So our community member @MoxieOnline brought up a interesting question the other day while she was working on updating the Wiki (Give Moxie a virtual high five for all the work she puts in). She was wondering how we should refer to Zones now that we will be having mostly a Seemless world instead of having distinct zonelines.
We know that some dungeons may still have distinct loading zone lines, but there will be other dungeons that might be just seemless parts of other areas. We have also been shown that some Zones will have Sub-Zones. For example Wilds End has 'The Mad Moors' as a sub-zone. While Avendyr's Pass has 'Hangore' sub-zone.
Continents seem self explanitory, but should we call Avendyr's Pass maybe a 'Region' and 'Hangore' a Sub-Region? Or do we call 'Hangore' a district, a neighborhood, or a territory?
Black Rose Keep if I remember correctly is a Dungeon that you will load into, but what about Dungeons that are not specifically their own loaded zone and are instead just a deep Cave system or maybe a Mysterious Tower found inside an outdoor Region with no zone line; should we still label these as specific Dungeons on the Wiki or do we just call them a 'Point of interest' within a Region? What does VR think of as a Dungeon vs a Point of Interest?
Does VR have an official stance on how these Regions or Zones, sub-zones, dungeons, etc should be labelled and called? It would be great to get an official ruling on this so that we as a community can use the right designations in our conversations and how they can be Labelled on the Wiki.
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Also... I was considering how the UI will tell you where you are and how specific it will be.
Does it say I am in 'Wilds End' or will it be more specific and tell me that I'm in 'The Mad Moors' or will it be a combo saying 'Wilds End - The Mad Moors'.
What will other players see if they do a '/who Goofy' or when they look in a Guild or Friend List and see me. Will it just tell them that I'm in Avendyr's Pass or will it show that I'm actually in 'Hangore' specifically.
This also brings up how the game will notify you that you've crossed over into one of these other regions or zones. Without a specific loading screen will the Player get a Notification Toast that will appear for a few seconds when you officially cross over into another area? Will that same notification popup when you enter a sub region like 'Old Wood' or 'Fae Hollow'? What about if you enter a Dungeon Tower or Cave system?
WoW zones were called just that even though they had no zone lines. They have instances for dungeons, but no zone lines. When you went from Elwynn Forest to Westfall, you got a floating message simply saying Westfall. It was unobtrusive, but very effective.
Also, music could be used to herald in a new zone. In one of the Dev streams, they showed concept art for how the environment transitions to a new zone.
I think it would be cool to show the Main zone and the sub-zone as a location.
Good stuff man.
A border without a checkpoint is still a border. "Zones" is part of our standard nomenclature and I'm fine with still using that word. Odds are, the game will have a specific term (like "region" perhaps) and we will all use that interchangeably with other commonly used terms.
Of course, it will mostly be a moot point because we all speak in abbreviations anyway. Blackrose Keep will simply be called BK or possibly BRK.
I would go with:
World -> Continent -> Realm/Kingdom/Empire/Province/Territory(etc.) -> Territory/expanse/district/jungle (desert, etc.) -> Dungeon/City/Suburb/Town/Township/Settlement (etc.)
Zones are just contextual areas of game play, with or without loading zone lines, with no real limit to size or content. I would apply zone to any area below that of the world really, and it just depends on the context that the conversation is focused on.
"I wouldnt mind seeing the Silent Plains, I havent been in that zone."
"We need to go to the Mad Moor, thats a scary zone!"
The zones concept in Pantheon is still a little hazy to me.
I'm sure internally VR have terms they use - they have spoken about 'overland dungeons' and the like, but I think they all exist in 'zones' because, though they have spoken about zones 'continually loading' they still talk about 'zone lines' (even though they aren't straight lines) and transitioning between zones.
