Reclaim Gnome and Zul'G

[ravenmoon]

no, the Gnomes have not reclaimed Gnomeragan in 4.0.1 or 4.0.3, you have recalimed Gnomeragan surfaces which serves as starting zone, not the entire city.


So, why not have Gnomes take over all of the city later and Trolls rule ZG as their home capital city after you finish quests at 35? Why? well, once you do the StV quests concerning ZG you're never going back there, once you finish Gnomeragan at level range you're not going back to that instance either. Like most places, you leave their for good.

It makes total sense if through phasing, once you've completed the quests, those cities become capitals for those two races. Yes everyone who completes the quests will have access to the city [i.e. allinace will have Gnomeragan, Horde ZG] - it's ot hard, you add a flight point to both, you add a Zepplin tower to ZG and deep run tram port is connected to Gnomeragan. You add all the necessary vendors and trainers.

Zul Gurub
Yes ZG and Gnome are huge, but then so is SW and Org. THe point is it would be so cool and would make a fantastic level 30-40 event. The trolls usher in a new era, moving into ZG, the Capital of the Jungle Trolls from which all Jungle troll gribes come from, the Darkspears move in as the main agents behind the rescuing of the city from Hakkar and in the quests aided by a band of heroes. The event ushers in a new drive for Trolls, a drive to see all trolls united, the Zandalar use the darkspears as thier poster child to help catalyse what they've been trying to do for so many millenia. It would be glorious.

It also gives the horde a vital capital in the south of Azeorth [Eastern Kingdoms. - and shifts one race from Kalimdor back to eastern kingdoms, - doesn't make sense to have 4 horde races in kaliimdor anyway, but then the darkspears are quite small in number anyway, back in StV, they can have many new recruits from other jungle trolls who decide to join up with their cause.] It would be glorious. In time they can populate the city with proper structures to house vendors, trainers, AHs. Most races get racial quests all the way up to level 20 cos they have a second zone, whiles Gnomes join with dwarves after 12, and Trolls with Orcs after 12 too and worgen with Nelves after 12, - but at least this way, trolls and gnomes could have a little extra after 35 to set up a little extra lore.

The Echo Isles, also gets automatically phased, altho it doens't phsyically change, Vol'jin is no longer their whenyou visit, but is now in Zul'gurub, his lieutenant tho is there, and Echo Isles serves as a base for the Darkspears in Kalimdor. You could get a ship from Echo Isles to Grom'Gol or they could have the zepplin take you from ZG to Grom'gol instead of org, but better to have cpaitals all connected through ships/trains, Echo Isles doesn't need to be connected directly to ZG anyway. But the Zepplin route would be to ZG instead of Grom'gol.

Grom'gol could become a naval base for the horde? or it could be destroyed in some dramatic alliacne fight as part of the phased event, the horde lose Grom'gol but gain Zul'gurub.

Gnomeragan
Similar to the trolls, the city gets phased in after you've completed the instant and quests, vanquishing Thermaplug for good. once the instant is done, you get quests on clean up, a final re-appearance of Thermaplug as an undead, where you get mkekatorque and few others helping you finish him off once and for all. Or whatever story the writers come up with,

They can then use the opportunity to sorta define the role of the Gnomes in the alliance. You see on horde, it is very clear that the Goblins are the explosives and transport experts, and technologists. All horde bombing has goblins involved, all horde Zepplins and some ships have Goblins involved. Whereas the Gnomes role even in the allinace battleship is sketchy at best. You still think of High Elves, Night elves (highbourne) and Blood elves as far more accomplished wizards as well, and for purpose, well all the other races have defined themes - so you can use this as an excuese to invent something for the gnomes.

Gnomish architecture is almost none-existant, Gnomish towns and setltments no where to be seen, what are the Gnomes doing elsewhere? nothing. Whiles you see goblin oil refineries, operations in Stonetalon, in Felwood, in the Barrens etc...

Anyway perfect opportunity, but they don't have to. It can be done later. For now, all they need do is phase the city, once you've conquered it, well both the starting area and the rest of the city are in a different phase [which is fine, remember no one can visit the goblin or worgen starting zones either like they are, so nothing new there]. you add buildings, vendors, flight paths, trainers, and each of the different sections of the instance that you once went through change.

PHysically the only differnece is it becomes a much brighter lit place, and it now hosts buildings with vendors, AHs and different trainers and embassies. for e.g. you could have a heavy High elf influence in the Mage section and a bit of new lore between the Gnomes and High elvses highlighted too to help boost their wizadry credentials. I can also imagine a huge engineering section, visitng construction of alliance flight ships, and planes, the Gnomes obviously scorn on inferior goblin aerial technology.. mere ballons and half arsed rockets do not compare with fully fitted navigational aircrafts and air battleships. etc.

