Arksien said: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?
To me the best part about the starting cities was you HAD to return to them at some point to either buy spells or craft cutural gear. Also when you first started the game you were in the middle of a city with no map and no idea what you were doing. It took me an hour to get out of nerriak to kill anything. GOOD TIMES!
I actually had a few good experiences with starting areas, races, and factions. My first character was a half elf Ranger and I started in Surefall Glade. I remember the tunnel to Surefall being very dark and hard to get through at night. Having a fire beetle eye was really helpful in some areas. My favorite starting area was probably the Wood Elf village. There was always lots of people running around fighting over killing bats. One time I created a Dark Elf warrior and ran him over to Kelethin. I killed lots of Orcs and got my faction up with the Wood Elves. The forests of Greater Fandark and Lesser Faydark were pretty magical for me. Qeynos and Freeport were also fun. Freeport had some sewers you had to traverse to get your newbie spells if you were a Necromancer. Neriak was pretty, but easy to get lost in. I had trouble finding my corpse there a few times. The only starting area I didn't like that much was the Erudite one.
One other thing I wanted to ask was who was the Dark Elf outside of Qeynos and who was the Ogre in Kelethin? I always wondered why they were there. Maybe one of the people who worked on EQ orignally knows their story.
My primary desire of starting cities is that the game does not give up on them like EQ. EQ tried very hard to seperate high level players from lower level players by constantly moving the "hot" cities from one expansion to the next. I want cities to have a mix of high and low level players, not just low level players.
My thoughts on racial cities are as follows.
Myr Starting City (Syronai's Rest) should be under water but with probably most areas there that are not covered by water like cavities/halls/rooms for some odd reason (do Myr prefer to live within water?). Their Sunken City should be sinister and the most difficult city for any non-racial player to get to.
The Dwarf City (Fortress of Khadassa?) is somewhere in a snowy mountain. A Harsh cold environment with small claustrophobic rooms and corridors.
Elves Starting Area (Wild's End) as per the map posted before should mimic the Wood Elf city from EverQuest.
Skargol, the SKAR race city is more like a tropical sort of village with huts and such surrounded by the swamp.
bigdogchris said:My primary desire of starting cities is that the game does not give up on them like EQ. EQ tried very hard to seperate high level players from lower level players by constantly moving the "hot" cities from one expansion to the next. I want cities to have a mix of high and low level players, not just low level players.
^ this
Please design the cities where they will always stay relevant and the world around them would always be interesting and active so people don't have to abandon them permanently especially with future expansions. I want racial cities to always be a place you want to go back to or stay around for a long time. And in future expansions I don't want the "old world" to be redundant and unwanted because the new continent/content just replaces because it's far more convenient.
Laura said:My thoughts on racial cities are as follows.
Myr Starting City (Syronai's Rest) should be under water but with probably most areas there that are not covered by water like cavities/halls/rooms for some odd reason (do Myr prefer to live within water?). Their Sunken City should be sinister and the most difficult city for any non-racial player to get to.
The Dwarf City (Fortress of Khadassa?) is somewhere in a snowy mountain. A Harsh cold environment with small claustrophobic rooms and corridors.
Elves Starting Area (Wild's End) as per the map posted before should mimic the Wood Elf city from EverQuest.
Skargol, the SKAR race city is more like a tropical sort of village with huts and such surrounded by the swamp.
I have to disagree with the size of dwarven rooms. Dwarves my be shorter, but they are traditionally known for very large, cavernous areas. They build everything big and grand.
Its a Napoleon thing.
Beefcake said:
I have to disagree with the size of dwarven rooms. Dwarves my be shorter, but they are traditionally known for very large, cavernous areas. They build everything big and grand.
Its a Napoleon thing.
My deer, Beefcake. I really need a race with claustrophobic living quarters. It just makes my day, who would you suggest? Gnomes? :p
Laura said:Beefcake said:
I have to disagree with the size of dwarven rooms. Dwarves my be shorter, but they are traditionally known for very large, cavernous areas. They build everything big and grand.
Its a Napoleon thing.
My deer, Beefcake. I really need a race with claustrophobic living quarters. It just makes my day, who would you suggest? Gnomes? :p
Halflings. They tend to have small underground holes.