The last time we discussed zones I think I mentioned that I like 'zone lines'. To me, they are like the 'transitions' you get in a film. You move to the dark rear of a cave in Avendyr's Pass and you transition or 'zone into' Halnir Cave. That 'zoning in' represents some time of 'boring' spelunking that would be a fade out, fade in transition in a movie, or maybe a brief 'travel montage'. This makes more sense when a zone line isn't geographically accurate, such as often TARDIS-like sub-zones, which it sounds like Terminus will have.
Even if an MMORPG world is geographically 1-to-1 and crossing a zone line doesn't represent travel and is 'seemless', if the transition is serving an in-game function, like breaking monster 'leashing' (so you can run to the zone line to save yourself) or limiitation on text chat, then is still makes sense to think of the world in 'zones'.
I'm excited to see how it all works in the next session (this summer!) but I guess I'm not too worried about what we call parts of the world, conceptually.
I hopefully imagine, though, if zones load seemlessly in natural places, we will think of the world of Terminus as more organic geographical regions than we perhaps have of other virtual worlds before. Location terminology based on the lore of the world, not the 'game' arrangement of it. I'm looking forward to that!
As much as I loved Everquest, the square zones with invisible walls and obvious zone lines didn't exactly help ones sense of immersion ;^)
This topic has been promoted for my CM content, please continue the discussion and have fun! :)
"Hot Topic - A Zone by any other name... the community wiki team was wondering what to call zones now that they're seamless, help them out and have your say on our official forums https://seforums.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/13811/a-zone-by-any-other-name #MMORPG #CommunityMatters #games'
P.S. The appropriate team members have been alerted to this thread so hopefully when they have time we can post some official clarification for you :)
Just call them zones. Because that is what they are. A zone does not need a loading screen. Borders IRL also don't have loading screens and we still know there is a border and beyond lies "something else".
I actually dislike MMOs that just try way too hard to come up with "new" and "unique" terms for something we all know by a simple name. You don't need to make up new terms. It is fine to just call stuff like it is. So I do hope we keep the known terms for all the basic stuff and don't have to call it whatever else, just because reasons.
I think region is a better term to describe big areas like Thronefast, Avendyr Pass, Faerthale...etc. Then I think that areas like Hangore, Halnir, and other areas located within a region should be refered to as zones within a region, even if there isnt a loading screen attached to these areas.
In my mind a (small) region is part of a (bigger) zone, not the other way around.
Regions usually don't have a strict border, or just a implied one. "The region of the ash forest". While zones usually mean, well... a whole zone that has plenty of regions / landmarks. Like EastCommons had several camps. Each being their own little area / region.
Switching that up, would confuse people. Pretty sure.
I wrote on YouTube:If it's standardized, it's hard to avoid some technical term like Node that breaks immersion. Either be as generic and non-technical as possible, like area or region, or try to tie it to the Lore of Terminus somehow.
For example, if there were ever an Imperial Survey say for Tax purposes, whose nomenclature was adopted more generally, say during one of the larger wars, and use that.
Something like Region, Prefecture, District, and Precinct.
That said, it's hard to shake Zone.
Balanz said:If it's standardized, it's hard to avoid some technical term like Node that breaks immersion. Either be as generic and non-technical as possible, like area or region, or try to tie it to the Lore of Terminus somehow.
Oh please no tie to the lore. No idea why, but I just can't stand games trying so hard to be unique that basic terminology gets pushed over for new and fancy words. Pls no haha.
Machkeznho said:I think refering to the topographical features in terms of regions might be the best bet, like bogs, forests, plains etc
But what do you name those things? If you say 'Thronefast' you immediatley know what area in the world you're talking about. Some random bog somewhere, which might only be one of several throughout the world means you have to remember each of those names and the physical relationship to a larger and more well known location like Wild's End or Avender's Pass, etc.
A place like Hanggore, the only (apparently) large orc fortress in all of Kingsreach exist within Avender's Pass because of it's unique status is easily remembered.
