Home is where the Heart(h) is....Follow

Where do you live and why ?

I cannot for the life of me understand why so many Alliance (the majority ?) of folk on my server choose IF as their base..... However snazzy your computer, doesn't everyone get lag periodically in Ironforge ? And in IF (and SW) don't you get fed up with the multitudes of beggars, retards, people dancing, people running in a circle, people spamming idiotic messages etc etc.....???

I can obviously see that the AH is the big plus of the major cities...but the down sides of SW and (especially) IF seem to me to be pretty hefty too....and Darnassus is well, like New Zealand. Pretty to look at, but hard to get to.

So. I have decided to live in a port. If you are invited to a group that cant summon, you are half way to anywhere and most of the way to a lot of places. If I want to shop, I will have to go out to shop. But at least the guy spamming "please lend me 10g" wont be in earshot any more....

Cafeen will be bound in Kargath until the end of days (or at least until TBC). It's out of the way, and I tend not to hearth at the end of the night, but it's very useful when I was raiding MC and BWL 3-4 nights a week.

Grom'gol was also his home for awhile, it's a zep flight from Org or UC and very handy for heavy ZG raiding. (It's also about a 6-7min flight from Kargath, so UBRS and what not wasn't bad, too far for MC/BWL Hearth+repair runs though).

Dithers is bound in UC. Not sure why, just haven't bothered to change it.

Other toons tend to be bound in Org, though they don't always camp there.

As far as lag, in Org for me it's not that bad. It's a little slower than outside, but not all that much (I'm already running borderline and have most of the settings down anyway).

My characters are mostly Engineers, so most of them have Thunder Bluff as their home. It's the city with a forge closest to the bank and mailbox.

Most of my Alliance toons live in Menethil Harbor. It's easy to get to anywhere in the world from there, and it's a short ride to the big city and the AH. The only toon of mine that actually lives in IF is my day-trader.

Horde-side, I tend to use Orgrimmar as home base, for the same reason. Access to the Zeps is the big reason, not access to the AH.

Since I spend most of my time now in the Eastern Kingdom, I am bound to Kargath. It is midpoint to the continent and most everything is relatively quickly accessible from there. I my toons early days, it was most frequently crossroads.

As a semi roleplayer (which means a play on a regular PvP server, talk normal but make solo choices that my character would make.) I use the homecity of my toon's race. Tauren have their HS in TB, Orcs and Trolls in Orgri and Undead in UC. It just makes me feel better that way I guess.

As ThelsDeKwant said, IF is just too convenient. Everything you need is very closely centred - mailbox, AH, bank, FP, reagent vendor, armour repairs. It's also a very short flight away from both BRM, perfect for the instances and raids there, and Menethil Harbour, so the southern part of Kalimdor is easy to get to. (I tend to just port to Moonglade for the North)

The mage, though, is bound to Silithus, as I think most are - getting anywhere on either continent is just incredibly easy.

Characters that are leveling tend to be bound to whichever zone they most frequently visit. The priest (43) lives in SW, both because there's a trainer and because it's the most central hub for all her regions. Likewise with the warlock (23). My warrior (28) is bound to Astranaar, because until she moves to STV she's sticking with Ashenvale for quests/grinding.

I am still leveling, so... I make my my home where I have quests!
Desolace, at the moment.

I prefer IF for most of the reasons mentioned on my main.

Everything is fairly close, and the people opening lockboxes, trading enchants, offering deals (which are actually rarely deals at all) on Trade channel, are usually all in IF. The Inn is convenient, and the General Goods vendor where I get my arrows is close by the bank, which is a stone's throw away from the auction house, which is a few shops down from the inn. Down a corridor and around the corner is the gryphon master.

Ironforge is also convenient for the higher-level instances in Eastern Kingdoms. It's the closest one to Scholomance and Stratholme (Stormwind being further south and Darnassus being in a remote part of the other continent entirely), and it's also one hop away from Searing Gorge, making it a convenient location for all of the Blackrock instances (and MC and BWL, of course).

Finally, as most other people said, it's close to Menthil, so I can hop across the pond to Kalimdor to either Theramore or Auberdine, depending on where I need to get to there.

I've my HS set to Menethil primarily because it's the crossroads of everywhere I need to go. Need to get to Kalimdor? Hop a boat. Need to get to an Eastern Kingdom End-game instance, grab a gryphon to a PL or the Searing Gorge.

It's all about the convenience.

Not only do all my characters live in Ironforge, they all log out in exactly the same spot - on top of the crate right next to the auction house stairs.

I'm a little bit **** retentive.

I really like Thunder Bluff-as everything is close together and it is usually fairly empty. I like that. Druid, 60 horde mage, shaman, all have their hearth there. My Rogue has hers in UC, only because of the trainers being there, and it is her home. I love it there too.

My human mage however, his is set in Booty Bay. Since I can portal to a city when I need to, I find BB is good for getting where I need to go. Plus I do the fishing contest when I can remember and binding there is a must for that.

Up to a certain point, nearly all my toons were set in Crossroads-as it truly was the crossroads to anywhere you needed to go. New flight paths in Ratchet, and being much higher levels, and things changed. Can't recall the last time I really spent much time in Crossroads now!

My hearth is the nearest inn, but the city I spend most time in is Darnassus for the exact reasons you mentioned; it's pretty to look at and out of the way (meaning not many people). It also has the advantage of flight paths to almost everywhere I need to go and a short hope to Darkshore's docks for the rest of the world. I avoid SW like the plague and only visit IF if absolutely necessary. Generally, if I need to auction something, I'll send it to another character instead of running to a city, then running back to what I was doing; it's more convenient and probably less expensive than the constant flying back and forth. I'll even do that with stuff I want to store, but won't need quickly or soon.