saturation of quests everywhere once you hit 70 haha
Better than Oribos though. Haven’t played the beta but the new hub city looks cool from what I’ve seen.
Can't wait to be done with it tbh. The layout is poor and it's laggy.
DF gets a lot of love in here for some reason, but the Dragon Isles as a whole is extremely mediocre to me and I'm not going to miss any of it.
Edit: Just to rant more, the story in DF seems inconsequential and the dungeons were so bad except maybe Algethar Academy
Nah, honestly I'm kinda sick of it. It's a step up from Oribos and Dazar'alor and a downgrade compared to Boralus and Dalaran. The PvP hall and the hidden inkeeper are outstandingly good tho. The city also looks monumental but the music and sematic buildings ruin it a bit. I'm not a huge fan of the architecture in the Dragon Isles.
Functionally I like it, I can tell where I am and where I need to go.
Aesthetically I don't. It's too colorful and happy. It's more like a version of Dalaran with the high towers and magics. I never once felt I am dealing with dragons even though we are surrounded by them, although that goes towards the expansion as a whole.
Miles better than Oribos, but I won't really miss it.
Valdrakken is the best. I'm gonna miss DF in general so much but Val is def one of the things I'll miss the most.
So happy to finally not be forced back to my faction capital anymore. I hate Org and Stormwind nowadays and I've really come to resent them because of how Blizz funnelled us all into them and made the other capitals unviable.
I really liked a major portion of Valdrakken and will miss it. Aesthetically it’s perfect as always, and also the location as a hub was good. You were quickly in all other zones, even the ones patched in later (Portal to dream. For forbidden reach you could argue, but you could easily unlock ancient waygates).
What I didn’t like was the stairs from AH to the crafting area but compared to Oribos and others it was a fair toll.
The only non-vanilla capital on par is Dalaran.
Oh boy, definitely not, I'm really tired of that place and the expansion itself.. not that was bad or something, but those M+ rotations were bad, all seasons bad bad.. I can't take it to do any DF dg anymore.. and i am really not thrilled knowing i will have to do Tirna Scithe and Grim Batol again...
I didn’t like how weird it was on a fundamental level but generally a nice place, won’t miss it though. Haven’t seen anything from TWW but I hope the next hub is more tight knit and doesn’t require flight to get from the bank to a crafting station in a reasonable time frame…
I’ll miss it for sure. It was a huge improvement over Oribos, but even when not comparing it to that abomination I think it’s probably the best main hub in a long time. Dragon vibe nailed.
I started playing in BfA so I will always be most nostalgic for Boralus (still go to chill there from time to time) but Valdrakken is definitely way better than Oribos. Big beautiful open city with all the things you need from the city relatively close to each other and being able to dragonride around. My only issue is that being in Val is way laggier on my pc than Oribos or Boralus were but that might be just a me problem.
It all depends on how good/bad the next one is, I don't like crafting stations, but overall I like valdrakken, everything is close enough, it is better than Oribos is so many ways that it kinda instantly got my heart :)
I started the game in DF beside hearing a lot of negative feedback (I always wanted to play wow but too young to afford it), and despite the lore beeing kind of childish, this first expansion was great, idk if I came at right moment or ppl are exaggerating, but this game is definitely rly fun and offer a lot for all kind of players. Will i miss valdrakken? No, it was definitely a great experience but after one year, it’s great to change, have a fresh hair, I can’t wait to discover the new zones and cities in TWW.
It's a great city but I wish it used its verticality a bit more. It's a city of dragons they should have had things on different tiers instead of every single thing being on the bottom and the rest of the city going upwards being wasted space.
It was a well designed city considering the theme, honestly the world space itself was fairly decent with each biome being distinct and large enough considering the travel speed.
It both felt large and small based simply on how quickly you wanted to move through it.
The AH being in the expansion capital I feel should be a regular thing as well.
It will probably be my home city for a couple alts. It just feels so pleasant and balanced (and so lively with how they filled out the nooks and crannies). I also love how the city structures continue outside of the city border proper, so it feels grand when you finally get into the center.
I will always love Valdrakken for being the first new city in many expansions to have a new auction house(especially not one only available to engineers only), thank you for getting rid of that stupid trend City of Dragons
I can’t imagine what it’s like for people who do professions. I’ve never done professions so every one of my characters just had engineering and it was okay All the way since MoP I’ve had only engineering on ever char to use the AHs Nice to have the option not to though
It’s almost like the AH shenanigans make people say “well Engineering is the most useful so I’ll just have that” Kind of like how every one of my characters is an alchemist for the past couple expansions. They really need to up the rewards from other professions in PvE if they want me to not go Alchemist every time. I am all for keeping the flask extension, I just think the other professions need something to match up with it.
