Expanding the Frontier (frontier zones I’d like to see)

[Whistler]

I’m really lagging behind on writing zones, so I figured I’d put out my ideas to see what other people think, and if anyone wants to run with these and write/submit them, please do. My dreams run far afield of my abilities. Here’s some of what I see as possible in the eastern continent.

Hometowns:

I’d like to see a Grugach village at the end of the damp forest. Grugach or ‘wild elves’ are fiercely xenophobic, and live in deep woods. They camouflage themselves well and blend with their surroundings, becoming virtually invisible. These elves live more in the brush than the trees. In game terms, I’d like to see the village with all the mobs hidden-including the shoppies. There is however a fountain of detect hidden in the temple—if you can find it!

Cloud city: Cloud giants living among the clouds atop a giant beanstalk. Beware the thief little jack and the wrath of Calrecian the administrator—and don’t get too close to the edge of the clouds or you could fall to the lands below…

Ogre Atoll: a swampy island just off the coast of the Sava Sea. Lots of good things to eat for ogres, and hot springs in which to boil those they catch.

Also need half-elf hometown and minotaur perhaps the half-elf town could be north of Rowenguard, or serve as a “Slum addon” Perhaps the minotaur town could be on the southern cliffs of the frontier.

Other zones:

southern cliffs. Actually would like to see the entire coast of the continent mapped out, perhaps connecting the Sava sea with the greater ocean. East of the frontier the sea should either be a connector with the western edge of the ocean or “The edge of the world.” (is the world really flat?)

I imagine the central continent being heavily forested and a path cut eastward leading up through hills to an eastern mountain range. The entire east and south side of the frontier should be cliffs, preventing landings-except at a couple of places.

I’d like to see 2 more human hometowns. “Nubis,” near the great plains, for those black skinned humans, and in a cove on the eastern coast, “Qa Xien,” for those humans of Asian decent. (ok, I want a shoppie who sells katanas… and you gotta be willing to go to the ends of the earth to get one…)

Also near the great plains, I’d like to see a Wemic village (lion centaurs whose culture closely resembles those of the native Americans,) and Gorilla City- more congo than planet of the apes.

I’d especially like to see a ford across the Sava by Rowenguard, leading to a new cut trail (The Eastern Road) going east into the continents interior, perhaps with an unusual trader or two on the path, and a forgotten wizards tower not far from there—no longer the isolated place it was when the mage first set up his hermitage.
New roads need woodsmen to cut the trees, and slaves to build the road, haul the stone, etc…and where do those stones come from? Is there a quarry nearby?

One other room that seems ripe for expansion is frog lake on the southern sava…what lies beyond those reeds to the east where the red eyed tree frogs nest?

So as you can see, big dreams…. Just thought I’d share if anyone wanted to roll with it.

-

ps, once all hometowns are finished, we should consider a vortex clone for the frontier- something that connects with the regular vortex at a place like safehaven.

[Anduin]

one of the turn offs for me about writing a zone is (as far as I know) we get no say in it's location. I wouldn't want a zone I wrote to be in the new cont, unless it finally gets vortex.

[Thor]

one of the turn offs for me about writing a zone is (as far as I know) we get no say in it's location. I wouldn't want a zone I wrote to be in the new cont, unless it finally gets vortex.

I don't think that's true. You can always make a case for a certain location. I've seen it happen many times. There's no guarantee it will get approved, but you can find that out before you ever start writing a zone.

[Belsambar]

The biggest downside to the coastline of the 3rd continent is the monotonous writing of ocean around it. However, I am actually willing to drive myself (more) mad on that one, as the nightmare is less in the room generation than in mapping it out, whether trying to do another 'lost in a storm' with those CRAZY bloody exit setups, or just doing gridwork ocean.

IF Tamar and Toku want me to do it, instead of someone else (and yes, I really will, provided you don't mind a few surprises here and there. The shoreline would come with a few marked places where connector zones such as rivers or trails could go for future zones, albeit maybe blocked off in creative ways. This is going to extend the shorelines of northern AND southern continent, opening up a whole new map possibility unless the god+ staff have an idea of where they want the continents to have their bordering. Is northern continent going to have an eastern edge? Southern continent? Or do they continue in a 'strip' capping the ends of the planet forever, and we just need to get to the backside of it? I'd like to see a little more continental definition all around, but I will not accept concepts that our world is so small the continents are even CLOSE to 'wrapping' yet.

I want to make a quick note of the fact that I've used the graphical version of Gytar's map (as originally posted on the TFC website, the original one) on print out since 2000 to find areas and get around (you should see my notes on the pages!)...and I don't see that as much more than a snapshot of one part of the one side...maybe 30% of the overall surface area. The really interesting thing is that if you do wrap it around a globe, you end up with Gla'shorn's getting around the south pole with a little bit of a twist to the map (or axis tilt to the globe, rather), which actually makes a lot more of the other geographical stuff on the map make sense (like looking at it on a straight up 'nsew' scale, when you go SW from glaciers, you end up in jungle....if you set the northern mountains (ie, whitefrost) towards north pole, with gla'shorn's towards the south, with similar tilt to earth, it suddenly makes a vastly greater amount of sense (Madman set that up right? How in the name of the gods he ever kept all that straight in his head to set it up, is beyond me...mathematicians are weird).

That's also something I've been wondering if people have been paying ANY attention to...since geographics should still make some sort of SENSE if you're not giving a completely magical reason for it (such as signs of a massive battle and wrenching of magic causing a desert to become a frozen wasteland after a battle with a frost mage and a white dragon...in the middle of an otherwise very HOT section of map...)

