dorotea said: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 imprtant 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.
dorotea said: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 imprtant 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.
What an interesting question Goofy (thanks for your work Moxie!). I don't really mind one way or the other tbf. If you choose 'zone' I'd completely understand what was intended. If you chose 'areas' I'd still get it. I really like chenzene's idea (World -> Continent -> Realm/Kingdom/Empire/Province/Territory(etc.)) as it fits an online organizational structure. You might ensure to use terms that VR finds most acceptable though. Maybe email the most relevant Dev for advice? My only concern there would be, players would likely (inevitably?) breakdown the names of locations into short-handed nicknames i.e. BS = Broken Steppes, WE = Wild's End, SP = Silent Plains, Khaga Sands might become Khaga or Khag. And at this point (game being live of course) most communication regarding those locations will be in this form. But if you are asking for the Wiki's sake, I wouldn't choose that.
Manouk said:dorotea said: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 imprtant 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.
Absolutely
GoofyWarriorGuy said:*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 ;-)
If they have a Dungeon in the Mad Moors and they don't name the end boss "Othello", VR will have missed a golden opportunity.
I believe MMO players in general, not just WoW or EQ ones will call the places we go to zones regardless of what the team decides to call them. I can understand to want to give them a name that is not zone since the original idea for zone is not neceissary in a seamless world.
I played EQ, and then WoW when it launched. A seamless world was easily one of the biggest and most amazing things to me at that time. And yet I can't recall anyone changing the language. It was zones, areas or just the name, often abbreviated.
So for Pantheon if it really is wanted to get away from saying zone, then I think region works best. Because in regions you can have your Crushbones and your Deadmines and Joes Farmyard which would be areas within the regions.
I think zone is acceptable when talking about these places in the abstract, or for internal development, but it feels artificial and forced from an in-game perspective.
In-game I would much rather see that language lose its purpose and give way to the proper names of places, or descriptions of the geography. I wouldn't want to see messages popping up as I cross an invisible line walking down the road saying "Now entering new zone: Wild's End"
When talking about the different areas of the world map I would keep using the word "Continent"
When talking about the different areas on the continent map, like the different colored areas of Kingsreach I would probably use the word "Regions"
When talking about areas owned or controlled by various factions I would say "Kingdom", or "Territory"
Otherwise I would use nouns appropriate to the situation. The name of a city, a forest, a road, a mountain, the island you are on, the sea you are in, etc...
Ultimately, I think names and designations will just happen organically. When something is notable enough that a large percentage of the playerbase can associate with it, it will be used as a landmark/identifier.
It could be a bridge in the middle of nowhere and have no offical name, but something about it stands out, and everyone knows of "The Bridge".
Even things that appear in several zones could be identified easily, IE: EQ druid rings, they had no offical names, but if you told someone you were at the "WC ring", they knew where you were. Or areas were known by the uniquely named MOB or NPC that lived in the area.
It will happen organically as players become familair with the world, and develop acronyms and easy to type/speak names for things/places.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to chime in!
For my part, as Goofy touched on in his two posts, I am thinking purely from the perspective of the Wiki in this case. The Wiki relies on Categories and Links to be usable. While I can make redirects for links to account for the common variations, I cannot do the same for Categories. I need a top level term that will be the standard, allowing me to create Categories for organization, navigation and consistency.
The reason why I hesitated on using Zone without gathering feedback is that I realized that could be misleading and confusing, as Pantheon largely shifted away from using Zones as we know them outside of specific cases (in theory). Additionally, I thought that distinguishing areas which require crossing a Zoneline from other areas could be a useful to the community. Originally, I thought that Dungeons would make up the bulk of content that you cross a zoneline for and I could fall back on that. However, per the nightmare inducing roundtable June Roundtable, not everything they consider a Dungeon - Blackrose Keep being the given example - requires crossing a zone line.
Some thoughts I'd be interested in getting some additional perspective on...
MoxieOnline said:Some thoughts I'd be interested in getting some additional perspective on...
- If the Wiki uses Zones to refer to all notable content area, what should the Wiki use to refer to Zones which are actually behind a zoneline? Do you folks suppose that will ever be a useful "filter"?
- Thinking from the perspective of someone orienting themselves to Pantheon via the wiki, would it be confusing if the Wiki informed you that the game was not Zone based, with only occasional uses of zone lines, while simultaneously using the term Zone for everything and not just those occasional cases where zonelines are actually used?
I mean even in something like WoW were zones are seamless they are still called zones so I don't think it's necessarily right (or wrong) to say Pantheon isn't zone based. I don't think it's a useful filter to have those you actually have a load time into vs seamlessly crossing a line.
World > Continent > Zone > Area > PoI
"We are in Thronefast (zone) at the northern Gadai camp (area), by the waterfall (PoI). Come on over."