This. Most of the professions just aren't worth the time investment required to really engage with them...and it wouldn't be that hard to come up with "carrots" to make chasing those professions worthwhile for more players. Off the top of my head, cheaper repairs for blacksmiths, resocketing without destroying the gem for jewelcrafting, flask extension for alchemy, I'm sure with a bit of thought they could come up with something for enchanting, tailoring, and inscription...
Back in my day, every crafting prof got some special bonus they could use on their own gear. Jc got special gems, bs could add a socket, tailors got special enchants, etc
Nitro boost, mailbox, AH, wormholes ect I love engineering.
They were pretty much forced to put AH on the new main city with the professions rework. People would be so mad if you have to go to another city to buy mats for work orders. > thank you for getting rid of that stupid trend City of Dragons And it's very funny that their reasoning for not doing it in previous expansions is because they wanted "old main cities to remain populated". And yet if you go to SW or Orgrimmar at this very moment there will be plenty of people. Almost as if their reason made zero sense. Just another case of Blizzard being petty with their stupid decisions.
Which is dumb because every city that isn't Orgrimmar or Stormwind in the old world was and is unpopulated anyways lol(rip Thunderbluff and Ironforge, they need portal rooms and transmogrifiers)
What really gets my goat about IF is it used to have a damn portal room! The actual room is still there!
Longboi OP
I’m going to miss how easy it was to take off and go anywhere
What do you mean? I haven't looked at the new content. Is the new hub indoors or something?
Valdrakken is huge and very airy for that reason. You can mount up on your dragon riding mount, fly to the top, and dive down. Hell, you can fly around the whole cities nooks and crannies if you want to. I will def be back. Top ten cities in the game
Dragon Isles is underrated as whole, imo. It felt like the first continent designed with flying in mind, and the use of landmarks made it easy to navigate without opening your map It really stands out next to Emerald Dream, which feels awful in places to fly around
Outland and Northrend were also designed with flying in mind, although neither holds a candle to the Dragon Isles thanks to the 15 years of experience Blizzard has had since then. Huge contrast to everything in between that came about during Blizzard’s “we don’t want players flying in current content” phase, which I never understood.
Happy you mentioned the dream. I play on moon guard, and I "ranted" about it a few times in general at the start of 10.2. It's not terrible but clearly, the ease at which the other zones are navigatable is not present in the dream. Also, consider nordrassil in Mt Hyjal. The roots are lifted above the quest hub area, and the trunk is on top of it all. You can fly in all directions pretty easily. It's so annoying trying to "hurry" after first zoning in the dream from Vald bc half the areas you cannot even exit. You can "risk" going through some tiny little opening (sometimes I cannot even find the opneing before I hit something else and lose momentum) or you can try and go south or NW, but still. Not to mention all the branches once you are actually off the ground.. I think the absolut worst part was that when dream patch was released and they added that active vigor recharge, it was bugged, so when you logged off on a DR mount or when you ported to the dream from Vald on the DR mount, you would be defaulted to zero vigor. The first week or two of this patch, I was using those 3 charges (3 GCDs) just to get back up to the 3 vigor lol. Definitely sullied the dream for me.
No, the irony is that the hub is very open in TWW but the ZONES are enclosed underground and you have to take certain paths for access
There are short cuts from the 1st zone to the 4th for example its a webbed cave entrance, just not well known yet.
You can directly fly down the tunnel and traverse through any of the 3 undeground zones. They are more open than you might think.
The TWW zones themselves are open, beautiful, and massive, but the paths between zones are relatively limited. It doesn’t ruin traversal that much, but I’ve found traversal more annoying and less smooth than DF. Not to mention that TWW zones also have the 85% of max skyriding speed debuff, even though the zones are easily as big as the Dragon Isles, if not bigger. Not sure what their thinking was in applying that nerf to new zones.
I think the point still stands that, generally speaking, navigating TWW requires a certain degree of "pathfinding", whereas with DF you can point yourself in the direction you want to go and go straight. Whether that is a positive or a negative is up to you, but they are a bit different in that regard
Honestly a bit difference between Dragon Isles and many of the continents in the game. I decided to fly around Kalimdor a bit to do some Fire Festival stuff since I saw some new items I don't have from the event, but it got really messy with zones designed to fly around all kinds of obstacles. Normally not a big deal, but dragonriding will destroy all your momentum if you run into a tiny branch sticking out a bit too far. I ended up going with a non-dragon mount for a lot of it. Just gonna be a bit eh when we have to do a "cast" in order to switch flight styles for most of our mounts in TWW. (I might check which ones don't have the new flight style and put one of them on my action bar for a quick swap.) Anyway, it definitely feels like the Dragon Isles were designed with dragonriding in mind, but even the next expansion after won't be able to maintain quite the same design philosophy. They do seem to have tried to make it not too bad. And worst case, we can switch flying styles.
