I used to love the starter isalnd that you went to in old eq2 before they "wowified" it. It was the same layout for both factions but there were differnt mobs and quests depending on wether you were queynos scum of freeport heroes! There was a couple of named to kill, including the rare named sea creature. cant remeber if iy was an octopus or a shark.
ahhhh, good times, good times
If someone is talking in general chat in a language you dont understand, chances are they're not talking to you. So chill out and stop bitching about it!
Dwarf Area in EQ1. I loved the chessboard. It was such a dangerous and unfrogving starter zone. I don't recall if that haunted area in the teens was still in the same zone. But I loved that place as well. At release it was hard not to fall in love with EQ1. Suhc an amazing and scary world.
Gnome area in WoW - The first game to really offer fun content at low levels. Until WoW people always said wait until level 20 then the game will be fun. I loved the foot prints in the snow.
Dwarf Area in Vanguard - The Dwarf city was simply amazing. Especially considering most people would never see it except as a low level Dwarf. Some of the 14 or starter areas were quite hit and miss in terms of quality. But the Dwarf area was my favorite.
SWTOR I am not a fan of Tor but I thought the starting areas were well done. Mainly because of the story.
Tortage - AoC - IMO one of the worst games ever released. A complete sham of a game. But Tortage was well done. Its to bad the rest of the game was completely unfinished.
Rift - Both starter zones. Both Freemarch and Silverwood are extremely well done starter zones. Offering exploration, tons of quests, a starter dungeon, capital city and much more.
The Shire -LORO - Just a wonderful zone if you like hobbits. It really brought the books to life to me. There were lots of the characters from the books, buildings and some amazing views. If one grew up reading the books its almost a must to play lotro to expereince the Shire.
Teldrassil - WoW. Amazing visual aesthetic and music.
Elwynn Forest - WoW. I'm a big fan of classic fantasy like this.
Dun Morogh - WoW. Another classic snowy setting.
Tortage - AoC. Very well done with amazing visuals and music.
---
Yeah, I think WoW had amazing world design - and I will never forget the impact the atmosphere had on me.
I've played MMOs since their inception (pre-UO) - but nothing comes close to WoW in terms of the overall visual aesthetic. The game is dead to me now, but that's irrelevant.
My favorite for sentimental reasons is Jhelom in UO on launch day! Mind. Was. Blown. Not because of anything specific to Jhelom, but because I was playing an Ultima game with thousands of other people. 1997-2000 UO is still by far the best gaming experience i've had or probably will ever have.
My runner-up would prolly have to be Ak'Anon (gnome city in eq). Great atmosphere, little tunnels with mechanical spiders, I just remember having a blast there.
And of course shout-outs to the gelatinous cubes in Qeynos Sewers. I spent an inordinate amount of time punching and kicking them to death.
So it's not really a 'starter' area, but it is where you start the game. Any city capital in Final Fantasy XI. They were magical to me, huge with a great scale to the character. There were all kinds of branches off that led to areas where you would just get mauled, and the best part is there were characters of all shapes and sizes running around. The first character I ran into was a level 60 Dragoon looking extremely awesome and they became a friend for the few years I played. It felt like a real bustling city, and because it wasn't a linear grind themepark I revisited the city throughout the years I played. I would constantly return, and explore things that I was unable to before.
This is my ideal MMO setup. Real city hubs that all levels frequent, and you constantly return to. There wasn't one area in this game that I felt like once I had grinded through it I would never return to. It was more like a real world laid out to explore and travel and not a straight line.
AOC Tortage - Is by far the best starting area I have played. Unfortunalty it did not reflect the rest of the game and I didnt even make it to max level.
None of the others stand out to me. SWTOR ones seem fine but just nothing new or memorable.
AOC Tortage - Is by far the best starting area I have played. Unfortunalty it did not reflect the rest of the game and I didnt even make it to max level.
Absolutely agree.
The starting area in AOC, was from start to finish, superb. I especially loved the mission where you have to sneak into an enemy area, climb up onto a rooftob to spy on a conversation between some enemies.
It was just an incredibly well designed experience that actually makes me miss the game every time I think about it.
Why do I write, create, fantasize, dream and daydream about other worlds? Because I hate what humanity does with this one.
My MMO starter zone experience includes: FFXI, WoW, Rift, Aion, LotR, and WAR
Tortage in AoC was definitely pretty solid.
I have very fond memories from my first character in WoW, a Night Elf, so Teldrasil might be my favorite, if only for nostalgia's sake.
I thought the Worgen starting zone was done very well. As far as the solo quest system is concerned, I think phasing adds good depth to the story telling.
