Talador First Impressions

Following up from Gorgrond, Talador is the next zone that players travel to, with quests starting at level 94.

Talador is much more clearly linked to the Outland zone of Terrokar Forest. This is where you'll find Shattrath and Auchindoun, as well as less iconic areas like Tuurem.

As in all of the Draenor zones, you have a bit of flexibility on which quests you do (there is a bit of the old dreaded "Christmas Tree" effect when you get to a new town, but I think they mostly strike a happy medium between quest log overload and the linear Cataclysm model.) What surprised me is that the battle for Shattrath can be done pretty quickly. This is a major event, arguably Warlords' equivalent of the Wrathgate. I'll leave at that for spoiler-sensistive.

Like Gorgrond, I did this on an Alliance character (the same one, unsurprisingly.) I actually think that, perhaps more than any other zone, Talador hits the Burning Crusade nostalgia factor. You run into a ton of familiar faces and locations. In fact, nearly every BC element is touched upon: marauding Orcs, the Burning Legion, the Arrakoa, the Auchenai Soul Priests, and so on.

It's also quite exciting to see what Shattrath and Auchindoun looked like before they were ruins, though at least up to the point I'm at, you really only do anything all that significant on the outskirts of Shattrath, which has... suburbs, I guess, that stretch out much farther than the city we remember from BC.

While Shadowmoon Valley was fairly serene, Talador is a zone completely overtaken with warfare. Between the Siege of Shattrath by the Iron Horde, the Burning Legion's attack on Auchindoun, and the invasion by the Arrakoa (with their really cool new models,) there's not really much of a place to rest safely.

While there are certain spoilerific things that I'm a bit upset about, overall I think this is quite the exciting zone, and is a real step up from the frankly disappointing Gorgrond (though I'm still holding out hope for level 100 taking us to the actual rocky parts of that zone.)

I don't know exactly what will open up next, but I would guess that Spires of Arrak will likely be the 96-98 zone, with the final climb to 100 happening in Nagrand. Alternatively, we could be wrong about Tanaan Jungle being a 100-only zone. Frankly, I think it would be nice to have a bit of choice. I think Northrend's two starting zones and two "final" zones was a great idea. Given that Hellfire Citadel (or whatever the Iron Horde winds up calling it) is clearly still a significant location, and that Nagrand is Warchief Grommash's home turf, both could make for good "final" zones.