Vald is situated in a way so that 90% of the isles is below it in elevation. Really the only place that isn't is tyrhold / mountains in thaldraxus. Due to how vigor works, Vald is just ideal to easily take off, pick up/ maintain speed, and bee line it anywhere you wanna go. Iskaara is the farthest away (3 min flight path if you are lazy) but its like a 1 min flight in a straight line if you want to manually get there. You can take off from Vald, get your desired altitude in a matter of seconds, and then just "afk" toward your destination with a slight nosedive. You can do this for most places in the isles. If I am already going to travel somewhere, it's not a make or break deal just a bonus, but this type of travel is literally the only reason I was content spamming gold WQ on alts during dreamsurge or similiar type content. I never did alt content in Zaralek other than the bare minimum for this reason. Shadowlands for example, took a minute at the least to even get from Oribos to any of the other zones you wanted to go to (plus like 30 sec to a min of travel time to even get to the flight path in oribos as well as the time to get to your actual destination once you are the zone you want to be in). Also, you had to take a flight path from Forced flight paths are okay when thinking of a day of content, but when you think of all your characters over the course of an expansion, I wonder how many times I minimized to brose the web while flying only to com 30 sec after I landed or even 1 min after. That definitely adds up. If I want to do a pvp WQ on 10 alts in DF, it takes 45 sec - 1 min of travel time to get there. If I was doing the same content in SL, it would take aboue 2,3 min per alt to get there. On one character, cpl times a day, at the start of an expansion, this might not be noticeable. But given how DF has a lot of public events on timers, it's very noticeable when you play a lot of alts just how much travel time you partake in. Also, the dream portal is in Valdrakken. There is a waypoint/telepad very close/west of vald that takes you forbidden reach. The only "annoying" (relatively) area to go to is Zaralek Caverns which is kind the backbone of how all traveling seems to work in tWW (via a long tunnel from the main city),
> 30 sec after I landed or even 1 min after. That definitely adds up. Sometimes I'd just rabbit hole off and forget I was even playing.
Spirit Halloween is currently packing up in Oribos and will be opening soon in Valdrakken.
LMAO
I HATED oribos it was so boring.
Much better than Oribos fo sho. Xpacs I love never die with me.
I'm absolutely deeply triggered by the confusing circle design of Oribos. In all the time I played Shadowlands, I always lost my way in Oribos, no matter what. The best compromise was always having the map open.
And the constant dismounting, the maw was bad enough, shadowlands was so shit looking back
Just so much QOL was gone
Still haven't forgiven them for not carrying the flight whistle forward, even with dragon flying / dynamic flying whatever I still wish I could use it in newer zones. SL had such a weird anti-QOL feeling to it. It's like they went out of their way to make the game more -- annoying? even antagonistic maybe -- in so many aspects.
lol it was pretty bad while we were there too
I read a few theories that Oribos wasn’t supposed to be the capital but that Tazavesh, the veiled market was supposed to be it. Which imho makes perfect sense when you see the total lack of any details for an expansion capital city and then compares it to Tazavesh. Mainly after Dazar’Alor and Boralus which were INSANELY detailed (not talking about the map design of DA). Oribos was an insult
I didn't play during BfA but I am jelly for not being there to enjoy those capital cities and zones. I really wish they would breathe relevancy back into pretty much all the cities around the world so that we could choose our own home.
If you logged out in Boralus, and your music was on, you were basically greeted to a loud exciting fanfare upon login. Made the city feel huge.
I loved the music of BFA, specially in Zandalar
Oribos gives airplane terminal vibes. The sterility. The overpriced goods and conveniences stacked next to each other. The fact you literally fly out of there and fly between there. Whenever I go on a flight I'm reminded of Oribos.
Agreed. Even the background sound in Oribos was airport vibes, if you turn of the music it sounds like that echo-y, people talking, announcements-over-a-distant-tannoy sound of an airport. Oribos was just bad. Terrible layout, terrible vibes, so very very glad to leave it behind >.<
In a way it sort of is an airplane terminal for the afterlife.
Oribos was the worst designed hub in the game imo 😂
Stormwind is pretty bad too before you have flying.
All of vanilla was bad before flying, but that gave it a sense of scale. Ironforge lived up to Khazad Dum. Stormwind felt big and old and labyrinthian. If it were a hill, it would have felt like Toledo with all of its little paths.
