Whats your favorite zone?Follow

Najena I raised my young dark elves there when I first started playing. Zone is atmospheric and lore-heavy. Keyed dungeon gives it the D&D feel (though I wouldn't mind them ringing the perma keys...). With in-era gear this zone has areas that are hard into the 40s (goblins, spiders). Several dead-ends and unfinished spots they could add layers upon layers to this place (i.e., Najena's dorm room... she is training up inititiates. The whole place is like an evil Hogwarts).

Tower of Frozen Shadow I love this zone for similar reasons to Najena. Themed floors are fun, and back when my brother and I were duoing this people in game said it wasn't possible for our necro/chanter combo at the level we were... it wasn't easy, but we did it :)

The Warrens is insanely fun at low levels when you have risk. The Muglwump alone is worth the price of admission.

Plane of Hate is fun to fool around in now adays. The non aggro of the place is just bizarre, but it's been revamped and tinkered with a bunch from it's once-deadly to raids past. This zone would be a 50s level candyland if they would just all/all more of the class specific items (that are mostly not useful to the limited class that currently gets them).

Crypt of Dalnir is the hardest-tuned-for-its-time dungeon of anything pre-GoD that I can think of (and they downtuned the GoD stuff later...). It's also kind of weird with the Kly mindcontrolling dwarves, spermy wrigglers to kill and the somewhat linear exit path (go too far in, you'd better be able to go all the way).

The Overthere is just a nice wide-open outdoor zone with camps I enjoyed grouping at (sky ramp anyone?). Great xp with someone that knew how to chain pull... and I always highly valued the Worker Sledgemallet

Hollowshade Moor was a fave for a long time, as I was able to manipulate the "war" with my enchanter and managed to farm the desirable nodrops for all my characters. Much easier obtainable gear in later xpacs make this effort purely nostalgic, but getting that first Eye of the Owlbear Mother was a great accomplishment.

I'm that rare person (apparently) that enjoys most of the Ykesha zones. If the devs had made the gear better for its era these zones would have been much heavier enjoyed. Instead, timesinky spell quests and buggy semi-raids are what most people remember of it. I'd retro-revamp it for future progression servers... possibly just by releasing it slightly ahead of PoP (since really it was kind of the casual content missing from PoP).

In more recent years, The Serpent's Spine xpac has impressed with the replayablility and strong design for the casual stuff all the way to level 75. Stone Hive is the most old-school vibe zone I have seen (Runnyeye meets Blackburrow meets Crushbone).

The Hive party at the top

Ruins of Illsalin my 85 pally loves this zone. The first time I soloed Ritesmaster Verok was a good feeling.

Crypt of Dalnir is fun and crazy xp from 25 to about 35ish.

Some of my favorites are more about nostalgia than anything else (cause they're old and really crappy looking relative to modern zones). Crushbone, of course. My first character was a dwarf, and I remember spending *ages* just hunting in Butcherblock mountains. Then I grouped up with someone and they took me to Greater Faydark. OMG! This world is huge, I thought. Then we went into Crushbone, which was the first "dungeon" zone (although it wasn't really a dungeon, it was the first zone I'd been to that was exclusively full of things to fight). I distinctly remember leveling there and watching the Legos go from being impossibly tough, to difficult, to "I've got your number now". And of course, eventually camping Emperor Crush's throne room. Um... And then fleeing from Ambassador D'vinn. Of course, if you did it wrong when running and fell into one of the ditches, you were toast. So you learned where the little bridges were.

Befallen was fun. Spent quite a bit of time hunting there (and nearly lost my corpse there). Runneyeye and blackburrow were up there too. Unrest was my all time favorite though. I spent a *lot* of time there (cause small bronze armor dropped there). I learned the layout, the pathing, the tricks, the mobs. Everything. Those were great times in EQ IMO. Ironically, I didn't spend a ton of time in Guk back in the day. I think part of it was that I tended to avoid damaging faction for anything that didn't start out KOS to me. The live frogs weren't KOS to start with, so I was hesitant to go in and slaughter them. I think this eventually got busted when we did some guild thing for drops there, but prior to that point I'd avoided it.