If I had to pick my current favorite though, I really love the whole Cataclysm human starting area: Elywyn Forest > Westfall > Redridge > Duskwood. Really, one great story is told across the first 3 zones, with several other interesting sub-stories woven in between. Then add the haunting environment of Duskwood as icing on top of the cake. I log onto an unlimited free trial account every now and then just to run through these zones!
None of the other games really had a starting zone that blew me away.
Talking Island from Lineage 1. Lineage was my first mmo , and it was just insane playing with so many diffrent player's, Always wondering once you left town who would be the next guy to pk you, was a blast!
I find this a tricky question, because the expectations for starting areas rised with the years for me. With the following 3 it was mainly the story setting and the atmosphere that was created, that I really liked:
- Anarchy Online for the starting island.
- Age of Conan starting area.
- Bounty Hunter on Hutta in SWTOR.
These were a lot of fun.
In other MMO's it was mainly the freshness of the new game with a huge world in front of you to explore that created fond memories, but not so much the content (typical kill x mobs or grind). Among these are:
Talking Island from Lineage 1. Lineage was my first mmo , and it was just insane playing with so many diffrent player's, Always wondering once you left town who would be the next guy to pk you, was a blast!
^^^^^^^^^
THIS. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, THIS.
Talking Island. It was HUGE for a 2d starter area and had a very wide variety of monsters to hunt. The town was just within reach of avoiding death, but also far enough away to die to a pker. The monsters consisted of Rabbits, Boars, 4-5 different Orc Monsters, 2 different Dwarf monsters, Shelobs (Arachnevils-- aka spiders), Floating Eyes (these things wouldn't attack back--they would just try to paralyze you with their Gaze), ELDERS which were cloaked old men with a staff who'd aggressively attack chaotic players, 4 tameable dog monsters, and then a bunch of other monsters which you could only find in Talking Island Dungeon itself.
The tameable dog aspect of Lineage hooked me deeply. You had to punch dogs and lower their health to 1--without knowing what their actual health was--and when they were injured enough, you would feed them Floating Eye Meat (you could only get this item from the Floating Eye monster). Once you had tamed a dog (you could get a Beagle, Shepherd, Doberman....waaay later into the development of Lineage did they add 10+ other tames such as the Killer Rabbit and Collie and Raccoon and Bear and Husky and what in the f**k ever.
There was a boat dock on the righthand side of Talking Island -- this was one of your cheaper options to leaving the island because you had to wait for it to appear. This boat would appear every...15ish minutes? If you didn't want to wait, you could use the Teleporter in town or cross the Talking Island Dungeon tunnel. Anyway, at a rare very occasion, a boss named Kurtz would spawn at the dock. He'd spawn with a group of 8 monsters named Black Knights; Kurtz was the captain of the black knights, etc. He was pretty easy to kill when NC first released the game. As Lineage became older, Kurtz became a HELL OF A LOT STRONGER and his drops became better. NC added a proccable weapon named Kurtz Sword to his lootpack that had a .001% droprate. It was definitely one of the most uber items for a Knight class.
There was also a very high level boss within a Dungeon on the island -- a boss named Baphomet. Back when Lineage 1 was new, Baphomet was easier to kill. As the game became harder, Baphomet because incredibly buffed and his drops became better.
The dungeon that Baphomet dwelled within had 2 floors -- and it connected to a tunnel that led to the Mainland continent of Aden.
and all of this was just in the STARTER area.
As Lineage became older, NCsoft added 2 other starter areas to the game which weren't as memorable or as fun. Singing Island and...some other bullshit area. They were just new maps which contained the same monsters throughout Lineage, but debuffed and renamed with crappy drops
-Nostalgia-
When the Lands of Aden server had just released, a majority of players moved to this server. The koreans were cheating, hacking, game ruining jerks--y'know? I was still leveling on Talking Island with my good ingame friend SHIMESU. He was of asian-american descent, but he would go out of his way to fight the corrupt korean players. One day I found him outside of Talking Island Town fighting about...5 korean players by himself. One of the koreans PKed him, but the pker decided to stick around for more fighting. a Guard killed the korean (Because that's what happens when you PK--you turn Chaotic and guards attack you for 24 hours, even if you work off your chaotic status) and the PKer dropped a CLOAK OF INVISIBILITY. THIS WAS WORTH A GOD DAMN FORTUNE--MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS OF ADENA. This item was so rare because Lands of Aden had JUST opened. It was unheard of that a CoI had even dropped to a single player, and of course a korean would've been the one to secretly own it...Bastards.