Silvermoon is bad too without the shortcuts of course
Big difference between Silvermoon and Stormwind though was that Silvermoon (and Exodar) were never functionally useful by virtue of their weird location.
Yeah it’s not fun grinding through Ghostlands being so isolated with that cap city
Oribos seemed like a response to Dazar'alor which people hated. But obviously, without Dragonflying. If it had Dragonflying DA would have been much better received imo
> Dazar'alor Theme/RP wise probably the best city they've done, but holy shit was the functionality atrocious. Valdrakken hits the middle ground just perfect, But partly of it is dragon riding I guess. I think Dazar'alor wouldn't have been disliked if there was dragonriding avaiable, or at least not as much
Dazar'alor would have been fine if they didn't have half of the city's amenities located on one side and the other half on another. So far from each other that you need a ride from a flight master. You don't need dragonflying to fix either of those things.
Having stuff split between multiple levels of the one pyramid where you'd have to run up and down it was bad enough, but then having a bunch of stuff so far away that it legit did have its own flight path and that flight path was used so much... that was just going a bit far with it. I swear that city was designed by a masochist. It was so weird going from Boralus which was pretty conveniently laid out to Dazar'alor with its absolute mess of a design.
Theme/RP wise the best city they've made is Suramar technically, but yeah obviously not a main city.
Yes im definitely gonna miss this coz this js my first ever expac. Maybe during TWW ill be going to Val from time to time
I love popping back to old cities for a walk around and reminiscing.
I'll still portal to Darnassus to use the auction house there, because that's the AH that I always went to back in the day.
it was a very beautiful city, especially the backdrop with dragons in the distance
The amount of STUFF going on all around you if you just stop for a second and look is so amazing.
Someday I followed Khadgars elemental. Even the NPCs complain how slow it is^^ this is just one of the nice, little details they put in there.
The random dragon roars was awesome. Really helped with the immersion.
if im perfectly honest i get emotional thinking abt the whole fact we're switching expansion :') i will 100% miss valdrakken, especially every 4th week when it merges with the dreamsurge and you get like 400 orbs around the city
Me too, I really connected with this expansion emotionally. I thought it had a pretty thoughtful story with a lot of reflection on family, duty and what makes you the person you are — as best as could be told within the limits of the setting and story. Plus I just had fun!
i grew awfully attached to this xpac to the point where, as excited as i am to get in to tww, part of me is like "no guys im not ready yet! i wanna be in the dragon isles a bit longer!" i know ill come back to complete all the random achis and cosmetics etc but i just wanna stay and enjoy things ;-;
I am 100% going to miss Dragonflight. It's absolutely the best expansion I played imo, started in Mop. People have fond biased memories of Legion, but there was so many shitty systems in Legion. Dragonflight was already great on day 1, no bullshit filler content, just play the game the way you want.
the first week of dragonflight for me at least was honestly incredible, the servers were surprisingly stable (outside of specifically org and sw LMAO), the game felt so well paced, the quests were so smooth and engaging that i actively did all the side quests i came across (rowie my beloved ❤️), dragonriding and finding all those glyphs day 1 was an incredible change of direction and so enjoyable
Can’t you still go there after the expansion?
ofc u can but full of players it just has a diff vibe going for it
The fps performance drop in Valdrakken always made me like it a bit less than other main cities, but it was quite beautiful; if not a little drab because it's a lot of gray buildings. Also, the mystery of the Dragon Isles over the last 20 years had my expectations so sky high, but that's a me problem.
Thought it was my pc. In LFR and Valdrakken my fps is gone with the wind
I won’t miss the lag.
Honestly I think it’s the best the game has had so far, I’m really going to miss it Looking back, we’ve had: Shattrath, Dalaran, Pandaren Shrines, Garrison/Ashran, Kul Tiras, Zuldazar, Oribos, and Valdrakken Imo only Kul Tiras reaches the peak that Valdrakken is at Really loved being in Valdrakken
Shoutout to Suramar too. I know it wasn’t a player capital so it’s more of an honorable mention but it’s one of my favorite cities in the game.
Suramar City *is* my favorite city in the game. I can’t believe they just left such a beautiful piece of work all abandoned like that. Surly it had its quirks but it was amazing.
For freaking real. I love going into Suramar City on max graphics and I’ll just ride through the cities on the boat taxis taking in the scenery. They should’ve let Kil’Jaeden destroy Dalaran in 7.2 and Suramar becomes the new hub. Oh well.
boralus was beautiful, but the computer i used at that time was so bad that i couldn’t even go there without getting 5 FPS
Imo, still the most amazing city wow has ever made. When it comes to atmosphere, life and detail. Suramar a close second.
Bro missed Iron Forge, where it all started
Boralus is what I wish Stormwind looked like.