Lore-wise, it would make sense for the different races / cultures to use different terms. Humans would probably use medieval monarchy terms like "kingdom" while other races would have different terms. But us, as players, also have our own shared gaming culture with its own language, and that will likely supercede any game naming convention. Unless all of Terminus uses the same convention, in which case standard gaming terms will be used interchangeably with in-game terms.
My money is still on "zone" since it's already a standard term, it's tied with "area" as the easiest to type, and it already has a verb form ("zoning"). MMO players have already shown our willingness to stick with old terms: look at "mobs", which comes from "Mobile OBjects", a term dating back to MUDs.
It's obvious that the community will still use the Term 'Zone', but part of this question is about what makes a Zone these days. Like I said in my original post we know that each Major zone will have sub sections that have an identity of their own as well as Dungeons (be that Caves, Towers, Ruins, Villages, etc...) too.
When we thought there were clear 'Zone lines' between places like Eastern Plains and Wild's End, it was quite obvious that those 2 were the 'Zones' as we like to call them. Places inside these zones would therefore be considered points of interest, or perhaps just 'Camps' like we used to use in EQ.
But now that it's all seamless, what makes one thing a zone and one a PoI or a Camp?
Wild's End may be an obvious zone, but now maybe 'The Mad Moors' could also be a 'Zone'. And perhaps there is a specific Ruined city within these Moors that is large enough and complex enough to be considered a 'Dungeon', so this could make it a 'Zone' too. But if we start chopping up larger Zones into too many smaller Zones, the term Zone starts to get muddy.
It also leads into the game UI and how it considers Zones. If we as the player base consider 'The Mad Moors' to be a zone of it's own that doesn't mean the UI will recognize and list us as being in 'The Mad Moors' zone but instead just lists us as in Wilds End, which of course is a Huge area which may have several sub-zones other than the Moors, as well as multiple dungeons or other points of interest.
My main point in posting was to get the feedback from the VR team on what the Wiki should list as a zone. And if we list these sub-zones as Zones, should we use a different Term for the greater zone surrounding these sub-zones. Especially when it gets to the outdoor Dungeons. Since some will be smaller and could just be considered Points of Interest, while others may be larger and should be considered a full on Dungeon Zone even though they are seamless with the greater Region Zone.
So 'Wild's End' could be a Region, 'The Mad Moors' could be a Territory or maybe Terrain, while 'The Mad Ruins'* could be a Dungeon. All of them being referred to as a 'Zone' by the player base. The question is just "What does VR want these labels to be?"
*Note: 'The Mad Ruins' I made up as an example dungeon within The Mad Moors. There may or may not actually be a Dungeon found in the Moors and if so it likely would not have that name. Although if the VR team decides to use that name I want a tiny 'Goofy' chiseled into a stone wall somewhere for credit ;-)
But now that it's all seamless, what makes one thing a zone and one a PoI or a Camp?
Well, that seems pretty easy to answer to be honest.
Whatever is the "biggest overarching landmark" will be the zone. We will STILL likely see semi clear borders to make them out, and likely a compass / map will list the zone name for us to just read. The other stuff will just be landmarks with names that are,... well, set in stone for like forever. A dungeon will be a dungeon. If it has a zone line or not, it will be a dungeon X in the Zone Y. An orc camp will just be that: The orc camp X in the zone Y.
No need to reinvent the wheel here really. Just act like we still had zone lines and go with that. Simply because we WILL have zone lines, just without loading screens. Just like we have IRL between countries.
With truly no "zoning" the concept becomes irrelevant. Political borders and major landmarks will become the way we give directions - as in "real life". If faction is important with advantages to adventuring in areas where one has good faction and disadvantages (up to being kill-on-sight) in other areas what will be important is what race or faction controls an area.
As in LOTRO - where one might say "I will meet you in the west part of the Golden Wood near where the crazy elves party every night". Even if zoning to enter or leave Lothlorien is eliminated.