Fun fact, the racial starting areas and adventure yards were not part of the original design for Qeynos and Freeport. When we first started internal alpha testing code quickly discovered tanking frame rates due to the amount of shaders being loaded. The theory was to break up the new players into separate starting areas and initial adventure yards. Sounds like a good fix right? Unfortunately adding the starting hovels and adventure yards wasn't much of a fix. Instead of having hundreds of players spread out over a large area we now had hundreds of players gathered in small hovels and adventures yards causing even more shaders to be loaded into memory. Large areas like Antonica handled many more players and mobs easier due to the way everyone was spread out. This issue was quickly resolved though by adding instances once the load got too high in a zone.
Long story short the starting areas and adventures yards were some of the last minute zones created for the launch of EverQuest II.
When adding in the new zones I focused very hard on ensuring a logical line up to the initial layout of the city. I'm very proud of how well these hooked into the flow of Qeynos as if they have always been planned.
Nettleville Hovle, is essentially a mirrored version of its neighboring area Starcrest Commune. This allowed us to get these in quickly and then add detail to make them feel unique.
You can also notice how much I love height changes in my work with these two areas.
Responsible for, design/layout, exterior lighting, created all geo/uv except center buildings and the majority of exterior prop placement.
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