Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
How are the Player Cities lately?
Diross
Member Posts: 179
I'd like to know the condition of the player cities these days. Are they current operating metropolises or ghost towns? Also, same question about player homes, are they vastly occupied or vacant? What did SOE do with all the vacant player houses when many ppl left after the NGE?
Thanks.
Eve-Online, EQ2, DnL, SWG (Dead), Guild Wars, Anarchy Online, EQ, DAoC, Planet Side, WoW, LOTR, Tabula Rasa.
Comments
I cant say anything about the current status but a few months ago they had a event that the empire ordered all condemned houses destroyed. now this is just for the rp factor the houses weren't destroyed they was packed up into the toons datapad. When that patch hit they tagged all the houses where the account tied to them was inactive for a year or over as "abandoned" and the players sent out orders to have it destroyed. This still left many abandoned houses due to the fact of reactivating a account and then canceling it. But many city's where lost (including mine) to open up slots for new players.
Many of the ghost cities have dissapeared due to the housing packup mentioned as well as some bug fixes they made to residency (there was a long time bug where you could be a resident in multiple cities). I'm sure there are still some that are being kept around artifically, but the majority of them are now kept alive by playing people.
My guilds city (which is around 4 years old now) is pretty active with people coming into buy goods off our crafters vendors.
Id try the trial to look and see for your self..
3 or 4 years ago I couldn't even think of what a dead city would be like because people were everywhere!... a lot of people worked very hard on keeping them citys going,...... just a shame.
Been there done that:
Asherons Call,SWG,AOC,D&D,COH,Anarchy Online,DAOC,EVE,Guild Wars,LOTRO,POTBS,WAR,WW2, and Rift
ehhh... I'm relly sad now... I started to think about city in SWG that I created
and being mayor over a year... ehh all those events... Grand Prix, Fashion Shows, Concerts... I just cant forgot them... I relly do miss SWG 
((
Some Screenshots of my City, the grat city of Atlantis!
Overview:
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/7682/baner13cc.jpg
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/1992/baner24ww.jpg
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/8388/baner37fj.jpg
Main Square:
http://priv.twoje-sudety.pl/~sniperx/swg/atlantis01.jpg
http://priv.twoje-sudety.pl/~sniperx/swg/atlantis03.jpg
The empire bombed and destroyed abandoned houses which left room for new cities, al-though most room has already been taken up again! As many noted, not as many houses were destroyed as they were hoping, Only people that didn't have an active sub, houses were destroyed.
"Don't hold breath about another KOTOR game coming from Bioware" - Chris Preistly
"Bioware is more intrested in pursueing development of it's own Intellectual properties"
- James Henly
Id try the trial to look and see for your self..
Still ghost towns on bria but due to gilford the great or whatever who bought up like 15 cities then got banned for exploiting. Now it will be a year till those 15 or however many cities he had complete control over will be able to be packed up which sucks.
Have you seen those westerns where the sheriff goes into a ghost town with tumbleweeds running across? that's pretty much what it looks like, total silence pretty much
The only player citys that will seem "active" are ones that have a good mall. There is no compelling reason to hang out in one for any extended period of time. The XP, loot and adventures are all located away from player citys so why would players hang out in one? I personaly make it back to my city only when my inventory is full or I need to craft something on a alt.
IMO, this is how they ruined the game. They took the game out of the players hands and made it a quest based game. The reason i liked the game in the past was because it was pretty much player driven. I really felt i was living my story in the Star wars galaxy. Now its as crappy as WoW pretty much.
IMO, this is how they ruined the game. They took the game out of the players hands and made it a quest based game. The reason i liked the game in the past was because it was pretty much player driven. I really felt i was living my story in the Star wars galaxy. Now its as crappy as WoW pretty much.
I don't know if I would go as far as saying it is as crappy as WoW, as when player cities first came out they were still only for role players as they are now. People in my guild who had a city rarely hung out in the city nore did the people I knew who owned cities hang out in them beyond the necessity of the mayor to give people placing rights.
I do agree that they are ghost towns, but they have always been. There was never a reason to sit in a player created town beyond an organized group of people. The first time I quit Dathomire Miners outpost was still the largest place where anyone could find anyone due to Kamurith missions yielding so much XP.
Player cities had much more use during the pre-CU era. Players crafted most of what was needed in game, so the player economy allowed player cities to compete for merchant business. Also, many cities erected factional bases that brought about many city pvp 'raids'. There were many alliances between cities and guilds to protect city bases made during those days. The battles were incredible! There were often missions given by city terminals which allowed for particular hunting (hides, bones) or leveling a particular skill. I spent a lot of time in various cities, be it fighting, shopping, buffing, parties, etc. Even the garages had a purpose then for quick maintenance when needed. Ah, well...those were the days.
The marginalizartion of crafters and the very low population of players does not make for cities bristling with active players. They are mostly there for planetary shuttle support in the current game, not much more than that.
Some of my best memories happened in player cities.
The only time I was in a static city was when I was buffing people (which I did for about 2 hours everyday).
Player cities don't have a reason to be where they are that is natural, so they always tend to be ghost towns. Cities grow as centers of commerce, for the most part. The NPC cities have starports, which create foot traffic for commerce. Player cities don't have starports, which is why having a good mall that draws foot traffic is a key to having a successful player city. Which is why player cities suffer in a loot driven economy.
Other draws to player cities are role play events, base busting, and being located near PvE POIs such as the krayt graveyard and Jabba's Palace, preNGE before a shuttleport made Wayfar not so far away. Having an active guild in a player city helps a lot, but of course because the player population was drastically reduced by the NGE, player cities suffered. Just fewer toons around at any one time.
Nowadays many of the NPC cities are ghost towns except for the NPCs themselves. Player cities seem even emptier as you can't park stormies or rebel troops there indefinitely to give them the illusion of population.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
During pre-cu, I was a part of a couple of active player cities, one on Chilastra and one on Flurry. True, the one on Chilastra was a roleplaying guild so we had guild meetings every Monday night which brought people to town and the guild had bases so there was activity around defending them but there were always guild members going through the town for various reasons. Then I went to Flurry and became a part of a city that was based between Mos E and AH. The city was made of four or five guilds at one point. Once again there were always people going through the city or hanging out in the cantina. During pre-cu an acitve player city could offer one everything they needed...mission terminals for xp, player vendors for all one's crafted items needs, npc trainers for learning new skills (or guild members willing to train skills), and entertainers/medics for one's healing/buffing needs and, depending on the location, there were nearby random spawns for xp and sometimes one could find a good harvesting spot near town. NGE killed player cities (along with a lot of other things) because quest lines are the way to get xp, and even if one wanted to use mission terminals to get xp, most locations are limited in the level of missions the terminal will give (unless that has changed in the past year...well, less than a year actually but not by much since I last played) and one is wasting time to make a trip back to a player city to get buffed when server cities are easier to access. Basically, (as of the last time I played) server cities only serve two major purposes now: storage and vendors. As others have said, the other purpose for them would be roleplaying (unless they are near a quest location, in which one would add the purpose of getting to quests quicker).
You can run missions at whatever level you are at from any player city now. Up to level 90, so that issue has been solved.
Yeah, that's one really stupid NGE decision that was turned around. At first, prior to the NGE, it was thought to be a bug, but like so many strange things (Jabba's Palace poofing, anyone) it was deliberate as part of the preparation for destroying the game as we knew it and replacing it with dreck on 15 November 2005.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi