How to Decentralize Ul'dah

[Jericho]

Even if we grant that most everyone moves to Ishgard, you didn't really address the last sentence of my post. What's to keep us from having this same conversation a few months after Ishgard opens, only complaining that, "Hey, guys, I've done all I want in Ishgard. I'd like to head back to LL now"?

I doubt anyone will have a problem with Ishgard being the central hub, whether they want to head over and hang out in LL for a while or not. The problem people have right now is that of the 3 starting city-states, one is clearly the "better" choice, and that just breeds too much animosity... The fun-loving "My city is better than your city" banter isn't quite as harmless when one party is correct. When Ish is the place to go to work, and the 3 starting cities are our home, there shouldn't be any issues. The Jeuno example comes to mind... The social map can pretty much be copy and pasted off FFXI.

[Viridiana]

I doubt anyone will have a problem with Ishgard being the central hub, whether they want to head over and hang out in LL for a while or not. The problem people have right now is that of the 3 starting city-states, one is clearly the "better" choice, and that just breeds too much animosity... The fun-loving "My city is better than your city" banter isn't quite as harmless when one party is correct. When Ish is the place to go to work, and the 3 starting cities are our home, there shouldn't be any issues. The Jeuno example comes to mind... The social map can pretty much be copy and pasted off FFXI.

Except that there will still be people who won't want to hang out in Ishgard. I could care less if it winds up being the central hub, at some point I'm going to want to hang out in another city for a while. When that time comes, I shouldn't wind up cut off from the rest of the world.

Again, I'm coming from having played WoW for years. There, if I went to the least popular city in the game, I could still communicate with the players in the other cities. There was very little chance of my missing out on anything that was going on, and the entire market was still there for me to use. The only concern I might have would be transportation, and that wasn't a likely concern, either.

If Ishgard opened tomorrow with no changes to chat or to the MW system, the best we could hope for is a mass migration to Ishgard. The worst would be what I mentioned before with the market staying in Uldah. Either way, Limsa and Gridania would continue to be deserted, and those of us who prefer to stay in one of them would now have two other cities we'd have to go to to get stuff done, neither of which we'd want to spend much time in.

One major solution, though, is already confirmed as being planned: cross-zone chat channels. All that's left, then, is to hope they also decide to link the economies.