Game Sports Realm

City Hall Placement

In order to create a player city, you must first place a city hall. There are 3 city halls types (Tatooine, Naboo, Corellia). Examining a deed will tell you what planets it can be placed on. You must be a novice politician to place a hall. Upon entering and exiting the city the message "you have entered " will appear. The class rank of the city will appear in parenthesis next to the name. Architects craft buildings and the politicians place them.

When a city hall is placed, you have 24 hours to get 10 citizens in your city. The owner of the city hall counts towards that total automatically. A citizen is an individual who owns a declared residence within the borders of the city. To become a citizen, place a house in the city and select "make residence" from the city management terminal.

-From Allakhazam

PLANET SITE: DANTOOINE

Me and the other founders of Crystal Valley searched all throughout Dantooine for a suitable building site. The location we decided would serve as the foundation for everything in the city. We took the unorthodox method at the time - building the city far from any NPC town or outpost. Dantooine was a characteristically large planet in the game and held some top tier monsters and missions in terms of difficulty. Moving through the landscape was brutal due to the lack of facilities available in convenient locations. If you did not own a vehicle, Dantooine wasn't the best place to go. Even if you did have a Landspeeder or Swoop Bike, the wilderness required you to pack some serious heat if you wanted to get through alive.

THE LANDSCAPE OF CRYSTAL VALLEY

THE EDGE OF DANTOOINE

THE FORCE CRYSTAL CAVE

There were many factors to consider before picking the actual spot of the City Hall, such as scoping out potential enemy Imperial cities in the surrounding location, obstructive landscape such as mountains and rivers, and economical resources. Dantooine was a flat planet overall and the particular spot we discovered was a vast plain on the extreme northwestern edge of the Planetary Map. Flanking the sides of this stretch of land was a barrier of mountains closing off the region on three sides.

The primary reason for the extreme isolation of Crystal Valley to the NPC towns of Dantooine and other player built cities was the advantage of being as close to the Force Crystal Cave as possible. In late 2003 around the time we started building the city, the only way a player could become a Jedi was to unlock the Force Sensitive slot. Holocrons were one way of doing that and the items were highly rare loot that only dropped from Force Sensitive NPCs and Jedi. Dantooine was full of these types of foes - hence, it was a top tier planet in difficulty.

The Force Crystal Cave with respect to the nearest NPC town (or more specifically, the nearest shuttleport) was a literal pain to get to. The SWG developers deliberately made the journey to the cave as difficult as possible by placing the landmark thousands of meters away from the closest shuttleport. The location became one of the most visited landmarks in the game (in all servers) because it was the way to become a Jedi. However, the insanely long distance prevented many people from embarking on the goal to unlock the Force Sensitive slot.

There was a great economic opportunity in having Crystal Valley's location near the Force Crystal Cave, even though it would isolate the city from most of the planet. We created a long-term investment plan to specialize the city towards the advancement of all Jedi on Chilastra. Thousands of players visited this part of the planet every day. If Crystal Valley was to grow and build a shuttleport (as well as other facilities), the economic benefits would be infallible. The amount of people that died in that general area was also a lot higher than most places in the game. Getting killed in the Force Crystal Cave meant spawning at the nearest cloning facility at an NPC town, which would mean waking up several thousand meters away from where you died. We realized that having a shuttleport, cloning facility, and other facilities in such a remote location would become make players' lives much more convenient, saving a lot of time and money.

To say the building site was 'aesthetic' was an understatement. Three sides of the location had the tallest peaks of Dantooine as barriers and the landscape was very flat - perfect for laying down player-built structures and for extracting resources. The roaming creatures and NPCs in the outskirts of the city were some of the most difficult to kill, giving us a tactical advantage against enemy players. We also discovered a 'natural road' that was actually the main road of Dantooine, running through the landscape, flora, and valleys throughout the planet; branching off into different quadrants on the map.

The natural road that ran right through the center of Crystal Valley was more like a planetary highway because it helped players navigate in and out of the city. When it reached Metropolis rank, the radius of the city was several hundred meters, requiring some degree of navigation that you didn't need when it was first being built. All the houses and structures were built to face the road and the division of the districts was heavily influenced by the road's direction.

These and many other factors led us to finally choose the official location to build Crystal Valley: -5377, 7004