What's funny is that I have very very vivid memories of those early zones, but everything past that kinda blurs. I think because it was all new and the world was huge, so I really focused. As time when by, it became just another new zone. The planes were exciting and terrifying and fun all at the same time, but I wouldn't call any of them my favorites. The revamped PoH was good though. In Kunark, as I mentioned in the other thread, I really like Kaesora, mostly because of the layout. Actually, several Kunark zones were like that. Overall a very good expansion. And Veksar was (and is) one of my all time favorite zones (it was released later though). Loved the layout. Loved the look and feel. Great zone.

Luclin was kinda "meh". Nothing really stands out. I suppose Ssra temple would be the best zone there IMO. Good layout, lots of stuff to do. And the transporter/tunnel things were (and still are) relatively unique. Velious was also sorta "meh". Lots of stuff to do, I suppose. But a huge amount of grinding. I suppose Kael was the best zone to hunt in from a "fun" point of view (TOV was always business). Well, I suppose Mischief, but I never had the full on love for that zone that others had.

Beyond that, things *really* get blurry. PoP had some interesting zones, but nothing that really made me go "wow". Crypt of Decay was nice though. Looked good and decent layout. I think the overall progression in PoP somewhat blunted the zones in terms of niceness. You went where you needed to go, not necessarily where you wanted to go.

Gates had great potential, and frankly the zones did look great. But holy hell was it such a pain that no one really wanted to go there unless they had to. A shame really. OOW fixed a lot of that, and was a great expansion. None of them "amazing" in terms of look/feel, but good solid fun zones. It actually kinda felt like the older stuff in that you could gradually move from one spot to another as you advanced. While I didn't like the faction grind associated with the armor quests, the quests themselves were pretty decent. Didn't hurt that at the time, the major hunting zones you needed were also some of the most popular and exp granting zones (NC and WoS). I think Nobles Causeway was the more interesting of those two. Again though, I wouldn't rank the as my "favorite" zones. But they were good zones that I spent quite a bit of time in.

Some of the Ykesha zones *could* have been great. Good look and feel. But the mob placement and pathing, and general lack of anything great that dropped there made it iffy at best. Folks generally just hunted for exp in the open areas and ignored everything else. There were *some* things worth going there for, but honestly if it weren't for having to go there to get certain spells, I'm not sure how much time I ever would have spent there. My wizard did like hunting in a couple areas there though.


Ironically, while I initially hated it, I actually really enjoyed Oceangreen. Once you figured things out, it wasn't so bad avoiding getting steamrolled by mobs. The quests are good (did the whole Bayle aug thing). There's a great story there. And good spots to hunt for any class combo. I've actually come to enjoy the more modern zones with those kinds of progression task setups. Same thing with HoT. I've been doing the progression stuff there, and it's actually quite fun. The Grounds is fun, and the tasks fill in the story well. It's hard to point my finger at a "favorite" though. They're all pretty decent and fun. Because of the whole hot zone thing, I've been tooling around in Hill of Shade (I more or less skipped that whole expansion). It's a lot more fun and interesting that I thought it would be. The idea of two groups spirits, cursed to replay the events that lead to their downfall is great.

Dunno. Lots of good zones. I think I have a soft spot for some of those old classic zones, so those tend to place as my "favorites". I doubt if I were starting playing today that they would be though. Newer stuff is mostly all quite good though. Honestly, they've made a lot of improvements in the game and I'm a lot more happy with it than I was back in the GoD/OOW/DoDh range. Those were kind of the dark days of EQ IMO.

