Should there be multiple starting areas?

"]I agree that the Round Table is a huge joke"
I how ever disagree.
as the developers do follow this board and pay attention to our ideas however some ideas that going to do will hit the back burner for now as the programers can only to do so much and closed beta is more like alpha part 2

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.
everquest next will be the finished product and most likely take less the 10 percent of Landmark to do the world but that in it self saves the developers almost a year in devlopment

I could only hope that they would take all this saved development time and sink it back into designing more cutting edge features. I dont want another game that just gets pushed out quicker just because they can cut corners. I want a finished product that takes the time to get everything right at launch. Just because they can cut Dev time by having players build content for them and building the world easier.

I would like to see them overhaul the Round Table response videos:
A: They should be about 7.5-10 mins in length with segments discussing only the topic at hand.
B: They should cover why you felt you needed to discuss the topic.
C: Tell us a little about what you had planned. Just a little discussion on the subject without giving too much away.
D: What dis the players have to say about the suject good and bad.
E: How did the players reactions help to get to the bottom of the matter
F: Is there any follow up info you need to finish the discussion.
G: How have we influnced the game.
H: Closing statements.
I: Upcoming questions.

Primarily we want to hear from you the devs on what we were asked and if our ideas are doing anything at all. So far you just seem to shoot our ideas down. Maybe its not feasable at the moment but let us know if it is something possible later on or planed for the future. We want to see you talk about the discussions rageing and what you like dislike about what we have to say. Right now it seems like nothing we say is having an effect. Also it would be nice if tuning into the round table videos we actually found out new information about Next.

I agree however the game makers could certainly show a few buildings of such a Lore specific city and have contests involving the whole community in Landmark to match there style and the best get selected to be added to it during the development stage.

This is the key to the reason the threads are mostly a joke. The dev team is just turning on the TV and pointing the kids at it while the dev team "does things" instead of engaging the community. Distracting folks with threads that have zero chance of being of use or value to the dev team is just busy work for the community.

I feel like this is what the round table is about. Sitting at the kids table while some guy in a suit asks questions that dont matter in the first place.

In practice I think everyone starting in one area usually works best. Logging in to try a new MMO only to discover it is a ghost town - because new players are spread across a dozen starter areas - makes a really bad first impression.

That said, I voted for the first option because that's what I prefer. Racial starting areas help me settle into a new character's skin.

Maybe they can avoid the ghost town problem by starting new characters in their capital city which should be bustling with players of all levels. Give them the how-to-play tutorial stuff in town and then send them off to begin adventuring in eg. sewers or a nearby cave system with newbie content.

The only problem is that all other EQ titles use faction between the races, and good and evil. This game seems to make all of that just disapear into some kind of everquest superfriends theme. Even if the lore says something blew the continent apart and dragons are mad that someone did something. Cetrain races surely would have joined them, fought against them, or helped the dragons. Races hate each other. Races hate their own interfactions. Im sure some of the races would have went their sepperate ways. I really dont feel like all currently availible races starting in the same city is a good thing. It does not seem like there is even good and evil in the game.

The other thing is what is going to keep people in or around one city after its built? Are further out cities just being built to shuttle players towards the harder content only that they felt there should only be one city at launch? Cause if you just build qeynos so that you could build freeport, so that you could build halas, to build kelethin and so on just so you can control the rate of expansion and content its kinda dumb. Even in a supposed sandbox game if you turn it into another tunnel game with an open world it will fail. I dont want to build a quest hub to wait to build another quest hub, and so on.

Then they plan on intruducing more races as they go. Which is fine they better have at least all the starting races from the other 2 titles.

I need multiple start areas. I would hate to roll 3-4 toons and have to the same start quests over and over again (Tera). Kind of boring.

from the perspective of the lore it already looks like
there will be multiple starting areas. The combine races
look like the good guys so to speak, dwarves/elvs/humans,
who fled to Kunark... fought with the iksar and are coming
back for more punishment on Antonica which has since grown
more dangerous (probably freeport area).

More realistic to expect a unified Rallos Zek
driven army of ogres and orcs with their own specific
struggle surviving the dragons forming their hordes
in Feerot fighting a 3 way with Trolls and Frogloks.