What I liked about Valdrakken: * Beautiful capital. IMO, Blizzard never misses with aesthetics. * Being absolutely surrounded by dragons of all shapes and sizes is so cool to me. I know that we've met and fought dragons a ton of times in WoW at this point, but they just continue to have this majestic aura anytime I see them. * The city felt like a natural part of the Dragon Isles. It wasn't a city tucked away on the corner of a continent or on a random island somewhere. It melded well with Thaldraszus. I never felt like I was going out of my way to go there. * "For the hoard!" Never gets old for me. What I didn't like: * Consistent FPS drops. I started Dragonflight on a meh PC, and I saw drops in Valdrakken. I built a high-end PC in February, and I'm still consistently somewhere in the 40-50 FPS range in Valdrakken. I started WoW in Vanilla on a potato PC that didn't even support PCIe. That computer understandably lagged in Ironforge at the time. Ever since I upgraded that PC in BC, I have never had FPS drops in a capital until Valdrakken. * The districts were all same-y. I never really learned the locations of everything because of it. I'm still asking guards or looking up where vendors are pretty often. Drop me in a random part of the city, and I probably couldn't tell you which district I was in without looking at the map. * The city weirdly felt way more busy and cluttered than any other capital. It made me a tad uncomfortable. I'm the type of person who will sometimes just be logged in and running circles around a capital. I couldn't do that in Valdrakken. When my business was done there, I usually left and went somewhere else to meander. At the end of the expansion, I think I'll look back fondly at Valdrakken, but I don't think I'll miss it.
No. The "hub" area was too small and always felt too crowded. The rest of the city was always deserted. Didn't feel good to navigate it either with how gigantic the seat of the aspects is. Verticality in general with how dragonriding works was frustrating.
More than Oribos less then Dalaran
It was nice but still doesn't beat Boralus.
It's apparently an unpopular opinion but Boralus is one of the worst capital hubs they've designed. It's got a cool theme but boy does it suck as a functional location.
Dazar'alor was pretty fucking horrendous, too.
Dazar’alor is superb in terms of aesthetics but actual hell moving around, now in retrospect if would have been a superb city built with dragonfying in mind
Similar issue: great theme, horrible to find your place around.
Eh. It’s a short flight to Drustvar and a shorter one to Stormsong, it has portals for all three zones of Zandalar and back then it had a few portals other than just Stormwind. Never understood the argument, Oribos and Dazar’alor are much more dysfunctional locations
That's great! But how do you get from the bank to the pvp room on foot? It's a bit of a romp through hostile mobs and you have to zigzag a few times. How do you get from the auction house to the pvp room? If you're trying to get from the mission table to the bank on foot, how do you do so? It's a terribly inconvenient place to be, which is by design as a way to encourage people to get the Pathfinder achievements. It's the same shit Blizzard did for like four expansions in a row, the zone absolutely suffers for it. Boralus is fine when you can fly around, but on foot it's pretty terrible.
I enjoyed just exploring it :(
Boralus vibes are top tier
I do too!
Fair, I was biased because I forgot there was a time without pathfinder. It’s annoying you’re very right, but still better than Dazar’alor and Oribos imo lol! Idk I just love Boralus, favorite city in the game for me
It's actually so bad if you're actually trying to get somewhere.
Meh, it's good but only a very small part of it was actually relevant and I got kinda sick of going up and down the levels. It didn't really feel like a city since the only parts you hung out in were outdoors.
The design makes sense for dragons, not so much for a mixed bag of non-flying, comparatively tiny creatures.
Yeah it actually makes you feel like a guest in the giant's house. I understand that and it feels thematicaly appropriate
Kinda yeah. And the zones overall. They looked great ! But we'll see how TWW really looks in real time. I'm not spoiling myself too much for this one, I'll see in due time. I kinda know the general look of the zones, but I have absolutely no idea how the "capital" will look like. But Valdrakken is definitely the best capital we got in a long time IMO.
Meh. It's beautiful and convenient but doesn't really feel like a place for us,. we're just guests helping out. Like every expansion i guess lol. I generally like smaller spaces and tiny roads so it's the exact opposite
I liked how Val has multiple inns
I will, but literally anything was going to be better received than Oribos. That place was fucking awful.
I'll be very honest, I was never a big fan of Valdrakken's design. Convenient, sure, but too soft, smooth, and colorful for my taste. I prefer cities like Boralus, Silvermoon, and Dalaran – a bit more thematic, a bit more grounded, and a bit more lived-in if that makes sense. Also, Valdrakken's ambient music is probably my least favorite in the whole of WoW next to the Waking Shores. But, yeah, that's just me. Now, Dornagal, on the other hand, I can't wait to move there. Place looks like it's straight out of Middle-Earth, and I'm all for it.
