Guild Wars 2

The racial cities (Divinity’s Reach, The Grove, Rata Sum, Hoelbrak and Black Citadel) are all empty now, which I think is very sad because they are all beautiful and I would like to spend most of my time on my human in Divinity’s Reach without feeling so alone all the time there. The solution that I found for this, is to make taking a Waypoint to your races capital city free, and make all the 6 cities (including Lion’s Arch) share the same map chat

Agreed, although this wouldn’t solve the “empty” feeling. Sharing map chat just means there would be a public phone between the major cities but you wouldn’t see anyone. There needs to be activities (like keg brawl, and bar brawl up coming, and w/e the moa racing track thing is being built in LA) and an incentive to do those things other than for fun. Not to say they should offer gear or coin but maybe some karma, maybe a laurel for being #1 in a race/fight (only doable once a game day) etc. Simply sharing the travel and map chat isn’t going to solve much :/

As far as I know there are still many mini-games that haven’t been implemented. I’d recommend to the developers to always have these mini-games rotate as one of the daily achievements.

Edit: Also, player housing would certainly increase traffic in the racial capitals.

Edit: Part Deux: Giving us a reason to frequent taverns is something I’ve longed hoped for. I don’t know what they could do, but I hope they do something to entice us to spend time in the taverns. As it currently is, taverns are Points of Interest in name only.

Other than for world completion and Wintersday, I’ve never felt need to set foot in Rata Sum, The Grove, or Black Citadel.

On Tarnished Coast, DR is pretty active though, almost as active as LA, because of all the roleplayers.

Wouldn’t you guys like to fight bandits in Divinity Reach? I think events will save the cities not some fun activities.

I think different things will bring different people to cities. The idea of sharing the map chat of the cities is interesting. Perhaps they could add a “city chat” that had shared chat. It might help ease some congestion in Lion’s Arch.

As for the cities, there have been a few threads with excellent suggestions for those. I do think that both activities and events should be added to them. Housing would help. Perhaps locate guild halls within the cities. The suggestion about adding the city activities to the daily might also help. In the taverns, add a little more npc atmosphere. Brawls, card games, etc.

I see people in Divinity’s Reach, but I think that is because for whatever reason, the starting area of Queensdale has become “the” starting area. I see low levels of all races leveling there. And I don’t mean down leveled, I see fresh alts leveling.

Maybe part of the problem is the cities design. Divinity’s Reach is relatively straight forward, so is LA. But Rata Sum is a nightmare. It’s a maze that is horrible to visit and other than map complete, who would want to spend time there? It’s design is awful.

So is the Grove. Horrible, maze like design that is not fun to visit, only frustrating.

I spend most of my time in Divinity’s Reach. I see people there but regardless of what city I’m in, I’m not concerned with the city population. I’m crafting, banking, TP’ing and never feel “alone” in cities. I’m there to do whatever. Not just stand around looking at other players.

Sometimes the map chat in LA has devolved into such stupidity it’s nice to go to a quiet city.

No to joining city chat. I leave LA to leave the stupid chat behind, not have it follow me to Divinity’s Reach.

Rata Sum horrible desigh? I think Rata Sum has a perfect design, it could be the main city.

Halanna.3927:

I see people in Divinity’s Reach, but I think that is because for whatever reason, the starting area of Queensdale has become “the” starting area. I see low levels of all races leveling there. And I don’t mean down leveled, I see fresh alts leveling.

Maybe part of the problem is the cities design. Divinity’s Reach is relatively straight forward, so is LA. But Rata Sum is a nightmare. It’s a maze that is horrible to visit and other than map complete, who would want to spend time there? It’s design is awful.

So is the Grove. Horrible, maze like design that is not fun to visit, only frustrating.

Players are used to play in familiar environments like they have seen in all other games. From all the starting zones, the human zones are the most populated because of this.
People choose it regardless of what design it has as long as it feels familiar to them.

Ronah.2869:

Halanna.3927:

I see people in Divinity’s Reach, but I think that is because for whatever reason, the starting area of Queensdale has become “the” starting area. I see low levels of all races leveling there. And I don’t mean down leveled, I see fresh alts leveling.

Maybe part of the problem is the cities design. Divinity’s Reach is relatively straight forward, so is LA. But Rata Sum is a nightmare. It’s a maze that is horrible to visit and other than map complete, who would want to spend time there? It’s design is awful.

So is the Grove. Horrible, maze like design that is not fun to visit, only frustrating.

Players are used to play in familiar environments like they have seen in all other games. From all the starting zones, the human zones are the most populated because of this.
People choose it regardless of what design it has as long as it feels familiar to them.

Actually, Queensdale is the easiest starter zone for getting all your weapon skills opened (under the bridge) and when it comes to dailies, everyone has the Champion Cave Troll’s time down to an art. Queensdale also has more active DEs and more variety of enemies within closer proximity to each other.

Agreed, Ironicly enough Guild Wars 1 cities are far more populated than GW2s due to there being no servers. With the exception of Lions Arch. If they were to do cross server racial cities that’d be great with the exception of Lions Arch obviously. Or make it so there was more of a purpose to go to those cities besides story.

Add huge events that doesn’t always have to be combat-related, add a couple of fun jumping puzzles and make more mini-games for god’s sake in the cities! We were promised that there’ll be more and currently we only have 1; Keg brawl.

I wanna activities e.g. For the black citadel:
-race tanks in the underground race track; you v.s. other players and you can ram them off the track, or use the auto-cannon to blow them up,
-or “adamant survival” where you play as an adamant guard (if not charr “honourary adamant guard”) and try to survive waves of hostile charr .
Any adamant guard type law enforcing mission in the citadel would be cool.

I like the idea of having my own house. although wouldn’t you have to add a new district acting like a single-player/party instance(except multi-player); but multiple of them with X amount of people assigned to them?

I don’t want events in cities. I would like to have mini-games or something there, though. As I’m on Tarnished Coast, Divinity’s Reach is always full. Other cities, not so much.

(I only do Black Citadel for map completion. Now THAT is terrible map design. They don’t even have it split into levels).