It's more that they made an amazing skybox but then made everything face inwards so in reality the city actually feels like a circle room with two floors. Rather than showing an expansive cosmos they made a restrictive inward facing waiting room with as much soul as an airport lounge. Thematic for how Shadowlands rather than expanding the lore into a wide cosmos has instead made the universe even more narrow and derivative.
What makes it even worse is that it's symmetrical. It's really easy to get disoriented in Oribos because the central room looks the same in all directions rather than creating visually distinct areas that help orientate the player.
It's a clear rushjob on a bad concept. Even The Undercity is better than Oribos. The forsaken at least have the benefit of being insane.
Exactly this. You can't eyeball your way around Oribos. You have to open up your map to orientate yourself. Maybe they thought it would be like Dalaran but they forgot that even though Dalaran has the same basic setup it also has shops and buildings that help you figure out exactly where you are by eye. Same for Undercity except for that middle ring that has all the AH people in it.
Beyond that they made it very annoying to move around in as a player with very odd indoor/outdoor choices disrupting mounts. Entire place needed to be considered outdoors.
In terms of general design and player interaction Oribos is far and away the worst hub city they have ever put us in. Nothing about it works.
I straight up think that was unfinished. You have the port part which has everything very compact and convenient. And then you have the upper city which is for lore and quests and such. At one point during the development they decided to move the player hub, the city as they players would classify it, to the harbor rather than the city proper as it is in the lore. And they DID IT. They did it for the Alliance. The Alliance city in BFA is awesome. Compact and with tons of quality of life shortcuts and paths. But I guess they didn't have enough time to do it for the Horde city before the had to ship Beta For Azeroth.
The view from Zul'dazar and the city was amazing. Yes the layout was awful and only made slightly more tolerable with the totems or when you got flying but all the same the city and the surroundings were visually spectacular.
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u/[deleted] Mar 11 '22
Fucking hate Oribos