City of Heroes has a lot of cool city zones, but what makes it unique is it is fully 3-d functional. Every telephone wire can be stood on. Every ledge of every window is there to perch on.
I liked Vanguard's cities too. There are quite a few, large,and different cities.
Ryzom also has cool cities.
LOTRO doesn't have cities, and there's only one real city in the whole set of books.
To this day, I honestly think nothing has topped Everquest. It's not that EQ had a few awesome cities, it's that it had a LOT of awesome cities. Basically a city for every race, and it had 12 races at release. And these cities were all highly varied, highly detailed and the size of a "capital" city in a modern themepark MMORPG.
How many MMORPGs can boast anything close to that nowadays?
My favorites were the capitols in DAOC - before player housing completely decimated them. But frankly - no graphical cities can hold anything to the old text ones - like Kelfour's/Wehnimers.
It may be nostolgia, but I think EverQuest had the best cities. Each one had its own unique style to it, even the 5 "Human" cities. You had Erudin with its marble streets and teleporter things, and it basically being a giant school city. You had Paineel which were some narrow streets patroled by the undead. Qeynos and Freeport were both port cities that had a distinct feel to them. Halas...well it wasn't my favorite but it seemed to match the Barbarian race rather well. Everyone had a distinct feel, and even side towns like High Pass Hold felt more like a trade hub then many modern mmo quest/leveling hubs do.
My first pick would have to be "blah blah blah" from some MMO that isn't around anymore, and only a handful of people played when it was live, so I sound like a hardcore player.
My second choice would have to be Aion-Sanctum. Amazing.
My third choice would have to be Warcraft-Ironforge. Those Dwarves know how to build a city, son.
I think Vanguard has the best that I have seen. Obviously games that take place in cities are going to have some of the best. When you look at games where cities are a less than half of the land mass of the game and cities are still epic in scale I think you have to look at Vanguard towards the top.
I never played Matrix online, but my bet is mos tof the game took place in cities so it makes sense that the development team would spend a huge amount of time on that portion of the game.
“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”
No longer running, but The Matrix Online city was amazing.
Would have to agree with you there. The combat was fun too.
Whatever happe....ohhhh yeah, SOE. Heard they bought MxO, REed the combat, and made DCUO. Thinking back...there was a lot of good things going for that game. Although I remmeber only wanting to play because I couldn't due to hardware.
That was all back in a time where copying the most popular thing wasn't even really done and if it was it was never admitted openly. When the genre was still trying new ideas.
Er did you actually buy and play the game at release?Oh thats right you said you could not because of hardware but know there were loads of good things and soe destroyed it even though you never touched it.
Well i did.
Firstly it came out early march 2005 and did very poorly for sales with monolith.SoE was looking for the licence to DC comics to make a mmo which monolith had and it was part of the deal to take MxO along with the deal which happened in aug 2005.
Within a month i can tell you it had almost empty servers.
SoE actually asked the few players left and trust me whn i say few were left what we wanted changed(at this point i was playing it as a soe all access customer).They actually tried to revamp the combat a bit and merged the servers but population never picked up at all.
I came back to it peroidically over the years and it remained dead till the plug was pulled in 2009.
Also i don't know what RE went on mxo because it plays differently to DCUO only thing they have in common was monolith owning both licences is all.The things in common either are the usual things in common in all mmorpg or already done stuff like super jumps and flight which CoH already had and the one in mxo was pretty sluggish compared to CoH,DCUO etc.
You would know all this if you actually played the game and supported it from the start.SoE had a dead product on arrival already and doubt monolith would have even let it live 4 good years with such a low population.
Guild Wars had good cities. Very busy. My favorite was pre-shattering Ascalon... There were bigger ones... And nicer ones... But that was my first GW city and it was 'oh, wow.' Plus, at that time, I'd mostly been playing played games with nothing more than villages (Mabinogi), or were very limited in view and were no real cities at all (Eve Online)...
Bree (LOTRO), prior to the Mines of Moria expansion was a rocking place. Plus it looked nice... It was really, I felt, appropriate to the story. I recognized places from the books and all those supplementary materials I read over the years...
Stormreach in Dungeons and Dragons online is amazing. It's a major hub and has a lot of people, plus it looks cool.
EverQuest 2 has lots of great cities. First time I played that I spent days and days just running around various areas to find and explore as many of them as I could reach...
Other than that... Most of the MMOs I've played really haven't really had 'cities.' More like canyons of buildings or villages with little purpose but a few vendors and maybe a handful of quest givers...
Comments
Vanguard -Leth Nurae..absolutely stunning and music to match as well.
Allemantheia, in TERA.
I loved Vanguards cities they had character and felt like cities rather than artificial trade hubs.
Nothing has been as epic as stepping into Orgrimmar for the very first time after a long ass run from Mulgore back in 04
City of Heroes has a lot of cool city zones, but what makes it unique is it is fully 3-d functional. Every telephone wire can be stood on. Every ledge of every window is there to perch on.
I liked Vanguard's cities too. There are quite a few, large,and different cities.
Ryzom also has cool cities.
