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As I prepare to start concentrating on area building again, after the long work on Brogendenstein and the (hopefully) upcoming Blades of the Netheril NWN title I find myself wondering what kind of new area content our players think Arelith would most benefit from?
I have my own preferences of course, but don't want to influence the outcome here by saying just what it is...
all of the above tbh
Personally I'd like to see more sea/undersea/secret areas to be discovered, but as Sorrow said, all of it sounds nice too! 
Voted but 'All of it sounds amazing' is also true,.
I'd love to see more of the settlements updated! Brogendenstein is absolutely beautiful and visually one of the best updates I've seen.
Andunor, Cordor, and Bendir stand out to me as settlements that could benefit from a facelift, even if just a minor one. Garden areas, more houses, a new street with a cool NPC shop to offer upcoming items in. It really does breathe life into settlements and make them feel like they're evolving throughout the IC years, especially with projects that characters are actively trying to help with.
That said, I also would love more secret locations and planar stuff. Close second/third! I wanna go explore!
Thanks for all the work you're doing, I'm looking forward to seeing more!
Juniper Oakley - A Little Bitey
Ny'aza 'Peggy' Philor'tyl - Travelling
Tiffa Took Hss'tafi - Happy in Sigil
Secret areas! There's so much missing when it comes to things that could bring people together. e.g. Yuan-ti only secret meeting areas, underwater areas that aren't dungeons or just the sea floor (i.e. potential acquatic character quarters or meeting/living spaces), unseelie wild locations, weird-magic warped locations for hags, non-hostile kenku hideout areas.
What about secret areas that require a password that can only be learned in game through some crazy difficult code-breaking or mystery or something?
RP only starts at 30 if you're a coward.
think of how many new quarters and guildhouses cordor can get when we demolish the arena 
My vote is for ocean stuff with the asterisk* of an underwater village. Waterdeep has an aquatic city full of sea elves and tritons in its harbor, it would be cool if Guld had one too. Waterbreathing has precious few uses on the server, and some of them are broken, so it'd be cool to have a place to use it + amphibious characters to hang out in (sea elves, water genasi). Being able to buy sea stuff for cooking there would be cool.
I have lots of ideas about it, if you can't tell. 
Looking forward to whatever happens, though!
Ideas for locations:
Isle with low housing options, wilderness area, only reachable by boat, hidden on the map, owning a house there enables boatsman to transfer them to and from the isle, unique plantations only accesible there, so owners can harvest and sell in arelith. Could be used in rare recipes.
Pocket dimensions, for spellcasters.
Hidden cave transistions, only visible when getting close to it (ala as tracks do now, or shadow doors) perhaps locked behind a spot/search check.
Dormant Character: Tabitha Fuzzypaw - Shelved, searching all corners for treasures and secrets.
Misty Scrollsinger - Still searching answers, but is now elsewhere
Rolled Character: Björn Njald - sailed on new adventures
I feel like Cordor could really use an update / expansion.
Naturally I am biased.
I will always advocate for giving Bendir more stuff, and giving people more of a reason to roleplay there. That's just me, though.
Please update the core Myon map the place is absolutely absent of RP because of how dated it is.
I /love/ secret locations and I think they add a lot for exploration-oriented characters. They don't even necessarily need to be things like boon site, since these invariably get gamed into becoming standard knowledge no matter how niche. It just adds a level of mystery to the world as a whole imo to look around any given area and think "I've been here plenty, but WHAT IF this is like X elsewhere where there's that one niche thing no one knows is there?"
Would be nice to see a few destinations added to the astrolabe (Bytopia, Dragons Eyrie, Deep Caverns etc)
I'd love to see Dis expanded - including a high level Writ hub, some planar combat or a push up to the first plane and the blood war on full display, to integrate it more into other planar areas, give the place a solid reason to exist beyond a second 'neutral' hub.
Failing that, Andunor is old, comparatively, and could do with a solid facelift in a lot of places., even if just the Hub
In the spirit of all the Sigilites hanging around Dis... Sigil! ;D
The UD settlements like The Table and Sharps could really use some attention. Making Andunor more dynamic in general would be great!
