Shattered Kingdoms

True, only an experienced player would know these things. But I still think it shows a bias towards starting in one area versus another. All things considered, I think some do come and read these forums before hopping into the game and learn some information (such as where not to go for newbie areas).

But here's the situation that started my mini-rant, two friends of mine started characters at nearly the same time, different starting cities. Friend A got nearly a full starting kit where they started, Friend B did not so went and killed NPCs, could only afford a few pieces of equipment, got fed up, deleted and started in the city that gave him equipment and abandoned his "ideal" character concept because the race he really wanted to play could not start in the city that gave equipment. From listening to two completely new players complain for nearly an hour on how unfair such a system, I decided to say something here. They both came to the agreement that if they did not have someone telling them how good the game gets, they would not have continued playing when there is an unbalance from the beginning. I don't know about you, but hearing new players make statements like this doesn't reflect well on the product at hand.

Did Friend B roll a SKnadian? You know, from the North?

I dunno, it seems to be more a matter of perspective than anything else. Starting in, say, Ayamao gets you a full set of armor, but it also has the worst training area, organization-wise(my opinion, of course, but having the trainers in the room with monsters and having to go from one trainer to the next just hoping you'll finally find that damn warlock trainer...it's not very newbie friendly at all). In Taslamar, you get nothing for free, but you get one of the most awesome training areas, with a unique and OBVIOUS trainer for every profession except for Hellions and Necromancers, IIRC. Plus, unique weapons/armor for each class. Kytar gives out free cloth armor when you start, and has the best trainers of all the starting areas, but buying new weapons is expensive as all hell.

These are just three examples, though. I have no idea which training area your friends started with.

One was an elf bard starting in Sith, the other a minotaur barbarian starting in Teron. Both based their decisions off of what was read on the forums and the help files on here, with the exception of the one playing the minotaur. They asked me which starting area had minotaurs around it that they could use for background, the only place that came to mind was Teron.

Oh, yeah. Teron, at first, seems very unfair. The NPCs hit pretty hard, and everything's pretty expensive compared to other kingdoms. If they agreed to do the quests, though, they shouldn't have had much trouble. The main problem is, once again, the trust fund limiting the amount of coin you can start with.

Yeah, so I suggested to Friend B to play something more "friendly" to start with and learn about the class and system (completely new to games like this, but not RP in general), then go play their dream minotaur character. If he sticks with SK, that minotaur will be impressive in skill/RP.

Still, I think it would be best to level the playing field in the schools, from training costs to eq costs. Even if they don't give eq, make the cost for the items extremely cheap. Or, give a quest once someone trains that first level that would give them say five platinum and everyone is happy. It doesn't take much to get that little bit of experience and can be done with no armor and the wooden weapon in most places.

If you've started in Kytar recently, they have a string of quests that ends up giving you around 2 platinum JUST for walking from place to place and killing two rats.

Taslamar has Iserken's Jobs, but that's my second-biggest Taslamar gripe, honestly. The hunting and errand jobs are great, but the gathering jobs are asinine and need their directions changed. "Find the orchard in the southern border of Taslamar." *rolls eyes* What new player knows what the southern border of Taslamar is? Hell, I've been playing the game for close to a decade and I always thought the southern border was the mountains between Taslamar and Ayamao. Would it be that hard to change the directions to "An orchard west of Everclear Village" or "The cactus grows in the fields west of Taslamar's Palace?" Players who have been here for years know where to find those two areas pretty easily, and players that just started can easily say "How can I get to the village of Everclear?" and get simple, easy directions.

Another good point. Some of the quests are nice (Kytar now that it has been fixed is one of them), but some of them just require so much work that a really new player could possibly get annoyed with walking around the wilderness and possibly dying to an aggressive creature trying to complete them.

How much OOC knowledge you use IC to achieve such a fate? Should punish yourself for cheating.

areas command is ic kthx, askin direkshuns is ez


I usually am at vet or higher at about 10 hours.