Anyway, SHIMESU managed to grab the drop and he held onto the priceless cloak for quite a long time..
-------------------
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Lineage 1 was a korean game. I understand this. However, the koreans who decided to come to OUR server -- the NORTH AMERICAN SERVER -- came to hack and cheat and destroy our gameplay. They would sit together at internet cafes and call each other for help in pking ENGLISH speaking players. They would have first notice if any sort of hack or exploit became available in Lineage because Lineage originated from THEIR language. They would use korean-made bots, they would take advantage of secret leveling spots, and they would GUARD THIS SH*T WITH THEIR LIVES. They would literally sit and wait for an intruder to enter their turf and pk him until it was safe to continue cheating at their gameplay. NCsoft was such a corrupt and moronic company that they would NOT remove the cheating koreans from our servers, and they would even ban you for interfering with their gameplay.
Overall, I was banned 21 times from Lineage 1. I even had an employee named Mike Zupan call my home and ask me to stop making accounts. It was pretty funny.
Sarutabaruta please. I could lvl there for years (oh wait, I did).
I don't understand how this could even be possible. Every FFXI zone is just a big empty area with nothing going on except roaming creatures. Not to mention level 1-10 combat consisted of nothing other than slowly auto attacking, followed by the occasional ability once every 2-3 minutes. Now I'm a HUGE FF fan, and I played FFXI for a few years, but even I freely admit this. Surely you had to experience something that offered a little more in another game?
Asheron's Call because there was no starter area. Pick a compass direction and run until you get one-shot by something then pick another direction and do the same thing. No walls, no zones, no directed paths, no limits other than your survivability.
Comments
LOTRO Shire here too.
-unique (albeit somewhat annoying) quests
-great atmosphere
-funny/clever dialogue/storyline
-chicken run quests and the impossible to get reward
I review lots of indie games and MMORPGs
Warhammer Online
Greenskin starter area: Mount Bloodhorn
Chaos starter area: Norsca
It took only 5 mins to get feel of the Warhammer on those zones...
I used to love the starter isalnd that you went to in old eq2 before they "wowified" it. It was the same layout for both factions but there were differnt mobs and quests depending on wether you were queynos scum of freeport heroes! There was a couple of named to kill, including the rare named sea creature. cant remeber if iy was an octopus or a shark.
ahhhh, good times, good times
If someone is talking in general chat in a language you dont understand, chances are they're not talking to you. So chill out and stop bitching about it!
Dwarf Area in EQ1. I loved the chessboard. It was such a dangerous and unfrogving starter zone. I don't recall if that haunted area in the teens was still in the same zone. But I loved that place as well. At release it was hard not to fall in love with EQ1. Suhc an amazing and scary world.
Gnome area in WoW - The first game to really offer fun content at low levels. Until WoW people always said wait until level 20 then the game will be fun. I loved the foot prints in the snow.
Dwarf Area in Vanguard - The Dwarf city was simply amazing. Especially considering most people would never see it except as a low level Dwarf. Some of the 14 or starter areas were quite hit and miss in terms of quality. But the Dwarf area was my favorite.
SWTOR I am not a fan of Tor but I thought the starting areas were well done. Mainly because of the story.
Tortage - AoC - IMO one of the worst games ever released. A complete sham of a game. But Tortage was well done. Its to bad the rest of the game was completely unfinished.
Rift - Both starter zones. Both Freemarch and Silverwood are extremely well done starter zones. Offering exploration, tons of quests, a starter dungeon, capital city and much more.
The Shire -LORO - Just a wonderful zone if you like hobbits. It really brought the books to life to me. There were lots of the characters from the books, buildings and some amazing views. If one grew up reading the books its almost a must to play lotro to expereince the Shire.
The Shire - LotRO. Love Tolkien and I love LotR.
Teldrassil - WoW. Amazing visual aesthetic and music.
Elwynn Forest - WoW. I'm a big fan of classic fantasy like this.
Dun Morogh - WoW. Another classic snowy setting.
Tortage - AoC. Very well done with amazing visuals and music.
---
Yeah, I think WoW had amazing world design - and I will never forget the impact the atmosphere had on me.
I've played MMOs since their inception (pre-UO) - but nothing comes close to WoW in terms of the overall visual aesthetic. The game is dead to me now, but that's irrelevant.
My favorite for sentimental reasons is Jhelom in UO on launch day! Mind. Was. Blown. Not because of anything specific to Jhelom, but because I was playing an Ultima game with thousands of other people. 1997-2000 UO is still by far the best gaming experience i've had or probably will ever have.
