Hmm, this sounds like fun...
The Undercity: Where the heck is <fill in the blank>? OK, I'll ask a guard. It's over in the western part of the city, so I'll just...whoops, there's a wall in my way. OK, I can go around it and then I'll be on my...oh, now there's a big moat of toxic sludge. Well, there's a bridge over there. I cross that and then...hey, I don't see the NPC anywhere. It must be above me. Oh, and I see on the map where the entrance is, back toward the ring of sludge, and up and around, and up a ramp, and through two more rooms, and...y'know what. I think I'll use my hearthstone to get out of here.
Darnassus: This is such a beautiful city. The bank's in the middle. All the vendors are over to one side. All the tradeskill people to the other. But to get here I had to fly to continent no Alliance use, to take a boat from a zone nobody uses, walk through a teleport nobody uses except to leave into -- you guessed it -- a city that nobody uses.
Thunder Bluff: Long elevator ride up = long fall down. And the city is split into one big central area and three other plateaus connected to the central area by bridges. And the central area is split into three different levels, so that this place becomes a maze of ramp tunnels and rope bridges. It's enough to opt for that long fall down.
Orgrimmar: Welcome to the Horde capital of the world. Such fine architecture went into the construction of this city. City planning too. It's very easy to get around and such stunning views the whole way. I think I might plan a vacation to see the sites here...in 2012 at the soonest.
Shattrath City: The one neutral city in all of Outland, and sanctuary as well, which means you can't be attacked. Except by Dirty Larry and by the giant bird quest in Lower City. And the Scryers and Aldor hate each other, and by extension, one will utterly hate you. Other than that, completely safe and neutral.
Alterac Mountains: What Greench?
Arathi Highlands: Assuming you can even find Drywhisker Gorge in the east zone wall, you're sure to face a very painful bloody death trying to get the ore from there.
Badlands: Someone said this was a good zone to go to if you were sick of Stranglethorn. But where's the town? Where are the questgivers? Is there anything *chomp* to actually do *bite snarl* here other than fend off *screech* the wildlife?
Blasted Lands: 5 primary quests in the zone that involve killing 5 creatures, some in quantities greater than those creatures even really exist for, and always being camped by all the other level 50-52 people as well as the level 60s that want the potion effects.
Duskwood: LFG for Morbent Fel! LFG for Bride of the Embalmer! LFG for Stalvan! LFG for...*pummeled into the ground by Stitches*...*run back* LFG for Morbent Fel! LFG for Bride of the Embalmer! LFG for Stalvan! LFG for...*pummeled into the ground by Mor'ladim*...LFG for *pummeled into ground by crypt respawn*
Eastern Plaguelands: So this dude wants me to kill a ton of grubs, and a ton of bats, and a ton of dogs. K...I should only gain 3 levels trying to finish those quests. I think my eyes will bleed from the orange haze before then though.
Hillsbrad Foothills: Welcome Horde at level 18! Welcome Alliance at level 28! Welcome to the newly opened PvP servers. Welcome to "Tarren Mill is under attack!"
Loch Modan: You know what we need? More zones with giant obstructions in the middle of them so we have to go all the way around to get anything done. And just to enforce this policy, we'll make the only quests on THIS side of the obstacle require killing creatures that come in packs of no fewer than 3 at a time.
Redridge Mountains: That "no fewer than 3 at a time" policy worked great. But that was only for like 3 quests. What would be really cool is a whole zone like that. That'll teach people to solo in a massive multiplayer game!
Searing Gorge: See Loch Modan. Only this time, let's put all the quests *IN* the obstacle, buried real deep. And the repeatable quest people need for faction will be at the end of a REALLY long cave down in that hole and will only have enough spawns for maybe 3 people.
Stranglethorn Vale: Kurzen Medicine Men. They hit as hard as their melee counterparts, take as much punishment, and cast multiple healing spells. Two of these guys = run or die. And because of the camp there in, that happens plenty of the time.
The Hinterlands: You're level 40. You should have a mount now. So we're going to make a zone to emphasize that by making everything really spread out, with only maybe 5 total points of interest, 4 of which have a combined 3 quests, and the last of which is an enormous troll city that takes over an hour to fight through unless you know the cheaty way to the top.
Westfall: A zone that starts at level 12, and has quests that you should really be level 14 or 15 to do safely. Then when you finish those, you'll be level 14, and get a bunch of quests that you should be level 16 or 17 to kinda do safely, and even if you wait a while and come back, you'll still get the snot blown out of you by Defias Pillagers.
