Feldon There seems to be some confusion in the In Testing Feedback thread regarding the removal of Qeynos and Freeport as starting choices. I stand by the original article I posted, but some clarification is worth mentioning.
Qeynos and Freeport Going Away?
Qeynos and Freeport are not being removed as cities. Furthermore to my knowledge, none of the level 6-20 quests in these city zones and surrounding suburbs are going away. Although further testing on the Test Server will be needed to confirm this.
Players wishing to experience the Qeynos and Freeport level 6-20 content would need to create a character in Kelethin or Halas, Neriak or Gorowyn and arrange travel to Qeynos or Freeport to do those quest lines.
It is also worth pointing out that changing Citizenship between Qeynos, Kelethin, and New Halas, or between Freeport, Neriak, and Gorowyn, is approximately a 15-30 minute process. It’s a single quest or short series of quests. It is nothing like Betrayal. Nor is changing your Citizenship required to play this content.
EQ2Wire would prefer if the islands are not removed, but de-emphasized from the Character Creation screen, with more options added on the Departure Boat to port the player to level 6-20 content in all 6 starting cities.
We stand by our belief that removing content is not necessary to improve the experience for new players.
As they add new newbie areas, the newbie population will be spread out more- I suspect they are making this change to condense the newbie pop into the newest areas so that the game will appear more populated.
Really I can’t argue with the logic- you want newbies to have other newbies to interact with, or they’ll get bored and leave the game.
The island should be left in though as a bell option or something, so the old farts can go back and relive their glory days.
I’ve never judged the success or popularity of the game by who is in zones from levels 1-20. This content goes by in 3-5 hours of gameplay.
It’s funny how a single island is a much better way to funnel new players than throwing them into Kelethin or the un-navigationable cluster that is Greater Faydark f.e.
Why not leave them in and let them be “unlocked” once you get to lvl XX on one toon on your account.
Congrats on lvl 20 you account now has access to the “vintage starting islands”
new players are pushed to the new zones like they want, old players get to keep there islands
I agree, leave them as starting cities, direct them to their racial quest givers, and go from there. To remove them entirely as starting cities is just absolutely asinine. And I agree with Rooyak, Let it be unlockable once you get your first level 20 character. Heck, if it were my first character and I got a “You unlocked Freeport and Qeynos as starting cities!” as a message . . . I’d want to start a new character just to see what I unlocked! It would only increase re-playability, imo.