LOTRO doesn't have cities, and there's only one real city in the whole set of books.
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2025: 48 years on the Net.
i was impressed the very first time entering Tarantia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md5CjB7PtMY&feature
As much as I hate to say this being a sandbox gamer I thought Stormwind was an awesome city.
As far as sandbox games go I would say Theed in SWG was the best city I've seen.
Never trust a screenshot or a youtube video without a version stamp!
GW2 looks promising imo.
Rata Sum
Divinity's Reach
Lion's Arch
The Black Citadel
The Grove
Hoelbrak
Freeport - not only for the city but also for the npcs which made the city feel like a real one
Stormwind - great music,decent npcs
Age of Conan - Old Tarantia is probably the best looking one
I only played a little TERA but the first city i saw there ,Velika, looked good
To this day, I honestly think nothing has topped Everquest. It's not that EQ had a few awesome cities, it's that it had a LOT of awesome cities. Basically a city for every race, and it had 12 races at release. And these cities were all highly varied, highly detailed and the size of a "capital" city in a modern themepark MMORPG.
How many MMORPGs can boast anything close to that nowadays?
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Have to agree with this. I don't know a single MMORPG that has as many cities as large and fully realized as Guild Wars 2.
Moonglow - UO
My favorites were the capitols in DAOC - before player housing completely decimated them. But frankly - no graphical cities can hold anything to the old text ones - like Kelfour's/Wehnimers.
It may be nostolgia, but I think EverQuest had the best cities. Each one had its own unique style to it, even the 5 "Human" cities. You had Erudin with its marble streets and teleporter things, and it basically being a giant school city. You had Paineel which were some narrow streets patroled by the undead. Qeynos and Freeport were both port cities that had a distinct feel to them. Halas...well it wasn't my favorite but it seemed to match the Barbarian race rather well. Everyone had a distinct feel, and even side towns like High Pass Hold felt more like a trade hub then many modern mmo quest/leveling hubs do.
My first pick would have to be "blah blah blah" from some MMO that isn't around anymore, and only a handful of people played when it was live, so I sound like a hardcore player.
My second choice would have to be Aion-Sanctum. Amazing.
My third choice would have to be Warcraft-Ironforge. Those Dwarves know how to build a city, son.
I think Vanguard has the best that I have seen. Obviously games that take place in cities are going to have some of the best. When you look at games where cities are a less than half of the land mass of the game and cities are still epic in scale I think you have to look at Vanguard towards the top.
I never played Matrix online, but my bet is mos tof the game took place in cities so it makes sense that the development team would spend a huge amount of time on that portion of the game.
--John Ruskin
EQ, UO, L2, etc. Are still around.
Furthermore, I highly doubt anyone is telling their favorite city to sound "hardcore."
Seems like you have some issues that you should look into.
Omni one entertainment in Anarchy Online back in the early days before Shadowlands was my fav city of all time, how i miss it
All I got out of that, is that you agree with my Sanctum and Ironforge choices.
Thank you. I feel validated now. No therapy for me this week!
Er did you actually buy and play the game at release?Oh thats right you said you could not because of hardware but know there were loads of good things and soe destroyed it even though you never touched it.
Well i did.
Firstly it came out early march 2005 and did very poorly for sales with monolith.SoE was looking for the licence to DC comics to make a mmo which monolith had and it was part of the deal to take MxO along with the deal which happened in aug 2005.
Within a month i can tell you it had almost empty servers.
SoE actually asked the few players left and trust me whn i say few were left what we wanted changed(at this point i was playing it as a soe all access customer).They actually tried to revamp the combat a bit and merged the servers but population never picked up at all.
I came back to it peroidically over the years and it remained dead till the plug was pulled in 2009.
Also i don't know what RE went on mxo because it plays differently to DCUO only thing they have in common was monolith owning both licences is all.The things in common either are the usual things in common in all mmorpg or already done stuff like super jumps and flight which CoH already had and the one in mxo was pretty sluggish compared to CoH,DCUO etc.
You would know all this if you actually played the game and supported it from the start.SoE had a dead product on arrival already and doubt monolith would have even let it live 4 good years with such a low population.
Guild Wars had good cities. Very busy. My favorite was pre-shattering Ascalon... There were bigger ones... And nicer ones... But that was my first GW city and it was 'oh, wow.' Plus, at that time, I'd mostly been playing played games with nothing more than villages (Mabinogi), or were very limited in view and were no real cities at all (Eve Online)...
Bree (LOTRO), prior to the Mines of Moria expansion was a rocking place. Plus it looked nice... It was really, I felt, appropriate to the story. I recognized places from the books and all those supplementary materials I read over the years...
Stormreach in Dungeons and Dragons online is amazing. It's a major hub and has a lot of people, plus it looks cool.
EverQuest 2 has lots of great cities. First time I played that I spent days and days just running around various areas to find and explore as many of them as I could reach...
Other than that... Most of the MMOs I've played really haven't really had 'cities.' More like canyons of buildings or villages with little purpose but a few vendors and maybe a handful of quest givers...