User:Shai Halud/The Distribution of Land
Looking over things carefully, I've noticed two major problems which could arise concerning the distribution of land in GW2.
1) Asuran and Sylvari Homelands - As things stand, Ventari's Sanctuary sits right outside Vlox's Falls and smack dab in the middle of Asuran territory. Now, as it is a coastal area, the Tarnished Coast could well have been flooded and that could motivate either of the two races to take up residence elsewhere. Personally, I don't think they ever should have put Ventari's Sanctuary on an island near the mouth of a river that will be right next to Orr when it rises. Lion's Arch floods, the Battle Islands are destroyed, the D'Aldresso Seaboard and Sanctum Cay sink to the bottom of the sea and this little island, barely above sea level in the middle of a river right next to the coast and only a few hundred miles from the Orrian Penninsula remains completely intact? That would all be fine if this didn't also interfere with there the Asuran Homeland will be.
With the Sylvari, the Maguuma Jungle is the obvious place to go. It could well have become more jungle-like (see Make Maguuma Jungle Look Like a Jungle) after the dragons rose. It's filled with living plants and would be perfect for them and it has Ventari's old refuge in it. They could retcon that in two minutes flat and no one would really care. The Asura on the other hand are not quite as easy. They could move to the Maguuma, but it's rough terrain and harsh ecology would not really suit the Asura. Also, there's a detail in TMotW saying that Asura cities have both above and below ground structures and the description of the Maguuma states that all areas in the Maguuma which are not desert are very close to the water level, making the Maguuma even less suitable. Besides, the Asura already have several cities in a much more suitable area and no real reason to leave as TMotW mentioned nothing about Rata Sum flooding. The only other sensible place for them to live is the Verdant Cascades, but that would be rather hard to work in as we are cut off from northern Tyria by the dragons.
2) High Level Areas - Each of the five races, I assume, will start in their own homelands. That means areas in those homelands must be suitable to low-level characters. This means five regions with low level areas. Of course, starting regions in GW had higher-level areas for players to train in. Istan and Shing Jea Island are both good examples of this. This left the rest of the world for high-level regions (usually about 3 per continent). There will likely be sort of 9 regions in Tyria for GW2 (if you divide the Shiverpeaks into two regions and consider the Ring of Fire Island Chain as a region). Five will be starting regions, the Crystal Desert and Orr will have dragons watching over them, and the RoF island Chain is tiny and also guarded by the Orrian dragon (though it might be interesting to visit if the flood has cooled it off). This will be somewhat discouraging if new areas are not added, however, if nearly every corner of Tyria is made explorable and the scale of the continent in slightly increased, numerous high-level areas could be places in the newly explorable areas (such as the blaze Ridge Mountains and the desert and hills which separate Maguuma and Kryta) and nearly a forth of the land in the starting regions could be made high level.
- Why this is a good idea
- could fix problems concerning the distribution of land in GW2
- Increases the size of the world encouraging players to explore
- Why it may not work out
- The tree of the Sylvari can be seen in Ventari's Sanctuary, so people will be expecting the Sylvari homeland to be along the Tarnished Coast
- Would require a lot of work to create all those new areas and the land in between
