from a lore stand point, I think some cities must stay the way they are now. Dongeons.

it would be stupid if as a dwarf you could start in Kaladim, go out and be attacked by lvl 30 kobolds. worse in Ak kannon. this would mean they'd have to change the whole defficulty level in zones.

and so I started in kaladim and now for quests, you have to go to the other kaladim to kill i don't know what/who? not logical. If it's only available at lvl 70, people would complain why can HL players can live there and not their dwarf? then it would make other cities even more ghostly.

the world has changed and some cities are not welcoming you anymore. Dwarfs/gnomes are not enough anymore to fight back, reclaim it and then defend those cities, when you kill on, 2 new ones replace him. even adventurers would be overwhelmed.

now why couldn't you live in looping plains. the village there, like SS. could be possible, or windwhill village, or the one in thundering steppes. I would make more sense. Why couldn't you buy a house in a village if you like peace? a druid or a ranger ... why would they live in cities?

In rivervale? how do you want to live there if you don't know how to get rid of lamias and nightbloods? where do they come from? how did they get there? is there a portal to transport them in revervale? can you close it?

and if you can live in rivervale, why couldn't you live in nektropos or runny? you kill all the goblins and you have a citadel for your guild. and why not making a enchanted lands free from all source of evil, where you can move without being attacked? Let's also kill all the orcs from Zek and make or guild hall in the citadel.

from a lore stadpoint, there are things you can't eradicate. they always come back, like vermin.

plus, would the town leader help those cities? Lucain wouldn't and for Antonia, I don't think she could with all the other threat coming in. her army has other things to do than freeing a city so that all the queynosian inhabitants leave Queynos for rivervale. and just a few adventurers are not enough to clear a whole city.

and is it necessary? creating a new town? I'm thinking not ...

The lore for Rivervale is VERY specific. It has been corupted by the void, and sence we are going to be fighting a void invasion it makes sence,once it has been defeated, to focus on the all the remaining void beach heads and remove them... that would Include Rivervale. And there is enough room in there IMO to rearrange it to have it be a 1-10(it is a fairly save journey to the docks) or maybe even a 1-20 zone, and still have city amenities in it.

Just because we will be fending off a world-wide invasion doesn't mean that we'll be getting rid of them once and for all.

On the contrary, we know that Anashti'Sul is directly related and probably controlling everything the creatures of the Void are doing. With her becomming a worshippable diety, this guarantees that her presence will never be removed from Norrath ever again, or the conflicts with the Void. It might die down, but it will never go away.

Here is an idea...

Live event to push back the darklings to one side of Rivervale and post guards to protect newbies, and have a NPC warn young halflings that beyond X point is dangerous territory. This also makes it so that half of the zone usable for a certain HQ. For the Sash just have a small arena where the ghosty pops up from time to time.

Umm...there is this place, its called Maj'Dul. You can earn a license to buy a house there. There arn't any newbies living in Maj'Dul. Nobody considers this a starting city. You have to earn the right to live there.

I would feel the same way about a new Rivervale. After you do a long quest line, you gain access to the "city" version of rivervale. That one is a pleasent place to live, for high level adventurers. Maybe even introduce a tradeskill quest line to earn your way in. Regardless, new players wouldn't live there.

That makes sense from a LORE standpoint. There is a story, and you advance through the story and THINGS CHANGE. What doesn't make sense is a static world where after following a major quest line to save the town, or the city, or even one person and it doesn't make a bit of a difference. If that town/city/person is just as frightened/corrupted/captive/invaded/whatever as it was before you even tried then we're stuck in a game mechanic. A lot of the quest NPCs now relate to you differently after you worked for them. That is a non-static relationship, and very appropriate for any good story/quest. I'd just like to see this same logic applied to an entire zone.