Wetlands: Where is Sida's Bag? How many oozes does it take to get the darn thing? How many noobs are going to respond in general to tell me they got it on their first kill?
Ashenvale: Maestra's Post is under attack! Maestra's Post is under attack! Forest Song is under attack! Maestra's Post is...
Azshara: See Hinterlands, only take away the troll city and replace it with an island really far removed from the shoreline that you need to visit every time you run Molten Core.
Bloodmyst Isle: This zone has awful quest droprates, murloc quests, quest chains that are spread out in too many different directions at once, and is very, very red.
Darkshore: Never before have I seen bears and large cats hide so effectively behind tree trunks.
Desolace: This zone lives up to exactly what it was supposed to be -- bleak and desolate. And to enforce that, every single quest is leagues across the wasteland from the quest hub. We'll throw in warring factions that you have to ally with for good measure, which are at opposite sides of the zone from one another, so you have to travel back and forth some more. For good measure, we'll stagger sections of level 32 creatures with level 39 to make the travel interesting.
Durotar: Take a mostly flat area, cut three big cracks in it, and then run through those cracks to get anywhere only to realize the quest you need is on the ridge above you, and you need to find a way up.
Dustwallow Marsh: This zone wins the award for biggest waste of space. It's like Blizzard made the zone and forgot to do the quests, and then as an afterthought threw a few in from other zones that come here, along with a raid target.
Felwood: I need to pick up a bunch of useless items so I can turn them into some druid for more useless items that I can spray on plants for rewards...except the only ones that are even worth doing are being camped by PvP'ers who go between them on a cycle.
Feralas: What happens when you take 5 little mini-zones, staple them together with mismatched geometry by a central road, and put crappy quests in each of them most of which start in entirely different zones? You get Feralas!
Moonglade: I wish my class got their own private little neutral hidey hole at level 10 that I could teleport to at any time. Blizzard could at least humor the level 50+ folks that finally battle their way here and, y'know, put something in the zone.
Mulgore: Welcome to Bloodhoof Village. We'd like you to do a quest to pick up A, a quest to collect B, a quest to loot C, a quest to find D, and a quest to grab 4 different animal parts. Too bad the only bag space you have is your backpack. *snicker*
Silithus: No explanation required.
Stonetalon Mountains: This zone looks like a Blizzard zone designer was doing a report on the human digestive track and had visions of large intestines running through their mind. Although if that's the case, I'd be scared to see that guy's bowels with all the flocks of harpies flying around it.
Tanaris: Dunes of sand, and dunes of sand, and more dunes of sand. Hey, there's a rocky crag. And more dunes of sand. (And the 37th hyena I've ridden past, and the 46th scorpion, and the 19th basilisk. For a zone so devoid of anything but sand, there's an awful lot of predatory creatures out here.)
Un'goro Crater: Shizzle's Flyer, 2 inventory slots. Un'goro Power Crystals, 4 slots. Fungal Rock ape pelts, 3 slots. Un'goro Soil, pouch, and seeds, 4 slots. All the other quest items you have, 8 slots. Completing 10 quests at once, priceless.
Winterspring: This zone consists of killing furbolgs for quests, and then furbolgs for faction, and then more furbolgs for quests, and then more furbolgs for faction. Or you could go to Mazrothil or Darkwhisper Gorge for a change of pace and just get creamed.
Blade's Edge Mountains: It'd be fun to have a zone split into a ton of little compartments by a giant ravine and various other different plateaus. We'll connect the areas by bridges and...whoops, I think we forgot to include a path to a third of the zone! Oh well, maybe the players won't notice if we make a quest to collect booze and get ogres drunk.
Hellfire Peninsula: The quest chains in this zone have a really, really massive flowchart of prerequisite quests and reputation requirements. And lots of them also need to be more exact in their descriptions.
Nagrand: I wonder how many group quests we can squeeze into one zone, without putting any sections completely dedicated to elites.
Shadowmoon Valley: See Nagrand, only don't even bother to try to hide it.
Terokkar Forest: How many Arrakoa camps can we fit into one zone? One...too-hoo...tharee! Er, wait, no, there's like 8 of them. And a big-*** Desolace area with an unbelievable number of annoying creatures and quests in it.
Zangarmarsh: There were a few very apparent things about the designer of Zangarmarsh. He likes soap operas, as is evidenced by about 12 warring factions, none of which ever actually get into a fight with each other and just like to whine to you, the viewer. He's into dark drab shades of blue. And he really likes mushrooms.
ok, that's all the outdoor zones (except for a few I skipped.) I'd do the instances as well, but I gotta run out now.
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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.
