World of Warcraft Wednesday: Dalaran
Ah Dalaran, the sort of shining jewel in the World of Warcraft crown. After the success of Shattrath City as the neutral jumping point for the action of Burning Crusade, they pulled Dalaran out of Eastern Kingdoms and put it in Northrend to serve the same purpose in Wrath of the Lich King.
Well, not in Northrend, exactly. Over. In an attempt to get people to experience as much content as possible before they loitered around the big city. It didn’t work of course. These days you see as many 40s as you do 80s, as people have their alts teleported in. Northrend is a great piece of work, but getting to Dalaran is what it’s all about until level 76, anyway.
One thing about Dalaran is that it’s small. Really small. There are layers to it, there’s a basement anyway, but people usually congregate on the upper level. So if you had trouble with population in Shattrath, you’re going to have extra problems in Dalaran.
Convenience: B
Dalaran is a great place. Everything you need is close together. Vendors, profession trainers, mage trainers, and there are all the banks and portals that you could need as well. They took everything they’d learned about Shattrath, and condensed it.
The city may be well laid out, but like I said, it’s really rather small, which can cause some inconcievable lag on some larger servers. Hell, even the smaller ones will suffer from so many people packed into one zone.
Of course, the biggest problem with convienience is that Dalaran is hovering over Northrend. If you want to get up there, you either need to be a high enough level to get the quest, be ported/summoned or have Cold Weather Flying (which you’ll have gotten long after you’ve gone to Dalaran).
Ambiance: A
The towering violet spires and ivory towers of Dalaran are spectacular. Dalaran is really a striking looking city, clearly the best designed to date, and it really holds up when you’re flying over it in a way that Shattrath never really did.
The NPCs are all interesting. There’s a lot of little conversations taking place if you wander around and listen to them. And the NPCs in Dalaran even walk around and train and visit vendors if you follow them around. It’s really pretty damn cool.
Special Features: A
There are portals to all your faction’s major cities, one to the PvP zone Wintergrasp and also one to Shattrath. Having your hearth set to Dalaran gives you access to basically every point in the game, and you can buy fairly good rings from the jewelry vendor that will give you access to a second hearth here.
There are also fishing, cooking, and jewelcrafting dailies that increase your rep with the Kirin Tor as well as giving you extra cash and items, and a very large assortment of otherwise fairly useless items and shops to visit while you’re wasting time (including a toy vendor).
Dalaran also has its own instance, Violet Hold which is a nice low-level gear instance for players trying to put together a set for doing heroics or, eventually, raiding. There’s not a ton of trash and the bosses are all fairly straightforward.
Key Stats
Average Population: Large
Class Trainers: Mage
Best Feature: Access to any point in the game.
Worst Feature Too cramped even on smaller servers.
Recommended Hearth for Levels: 70-80
Dalaran is the best city currently in the game and worth trying to get to as soon as possible. Maybe you miss out on part of the “journey” of Warcraft, but wouldn’t it make it easier to quest if you had access to both continents immediately without having to hop flight paths and boats/zepplins? Plus there’s just so much to see and do here, that it’s worth hanging around as much as possible.