Can is start anywhere BESIDES Crescent Reach? I hate that place and when I use my Origin AA I would prefer to go somewhere where a POK book is easier to get to. Would going Gold help?
Just to be clear. Unless there is a /marketplace service for changing starting city, in general, Gold membership only helps with newly created toons, not existing ones. On some occasions GMs have reset your city flag, so you can manually change it to one of the choices your race/class has. However, most of that was done when TSS was new and some people accidentally got switched to Crescent Reach without doing anything. They may still do it, if you're Gold and have a good reason why. Yther Ore.
On a side note, adding a Marketplace item to change your Origin city would indeed be a good thing imo.
According to http://www.eqwiki.net/wiki/Command:Setstartcity , /setstartcity <ID> may work, although I seem to recall that you have to be Gold and that you can only do it one time.
I think they marked everyone as already set, and have to /petition about it. Is what I had to do with a few toons that automatically got switched when TSS came out, but didn't play them for many months. I could be wrong, but they were explicit in that I get right the first time, 'cause you only get one chance to set it, and there wouldn't be any more even with more /petitions. EDIT: Also /setstartcity without parameters lists what IDs and cities they represent but doesn't set any. So you can at least see what's available. Yther Ore.
If you are gold you can just petition. I just got it fixed for one of my characters that is an iksar cause I wanted to do the iksar newbie quests without the penance quest And they fixed it within 12 hours
Hmm, yes, Clerics and Necro Dark Elf origin takes them to neriak 3rd gate a long ways from the Pok book in Nec forest. Human Necro or Sk have to cross east Freeport and go through west Freeport to get to a book,Evil humans in Qeynos start underground and have to zone several times Gnomes in Ak'anon is a maze, Vah Shir trying to get to the book in Shadeweavers Thicket is a pain on good days. Crescent Reach is probably the best or close to it starting city in EQ. Any race any class and you only have to learn the city once, and leveling to 20 is right handy, with decent starter spells, and lots of Trade skill options. And other then being a vanilla zone, from the backside of CR to the Pok Book just outside, is about as close as you can get (Monks in Qeynos are seriously close). If origin is your biggest problem- you have it made!
Closest starting cities to a book (Origin point is in same zone as book): Wood-elf, half-elf/Kelethin Froglok/Rathe Mountains Human/Qeynos (certain classes/deities only) Human/Freeport (city is so messed up it doesn't really count; certain classes/deities only)
My Half Elf Bard is very happy with his home city of Kelethin. It takes just a few seconds to get to the POK book, what with the travel song and all.
Yup, it's my favorite starting city as well (although I don't like those little wooden elf things ). But another perk (especially for my Bard) is using origin to zip home, sell were you pop, easy run over to Tribute items, jump down and head to the PoK stone which isn't too far.
All Access does grant you this but its a one time use and easily screwed. I once just wanted to test this command and typed "/setstartcity" and it got expended without doing anything.