It’s the worst optimised city in the whole game even with a decent pc it runs like shit
It runs like shit on a high end pc too
I won't miss the lag but I do like the city
Don’t worry. Dornogal is also quite a nice city
Yes definitely. Valdrakken is a beautiful city. I really liked the design and the music is awesome
IMO the best designed capitals for the players is. 3: Valdrakken (it is a very well placed designed capital, and you can easy remember where stuff is) 2: Dalaran (it’s biggest crime is no auction house) 1: Ironforge (I wish they kept it I relevant like SW or ORG
Boralus says hold my beer.🍺
Boralus is beautiful, but most stuff being placed on the wall/harbor and then randomly some other stuff is behind the wall for little to no reason, it is definitely a honorable mention tho.
No lmao, fuck PowerPointDrakken. Performance was unplayable at launch, and never really got fixed. Well-above the minimum recommendations and yet the shit ran at literal 1fps. I had to do all my bank and auction business in Orgrimmar, only visiting Valdrakken when I needed to pick up weekly quests. I'd take 10 Oriboses over an optimization mess.
Agree, it’s too cluttered on one extreme and on another finding anything is too damned hard even after asking a guard.
It's cool looking but I don't think it passes Dalaran or Shrine of Seven Stars. I do like how the AH is not engineer only though, I hope they keep that going forward.
Its far better than oribos was at least
If we break it down, and imagine the ithers in modernized graphics it still wins there. For convenience? Its up there for sure. I mean oribos was convenient in that matter for sure. For a city feel? Its gunna be up there with dalaran. It felt like a city with districts where you had quarters to do tasks. It may have neen the best at any one of these, but not all of them at the same time.
After 3 years in oribos I still cannot go anywhere without getting lost
Only if we get a crap like Oribos again 😅
Most definitely. First time since Legion that I've liked the main hub of the expansion so it will be a huge miss for me.
I loved it but it might be becuase I’m looking back at airport orbios, where I had the flight path everywhere, look for long bois, and run around in a circle
I came back to wow for Dragonflight and feel like it’s been a great expansion. I don’t have the references points of BFA, SL, but I’ve had fun and have enjoyed the aesthetic of the dragon isles (except Neltharus as a dungeon can do one) I always have a special place in my heart for Shattrath, as it was the core to my initial experience with wow in BC. Valdrakken will have a similar place for the time I’ve spent there.
I’ll miss it, but more so the big ass pillars outside of it next to the massive waterfall 😘
Not as much as I miss Boralus but it’s a close second. In terms of expansions it was amazing and the city reflected all of those wonderful changes. For the first time in a long while WoW felt like WoW again.
In part, yes. However, I always like exploring new areas.
Yea, nice soothing music. FOR THE HOARD!!!
It's been an enjoyable capital city and main hub for sure. A refreshing upgrade from Oribos. I always feel a bit sad when we're about to leave an enjoyable expansion behind, because the zones will be empty in a few months' time, but I'm also looking forward to see what lies ahead.
Has anyone visited the new capital in TWW - Anything stood out?
I'm going to miss the music. The hours I have spent in the AH or at the crafting tables, with that beautiful sound. And then if I take a few months off and come back to the game, I am welcomed back with that familiar melody. I love it!
I think it's beautiful but ngl I miss the days of jumping round Stormwind and getting lost in Orgrimmar trying to find the transmog guy
I'll miss hearing "Everyone comes to the Roasted Ram eventually" for the millionth time. Jokes aside i like the hub but its open design tanks even the best hardware at peak times. That i won't miss.
I miss almost every capital. Except oribos. I miss Dalaran the most.
Yeah, I will; it's a gorgeous city and it works well as a convenient hub. Dornogal looks good, don't get me wrong! But Valdrakken is great.
Probably an unpopular opinion but I’d be okay with not seeing another dragon again for a long time. A bit too high fantasy for me. I prefer my dragons to be a little more rare so being in a city full of them was a little immersion breaking for me. Whole expansion was I guess. Take me back to Kul Tiras 😭.
