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The

concept of meaningful travel is something that is

argued to death on the forums of any MMO during its creation and launch

infancy. Without fail, there are two camps of players that join in this

ever-revolving argument. There are those that want travel to take a

very long

time, and those that want to be able to port their way around the world

instantly. Both sides have legitimate reasons for desiring travel act

in the

manner they wish, but I think a happy medium can be found. Or to be

more

accurate, I think the idea for a perfect system was created years ago,

but due

to technical difficulties at the time, it was never fully realized nor

implemented.

When

EverQuest

launched, travel between areas was an adventure in and of itself.

Getting

between continents required taking a 30 minute trip on a boat. During

the

course of the ride, there was little more to do than chat with your

fellow

passengers and watch the water go by. As an added hazard, players would

regularly get bumped off the boat in the middle of the Timorous ocean

and then

be required to swim for an ungodly amount of time until they either

died (which

was an incredibly cruel fate anywhere in an ocean) or managed to make

their way

to the single island in the zone. Even if a player were able to make it

to

land, getting off the island often proved to be a nightmare in and of

itself.

Overland

travel in EverQuest

was also no picnic in the early days. Depending on where you were when

you

decided it was time to go sell your wares, the trip back to town or the

tunnel

in East Commons could easily involve a trip through numerous zones that

took an

hour or more. As a result, players would normally enlist the assistance

of a

friendly Wizard or Druid that was willing to port them to a small

selection of

strategically placed zones that were scattered throughout the world. It

may not

have gotten players to their final destination, but it would get them

pretty

close.

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Travelling

in such a manner may not have been the

speediest method developers could have given players access to, but it

did

ensure that those players understood the layout of the land. They knew

where

zones and cities were in relation to each other. They knew when they

were on a

different continent, knew when it was shorter to just run to the next

zone than

it was to get a teleport to a different zone that ended up being three

zones

aware.

When

the Planes of Power expansion went live, all this

changed. All of a sudden, there were tons of new players that had no

idea how

the world was put together. The expansion introduced a central plane

that had

gateway stones to a large number of zones scattered throughout the

world. While

it may have allowed friends that were in different zones the means to

gather

together quickly and exploring new zones with little difficulty, it

instantly

destroyed any sense of geography. It also put Wizards and Druids out of

business in the blink of an eye.

As

time went on, an entire new generation of players

became “spoiled” by near-instant travel to wherever

they wanted to go. This

idea of travel also became a staple moving forward in many games and as

I

mentioned earlier, has become a point of contention between players

ever since.

Some games have made an effort to give players the best of both worlds,

but

none have found the perfect mix… yet. There is one that if

the plan had been

implemented as intended, would have revolutionized in-game travel as we

know

it.

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style="">Vanguard: Saga of

Heroes may have had a dizzying

array of technical issues when the game was

released (and if we’re being honest, probably for a good year

or two

afterwards), but it introduced some new concepts to the MMO genre that

have

become staples since. One idea that was never fully implemented was a

combination of Rift Stones (teleport points) and something called

Caravans.

Rift Stones were a different take on teleport stones. Blue stones were

scattered throughout the continents and allowed travel between multiple

points

of a single continent. If you wanted to hop between continents, you

needed to

find a red stone. These were normally placed at major hubs such as

capital

cities. Arguments can always be made as to whether there were too many

or too

few stones, but it was a system that still allowed players to keep a

sense of

geography of the land and I was a fan.

The

major idea that I think should become a staple though

is Caravans. The concept of Caravans always seemed to be changing and

being

tweaked and were even very briefly in the game, though they were

horrifically

bugged. The basic thought behind them though was pretty simple though.

Imagine

you and our friends find this game and fall in love with it. You each

start

characters of different races, play through your initial starting area,

and

then realize you’re all hundreds of miles away from each

other. You could

create a caravan. This was something akin to a permanent group and

allowed you

to travel to the location of one player.

For

example, if Player A is in outside a dungeon, Player

B is sailing on a ship in the ocean, and Player C is doing some

travelling the

open road between cities, any of them could be used as the focal point

of where

the others could instantly travel (for a cost). This would allow groups

of

friends to play wherever they wanted on their own and then pick whoever

was

closest to where they wanted to go to hunt that night, and all be there

in a

moment. Before you think that made things too easy, keep in mind it

allowed

players to group together instantly but it didn’t send them

back to where they

were when they were done. That still needed to be handled the

old-fashioned

way. It was a brilliant idea and I think it needs to be revisited by

other

companies for sure.