So to me, something EQ did way better than most games is their city design. Every race had a home city, and they were often so large they took up more than one zone. You really had to learn your way around. WoW also had a few really good city designs (iron forge comes to mind), but very few MMOs take the time to design unique, awesome cities for every individual race. Even Vanguard had the "tribal hut" vibe for many cities. I really would love to see each race get it's own major city, with unique traits (under water for Myr, small passage ways for gnomes, mines for dwarves etc) and memorable designs. I love when games take the time to do this, rather than lumping a bunch of races together into one starting zone.
A few of my favorites include:
Kelethin: Definite winner. The idea that you could fall off and die was crazy to me. It was like a maze on top of that, and really was a cool idea that we're living in the trees. No "elven" home has pulled it off so well since. There have been other tree house cities, but they all pale to Kelethin.
Cabilis: The water ways to swim in were a nice touch. It felt evil and also ruinous. You knew **** had gone down here in the past. Also, it was one of the "two zone" cities, and all four zones it attached to had a small newbie area, but then a drastic change in mob level (except the field of bone) that said "oh damn, nothing about this city is safe).
Nerriak: I got lost here A LOT. It felt terrifying and sinister, just as it should be for the Dark Elves. Also, drastically different factions in one city was cool, giving the vibe of "bad parts of town" for certain races.
Paineel: I loved the "hidden" feel of the enterance. Also, the whole "The Hole" thing was awesome, from the lore to the fact that you could totally fall in.
Shar Vahl: ok, so aside from the fact that I had to upgrade my PC just to be able to move here, this was a cool zone. The palace had such great architecture, and everything about it said "yeah, you're in the twilight zone." I really liked how surreal a lot of Luclin was (like Owlbears, Ssra, and Sonic Wolves especially), and it all had an "extra terrestrial" vibe right down to Shar Vahl and it's talking cat people.
Do other people out there have favorite MMO cities? Is this something you care about in Pantheon?
@Arksien
I agree 100% on the importance of each race having it's own starting city and how important memorable starting cities are on a player's positive first impression.
I started a thread back in 2014 that discussed this topic - 3 starting cities with teleports which has been archived unfortunately. The thread was created when it was annouced there would only be 3 starting cities with teleports that I was strongly aganist (as were many other community members), which was ultimately changed to 3 Sanctums (with potential teleports, which I'm hoping don't make it to launch) and 9 racial starting villages, or, basically one starting village for each race. I'm not sure if this is 100% accurate still as we haven't had an update regarding the starting areas since.
I've provided the link for the February Soundcloud below which discusses the cities at approximately 2:00. The whole roundtable is a good listen if you haven't heard it.
https://soundcloud.com/pantheon-rotf/developer-roundtable-2-28-15-pt1
The one thing I hope about the cities is that they stay relevant the entire game
I want to have reasons, I want to HAVE to return to a city to conduct business. Merchants and bankers and trades skill areas should be restricted to the home cities
When PoK come out in EQ the starting cities died, when they made guild halls in EQ2 the cities were ghost town. Please VRI keep our cities necessary
Good to know Raidin! I wish there was an easier way to search through the old archived posts. That's a bummer to learn they're considering going the "new gen" route of starting villages that you'll ignore for the rest of the game, and "hub cities" that many races share. I really dislike that A LOT and it's sad to hear they currently plan to go that route :(
@Sevens I agree. I'd like to see "one main hub where no one is KoS" avoided at all costs, unless it's something like EC tunnels where the players find a spot organically for trade. The major cities should definitely be the go-to place for vendoring, seeing your GM etc. Faction will mean a lot more if you need places to vendor and bank outside your own city.
EQ zones in general had such tremendous personality. As long as they can recreate that, the cities themselves should be awesome.
I'm going to necro this old thread because well, they want us to continue threads instead of start new ones and this is what I found in the search for "racial starting area"
I too vote for racial city's, having them and keeping them relevant, all through my time in EQ as a High Elf there was nothing like coming back to Felwith. It was probably one of the most social places I ever went. This was where I went to give back what was given to me in my starting levels, here I got to know some new starting players, and if they stuck with it and leveled up a bit they were usually invited into the guild. It was home.
It's very discouraging to go back now and find the place deserted.
I understand it's a lot more work for development to build all those cities, but I would prefer they launch with less races and each having a city than I would with more races. What's a race without a home?
