I never really digged Cataclysm, I thought they ruined most of the old zones. But there's a few post Cataclysm zones where I think they did really well.
- Vashjir was a fun experiment that had a good mix of scripted storyline and freeflow play.
- The goblin starting town was hilarious and very goblin'ish.
Pre-Cataclysm it's hard for me to come up with favorites because I think there were so many excellent zones. But some of my favorites:
- Barren because of the size and the frontier feeling it had.
- Moonglade and Azshara for the tranquility and probably in part because nothing much ever happened there.
- I was a Horde player at heart so STV always felt like 'coming home' to Durotar. But it was a great zone in many ways.
- Dun Murogh had a great ambience.
- In TBC Hellfire Peninsula was one of my favorites. I think it managed to relay the story of Outland in a single zone, and made me feel I was just more meat for the grinder. It was a zone that was good at telling a story without the abuse of scripted sequences that has become so common in games lately. I never really subscribed to the Nagrand cult, that zone always felt misplaced to me.
- In Northrend my favorite was probably Dragonblight, I think they did some amazing work on the terrain there. It's a very varied zone where the terrain changes in a subtle way.