Then we see the Dark Elvs reclusive in Neriak
seeking glory out from the dragons, dealing with goblins
and halfings with the combine races trying to reclaim their
ancestral cities one by one... making for new expansion
content ideas.

Several starting areas would be great, doing the vast
amount EQ1 would be devastating after a couple months.
El Ghost Town-o.

I see the devs aren't the only ones that like to write tutorials. Maybe they should make a tutorial on how to present and respond to Idea's here on the RT? Or we could all just act like adults and leave room for other peoples Idea's and all the possible different ways things can be perceived across the internet.
If all you bring to the table is a list of rules in a box , then its no wonder you might get the feeling that your input isn't being considered seriously. (just my first impression of your last few posts on this thread)

What this thread is about , is going to cover how much of the players experience within even 1 week?
Do we really need a lore driven hand holding experience with umpteen different senario's and locations?

Why not just let you make up your own back story (use your imagination) and let you plop your character pretty much anywhere in the world to start. But ofcourse there does need to be a tutorial to introduce the UI and the new concepts of how the player can interact and effect change in the world (hence start with a rally cry)
Its not like this itty bitty section of a players experience can't be refined and added to after launch.

Wow...nice backhand. So, the video responses address the question at hand...provide some information on how the input (you know...the stuff folks write in the thread) was viewed and maybe even impacted a decision/direction and so on????? What videos are you watching?

Oh right..it isn't important to address the topic of the poll/thread...it is fine to just blather on with what the dev team is going to do...in canned videos. Great that the dev team is "including" the community...to make it "our" game....yippee....

(made up example)
Poll question: Should female dwarves have beards?

<lots of discussion on thread for/against/discussing the topic...with what seems to be a majority saying 'yes' female dwarves should have beards>

Video response: "Female dwarves don't have beards."

WOOT...all that input and discussion sure helped 'guide' the dev team with thoughtful comments on the topic. So much of that time was well spent!!!!

It just isn't showing up....the dev team is doing what they want...and it doesn't appear to matter what anyone says....even if a vast majority like/dislike something...the dev team simply states what it is doing and ignores the input from the community.

It is fine...the dev team is 'working hard' and 'know better' than the community so perhaps folks should just ignore the round table completely and just wait for the twitter feed to let the community know when the next great decision has been made...saving time and energy for all.

Some of the ideas in these threads are awesome....many are far too involved (requiring 'work') for this dev team to bother considering...some are just too complicated to appear feasible. Others are wanting a game that is actually redefining the genre (that was promised) and are not something this dev team is interested in....sadly.

Sadly, the game is too far along (even with another year plus??? development time) to make the game interesting...

Multiple starting cities...on the water edge...could make the game a bit more interesting...but breaks from lore that has been announced already....sigh.

With the LU schedule they plan on having they could easily replace content in the same physical space so that multiple character players (which they expect to be less represented in the population than is the case in EQ2 for instance) don't have that issue.

Also, given the horizontal leveling there shouldn't be that much difference between a 45 min played character and a 22 hour played character combat wise. Whatever content there is will be much more level ambivalent so the issues associated with other games (lvl 1-20 of 95) where one section of the population can't do more than get rid of rats while others might as well be deity avatars incarnate (EQ2 TOV 95/340) shouldn't be as big of an issue.
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Given that background would players who expect to have 4-6 characters really need a horde of Dev starting zones that will be diffusely populated not even considering the real possibility of EQN SWG player made cities rolling in?

Starter zones really should be defined as areas for new players not 'low level' content as EQN's content is being tuned to be level ambivalent.

If EQN goes that way there really should be one per alignment and satellite factions (Halas, Neriak, etc.) should be something an established player (or character) joins.
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It is possible that EQN carries the a la carte 'tutorial' on the character and not on the area/zone which would make it so there would simultaneously be zero discrete starting areas and an infinite number of discrete starting areas depending on which side of the perception fence one sits on.

Starter zones are as backward in game design as leveling and EQN really doesn't have to have them if the tutorial is locked on the avatar and not the zone beyond worldwide 'hints' placed in 'noob-vision' mode for those who need it.