I disagree. I was often alone when creating new characters in EQ or WoW, but it didn't matter because that early in the game you don't need to group. Having different starting cities adds a huge amount of immersion and depth to character creation and beyond. Each starting city has its own culture and "feel" to it. Think about the difference between creating a barbarian to play in snow-covered newbie zones and creating a troll to play in the swamps. Creating new characters of different races often led to whole new experiences.
I do agree that it makes life easier for the devs, which is why they will do it this way. It's a huge copout though. Newbie areas don't have to be complex or even big. They could have different starting cities, with very few merchants etc., that feed into the same areas if they are really that concerned about it. However, with EQN, the "it creates more work for the devs" excuse is going to get old really fast. If you aren't going to add great features that require a little more content creation (e.g. different starting cities), then why do we keep hearing about how helpful Landmark will be in making EQN?
I could go on and on and on about how a single starting city is a horrible design decision--understanding, of course, that it's only my opinion. Something is seriously wrong when you go from every race having their own starting city in EQ -> 2 starting cities in EQ 2 -> 1 starting city in EQN. This is also a great example of how they are going about EQN entirely wrong from a lore perspective. You have the opportunity to "reboot" the lore and make any changes that you want and you decide to write it in such a way that everyone ends up friends and everyone ends up starting in the same city? Garbage.
