Blackreach was slightly disappointing as a location after the hype.

Wing

sum up fast?

its an overland zone with a rock roof.

more in depth?

all 4 zones were completely open and if you added a sky it might be more similar to coldharbor then a cave. now i want to say right now, the artists did a great job with the geodes, mushrooms, glowy subterranean environment, etc. but that was essentially wallpaper on what was otherwise and outdoor room in layout and structure.

blackreach should have been far more narrow and cave like in areas, a large portion of skyrims blackreach was dwarven dungeons and towers, of which you never saw the exterior (because you didnt realize there was one, other then being underground) instead every zone is a single GIANT cave, and the small section that could have maybe been narrow caves and dwemer ruins are just doors with loading screens between cells.

for instance, there is a dungeon in western skyrim (chillwind depths) thats a falmer dungeon, that would have been great as a connection point between two of the larger zones and remind you that you are in fact, underground.

having one or two large dungeons would have been great, but 4 large flat circles? this is really weird because i felt like with northern elsweyr you guys started nailing verticality again, the canyons around orcrest were amazing, and an underground area like that, that had large sections of verticality and crevasses would have been very interesting and distinct.

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next up is the sheer amount of NPC's and life. Blackreach is crowded with people, you cannot swing a person without hitting another person down there. (and im not talking players)

the mining town section by itself was kind of interesting, but if a group was down their trying to make a home i would assume it would be more like followers of pyrite or namira (her outcasts hid in a ruin in oblivion and hated the light) and finding a settlement of outcasts in the dark depths of a section of blackreach might have been cool.

but instead were treated with LOADS of people who are just super casual about the whole thing and seem to come and go as they please.

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the falmer, should have been a wee bit bigger and had a few more larger baddies among them, the bugs were nice, but they felt and acted like re skinned goblins, at one point it super felt like i was just in toothmaul gully. and they overall had very little impact and felt like npc trash mobs after i was used to them being a bit more scary.

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the vampire castle area was woefully underused, that entire section is devoted to a single main quest point (that the objective is to zerg through) and a single side quest. the trailers, reveals, and quest hyped up this army of vampires and werewolves, and then there are maybe a hundred in the whole place and you can just chill and walk around? the mob around it should have at least been designed more like a public dungeon.

**********Sumation**********

you kind of mocked elsweyr for being bi polar, it had super serious dragons, but the khajiit who invented sweets and drugs and have tiny housecat sized breeds that talk and are smol. but Elsweyr is still by far my favorite expansion.
-it iterated wonderfully on the public events with dragons (that was not followed up by harrowstorms, as i have detailed in another thread.)
-it had very diverse quests and we finally saw another stealth mission in the stitches (after they were all but abandoned after TG and DB)
-we had amazing verticality not seen since orsinium (as i mentioned the canyons around orcrest and the stitches)
-abnur tharn (im sorry but lyris is a block of wood, and im convinced she just carries the same 3 corpses with her to lay around when you show up to be like "look i was doing things!")
-more interesting biomes (the SE by the temple is a bit narrow and boring, but other then that good fun)

its still good, i still enjoyed greymoor, but it was not nearly as fun or replayable as Elsweyr for me, and honestly the problems and irritations with harrowstorms actually bring it down a few points for me, it would have been better without them, they kind of signify one of the recent problems of ZOS of designing an encounter in a vacuum with numbers and not looking at the big picture. they are not fun.

yeah.