They could even re-model parts of the city in the city phase after Ulduar citing Gnomish inspiration from the period of time spent in northrend and coming in contact with Mimiron and some of the technologies in Ulduar.


Cities
Cities aren't used that much on the whole..so why add two more? Well lorewise and player demand wise (lots of players have been wanting capitals for Gnomes & Trolls], Gnomeragan and Zul'Gurub the quest city zones we all know are deserted once you level past those areas (like every questing area once you've completed it), you might as well make them Capitals and add an event on the recliaming once you've finished the zone/instance level range. And as for the point people raise of too many useless cities so therefore don't add more. Well it is far from useless if involved lots of quests, i.e. the city was a quest zone before the phase, to me tha'ts useful. But other cities not been useful? well that's up to blizzard to fix. I think we all agree that the usefulness of a city is based on its location or rather what you can access or gain from it. AS the y are showing in Cata, you don't even need to have a city in the game, you could have people have amain zone instead, if you use the argument of useless city then potential we should have no cities. Cities are great for flavor and lore, they really bring out a race and score you HUGE points for diversity, scale, depth and epic factor of your game.

For ways to make all the cities more useable, because face it, wow's issue with cities is not that we don't like them its that we don't like not using them. Or having to be forced to only be in one city. And the biggest contributor to that is access to zones/area, location and transport. If you're not using the city as a major quest hub like Zul'drak or a major dailies quest hub or do events like the cataclysm event or city siege events, then you have to improve or faciliatate access and transport to and from and to differnet zones past the levelling stage you entre them.

To aid this, I'd like them personally to give every race an additional natural teleport to their capital so they can set their hearthsone anywhere thy want and alwyas have easy access to a trading city. Its up to them if they want to allow Shattrath and Dalarna to be addded to the list of natural heraths or not, or allow you to choose between your racial capital, shattrath or dalarn and allow you to change your natural hearth only between your racial capital and the 2 neutral cities, or just have it fixed at your racial capital and then provide portals to Shattrath and Dalaran from each racial capital,useable after a certain point i.e. when you've done the quests of introductions to those cities.

Either way once they do that, then they can free people to visit any city they want, then provide easier access to different zones from that city to the new raids . Each city will have an easy access point to a new raid.

Cataclysm and Cities access post 85
Firelands: Darnassus [ a 600% flight taxi (special) and Orgrimmar. [altho if you want to be lore fussy, it should be Thunderbluff as the Night Elves are very very fussy about who gets to go near the Well of Eternity, whose Guardianship is principally directed by teh druids - for which the Tauren, more recently joined to the order would regulate the horde's entrance - ofc you could have Tauren NPCs providing the flight from orgrimmar since org is closer to Hyjal and naturally players will wanna go their to raid Firelands instead of further away TB]
Skywall: Thunderbluff and Theramore [there is also CoT portals you can use, and they should consider having a bronze dragon in every major city somewhere interesting to teleport you there and not just shattrath and Dalaran]. If it most be a racial capital, then Exodar city will do for the alliance. [if TB is used for Firelands, then Skywall could use Org instead and provide fast transport rather than portal]
Stoncore Deepholme: Stormwind for the Alliance and Zul'Gurub for the horde, these would be geographcially closest. ofc to access ZG you'd have to completed the phased quests, otherwise you'll have to Zepplin their from Silvermoon or UC or Orgrimmar to Grom'gol posssibly or whatever route is actually taken.
Grim'Batol Twilight Highlands: Ironforge for the alliance off course, even though Gnomeragan is quite close, and for the horde, One of Silvermoon or Undercity

These are closest and wher eplayers would like to get to to access. Without portals in shatt/dala leading to all cities. players will have to use normal means like zepplins/boats to go from their city of choice to the city closest to the new area. This is fine. Meeting stones means that people can be summoned, and i'm sure we'll have teleport to instance as a Guild perk for guilds and sooner now we have a new lockout system, LFR - looking for raids tool can be implemented. no one will really neeed to travel. But hey that is what you can do for the cities to make them more popular.

The last thing you could probably do without major development to them is to give each something vital that players will need to get their to use. For e.g. Org and SW have the pvp vendors, therefore players will need to go there to get new pvp rewards. So... if another pair of cities hosts the Raid rewards, another pair hosts Heirlooms and competition rewards etc.. well you get the picture.