Has there been any change to the Dev's position on this?
There has been a quite large thread (perhaps the one Raidan is speaking about) in the past .
It all boils down again to immersion .
For me and most people who played and liked EQ , EQ hit incredibly accurately the immersion factor and it was certainly one of the biggest factors of its success .
17 years later I still remember my first log in EQ in Qeynos . There were people walking in the streets (PC and NPC), there were markets, guilds, guards, beggars . One overheard discussions that were giving keys to possible adventures . There were catacombs, dwarves in inns who were "going to make weep their dragons" and corrupt guards . It all felt so incredibly living that my level 1 bard immediately felt at home in this city . Much later one almost always found a high level PC helping newborns with advice, money and items at the home cities .
If you are to have the feeling of belonging to the (virtual) world, to be inside , immersed you need to identify with your character . The stronger the identification, the stronger the immersion feeling .
And in RL being at home somewhere is one of the strongest feelings .
So, clearly, a PC needs to be at home somewhere .
A PC is identified by his race, his family and friends belong to this race too, they share all history, lore and culture .
So it seems obvious that to enhance the immersion, there simply has to be a racial starting city . This has to be a place where I will feel at home for several years, a place that will provide unique (for my race and/or class) advantages and services and it is here that I will gladly often return .
In EQ it has been this "I return home" feeling that gave real value to the starting cities - they were not only some anonymous places where I "spawn" at level 1 and that I leave at level 7 to never see again .
PoP has very efficiently destroyed that feeling because it created a general hub in PoK so that from that point on, all Norrath cities became ghost towns and we all became homeless .
This was very unpleasant for me and many others and it is no coincidence that I left EQ shortly after PoP .
So in an RPG, the starting city has always 2 functions .
One is to provide a place for the starting characters so that they can learn the game, its mechanics and challenges and get the first levels . Every game has to provide this function by definition .
Second is to provide a place which will generate the feeling of home for the starting character . This means that there is history, architecture, lore and social structures that root the starting character in his past and "educate" him as a proper member of his race and , later , class . As this function is an option, very few games include it in their design . Those few which do (as f.ex EQ did) have a considerable added value because they become significantly more immersive .
Unfortunately the second function is not something that can be added later . Either the design is planned from the very start or it will never be in the game .
Personally I certainly wish to be able to identify with my character (and not only consider that the world is some pixels, stats and clicking with a mouse) and would be extremely disappointed if there were no racial starting cities . It is a subjective quantification but for me a good 40 % of the immersion factor would be destroyed if there were no racial starting cities in the EQ style .
There been a few great, Neriak to mention one (it felt nasty). EQ2 had Quenos that was a great city but the overused of small instances sadly made it less good.
My favorite is actually Divinties Reach from GW2 because it actually feels like a real city, every other MMO city I seen (including all othewrs in Gw2) sadly lacked that sense. The only thing lacking in it is stores (preferably player owned) You don't just have the houses of the people living there (something many MMOs forget), the city planning makes sense as well.
My tip is to preferably visit or at least see some footage from an actual medeval town (as a Swede I recommend Wisby, Gotland but there a quite a few in Europe, Maltas Valletta is also awesome). Of course that is only good enough for low fantasy towns, in Pantheons case the human city but even elves and similar need city planning.
A great MMO city actually feels real, you can guess which buildings are the oldest and the purpose of them. It should feel like home to your character (well, at least after you played a while), somewhere you grew up and comming home to relax, shop or have a mead at the tavern between your adventures.
Racial starting cities is amazing in a MMO and games without are the poorer. If they are done right the game will be far richer then a game with a single or 2 main cities.
Sevens said:The one thing I hope about the cities is that they stay relevant the entire game
I want to have reasons, I want to HAVE to return to a city to conduct business. Merchants and bankers and trades skill areas should be restricted to the home cities
When PoK come out in EQ the starting cities died, when they made guild halls in EQ2 the cities were ghost town. Please VRI keep our cities necessary
I agree. I'd be willing to take it a step further and have cities gradually change with time (diurnal and otherwise), season, population, etc. It'd be neat to notice minor differences coming and going.
Point to note: Racial Cities/Towns/Villages are also 'starting cities/etc'.
They do not have to be huge (think Qeynos in EQ2) but need:
Racial 'style' thoughout (though can have 'rich' and 'poor' sections or 'foreign cantons')
Racial relevant merchants/services. No 'cow sellers' in a city where people worship cows etc.
