Guildhalls. They said at Fan Faire that the reason they were going to remove Qeynos and Freeport as starting zones was because too many new players were going through the Isles, liking the game, but then they'd get to Qeynos or Freeport and nobody was there. So they assumed the game was dead, and they'd quit. Of course, we know people were here - they were just doing their banking and crafting and selling in the guildhall, instead of in the city like they used to. The removal of the villages was part of the revamp of the starting cities to make them higher-level - not much point in having level 1-10 quests when people would be way past that by the time they got to Qeynos or Freeport. Yes, it was a bad decision, but there were a lot of those at the time. They also wanted to make the cities less run-down, especially Freeport, and the Freeport slums didn't fit with that. What would have been much better is a quest series where we help solve the problems in the villages, and once we do that, we could go back to the normal version of them. They made it sound interesting at Fan Faire, saying we'd be able to influence things in the villages, but none of that ever happened. The new quests aren't bad, but the old racial quests were better - much more flavour to them. I believe they said Qeynos is two zones for technical reasons. They wanted to make it one zone, like Freeport, but something wasn't working right.
I think it would be fantastic if there was some way that we could do like a "neighborhood revitalization" to the villages and open them up. Maybe something similar to building the Griffin Towers or the Spires.
Willow Wood and Longshadow Alley are the two I'd most want out of personal nostalgia, but as Lera mentioned I'd much prefer actual explorable zones instead and a rebuilding series of quests sounds pretty cool. Sad it's not to be. The idea of the old neighborhood homes becoming questable and therefore meaningful lorewise is a much more interesting idea to me than just straight buying it with SC/loyalty. I'm hardly an adventurer these days but I would definitely run that content - I suspect something like that would get a small tide of nostalgia players, especially on 'off' months between holidays.
I totally agree about being able to have the old neighborhoods back. I sincerely miss them. They still exist and so there's no reason why they can't just reopen them again! I miss those and that is a freaking cool part of EQ2's past. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the idea of a neighborhood revitalization quest to reopen them so to speak.
Yes yes and more um..yes! Also, thinking of the griffin towers and building those and other things together as a server world building event (also the druid ring and wizard spire one too), I really miss that too. I would love it if the new expansion had a druid ring or spire that was defunct and we had to build it as a server to get it working.
Hm, now that we know we get this cool water plane thingy place as new Xpacs home - has anyone heard something else how to get Bubbleshire? I totally believed in the "new Xpac" theory, but now its got me scratching my head again.
I just thought it would be something that would be released to the generic Prestige House list that we could get from the Marketplace at about the same time? Uwk
I would love to get the neighborhoods back to but it has been a long time so I'm not sure they would or could give them back. I remember doing the old quests that each race did back in Freeport. I set up my characters in the neighborhood areas for their housing and brokering. On Qeynos side I did the same thing. I think my favorite neighborhood was Castleview Hamlet but the other neighborhoods were nice too.
I loved the old neighborhoods, I made a bunch of different races just so I could start out in them. Except I think Greystone Yard. I would love to see them brought back.
In Greystone Yard my barbarian fighter had her inn room. The others lived in Willow Wood or Starcrest Commune, where my ingame friends had their homes. Later we moved together to South Qeynos in a bigger house, shared the rent and had a lot of fun
I had a lot of them covered I think. I had Nettleville, Starcrest, Castleview, Willow Wood, and Baubleshire. Not sure of the others it's been so long now LOL
Well, if they're coming back with the Baubbleshire, they can certainly come back with the others. ;-> Uwk
Amen! Seriously, I do think they could make quite a few bucks "selling off the suburbs" to us as prestige places, like they're doing with the Baubbleshire. Now, it's just a matter of convincing them that money isn't an allergen... :-/ Uwk
That brings back memories. Two of my ingame friends and I did the same, we purchased a big (for us) house in Freeport. It was just one of the 3 room houses in South Freeport but it was right upstairs from the South Freeport crafting, broker, and banker. Good times.
Thinking back, the Tinkerer's House that we got with PoP, mysteriously ooppsie appeared on the housing portal about a year before we got it with PoP. I hope the Baubleshire House is not going to be for an expac after CD. I was already doing the Snoopy Dance and saving my DBC to buy it.
Yeah, cross our fingers...have we heard anything more about the BBSH (Baubbleshire House) recently? :-/ Uwk
