Tanaan Jungle First Impressions

The launch of 6.2 has come, and with it, the first real new content in the expansion since launch. There is a LOT to do, at least this first day - though it looks like there will be plenty to do every day in Tanaan Jungle.

Before you get there, you'll have to do a quest chain that involves building your Naval Yard - this will actually take a fair chunk of time. But once you build your first ship, you'll be able to head out into the jungle and secure your main stronghold.

I have to say, I'm impressed with Tanaan as a zone - while new zones have been added in patches in the past, they've always felt a little half-baked. Isle of Thunder probably came the closest to feeling complete, and I will put that up as a possible exception to the rule, but in the past, areas like Quel'danas, the Molten Front, and the Timeless Isle have not really felt like they had the scope of the full-fledged zones we get with the launch of an expansion.

Tanaan, on the other hand, totally feels like a real, full zone.

One factor, and perhaps the most important one, is its size. Tanaan is of course the Draenor equivalent of Hellfire Peninsula, which was of course the starting zone in Outland. While the geography is certainly different, it shares several characteristics. Amusingly, the Alliance town appears to be geographically in the exact same spot as Honor Hold, and I'd assume that the Horde's town is where Thrallmar would be.

There are a handful of familiar landmarks, with Hellfire Citadel as the most obvious one outside the Dark Portal, but this definitely feels new. There might be feelings of deja vu, but the environment is utterly different - whereas HFP was a barren orange desert under an alien sky, Tanaan is, as the full name of the zone would indicate, a jungle.

But beyond the normal darkness, there's also some rampant demonic corruption, with the blood of Mannoroth spilling down from the Throne of Kil'jaeden to the Citadel below. While not all of the Iron Horde fell in line behind Gul'dan, it's clear that most of them did, and what we're dealing with is truly monstrous.

There are three faction in Tanaan, and if the first day's rep gains are any indication, these should be much more on par with previous expansions' reps.

The Hand of the Prophet and Vol'jin's Headhunters are the core Alliance/Horde factions in the zone. You'll likely be spending most of your time doing things for them. One early quest sends you to gather scout reports from around the jungle, which conveniently leads you to almost all of the flight points in the zone.

The Order of the Awakened seems primarily focused on hunting down treasures and rare mobs. Unlike the "vignettes" in the rest of Draenor, these seem to respawn or count multiple kills, which is of course important, as you'll need to loot these things in order to do collect the items for your daily OotA dailies.

Finally, the Sabrestalkers are what I think of as a mini-faction. It's basically three people who have you fight the sabreons in a small corner of the zone called Fang'rila. I don't know exactly if they're built on a daily quest system, but you will earn some rep just from killing sabreons in that area. The quest I got thankfully awarded something like 4000 reputation, which should compensate for the relatively small amount of activity the faction entails.