[Kylor]

The problem with all of that bels is that you need to consider the expansion of the game and find a way to place the map over a larger sphere to serve as your globe so that the current map accounts for a smaller percentage of the surface of a globe leaving more open for writing. It is a fact that I ca guarantee, soon thor's area writer will be totally perfect for regular use and alot of people are already talking about writing so naturally we are going to have alot of zones going in soon. that combined with our recent rankings on TMC AND version 5 promising to be a much more fun and well rounded version for all classes, I can easily see TFC making a leap in growth this year. So let's leave alot of room for growth. There could easily be a more land south of lineoth and plantation and honestly in my opinion the frozen drift and glacier stuff on southern continent needs to be moved south of lineoth and replaced with something that you would expect to see halfway between the aran/skulltop area and the kuroth/warlooves area. makes no sense to have all that ice stuff in that geographical spot. it's alot of writing to fill in that spot but I bet I could do it.

[Whistler]

it occured to me after this long post that i neglected to mention the Aara hometown as well. perhaps a coastal cliff?

as to the size of the globe, heres the tough part. if we put another immense ocean (think pacific) east of the frontier, that would leave room for smaller island-continents...

of course, if we just put an 'edge of the world' thing in, that can always be pushed back....

=

[Belsambar]

I still don't see it as being needed. There's plenty of space as it is now, even adding into the tilt idea, like I said, there's not guarantee on 'scale' of ocean, or ANYTHING, until Tynian puts the official stamp upon a map saying 'this is our world'. Likewise, it is a magical world, and no, it doesn't actually HAVE to follow any sort of rules beyond how the landscape is presently done and expanding from there. Gla'shorn's is actually more south than Gytar's map ever gave it credit for, for example (been taking some more detailed looks at the map vs the movement in game) which is a good amount of what threw off my original calculations on the subject.

Nothing needs to be rewritten. Just expanded upon. I suppose back to the original point, is the ocean and continental itself, is this 3rd continent something like, africa, and is't just closer to our n/s conts than on our world, or is it like australia? So north and south have an eastern border? Does the continent take up more north or southward map space if either does? Or does it actually crash into one of them on another side, creating volcano's and massive mountains?

Before we can 'flesh out' anything, someone needs to come up with what needs to be there for bordering. You can hedge off an eastern continental border on either continent, leaving a HELL of a lot of undeveloped (unwritten) terrain between what is there and that actual border (presently The great eastern desert and Altibia are directly north and south of the frontier continent respectively at present). this can then STILL leave a blank line 'east' for the third continent, do the same for whichever is NOT given an eastern coastline, and the one that IS given an eastern coastline still has a western borderline and a souther borderline to expand upon.

Another thing I thought of is Gla'shorn could just be like tibet. In which case, it means there's another continent over there, shoving that whole mass skyward (and possibly creating the entire western range of the southern mountains and the Oort range) and causeing the ice and cold differential due to altitude, the ocean area being kept so bloody cold do to the upper atmosphere super-cold air masses funneling down through the range directly to the ocean there....

But I digress. Until someone writes it and it's made law/implemented, or Tynian gets bored and sketches out a map on a napkin at Denny's when he's out with Darkmoon and the kids and decides THAT is the continental shift style he wants to go with and the area writers to expand from, we're left with only getting tiny tiny tiny additions to the map as zones are put in on the edges and the connectors are placed in to get to them.

[Belsambar]

Or, We could go the discworld route, and TFC really IS Flat, we get an actual edge on our map (Falling....failling....Well. You fell off the edge of the world. Welcome to nothingness! *no exit*) and we just expand n s and w (or e if there's an edge on the western side)

[Anduin]

I didn't read all this, but I know the frontier zone I'D like to see is vortex attachment.

[Tokugawa]

one of the turn offs for me about writing a zone is (as far as I know) we get no say in it's location. I wouldn't want a zone I wrote to be in the new cont, unless it finally gets vortex.

I actually prefer if you have an idea for a location for the zone you want to write. That being said, I do not see the Outland Frontier getting a Vortex exit any time soon.

[Tynian]

Likewise, it is a magical world, and no, it doesn't actually HAVE to follow any sort of rules beyond how the landscape is presently done and expanding from there. Gla'shorn's is actually more south than Gytar's map ever gave it credit for, for example (been taking some more detailed looks at the map vs the movement in game) which is a good amount of what threw off my original calculations on the subject.

This perhaps assumes that all "rooms" are the same size, which is not necessarily the case.

[Kylor]

I wasn't really focusing too much on glashorns as much as I was talking about the frozen drift and "crossing a glacier" being smack dab in the middle of the oort range with forest/field/jungle in all directions around it. I personally don't give two hoots if TFC makes geographical sense or not but IF we decide we don't want a glacier where there should not be one (since there are no clues as to a magical reason for this) THEN I would volunteer to write the replacement zone AND it would give a chance to relocate jill to somewhere easier for the noobs.

[soloban]

This perhaps assumes that all "rooms" are the same size, which is not necessarily the case.

Having done a fair amount of maps, the first thing you must realize is this very fact. Areas like Rivers, Lakes, Oceans, Bays, etc... tend to have rooms that are much larger than the land. Just my observation.

Also, I'd be more than willing to team up with someone to write a zone. I could do the map and the connections and stuff and someone else could fill in the mobs and eq.

[wish]

New zones don't simply materialize out of thin air. So, I am going to get off my ass and write a new one. I don't care where it goes. But it will require a large amount of beach front property. 'nuff said.

[Avarice]

Sweet, your zones always rock Squishy!!!

[Kylor]

agreed, wish is my fav. writer.