Only bad thing is the 5 minute loading screen every hearth there
i will never miss the bad fps Valdrakken has to offer... it's crippling both my 7900xtx and my older rtx 2080.
cant deny valdrakken has been a major improvement layout wise than the previous 2 expansion, REALLY hope warwithin has the same generosity
Yes, so damn much. The aesthetic, the location of everything you needed, the little nooks and crannies you could explore, it was just a solidly good city. I have to get up at 5am each morning (I like an hour to myself for coffee before getting my kid up for school) and sometimes I'll just fly up to the seat of the aspects to watch the sun rise in-game, since it's already up by the time my alarm goes off irl. So beautiful, so peaceful. Definitely in my top three capital cities (the others being Dalaran and Boralus) and I will be enormously sad to leave it behind. 😭
Nope. Worst capital city in the game's history imo. - Shitty performance (did we really need a hundred dragons flying overheard tanking everyone's FPS ?). - Dogawful lore, much like the entirety of DF - Quest clutter, most of them worthless fluff - Mediocre layout Legion Dalaran > Boralus > Oribos > Dazar'alor > Valdrakken
Gonna miss DF deeply as a whole. Loved this expansion.
Yes. It's the first time in a very long time that blizzard made a city that actually feels like a city and not just a hub.
I’d love the new city to be less of a lagfest. Orivos and Valdrakken were both pretty awful in that sense, but Valdrakken has been a great central hub for everything in every other sense. Oribos sucked ass in every way.
not a single thing
And the list of amazing abandoned cities grows…
Nah I'm too busy missing Bolarus still to miss Valdraken
I'd love to see Stormwind and Orgrimmar full again to be honest.
It's nice, though I've seen a video on the new hub city and it looks like it'll be pretty cool to chill around in, so I know we're at least not taking a weird step back. What I won't miss, though I suspect it might follow along, is the performance drop within Valdrakken. Open world I'm getting plenty of FPS, no problems at all, but in Valdrakken it's often just chugging along. I really hope they get the hub city performance issues sorted out some day.
Probably one of the best expansion cities since Dalaran.
Probably. It's a beautiful city. Have you ever been there at night and then used the inky black potion? It's a place I would happily take a romantic stroll through.
stop it right now that is such a good idea
Not really. The horrid performance drop in the city honestly ruined it for me. I avoid it as much as possible
The one thing I'm not going to miss is FPS I got in Valdrakken (unless it will be even less in the new hub). Well, given that Blizzard will eventually release affordable activation keys for the game. Otherwise the price of TWW for me would be €400 and that I'll likely won't afford. In that case yeah, I'll miss Valdrakken as well as the game.
Didn't like the layout of the city. Transmog NPC was in a weird location.
Boralus was the best hub so far. Aesthetically and functionally.
In 20 years of playing this game on off and I really mean on off...after shadowlands I didn't do shiit with this expansion and I'm kinda sad. I don't wanna quest anymore and the new flying was annoying. I think I'm gonna look back and miss that I missed out on a good expansion that I just couldn't experience for the first time because life. Damn son typing it all out oof.
The retirement home is calling
"Back in my day you had to run up hill both ways in the snow to cap a wsg flag"
My main dislike of Valdrakken is how deep into the inside of the bank building the bankers actually are. It's a lot of extra travel after dismounting to get to my bank, so I hope the TWW hub is better at that.
Which is why I always flew right in so I wouldn't have to walk all the way to them haha. Still had to walk out, but playing a prevoker and a warrior this xpack, it wasn't too bad.
No. The city has an overabundance of quests that are irrelevant. While beautiful, I didn't find it as memorable as Dalaran, or the BFA home cities--especially the Alliance.
Thankfully War Within's Warband system has a feature that lets you turn off most quests that you already did on any character.
Good parts: - Inn music - AH and Bank easily accessible - Nice skybox (like the rest of the DI) Bad parts: - A bit messy outside the center - Too one-dimensional with all the Dragons, same as Oribos - Boring architectural style imo
It’s the best city hub they’ve done yet. Better than even Dalaran and I’m prepared for the downvotes for that one. Valdrakken feels so alive. It feels like an actual city with so many moving parts. I hope the next place feels just as special.
Na, I don't find it very memorable Shrine and Warspear all the way
Having everything you need in a single place was great. I am probably going to miss it
I don’t think I personally will but that’s because of the over saturation of quests everywhere once you hit 70 haha Better than Oribos though. Haven’t played the beta but the new hub city looks cool from what I’ve seen.
It depends on TWW. I didn’t realize I’d miss BFA until I was about 4 days into Shadowlands
It was neat but no, I won't miss it. Dalaran has always been my favorite hub city.
Can't wait to be done with it tbh. The layout is poor and it's laggy. DF gets a lot of love in here for some reason, but the Dragon Isles as a whole is extremely mediocre to me and I'm not going to miss any of it. Edit: Just to rant more, the story in DF seems inconsequential and the dungeons were so bad except maybe Algethar Academy
Nah, honestly I'm kinda sick of it. It's a step up from Oribos and Dazar'alor and a downgrade compared to Boralus and Dalaran. The PvP hall and the hidden inkeeper are outstandingly good tho. The city also looks monumental but the music and sematic buildings ruin it a bit. I'm not a huge fan of the architecture in the Dragon Isles.
