One of the things I thought the Elder Scrolls Series never did well was making areas feel fresh and new. There were only 3 unique looking themes in Oblivion with the Oblivion Realm, Cyrodil and that Realm of Madness. What World of Warcraft did well was it made each new zone feel fresh and new, it looked distinctly different from the one you were in before.

I don't know much about the lore but is there things like mars rock wasteland , purple looking areas, basically zones that could have a terrain setting like WoW's zones? They need to make a diverse variety of environments like WoW did in their original game

the elder scrolls world draws much inspiration from a real world continent, you wont find extreme changes in geography placed next to each other, wow is perhaps the worst world design i have ever seen and we can pray that it will never be anything like that

So basically Deserts, Snow Terrain, Grasslands and Marshlands, thats it. Whether or not one likes WoW's environment design, they still made most zones look distinctly different from one another.

Black Marsh - Swampy
Elswyr- Savannah
Valenwood - Jungle and Forest
Norther Skyrim - Ice
Daggerfall - Desert


There you go. We have alreaady seen desert, swamp, and forest in screenshots, and they looked very different from one another

While variation is key, WoW tends to be a bit extreme in their world design. For instance, the dwarves land is right in the middle of the continent, and that's covered in snow. It would make more sense had it been built on higher grounds, but as Azeroth basicly is a flat surface, it hardly makes sense.

The one thing I hope ZMO doesn't do is draw their "Material 1 vs Material 2" line right on the political borders, say, just as you enter Skyrim from Morrowind, you go from some kind of grass on one side, to EXTREMELY SNOWY on the other. It should be made seamless based on the geography, not on; "Well out power stops at this point, you Nords can start pouring out your snow from here."

They're smart peoples, but I won't believe it till I see it.