What’s your favourite WoW/WC3 locations?

[RatzRatzzz]

Hello, dear colleagues!

I’ve always adored models from WoW and, having recently started converting decorations from there, I was able to explore all the beauty of these scenery, creating beautiful landscapes of gaming areas.
So, when I highlighted my favorite locations, for some reason I became interested in the question: what gaming zones from WoW, dear colleagues, do you like? Specifically from the point of view of the general landscape, scenery, color scheme? Or, maybe, you have favourite locations in WC3?

These can be locations in Azeroth, Draenor and other places!

Let’s share our favourite locations!

 

[Chaosium]

I've always loved Feralas, spent so much time leveling there, venturing in uninstanced Dire Maul and all, it was cool

 

[RatzRatzzz]

I've always loved Feralas, spent so much time leveling there, venturing in uninstanced Dire Maul and all, it was cool

View attachment 515119

Yeah, Feralas is a very beautiful place, I can feel this tropical climate right through the screenshot xD
It's very atmospheric there

 

[Armelior_is_back]

I remember the small peeks of Dalaran in war3's campaign always made me think of how awesome an entire city built around magic must look.
I've never played WOW so no idea if there is a non-destroyed version there with all their retcons, parallel universe, time travel or whatever is going on

 

[Shadow44]

WoW classic locations was for me something special, like Ashenvale zone:

 

[The Nightmare Book]

No comments.

 

[RatzRatzzz]

I remember the small peeks of Dalaran in war3's campaign always made me think of how awesome an entire city built around magic must look.
I've never played WOW so no idea if there is a non-destroyed version there with all their retcons, parallel universe, time travel or whatever is going on

Hmmm, this peak was shown when Jaina eavesdropped on the conversation between Antonidas and Medivh? Or in cinematic when Archimonde destroyed Dalaran?

Btw, yeah, when I saw this cinematic I also thought about beauty of city!

In WoW there seemed to be an undestroyed version of Dalaran (although in the new update it was destroyed again

WoW classic locations was for me something special, like Ashenvale zone:

View attachment 515720

Yeeeaah, really atmospheric one
Personally for me, Ashenvale forests also were one of my fav zones in WC3

View attachment 515763
No comments.

This is Silithus, right?
An interesting area in its own way! From the screenshot you can feel that it is very hot there xD

 

[Chaosium]

Silithus is quite iconic for Ahn'Qiraj raid, the mega epic questline and the scarab mount, but as for the rest of the area... too many creepy crawlies for me

Got fond memories of Darkshore too, leaving the starter Nelf area and getting in the world proper, that was something (lots of murlocs though )

 

[Shadow44]

I wish some one, one day will do some resources to do stranglethorn vale in warcraft 3 Reforged

 

[deepstrasz]

Might not be too wow but I always loved this simple and green place, Mulgore when playing my favourite race, tauren as a shaman.

Spoiler

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/diealdor/images/a/a5/Mulgore.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20160701085255

 

[Retera]

To me it says something about how great WoW's doodads are that when I put them into Warcraft 3 and made a map on Warcraft 3 map editor of me just running in circles with a couple of WoW doodads, I almost felt like I was back in some of the iconic locations listed in this thread. For example:

Feralas

Silithus doodads on Tanaris terrain (sorry to those bothered by this):

For me it helps me to realize that it isn't just the exact locations. Sometimes I think there's an element of the classic WoW art style that just seems great, and can allow us to imagine epic places to go on adventures.

When we think about cryptocurrency folks and their never-ending efforts to scam their fellow human beings, one of their big ideas was virtual real estate. For me it seems very empowering to be able to open World Editor and draw the maps shown above. By eliminating the server dependency, and dependency on proprietary WoW code to experience these kinds of epic vistas, we allow folks to go on endless adventures. In my video above that almost looks like part of Tanaris... You know, since that's just a map that I drew on World Edit in thirty minutes, in reality the map stretches for miles and miles, or maybe forever, because it goes for as far as I can dream.

Maybe there's something special about that, and the technology of bringing alive the art of Warcraft.

Obviously I have days where I might use the power to dream for negativity, which is unfortunate, but as humans it's up to us to try to avoid that.

 

[gkevinx]

So do I!!!

I wish some one, one day will do some resources to do stranglethorn vale in warcraft 3 Reforged

View attachment 515868

 

[Retera]

do stranglethorn vale in warcraft 3 Reforged

At least one of the strangethorn trees is included in Frozen Throne from 2003 literally as part of the game. It's embedded in the background of the night elf expansion campaign. Based off of that, the Ultimate Terraining Map had some good strangethorn style stuff, if we consider how "Sunken Ruins" tileset on War3 is very similar to stranglethorn.

Here are some pictures I made with Ultimate Terraining Map over a dozen years ago:

I'm sure somebody who spent like even more time on this could probably do even better. I don't really consider myself a terrainer. I'm not even sure I could put my finger on these maps today if I tried, but I have these imagines in a Pictures folder on windows, last modified 2011.

This was some custom map doodle which -- like many things -- was later left to rot in some hard drive backup somewhere. Some RPG that I was making that never saw the light of day.

But sometimes for me obviously, that kind of idea sticks with you, and I remade that lighthouse model from one of those screenshots live in a video here:

So I guess these sorts of maps remain with us in our hearts and in our memories. But I thought I would share this memory in case it reminded us of the Stranglethorn-style doodads (especially in the first two pictures) that were made available on War3 simply by folks clipping out Sunken Ruins background bits from the campaign screen.

 

[Mashira]

Westfall has the mood and atmosphere I like.
Although, it seems hard to recreate in Warcraft III - at least I didn't stumbled upon a map that faithfully recreate the feeling from WoW.

Redridge Mountains are awesome as well.

Darkshire and Gilneas' spooky vibes are great too.

Human-themed locations basically

 

[Retera]

at least I didn't stumbled upon a map that faithfully recreate the feeling from WoW.

Would you want this map I drew, or would you say it also fails?

If you look at video and think it looks like WoW and not wc3, of course it is not, here is a video of drawing a similar map on custom Westfall tileset on World Editor.

I also used models from JamesF here: Buildings: The People's Militia of Westfall

 

[Mashira]

Would you want this map I drew, or would you say it also fails?

If you look at video and think it looks like WoW and not wc3, of course it is not, here is a video of drawing a similar map on custom Westfall tileset on World Editor.

I also used models from JamesF here: Buildings: The People's Militia of Westfall

Yeah, porting models straight outta WoW or any other game you try to recreate the vibe from is surely the easiest and most effective way. I feel like that similar tileset wasn't as good as the imported one from WoW, maybe because it didn't match with other imported models? I guess that is a discussion for a much broader topic regarding the coherence in artistic vision, in which environment designers' speciality is focused.

I happen to know the resource you linked, had some fun with that in the past when was trying to do some Westfall level. People who are porting models are doing a great service to the broader community because you don't have to be an experienced modeler or terrainer to have something to meddle with, and (old) WoW models fit quite well between SD WC3 models imo.

Also, a bit of off-topic (because I had to )
The third-person view in your map is such a novelty, but I adore the constraints of the top-down/isometric RTS-style view and how people are able to pull off awesome encounters and create maps with great exploration potential. The majority of today's era video games are third-person, which rely heavily on horizontal exploration, so to speak (or less frequently vertical), using landmarks.
You can't really do that in an RTS game, except when you do show the player a horizon ahead via clever use of cutscenes with a specific camera angle, to set further narrative or direction for a player. Alternatively, you can use pings/reveal parts of the map (I think Blizzard did this in Rexxar campaign) and that would act as a landmark too.