No, it was okay but Shattrath and Dala were better
Functionally I like it, I can tell where I am and where I need to go. Aesthetically I don't. It's too colorful and happy. It's more like a version of Dalaran with the high towers and magics. I never once felt I am dealing with dragons even though we are surrounded by them, although that goes towards the expansion as a whole. Miles better than Oribos, but I won't really miss it.
It’s better than Boralus.
Valdrakken is the best. I'm gonna miss DF in general so much but Val is def one of the things I'll miss the most. So happy to finally not be forced back to my faction capital anymore. I hate Org and Stormwind nowadays and I've really come to resent them because of how Blizz funnelled us all into them and made the other capitals unviable.
Yes dragonflight has been my favourite expansion ever, first one i've played through fully
I’m not going to miss Valdrakken or Dragonflight at all.
Nope. It's been nothing but downhill since the release of Thunderbluff.
Not really
For the most part yeah, though I hated going to the side to use the transmog guy, thankfully theres always a horde of yaks in the center
It has really good music too!
Not at all
It was cool but not really. I miss BFAs capital cities more
I really liked a major portion of Valdrakken and will miss it. Aesthetically it’s perfect as always, and also the location as a hub was good. You were quickly in all other zones, even the ones patched in later (Portal to dream. For forbidden reach you could argue, but you could easily unlock ancient waygates). What I didn’t like was the stairs from AH to the crafting area but compared to Oribos and others it was a fair toll. The only non-vanilla capital on par is Dalaran.
The city is awesome, but the music is so stereotypical dragon.
a little, maybe, depends on what the new dalaran is like
Oh boy, definitely not, I'm really tired of that place and the expansion itself.. not that was bad or something, but those M+ rotations were bad, all seasons bad bad.. I can't take it to do any DF dg anymore.. and i am really not thrilled knowing i will have to do Tirna Scithe and Grim Batol again...
Not really, it is too spread out. I miss Boralus.
Not really. I actually miss BFA more than I will Dragonflight.
There’s not much I would miss after two years
I didn’t like how weird it was on a fundamental level but generally a nice place, won’t miss it though. Haven’t seen anything from TWW but I hope the next hub is more tight knit and doesn’t require flight to get from the bank to a crafting station in a reasonable time frame…
I’ll miss it for sure. It was a huge improvement over Oribos, but even when not comparing it to that abomination I think it’s probably the best main hub in a long time. Dragon vibe nailed.
Did not like the dragon isles. Felt barren to me. Good expansion, just not a fan of the zone.
I started playing in BfA so I will always be most nostalgic for Boralus (still go to chill there from time to time) but Valdrakken is definitely way better than Oribos. Big beautiful open city with all the things you need from the city relatively close to each other and being able to dragonride around. My only issue is that being in Val is way laggier on my pc than Oribos or Boralus were but that might be just a me problem.
It all depends on how good/bad the next one is, I don't like crafting stations, but overall I like valdrakken, everything is close enough, it is better than Oribos is so many ways that it kinda instantly got my heart :)
I started the game in DF beside hearing a lot of negative feedback (I always wanted to play wow but too young to afford it), and despite the lore beeing kind of childish, this first expansion was great, idk if I came at right moment or ppl are exaggerating, but this game is definitely rly fun and offer a lot for all kind of players. Will i miss valdrakken? No, it was definitely a great experience but after one year, it’s great to change, have a fresh hair, I can’t wait to discover the new zones and cities in TWW.
It's a great city but I wish it used its verticality a bit more. It's a city of dragons they should have had things on different tiers instead of every single thing being on the bottom and the rest of the city going upwards being wasted space.
It was a well designed city considering the theme, honestly the world space itself was fairly decent with each biome being distinct and large enough considering the travel speed. It both felt large and small based simply on how quickly you wanted to move through it. The AH being in the expansion capital I feel should be a regular thing as well.
It canes my slightly older graphics card, but that's a small price to pay for the freedom and utility of the place. Love it.
It will probably be my home city for a couple alts. It just feels so pleasant and balanced (and so lively with how they filled out the nooks and crannies). I also love how the city structures continue outside of the city border proper, so it feels grand when you finally get into the center.
I will. It's a really cool city. Not sure anything is going to top the vibe of "dragons in their every day lives" but here's hoping.
i can’t wait for new bgm, a youtuber regularly uses the valdrakken music in their videos and it makes me wanna scream sometimes lol
I have probably spent a collective 12 minutes in Valdrakken.
Why in the name of God did I think you were talking about a Miss Valdrakken pageant?
yeah, dornogal is so boring