Shattered Kingdoms

Or it could have that question as part of the naming policy.

Are you from the deep realms? [Y/N] y
New character name:

You know, if you look at the black pyramid...its a newbie training area O_o

I think the only problem with the 'Deep-realms' is not giving the 'Deep-races' 'Deep-tongue' as a starting language. Rarely met a deep-elf who didn't claim to come from Ch'zzrym... including my own characters... and I always found it absurd that my character couldn't speak his native tongue. Granted, if you create in Teron you can learn the language to superb before you ever interact with another character... but still.

I don't see a need, as things stand, to open another kingdom... enough to say that my character was born in such a realm and headed to the nearest surface city to seek adventure... but throwing deep-races the deep-tongue from the get go does nothing to unbalance the game and adds quite a lot to the RP concept of a character.

I like the idea of giving any deep-borne race the option of speaking deep as their born tongue, but then how do they operate in their starting kingdom? They wouldn't even be able to understand the newbie school NPCs.

A

Just make sure that some NPC can teach the native language for cheap.

Just give dwarves, deep-elves and gnomes deep-tongue deep-writing (mastered). I don't think anybody will go overboard in complaining about how this is such a "buff" to the race.

I second Adder's idea. It feels totally embarassing to start playing a deep race and not having deep mastered. And it is not like something that can be abused (yeah, right, they can easily teach deep tongue/writing as mentors, big a deal).

Adder's option is even better. Make the deep races auto master deep

Make them innate skills and they can't teach them.

They won't be able to teach till lv36 anyways. Besides, it wouldn't make any sense why somebody who grew up learning/writing/speaking a language can't teach it later on.