[Deleted]

What exactly would be the point of another capital city within viewing distance of Ironforge?

[Arrowstormen]

and if i never does that quest? thats the problem. its to much to get a captital for doing a quest, and if you dont do it, you wont have acces to that city.

[ravenmoon]

and if i never does that quest? thats the problem. its to much to get a captital for doing a quest, and if you dont do it, you wont have acces to that city.

no, if you've never done the quest, you don't get access to the capital, it's really simple. it's not vital that you have access to the capital, as relaly all the things you can get in that capital you can get in others, obviously they won't add something like its the only place you can get PvE raid rewards to those two.

Level 80s and 85s would have to go back and do the quest chains to enter the aphse, but if you've levelled to 80 and seen what phasing is like you would know taht although you never get the changed stuff without doing the quests, your character can pretty much survive without the zone.

[Kellorkleft]

The surface of Gnomergan itself is the size of a city, and the instance is HUGE.
However, ZG with maybe some parts cut off sounds like an interesting idea. To balane out presence in a continent, maybe Worgen could get a city build up in Desolace.

Of course, this won't happen for the same reason Goblins and Worgen aren't getting capitol cities.

[Lord Cenarius]

Um how about no?

Gnomer would be completely useless to the Alliance seeing as how it's 5 minutes from Ironforge, while Zul'gurub would be a base of operations for all Stormwind raids.

[OnlineSamantha]

Bad idea, really. Sorry, but it just wouldn't be good with a phasing-based capital.

[acenthehole]

Goblin own all of azshara that's bigger then a capital city and a island covered with goblin buildings but worgen have a tree...a tree in darn, blizzard wont fix this problem because they don't see the problem and they don't like alliance.

[Lord Cenarius]

Goblin own all of azshara that's bigger then a capital city and a island covered with goblin buildings but worgen have a tree...a tree in darn, blizzard wont fix this problem because they don't see the problem and they don't like alliance.

Really?

Well then Night Elves have Darkshore which is bigger than a capital city.

And it's not like Blizzard designed an entire workable city just for the Worgen starting zone, since they hate Alliance and all.

[Tilie]

Here is how I think Gnomeregan will be respectable.

In no way can the Gnomeregan layout right now be converted to a city.

Heres my little lore.

So Gnomes figure out their home is too irradiated to cleanse. So in the Instance of Gnomeregan, the objective is to lay HUGE bombs everywhere in the instance, kill thermaplug and everything inside it, get out and blow the entire place up. Gnomeregan gone forever.

Here is a chance for the stupidly unused area behind Gnomeregan to be used as the Gnomes rightfully deserved rebuilt home. And it wouldn't be a major city. It would just be like Echo Isles.

Edit: Grammar

[Peroxide]

I want Stromgarde lol. I know I've said it before and many compelling arguments have been made against the Alliance getting the city (even if it was just like a Theramore styled city), but I still want it. I like the layout of the place.

[Kellorkleft]

Here is how I think Gnomeregan will be respectable.

In no way can the Gnomeregan layout right now be converted to a city.

Heres my little lore.

So Gnomes figure out their home is too irradiated to cleanse. So in the Instance of Gnomeregan, the objective is to lay HUGE bombs everywhere in the instance, kill thermaplug and everything inside it, get out and blow the entire place up. Gnomeregan gone forever.

Here is a chance for the stupidly unused area behind Gnomeregan to be used as the Gnomes rightfully deserved rebuilt home. And it wouldn't be a major city. It would just be like Echo Isles.

Edit: Grammar

Or maybe they just expand upon what they've alredy taken. Some refurbishing, and maybe a couple passages and spires upward to the mountain summit that shelters it.

[Deleted]

What's the point of having Gilneas as a capital city, when you will use stormwind as main city anyways?

[ravenmoon]

i think its really cool waht they have done with GIlneas, it's a war zone you fight over it


i seroiusly don't mind hem doing siege games for capital citsi and adding periodic events that occur in them, you can have 1 city where nothign happens at all for htose who like that then do something sle with the othrs.

altho Gilenas is a BG would be nice if outside this it was a capital

and somehow something happened to Kezan that you coudl also use it as capital.

All in all capitals have so much potential..so much..if you don't use them for anything at least they a quick ways to move around the world via zeppplins/trains or boats.

but things you coul d od is make them quest hubs, full of dailies, with the cvcentre a sancutary or give htem events or do differnet htings , like soome like gilenas are BGs, others can be isntances in addition to being the home of a race.