EverQuest II Interview
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 1128
Why was the decision made to remove the option of starting in Freeport and Qeynos? It's still surprising to many players as to why all of that starter content was cut out. Can we look forward to the starting islands being re-added in the future, perhaps? Or are they permanently cut out?
Despite the fact that veteran players have emotional attachments to the old starter isles, the decision was made to remove them because the lore was outdated, the Qeynos/Freeport cities were extremely hard to navigate for new users, and the quest chains were often disjointed. It was going to be a giant task to redo all that work, and the newer starting areas (like Timorous Deep and New Halas) were doing much better in encouraging users to try out and stick with the game.
Additionally, we have plans to repurpose Qeynos and Freeport to do some really cool stuff with them later on. Moving new users away from these cities allows us to mess with their layout and content without having to worry about accidentally ganking newbies as they play through that same area. We're setting the stage for future developments.
The Far Seas Trading Company plotline concerning the starter isles being off-limits to trading will be fleshed out further in the future also.
