Revisiting the homeland: The timeless charm of Durotar
A sentimental trip for nostalgic orcs
I’ve had many beginnings in my admittedly unimpressive World of Warcraft career. I never cared about raiding, running the same dungeons hundreds of times or the competitive PvP aspects of the game. For me, World of Warcraft has always been about the story, the lore, the adventure and, most of all, the atmosphere. It’s a world I love getting immersed in from time to time, always trying out new races and classes I’ve never played and exploring areas I’ve never been to. With 9 expansions across the game’s almost two decade-long (and counting) life, there is no shortage of new and old things to discover. So whenever the mood strikes me, I log in, create a new character, quest and explore until around level 10, and then I bugger off and play something else. As a result, I don’t have any insanely powerful characters, decked out in epic gear looted over hundreds of hours of grueling raids and dungeon progression to show off. Instead, my account only has two max level characters (my mains, so to speak) in very unremarkable gear and a whole bunch of low level characters (I deleted most of them a long time ago) of different races and classes that I tried out over the years. Part of the appeal of creating new characters is that, in addition to their looks and unique abilities, each race has their own unique starting area. Oddly enough, I still haven’t seen all of them. My heart belongs to the Horde and, while I’ve briefly played a Dwarf hunter and ran around the beautiful and frosty Coldridge Valley they start in, I mostly stuck to my faction. I am aware that I’m basically only seeing half the game this way and I keep meaning to give the Alliance an honest shot, too. Some day, maybe I will, even if it feels like betraying my Horde allegiance.
Out of all the Horde races, I have a particular soft spot for the orcs. I loved playing as Horde in Warcraft 2 as a kid so that’s definitely where this is coming from. Which is weird, because I don’t even play as an orc in World of Warcraft. Even though orcs are my favorite race in the game, my two main characters are an undead rogue (because I love the class fantasy of a decaying magical zombie assassin, wielding venomous daggers and lurking around in the shadows) and a blood elf paladin (because paladins are damn near indestructible in this game, so questing around the open world is a breeze). However, I have started a lot of orc characters over the years. Not many have made it past the level 20 mark, but there is a huge reason why I keep creating a new orc character every time I install the game. And that reason is Durotar.
Durotar is the starting area for orcs and it is hands down my favorite place to be in Azeroth. It does an excellent job of introducing the player into the atmosphere of the game and illustrating the orc way of life and their history. First impressions are important, and Durotar makes a great first impression. It’s a harsh, arid, rocky place with cracked, red soil and sparse vegetation. The warm orange tones that surround you and the glowing sun bearing down on the landscape almost make you feel the torrid heat. There’s not much wildlife to speak of, either: only scorpions and lizards skitter around the rocks, further driving home the apparent inhospitality of this environment.
And yet, orcs have managed to settle down and thrive in these lands. Not unlike on their homeworld of Draenor, the ever-resilient orcs have turned this red rocky desert into a home. As a young clan member, you begin your adventure in the Valley of Trials, where you take your first steps in the world and you get a first look at how the orcs have been living in Durotar. Having played Warcraft 2, it was really cool to see those orcish buildings in “real life” and be able to walk inside them and jump on the bed. The orcs have also domesticated boars for a steady supply of meat, they are picking cactus apples and turning them into delicious Cactus Apple Surprises to cool off, and the peons are busy chopping wood, just like in Warcraft 2. When they’re not taking a nap in the shade, that is.
There also little nods to the lore and history of the orcs. Nearby the Valley of Trials sits Sen’Jin Village, a fishing village inhabited by Darkspear trolls, Horde allies who settled there after being forced to flee their home on Echo Isles. Further North, on Durotar’s Eastern shore, lies Tiragarde Keep, a crumbling castle that’s still being controlled by stubborn Human forces, who tried invading these lands a long time ago and are still desperate to maintain a foothold in Durotar, however small. A short walk away is Razor Hill, where the orcs held the first ever Kosh'harg on Azeroth, reviving an ancient Draenor tradition of all the orcish clans gathering together for a massive celebration. Sweet! All of these bits of environmental storytelling do a great job of immersing the player in the atmosphere and I really appreciate the way they tie into the larger Warcraft lore.
And my God, the music. Those swelling, uplifting strings carry such a deep melancholy feeling that always gets me, no matter how many times I’ve heard these songs. Having played a lot of low-level orc characters over the years, I have fond memories of spending many hours running around this beautiful landscape while listening to these ambient pieces and completing the same quests I already knew like the back of my hand. It’s one of my favorite video game experiences ever and it’s a major nostalgia hit every time I come back. I won’t ever be bored of this place.
I really love how this small area of the game actually manages to encapsulate a lot of lore and many fun, memorable experiences. In the space of just a couple of hours, you are introduced to the orc way of life, you cut your teeth in the Valley of Trials, you visit the nearby fishing village to meet your troll allies and learn about their troubles with encroaching humans from Northwatch Hold, you get a sense of notable events in Durotar’s history by checking out the remains of the invading Kul Tiran fleet near Razor Hill, you take a flying wyvern to visit the enormous, mighty capital city of Orgrimmar (where you will spend a lot of time as a player) and finally you make your way to the Barrens, one of World of Warcraft’s most iconic zones.
Recently, World of Warcraft introduced a revamped new player starting area called Exile’s Reach. It’s basically a standalone story campaign that briefly introduces new players to all the important aspects of the game, from combat and looting to inventory management and grouping for dungeons. It’s a fantastic addition to the game that really streamlines the new player experience and gives them a strong start and a good foundation to build on. In contrast, when questing in Durotar you are pretty much left to your own devices. It’s up to you to explore the world around you, pick up quests, figure out how to get from one place to another and try out every new ability you unlock.
Another aspect worth mentioning is the player population, or lack thereof. Durotar is actually pretty empty nowadays, with new players eager to level up as fast as possible in Exile’s Reach and move on to more interesting, current content. This actually makes Durotar feel even more nostalgic to me now, as if I just came back home, but everybody has moved out. The only denizens are the scattered NPC quest givers and the wildlife, so it’s a pretty solitary and meditative experience. It really harkens back to the Good Old Days™, when things weren’t as complicated. There weren’t any infuriatingly obtuse crafting and looting systems to learn, there weren’t any daily quests you felt like you had to do out of fear of missing out on gear, Azeroth wasn’t about to be utterly destroyed every single day by ridiculously overpowered cosmic beings threatening to tear asunder the very fabric of time and space. It was just you, a lowly orc, whacking scorpions in the head with your rusty sword and feeling happy whenever you received some ugly new boots with +1 strength.
Yeah, my rose-tinted glasses are probably superglued to my face at this point. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion, and every time I’m back in Durotar, with that amazing music playing in my ears, I’m taken back to a time when my own life was much simpler. Much like World of Warcraft, as the years drag on, life gets bloated with all sorts of responsibilities and obligations that just weren’t there 10 years ago. That’s the way it works, and I’m not complaining. But it’s nice to have your own little happy place you can escape to whenever you feel like taking a break and re-centering yourself. For me, that place is the orange, rocky Durotar, and I already know it won’t be long before I’m back again on a fresh orc character (maybe a shaman, next time?), taking in the sights and those goddamn beautiful melancholic tunes. Lok'tar!