Services proportional to size. Small villages WILL NOT have a fully-fledged 'Mall of America' etc
A reason for Higher-Level players to use it...
A reason for Newbie players to STILL use it...
Additionally there are things I would *like* to see in starting City/Town/Village:
NO Inter-City TP if possible... perhaps a boat ride or caravan train at most.
DEVELOP as the server MATURES. Think 'Lore' ... as a game expansion moves the 'Story of Terminus' forwards a step ... the Village/Town/City will change. Perhaps, due to player activity, the City has (i) grown (ii) fallen into disrepair (iii) got torched by an orc army (iv) had a Hell-Mouth open under it...
Local currency
.... 'you want 10% money-changing fee??? are you mad!! Aradune wil hear of this!'
Local Banking
.... 'No sir, we haven't yet invented dimensional rifts to link this bank to the others.'
Multiple Factions (say 1 per 'Family' vying for control of the city + 1 for Clergy + 1 for Mages guild).
You have successfully Bribed a Servant of the Clinton Family (Bribery skill now 201)
Your faction with The Trump Family has increased
Your faction with The Clinton Family cannot go any lower
Your faction with the Servants Guild of Washington has increased
Your faction with Putin has increased
Your faction with The IRS has decreased
I am hoping they have personality. Nothing is worse than when devs put all the time and effort into a huge city that just feels like a giant castle city. Nothing special or important. I think back to EQ2 FP vs. Qeynos. They were just giant cities to me. Versus, the personality differences between FP, Neriak, Halas, Kelethin, etc. They didn't need to be massive to make the different or special, they were unique.
I feel like many developers just want to give us these massive castles that are just reskins of different cities. I'd rather see each racial city have a unique feel to them, even if it makes them smaller due to attention to detail. In my opinion, I prefer smaller cities anyhow as opposed to those so massive it feels like I am taking hours just to get through it.
I haven't seen a single person around here disagree on this topic. Everyone wants starting cities (town, village, whatever) for each race. They don't need to be enormous - EQ did size perfetly. WoW also had good size racial cities. EQ2 Freeport and Qeynos - way too big. The main cities on each continent of Vanguard, way too big, ghostowns. But I don't want a crappy little area like I got in Vanguard when I logged in with my Dark Elf.... it was nothing more than a camp with some tents and the opening of a cave - I was so disappointed!
I didn't hang out in all the EQ towns, but is was certainly nice to always see activity in the ones I did go to. Cabilis always had Iksar of course...Rivervale always had druids hanging around.... Freeport always was a place of commerce with people commuting to and from the EC tunnel......Kelethin another place of commerce....Neriak always busy with dark elves and fatties...Qeynos a little out of the way, but still attracted travellers with the lure of some quests involving the town.
From some of these pictures, Thronefast looks like it might be big - I hope it's not TOO big!
AgentGenX said:I haven't seen a single person around here disagree on this topic. Everyone wants starting cities (town, village, whatever) for each race. They don't need to be enormous - EQ did size perfetly. WoW also had good size racial cities. EQ2 Freeport and Qeynos - way too big. The main cities on each continent of Vanguard, way too big, ghostowns. But I don't want a crappy little area like I got in Vanguard when I logged in with my Dark Elf.... it was nothing more than a camp with some tents and the opening of a cave - I was so disappointed!
I didn't hang out in all the EQ towns, but is was certainly nice to always see activity in the ones I did go to. Cabilis always had Iksar of course...Rivervale always had druids hanging around.... Freeport always was a place of commerce with people commuting to and from the EC tunnel......Kelethin another place of commerce....Neriak always busy with dark elves and fatties...Qeynos a little out of the way, but still attracted travellers with the lure of some quests involving the town.
From some of these pictures, Thronefast looks like it might be big - I hope it's not TOO big!
Q and Freep mainly were too big because the overuse of zones, taking a few back alleys into their own zone is just silly. A city need to be a single zone to be really good, if you can't make large enough zones then male villages instead. Also, city planning matter here, with plenty of large unused areas the city also feel to large. Players don't have to have much use of all areas but it should look like npcs use them at least. Particularly Q in EQ2 had a bit too many areas that didn't feel like they had much point besides making the city feel larger. Large open areas are fine if the npcs put up some market stands there (they don't have to sell good stuff to players, apples and such are fine), maybe a performer or 2 and some kids playing marble. That makes the area feel used instead of making the city feel like a ghosttown or in the middle of a zombie acopalypse.