The Gnomes live on a spaceship. Not sure if they will have big or little living quarters.
Interesting, if you look at the races wallpaper, there is not much difference in sizes among the races. The shortest, Dwarves, are only about a head shorter than humans. The tallest, Ogres, are only about a head taller than humans.
Gnomes are taller than dwarves and halflings are taller than Gnomes.
Racial starting areas - no they don't have to be cities - are a wonderful thing in a MMO. They can keep us playing a lot longer as we create new characters and explore them instead of just grinding endgame content on a "main". Faction starting areas can be almost as good. I absolutely hate tree cities - easy to get lost and possible to fall off and die. The same reasons some people posting above like them. But I would rather have a race start in a tree city than not have a starting area of its own.
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
Loved the starter cities in Vanguard too..for the races. Hoping the starter quests etc aren't exactly the same as the other starter cities, but more along the lines of the lore that belongs to that particular city. Would like to see dungeons for high levels under those cities, along with newbie perception quests, crafting quests etc. Perhaps a city wide hunt for gnolls that have invaded and are hiding, needing to be routed out..for some good city faction. :)
Fully agree here, I think the charm of each city was that they were all indivual, unique and quite amazing and somewhat breathtaking to behold and not cookie cutter repeat areas like every underground area in fallout games (sorry fallout... love the game, hate that the dev's did that to it!)
My wishes are that VR devs delve deep into lore and creation for art and architecture throughout cities and lands as much as they have with everything else I've seen so far. I'm still shocked that this pre-alpha looks as incredible as it does, cannot wait to see the final product! Half the reason I play MMO's is the eyecandy and exploration of the world to see all the creations of the devs in all their iterations and what they've achieved
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.
Or gnomes can craft breathing apparatuses...like they did in EQ. It was costly but I bought one, no more worrying about the underwater breath buff disppearing (watching the timer and trying to get somewhere to breathe was always a race.) And buffs can be removed by the appropriate debuff spells. Felt much better after I bought that breathing mask. lol And I definitely plan to play a Dark Myr ..I have mermaid hiding somewhere in my soul. hehehe
CanadinaXegony said: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.
Or gnomes can craft breathing apparatuses...like they did in EQ. It was costly but I bought one, no more worrying about the underwater breath buff disppearing (watching the timer and trying to get somewhere to breathe was always a race.) And buffs can be removed by the appropriate debuff spells. Felt much better after I bought that breathing mask. lol And I definitely plan to play a Dark Myr ..I have mermaid hiding somewhere in my soul. hehehe
Some seriously good ideas in this thread!
Other races having to have something to get to the Dark Myr city via underwater would be a very cool mechanic imo if done right. Also, I like the gnome/rebreather idea, and maybe devs could put in limited use recipes for rebreathers that sell for a lot cheaper to help stimulate economy and crafting in game, like 2 minute use item that poofs when the time is up versus a heavier (weight-wise) and permanent use magic item that lasts forever but is VERY expensive and heavy af like in EQ. Convenience always did have a steep price in MMO's but clickies were also imo pretty much the coolest things in the game
I'm definitely going with Dark Myr for my main ( all the other races look amazing, but something about the Dark Myr... )
I can't wait to see our Dark Myr city, the art, architecture and building design and landscaping, placement of flora and fauna etc hanging seaweed as decoration or whatever... One of the things I always liked about traveling in Neriak and coming and going from the zones were the glowing translucent dark elven symbols placed minimally over zone entrances and some exits, like the triskelion you see when you first enter Neriak and approach the main gate. It was a nice eye candy considering the game engine at the time and computers just did not allow for incredible graphics at all. Hope to see things like that in the Dark Myr city as well, and see use of bioluminescence if possible too for their city and in their artwork, and for in-game models of certain underwater algaes/kelp/plants of various types etc
Something else I think might be cool is to have some modular things pre-made for the race city templates, giving Pantheon the ability to change things up for different seasons and/or racial in-game holidays and events. In WoW and EQ and most MMO's, the zones all stay the same and are mostly static and will only see holiday changes. The jungle zone is always the jungle zone, the desert is always desert, autumn is always autumn... if Pantheon could change out the plant models periodically as they go through their yearly cycles of sprout to producing leaves, fruit etc, change the color of various things in cities to reflect summer, autumn, etc and change out the artwork, city lights etc... I think it would add to the immersion feel of the game. To the devs, is it possible to have a mechanic like this in game?
