Should there be multiple starting areas?

I'm all for a tutorial, however it should be optional. I would prefer a tutorial before you pick your starting city.

There should be multiple stopping areas;

The pie shop and cake shop and donut shop. The coffee shop the tea shop and chai shop.

The tavern the bar and the cantina. City hall and museum and library.

Picnic tables and parks and lodges. Graveyards, memorials and mausoleums.

I am not so sure this apply to players as much as the DEVELOMENT team should keep some space for there own use even on live servers.

Your not going to want to stay in the starting area for a long time really; it still needs to be interactive with the rest of the world, as the frontier quickly expands in EQNL and EQN I should hope that they keep a few places open and public on all servers.

I am not really worried about a single starting place for EQN or EQNL because I see the huge potential to move out across the frontiers, and I will concede the starting area to make other places grow.

I always want to be able to invite and bring REAL LIFE friends into Norrath with out a hassle; I want to be able to meet and greet a new player on the first day of LIVE as the 30th year of live and go seek adventure.

I think that is a reasonable approach, I wouldn't think it would be difficult to offer the choice of 'racial' starting area versus 'general' starting area and leave it up to the player to decide. It's been done before.

Wait...didn't the dev team already answer this one...with the lore....everyone is leaving Kunark and heading to Qeynos?

Suddenly, people will be leaving Kunark and heading to....Rivervale...via that ship that jumps over land????

Freeport...sure...Qeynos...sure...Kaladim(sp)...sure...any city on the water edge would be possible...just no city that is land locked...at least at the beginning of the game/server life...

Why is this a question again? OH right..because everyone that isn't a dev knows that having everyone start in Cresent Reach was a horrible design decision and knows it should not be duplicated....

Lol I dont need any instructions to know how to rock! Who actually does the tutorial anyhow?

I think it would be weird if all the races started in the same place when the game launches. Open world chunnel vision sounds like a bad idea if you force people to start all at the same place if there is good/evil/neutral reaces in play. Sure you are building a foothold in the world but until we get some kind of back story on why this is happening this question is moot.

Since there is multiple continents I would like to see at least a evil starting city and an evil starting city on opposite sides of the globe. Would be nice to have a racial home you could venture to eventually after you start.

I am in the same boat.... I know they love their little rallying call idea. But it does make for kind of a sucky launch-- there'll be races we can't play, cities that don't exist, everyone will start in one camp. I mean, that's what they've said. But it will get better over time. Scant comfort is still comfort. I would be interested to know exactly how that will work-- will our "ancestral homes" all be standing at launch, for all playable races? I don't know.

I hope they instance the tutorial, the "starting area"-- would make it easier to opt out of, for one thing. But also when the instance ends you could pop to your racial city. Only one tutorial to make, but everyone is clearly starting the real game at their racial city. No lore-bending neccessary.

I hated when EQII moved to an evil city and a good city starting areas. It just hurt my brain, ogre guards standing next to dark elf guards standing next to iksars. The "combine" faction towards the endgame is made up of every race, if I'm not mistaken, so like wood elves next to dark elves.... The INSANITY! It's just WRONG. The only setting where evil and good races should cohabitate would be some kind of exile/bandit/outlaw setting. But the separate evil races hate each other just as much as the good ones hate them, to cram them all together and fumble for lore to make it so is... lame.

I'm late to this topic, but wanted to comment. It might have been mentioned already, given the length of the topic, but if so, I think it bears repeating.

See what Age of Conan did? DON'T DO THAT!

If we're talking strictly geography with different quests for the different races/classes to do at the beginning, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I just don't like every character regardless of race or class having to go through the exact same handful of hours' worth of content every time you want to try something new. I played through Tortage in AoC exactly 1.5 times. I've never looked back. That kind of setup is a huge turnoff.

Seems like they decided on lore that would justify implementing convenience mode designs. WoW did similar...

Instead of creating Lore for the world and then building the game around it, they came up with a game design and wrote the lore for it.

No racial divisions, no starting cities, gods that are neutral and don't matter. Sounds like the perfect formula for all races being simply skins and every character starting in the same place.

If you can make one starting area, but have it be somewhat different for each character and/or race someone creates then everyone gets what they want. Multiple starting areas in one location.

Yes....that sounds correct.

Mega City One - the starting city for all players. That is an appealing vision...can we play Judges too?

I'm sure they did both at the same time.
Same way choosing a male of female protagonist is going to immediately change the details of any good story.
If they start with EQ lore and change the game design, the lore is going to change to reflect those design changes.

I'm thinking that those who want their chars to start out as a Dark or Light side should have different starting areas. Not like the Queen's/Overlord Island. But different islands as in looks if you go that route.
I agree to a point that it could also be done by racial. But what if you are trying to make a normally 'good/light' char as a dark char without the betrayal quest of EQ2? As though they were born to parents who did the betrayal quest. What then?
Sorry, aspie overthinking here.

But....but...what if you want to make a 'dark' character and turn him into a 'light' character? The whole DE Ranger debate....can we do that....

Ok..ok...that was just an example....

One starting city has proven to be a horrible system. Horrible. Why repeat this horrible design flaw system? Oh right..it is easier than doing the work to make something that is more reasonable....like multiple cities on the waters edge that players can reach...at the beginning.

The lore indicates everyone goes to Qeynos from the continent Kunark...is the city they are leaving Overthere...don't recall atm. Anyway...just because all the people from one continent can only find one way to get to one place on the world map that doesn't scream lazy design. Not at all.

So, all the people on the continent have to all go to Overthere...get in line...get on a boat...and travel to Qeynos. A solid design. But again, according to lore...all the races on Kunark are living together happy...or wait...wasn't there something in a video somewhere that made it seem like the folks on Kunark didn't like the folks that flooded the continent? It is ok...after years of living together everyone gets along now so ignore that bit of lore...it is fine.

Direct quote or it never happened. The lore is written for the design; no other logical reason to pillage the existing lore the way they did.

I love the idea of racial staring city's but it would be cool to start in another with the associated non faction/reputation penalty but a path to earn it in that city

A tutorial is a great thing to help folks learn the UI and basic mechanics. However, sadly, there will not be multiple starting areas because the lore and marketing hype at Fan Faire clearly pointed out that everyone on the continent of Kunark only travels to Qeynos...

This entire thread is meaningless given the dev teams decision to have one starting area.

While all these ideas are neat...the decision has been made...much like the "can a toon learn all crafting skills" "question" wasn't a question at all..since the dev response didn't even bother to address the feedback provided...and instead simply stated the dev teams position.

This farce of asking for community input is getting pretty weak as time goes on...even tho many folks have some very interesting suggestions and desires. Picking a starting city after the tutorial is a great suggestion...sadly the only option players will be given is Qeynos.

tutorial should always be optional
and only good if you need them

I agree that the Round Table is a huge joke but its fun to dream that we would actually see a game worth playing one day. Been playing an ever watered down version of the same thing for so long I cant remember what a good new refreshing mmo played like.

Anyway there is no way in hell they would throw hundreds of millions at building a game without a concrete concept of how everything would work and play. That ship sailed a long time ago.

To me the cake is already in the oven. Its been cooking long before they ever started making the cake. But right now they are scrambling to find the ingredients to make a frosting. With all of our discussions and ideas contributing to the ingredients used. Having little to no effect on the taste of the whole cake. Wether or not the cake will taste good when its finished is yet to be seem.