Just being large doesn't make a city good, a small well planned village beat a huge wasteland of a city every time. A huge well planned city is awesome though. :)
Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing a small choice of selection regarding starting city. For example, each race can choose between their racial starting city or the starting city of their closest racial ally (or nearest good/bad aligned neighbor). Perhaps, humans can have the perk of selecting from a larger number of starting locations. This will allow friends who want to jump in the game and start adventuring together a wider variety with different classes that may not be available to the races of their choice.
So totally agree on starting zone in racial cities and well though out citys. I remember Qeynos and Neriak were my two favorite cities, both had such diff atmopheres. It is fun to have to come back to your home city makes the game more realistic and hence better immersion.
syntro said:I cannot wait for the underwater Dark Myr city! Ah! *fingers crossed*
Hopefully they rent out breathing gear or casters set up shop at the entrance and sell underwater breathing buffs for outsiders.
I wouldn't count on it... "A vast disdain for other races lurks beneath their tranquil surface, calling none friend and few honored as foe." - Races/ Dark Myr
I for one would like to see them using the impaled corpses of land dwellers as target practice at the entrance :). That said, I do think there should be a "rebellious" merchant posted not too far away from the entrance (like in EQ Freeport), that offers exactly what you describe.
Rogue said:I wouldn't count on it... "A vast disdain for other races lurks beneath their tranquil surface, calling none friend and few honored as foe." - Races/ Dark Myr
I for one would like to see them using the impaled corpses of land dwellers as target practice at the entrance :). That said, I do think there should be a "rebellious" merchant posted not too far away from the entrance (like in EQ Freeport), that offers exactly what you describe.
syntro said:Rogue said:I wouldn't count on it... "A vast disdain for other races lurks beneath their tranquil surface, calling none friend and few honored as foe." - Races/ Dark Myr
I for one would like to see them using the impaled corpses of land dwellers as target practice at the entrance :). That said, I do think there should be a "rebellious" merchant posted not too far away from the entrance (like in EQ Freeport), that offers exactly what you describe.
You know what, you've changed my mind. I hope they do have land dwellers heads steaked up too - that would be awesome. You want in the underwater city? Work on that faction, use an illusion spell/potion, sneak in, or get strung up as an example. The exclusivity adds to the allure.
This person here folks... Words to follow indeed. The Dread Myr City is not a tourist attraction that needs or wants your patronage. Be warned. :)
Sevens said:The one thing I hope about the cities is that they stay relevant the entire game
I want to have reasons, I want to HAVE to return to a city to conduct business. Merchants and bankers and trades skill areas should be restricted to the home cities
When PoK come out in EQ the starting cities died, when they made guild halls in EQ2 the cities were ghost town. Please VRI keep our cities necessary
Sevens said it pretty much. The worst thing about having a racial starting city is that it becomes drained of people as players progress through the game. There should be many reasons to visit your starting city, something which gives you benefits and such. One worry I have is a human city being overrun with all the other races because that city is the closest to X location which provides Y benefits for players which in effect makes the human starting city the best. And since every 'good race' can just go there and do all their crafting and trading etc, why ever go to the elf city which is far far away?
It would be nice if there were some kind of discount you get for going to your home city, or something else.
-Todd
EQ1 and WoW nailed this, everyone else flubbed it, including Vanguard. Just rinse and repeat with the VR take on what the cities and lore should look like. Bigger is not better. Personality and uniqueness/lore is better.
And yeah, it goes without saying, they need to design reasons why players keep coming back to these cities. WoW probably did the best with that so far.
"That's why we decided to go with unique starting areas"
I'm surprised I haven't heard more about this decision than just this little bit in the Live Stream, (and then I found one post from Kilsin mentioning it as well). The last I had heard (until the Live Stream) was that there was going to be just the 3 starting Cities.
I have seen many good decisions out of Visionary Realms but this one, above all others tells me the team at VR is well on there way to making a great game. Obviously this one decision won't make the game, so much more is needed but this says they are looking at what's BEST for the game and what the players need not just what's the easiest or quickest to program.
I tip my hat to you Visionary Realms.... Good Form!