- Edited for the bad spellings
I don't play many alts so I've never experienced more than a few starting cities from any MMO. But my favorite starting city would have to be Caial Br'ael from Vanguard. It was the evolution to Kelethin from EQ and with a newer graphics engine was able to be a much more beautiful place.
I've said this before but I sincerely hope for Tree City 3.0 with Terminus having one more tree city. And it would be great if the devs could design PRF in a way where starting cities remain relevant throughout a player's lifetime.
Calael Br'ael was absolutely my favorite city in Vanguard...the background music was wonderful...they had a stream that ran outside the city...had an actual running current, that carried you downstream to the top of the waterfall. (believe there was an achievement for jumping that waterfall without dying if memory serves me.)
My hope is that there is some reason to keep coming back to your starting city throughout your character's lifespan. If not, there is really no reason to spend a lot of time and resources on mulitple cities that will be vacant once you level out of the starting area or find a more convenienty located city which becomes the current defacto "central hub" for everything.
Will be interesting to see if there will be a "hub" city like Stormwind in WoW, and how much draw to return to your starting city there is. I always felt returning to West Freeport as home when I first played EQ and felt a sense of belonging to a degree, and even pride for being Freeport "Born". If there is a hub city, it might be cool for the hub city to not be one of the starting cities, and instead be for non-player character race maybe, or a mix of all races cultures built into one hub city maybe?
I'm also seriously curious to see what will happen in Pantheon for trade and crafting buying and selling, if there will end up being an in-game equivalent to EQ's "East Commons Tunnel" with regards to buying and selling that is open pretty much 24/7. Dev's never saw that one coming, and to this day on P99 the tunnel is flooded with buyers and sellers at various times throughout the day and night which is imo, really cool.
Portalgun said:Will be interesting to see if there will be a "hub" city like Stormwind in WoW, and how much draw to return to your starting city there is. I always felt returning to West Freeport as home when I first played EQ and felt a sense of belonging to a degree, and even pride for being Freeport "Born". If there is a hub city, it might be cool for the hub city to not be one of the starting cities, and instead be for non-player character race maybe, or a mix of all races cultures built into one hub city maybe?
I'm also seriously curious to see what will happen in Pantheon for trade and crafting buying and selling, if there will end up being an in-game equivalent to EQ's "East Commons Tunnel" with regards to buying and selling that is open pretty much 24/7. Dev's never saw that one coming, and to this day on P99 the tunnel is flooded with buyers and sellers at various times throughout the day and night which is imo, really cool.
I really hope there is NO faction neutral hub city. I dont want a bunch of stinky Mry making my beautiful tree city smell like rotting fish
I dont want them tooty frooty fufu elves and their silly twirly towers to build one in my rock solid stone fortress
Elves should go to elvish cities (at the most a couple of racial cities that are not KOS to them) etc etc
Sevens said:Portalgun said:Will be interesting to see if there will be a "hub" city like Stormwind in WoW, and how much draw to return to your starting city there is. I always felt returning to West Freeport as home when I first played EQ and felt a sense of belonging to a degree, and even pride for being Freeport "Born". If there is a hub city, it might be cool for the hub city to not be one of the starting cities, and instead be for non-player character race maybe, or a mix of all races cultures built into one hub city maybe?
I'm also seriously curious to see what will happen in Pantheon for trade and crafting buying and selling, if there will end up being an in-game equivalent to EQ's "East Commons Tunnel" with regards to buying and selling that is open pretty much 24/7. Dev's never saw that one coming, and to this day on P99 the tunnel is flooded with buyers and sellers at various times throughout the day and night which is imo, really cool.
I really hope there is NO faction neutral hub city. I dont want a bunch of stinky Mry making my beautiful tree city smell like rotting fish
I dont want them tooty frooty fufu elves and their silly twirly towers to build one in my rock solid stone fortress
Elves should go to elvish cities (at the most a couple of racial cities that are not KOS to them) etc etc
This leads into another great thing from EQ, tons and tons of different factions to consider. I would love to see a system again where we may have to work to be accepted in a city again, screw neutral hubs.