My runner-up would prolly have to be Ak'Anon (gnome city in eq). Great atmosphere, little tunnels with mechanical spiders, I just remember having a blast there.
And of course shout-outs to the gelatinous cubes in Qeynos Sewers. I spent an inordinate amount of time punching and kicking them to death.
So it's not really a 'starter' area, but it is where you start the game. Any city capital in Final Fantasy XI. They were magical to me, huge with a great scale to the character. There were all kinds of branches off that led to areas where you would just get mauled, and the best part is there were characters of all shapes and sizes running around. The first character I ran into was a level 60 Dragoon looking extremely awesome and they became a friend for the few years I played. It felt like a real bustling city, and because it wasn't a linear grind themepark I revisited the city throughout the years I played. I would constantly return, and explore things that I was unable to before.
This is my ideal MMO setup. Real city hubs that all levels frequent, and you constantly return to. There wasn't one area in this game that I felt like once I had grinded through it I would never return to. It was more like a real world laid out to explore and travel and not a straight line.
Perhaps I'm just nostalgic, but I've always enjoyed EverQuest II's Isle of Refuge.
AOC Tortage - Is by far the best starting area I have played. Unfortunalty it did not reflect the rest of the game and I didnt even make it to max level.
None of the others stand out to me. SWTOR ones seem fine but just nothing new or memorable.
Absolutely agree.
The starting area in AOC, was from start to finish, superb. I especially loved the mission where you have to sneak into an enemy area, climb up onto a rooftob to spy on a conversation between some enemies.
It was just an incredibly well designed experience that actually makes me miss the game every time I think about it.
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
tortage in AOC hands down the best starting area of any MMO. shame bout the rest.
My first was my fav, by far.... Butcherblock Mts in original EQ !!
the shire in lotro
My MMO starter zone experience includes: FFXI, WoW, Rift, Aion, LotR, and WAR
Tortage in AoC was definitely pretty solid.
I have very fond memories from my first character in WoW, a Night Elf, so Teldrasil might be my favorite, if only for nostalgia's sake.
I thought the Worgen starting zone was done very well. As far as the solo quest system is concerned, I think phasing adds good depth to the story telling.
If I had to pick my current favorite though, I really love the whole Cataclysm human starting area: Elywyn Forest > Westfall > Redridge > Duskwood. Really, one great story is told across the first 3 zones, with several other interesting sub-stories woven in between. Then add the haunting environment of Duskwood as icing on top of the cake. I log onto an unlimited free trial account every now and then just to run through these zones!
None of the other games really had a starting zone that blew me away.
Tortage in AOC has to be my favorite starting area ever. Just so well done.....shame how it dropped off after leaving Tortage.
I also have a soft spot for Ascalon in the original GW, but that was my first MMO so im probably biased
Cluck Cluck, Gibber Gibber, My Old Mans A Mushroom
Clearly none of you have played a Death Knight in WoW
Best starting area hands down was the DK starting area. Pace was great, conflicting emotions, great tutorial.
Tortage was good, but dragged on so much and let the rest of the game down.
Age of Conan hands down!
Talking Island from Lineage 1. Lineage was my first mmo , and it was just insane playing with so many diffrent player's, Always wondering once you left town who would be the next guy to pk you, was a blast!
I find this a tricky question, because the expectations for starting areas rised with the years for me. With the following 3 it was mainly the story setting and the atmosphere that was created, that I really liked:
- Anarchy Online for the starting island.
- Age of Conan starting area.
- Bounty Hunter on Hutta in SWTOR.
These were a lot of fun.
In other MMO's it was mainly the freshness of the new game with a huge world in front of you to explore that created fond memories, but not so much the content (typical kill x mobs or grind). Among these are:
- SWG
- Fallen Earth
- Vanguard
^^^^^^^^^
THIS. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, THIS.
Talking Island. It was HUGE for a 2d starter area and had a very wide variety of monsters to hunt. The town was just within reach of avoiding death, but also far enough away to die to a pker. The monsters consisted of Rabbits, Boars, 4-5 different Orc Monsters, 2 different Dwarf monsters, Shelobs (Arachnevils-- aka spiders), Floating Eyes (these things wouldn't attack back--they would just try to paralyze you with their Gaze), ELDERS which were cloaked old men with a staff who'd aggressively attack chaotic players, 4 tameable dog monsters, and then a bunch of other monsters which you could only find in Talking Island Dungeon itself.
