Talk:Character Race/@comment-24664636-20140316224321/@comment-5095015-20140317003408

See EQNext Round Table Response #25: Multiple Starting Areas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKm_z15uIMs#t=118

Omeed Dariani: "I think normally in MMOs people associate these things. Because usually your racial, ancestral home home is tied to a starting area."

Jeff Butler: "Often times."

Dave Georgeson: "It has been  has been in, like for instance, EverQuest, and to a certain extent EverQuest II. But when have we ever done anything the same way as everybody else! We're revisiting it now and we realize that ancestral homes don't have to be your starting area. We can connect you viscerally to other areas of the world. It's still a lot of work. And in fact, we might want to work with the players to start creating those kinds of areas."

Jeff Butler: "I think that's literally the perfect way to go for EverQuest Next. When we're working on Landmark we've already seen the creativity that people have been able to bring to the table. We want to show them concepts, we want to talk about the individual races as we move forward, and let them have the opportunity to sink their teeth into it just like we're going to."

In my view, the animations and character movement of Races help players understand racial identity in a way that simply can't be met with a piece of fiction or a static piece of concept art. It's one thing to visualize a race. It's another thing to control one as an avatar. As we move forward in developing EQNext, the Devs have shown a commitment towards helping us understand their vision for the new Norrath, and how we can help them build that world.

I see the ability to live in Landmark as a different race as simply an extension of that commitment. In order for this to happen, the races themselves will need to be more cleanly fleshed out, along with their animations and artwork. This concept work is currently in flux. Players are likely to become attached to a player model, and it would be unsettling to log in, find that the art direction has changed, and the features you had grown accustomed to have been dramatically altered.

Races need not be added in tomorrow, but I see adding them as an inevitability which is needed to truly share the vision of what EQNext should be with the players of Landmark.