I liked Stonebrunt Mts. It was a nice quiet zone with great opportunities if you just wanted xp and maybe some pocket change. The higher level kobold camps were easily single pulled by a savvy player and good xp with the cold iron armor selling nicely at merchants. The cats were a source for quality pelts and gems. The titans were neat when you saw them up and had some drops with decent bazaar value. Plus a town for selling & restocking provided you weren't evil or blew faction.

But your comment makes me think of the third thread we need now: Zones no one really cares about one way or the other. (Old) Lavastorm, Kerra Island, Dagnor's Cauldron, Swamp of No Hope, Wakening Lands, etc. Maybe you did a little xp'ing there or had a quest that made you visit but they're essentially fly-over territory.

Edited, Aug 7th 2013 8:09pm by Jophiel

I started playing just after the Luclin expansion and a while later discovered Grimling Forest. I spent a lot of time there and loved the zone. I still run there sometimes just to look it over, lol.

I have way too many favorite zones, I'm very fond of cities and places that used to be cities so here's a list of some.

1. Everything in Greater Faydark
It was the place where I started in as a half elf druid, it was a very nice place to start as, back then the city of Kelethin was rather confusing since maps didn't exist, but after coming back from adventuring to sell and bank stuff you became more familiar with the layout. Eventually I discovered Felwithe the city of high elves which was quite different from Kelethin, this city seemed to be made completely out of marble and other fancy looking rocks. What made me like this city was the hidden walls it had inside of the paladin guild. I remember feeling excited when i found out that I could get to the bridge above the paladin guild you see when entering the city.

2. Butcherblock Mountains
This zone is just mysterious, it has a lot of strange landmarks like the that made me wonder about their origin, one of them being the chessboard. Seriously, what's up with that chessboard?... Anyways another landmark I really like in this zone is "Fort Gonin" A forgotten fort of the dwarfs that's still manned by Guard Gonin and Guard Kyte, talking to them you learn that they've been forgotten, sadly they don't realize this and still guard the fort to this day. There's also a high elf merchant in the fort for some reason, no dialogue from him though.

3. Neriak Commons
This zone is very lively even though it's so dark and blue, there are shops everywhere, even underground! It's also home to my favorite tavern "The Blind Fish", an underwater tavern with windows that show the lake outside, sadly there's some jerk hafling spy ruining the view most of the times.

4. Cabilis
Home of the Iksar after losing Sebilis. I really enjoy walking around this place even though it's pretty much a giant slum, there are some npc's that comment about how dangerous the city can be since it's in a state of ruin, but the place somehow gives off a sense of hope, also GONDOLAS!

5. Katta Castellum
The Luclin storyline has always confused me with the whole Combine Empire feud so I didn't really get into it much, but this place has grown on me now that I've been spending time in this zone trying to figure out some unsolved quest. It's a very interesting city, they inhabitants seem to be at war with the vampyres, but they seem to have some living within the city for some reason. It's just baffling and interesting.

6. Veksar
When this zone was introduced my first thought was "oh god no, not another Kedge Keep", but I fell in love with this zone after surfacing inside of it. I thought it'd be another underwater hell, but it ended up being this beautiful ancient iksar city with waterfalls all over the place, It's probably one of the best looking zones in the game.

7. Kaesora
I spent a lot of time in this place as an iksar monk, back then there was very little lore about this place. As you ventured deep inside you'd run into interesting landmarks like a library and some sort of church where a sarnak vampire lives. There's also a hidden picture of a cat!

I have a lot more, but that's all I can write for now :p

Bit of trivia: Veksar was intended to be released with Kunark but as a very different zone. But the developers were having trouble making pathing work (a similar issue to Kedge with the 3D range of movement) and Kedge was so unpopular that they decided to just scrap the zone for the time being. You'll notice when they made a "new" Veksar, they made it mostly a standard dungeon with only a few water-filled sections and tunnels.

The old, old Prima guide for Ruins of Kunark had Veksar listed in its zone descriptions since they put those guides together well before the game is finished.