Distinct Starting Areas
- sgbutcher
- Jun 17, 2015
- 2 min read
One of my most memorable parts of starting in Everquest was the starting cities. In those days a lot of time was spent in and around your starting city and it really came to feel like home. My First character was a Dwarf, Kaladim was his starting city and home to the dwarves. Kaladim was just amazing to me the huge dwarven statue out front and the big wall. I spent a long time in Butcherblock and eventually went over to Faydark to fight Orcs and head into Crushbone and later hopped the boat to Antonica and spent a long time in oasis.
Kaladim EQ
Nothing though, compared to coming home. And that’s what it always felt like when I returned to Kaladim, as I would get near the music would change to the Kaladim theme music, then I would come over the hill and see the dwarven statue and would feel all tension drain away as I was home.
I remember making my Barbarian and starting in Halas. My wife started with a Woodelf druid and to come play with me she decided to run from Kelethin to Halas. This was an epic journey that she still reminisces about today. going from Greater Faydark to Butcherblock, taking the ferry to freeport, then the run through the commons to Kithikore and waiting until daylight to get through to highpass her slow carful trek through highpass to north Karana then the long run through the karanas into Qeynos hills then through blackburrow into everfrost where I finally met her. we both came to think of Halas as our home away from home. and this ultimately created a long lasting enjoyment of snow/winter environments in games.
WoW_Dun_Morogh_08
Back in ’04 this was a major deciding factor in playing World of Warcraft rather than playing EQ2. See EQ2 started on a tutorial island and then eventually you would end up in either Freeport or Qeynos. I never really felt an attachment to either never really felt a sense of place or belonging which ultimately led me to missing a certain attachment to my character. Whereas starting in Wow brought back that same old feeling that my character came from somewhere my dwarf was from Dun Morogh and Ironforge (yeah snow!!) enough time was spent there in vanilla WoW to again really make it feel like home to me. my character had a sense of place and I had an attachment to my character.
I also went back to play everquest awhile back only to find characters no longer started in their own areas, I logged back out and never went back.
though I did find that at least some new starting areas were added to EQ2 so if I made a dark elf for example I could start in an appropriate area but it only really worked for me for the few races who belonged in those new areas.
This again in my opinion was done well in Guildwars 2, but very few games do this at all anymore.
My perfect game will have many different races each with their own distinct starting areas and capitals. I will again get that sense of place in the world sense of belonging and attachment to my character.