The tameable dog aspect of Lineage hooked me deeply. You had to punch dogs and lower their health to 1--without knowing what their actual health was--and when they were injured enough, you would feed them Floating Eye Meat (you could only get this item from the Floating Eye monster). Once you had tamed a dog (you could get a Beagle, Shepherd, Doberman....waaay later into the development of Lineage did they add 10+ other tames such as the Killer Rabbit and Collie and Raccoon and Bear and Husky and what in the f**k ever.
There was a boat dock on the righthand side of Talking Island -- this was one of your cheaper options to leaving the island because you had to wait for it to appear. This boat would appear every...15ish minutes? If you didn't want to wait, you could use the Teleporter in town or cross the Talking Island Dungeon tunnel. Anyway, at a rare very occasion, a boss named Kurtz would spawn at the dock. He'd spawn with a group of 8 monsters named Black Knights; Kurtz was the captain of the black knights, etc. He was pretty easy to kill when NC first released the game. As Lineage became older, Kurtz became a HELL OF A LOT STRONGER and his drops became better. NC added a proccable weapon named Kurtz Sword to his lootpack that had a .001% droprate. It was definitely one of the most uber items for a Knight class.
There was also a very high level boss within a Dungeon on the island -- a boss named Baphomet. Back when Lineage 1 was new, Baphomet was easier to kill. As the game became harder, Baphomet because incredibly buffed and his drops became better.
The dungeon that Baphomet dwelled within had 2 floors -- and it connected to a tunnel that led to the Mainland continent of Aden.
and all of this was just in the STARTER area.
As Lineage became older, NCsoft added 2 other starter areas to the game which weren't as memorable or as fun. Singing Island and...some other bullshit area. They were just new maps which contained the same monsters throughout Lineage, but debuffed and renamed with crappy drops
-Nostalgia-
When the Lands of Aden server had just released, a majority of players moved to this server. The koreans were cheating, hacking, game ruining jerks--y'know? I was still leveling on Talking Island with my good ingame friend SHIMESU. He was of asian-american descent, but he would go out of his way to fight the corrupt korean players. One day I found him outside of Talking Island Town fighting about...5 korean players by himself. One of the koreans PKed him, but the pker decided to stick around for more fighting. a Guard killed the korean (Because that's what happens when you PK--you turn Chaotic and guards attack you for 24 hours, even if you work off your chaotic status) and the PKer dropped a CLOAK OF INVISIBILITY. THIS WAS WORTH A GOD DAMN FORTUNE--MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS OF ADENA. This item was so rare because Lands of Aden had JUST opened. It was unheard of that a CoI had even dropped to a single player, and of course a korean would've been the one to secretly own it...Bastards.
Anyway, SHIMESU managed to grab the drop and he held onto the priceless cloak for quite a long time..
-------------------
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Lineage 1 was a korean game. I understand this. However, the koreans who decided to come to OUR server -- the NORTH AMERICAN SERVER -- came to hack and cheat and destroy our gameplay. They would sit together at internet cafes and call each other for help in pking ENGLISH speaking players. They would have first notice if any sort of hack or exploit became available in Lineage because Lineage originated from THEIR language. They would use korean-made bots, they would take advantage of secret leveling spots, and they would GUARD THIS SH*T WITH THEIR LIVES. They would literally sit and wait for an intruder to enter their turf and pk him until it was safe to continue cheating at their gameplay. NCsoft was such a corrupt and moronic company that they would NOT remove the cheating koreans from our servers, and they would even ban you for interfering with their gameplay.
Overall, I was banned 21 times from Lineage 1. I even had an employee named Mike Zupan call my home and ask me to stop making accounts. It was pretty funny.
Sarutabaruta please. I could lvl there for years (oh wait, I did).
Taru-Gallante-Blood elf-Elysean-Kelari-Crime Fighting-Imperial Agent
I don't understand how this could even be possible. Every FFXI zone is just a big empty area with nothing going on except roaming creatures. Not to mention level 1-10 combat consisted of nothing other than slowly auto attacking, followed by the occasional ability once every 2-3 minutes. Now I'm a HUGE FF fan, and I played FFXI for a few years, but even I freely admit this. Surely you had to experience something that offered a little more in another game?
oh yeah, this made me want to play AC again.
Seriously? North Brit Graveyard... (ultima online for those that didn't play).
*you have gone link dead*
"stupid dial up when can I get cable in this swamp.." *log back in*
*you have been murdered*
Qeynos (EQ) It had that western frontier feeling
Halas (EQ) I liked the frozen, desolate region
Tortage (AoC) I really enjoyed the jungle, pirate cove scene
Gotham (DCUO) Always enjoyed that dark, gritty feel of Gotham city.
It's not about fighting, it's about balance. It's not about enlightenment, it's about balance. It's not about balance.