Even the settlement buildings, just examining their functionality and what role they play in a district or what they allow players to do etc.
Take for example the Table Manor, it is a great, biiiig space, but I think it would be cool if you could open up part of a big mansion like that to the public while also retaining security of its inner halls. Also just making the space more functional
For example, lower in the Table manor there is a barracks training room... But if you attack each other the NPC guards trigger and attack you!
Also being Andunor I would encourage more secret passage ways and escape routes. I think both the Manor and the Temple should have an alternative way to slip away somehow.
Last,
The Sharps has their awesome throne room. The Table has ... What looks like a storage closet to be fair. I think the district settlement buildings need to be upgraded. I also think both the Sharps and Table would benefit from buildings geared at being 'public' to support the districts factions sort of how the Guard Barracks does for Cordor.
For the times I've been in the Sharps back District house area it seems sort of disheveled in my opinion.
Both zones I think would benefit a lot from just updated design and attention.
i vote for a new land mass kinda like skal but with a higher teir writs
I am the "Other" voter. I like all of the concepts as they stand, but there are two specific areas I would love to see some expansion into.
My biggest want is more cave networks that aren't in the underdark! It's already really cool that so many of the cave networks connect to each other and it is possible to travel most of the southern island without poking your head up, but expanding these connections north would be really interesting for spelunking roleplay and for alternative routes to get around for seedy folk. Maybe even a little neutral mining town somewhere down in the caverns, similar in nature to the village around the Arcane Tower in terms of alignment.
My second want is an expansion of the planes, and more specifically the Plane of Shadow. More shadow doors, more echoes of the island! I think it would be neat, especially with the addition of so many shadow related races and classes.
Freth Tower quarters. Come on, it's begging for it!
Other than that I agree both the Sharps and the Devil's Table are quite dated and would benefit from a facelift and probably add one or two shops to each of them.
Well, my pie in the sky take is I'd love for Sibayad to actually become a place. Style it a bit like Waterdeep with a highly trade based city up above, where evil characters can be but not monsters and a skullport like section of the city below which allows monsterous races because money talks.
This would give openly evil PCs a place to be besides Andunor and another place for monsterous races to be. But it would require a lot of work plus likely need the Dis/Shadovar treatment of having guards. And I recall this was mentioned as not a plan for the server some years back when Guldorand became a city. So I don't expect this to be a thing, just giving my personal two cents.
Besides that, older settlement areas could use touchups. I suddenly recently realized there aren't any player owned bars in Andunor for example. And maybe the idea is staying away from things like the Nomad in Cordor, but it just seems like things could be added and updated to be more in line with newer settlement options. Like an actual stage somewhere could be really cool.
More sail rentals would also be an idea. It is a popular pastime but few places feel like they have a good range of rentals.
Besides that, I do love secret areas. They're neat things to figure out and can facilitate much roleplay. The downside of course is a lot of effort can be spent on these areas for them to sit idle for some time until the right characters come around to use it.
That all stated, I agree with the "all of the above sounds amazing" votes.
While I absolutely love new dungeons. I feel one of the biggest additions to Arelith could be more player homes and areas in settlements. I'm still a fan of dock area quarters in crows and sencliff maybe even off Guldo with player home ships that are non sailable. While I'm not a programmer, I believe we would have everything available in the game as far as textures and sprites to make it an easy transition. And could add a fair number of more quarters. Also seeing an actual "Slums" in cordor with super cheap quarters for players starting out in poverty. As getting a quarter in cordor is near impossible as s it is 
And if we're taking notes. As someone who rp's a writer with a love for reading can we please get a printing press on sencliff? 🥺
Trevor Highdale
Additional starting area(s) with level 1-20 quests. The Brog additions were very welcome and we could use some more of that in general, I mean a lot of these low level writ areas haven't changed since the mid 2000s. The biggest thing keeping me from making new characters any more is how little I can take leveling up when I've run that course so many times.
Maybe a remote camp or trading post surrounded by wilderness areas and writs so you could play an uncivilized character who doesn't have to go to big cities at all?
I think the Underdark is lagging behind on quests too.. Since XP was reduced it seems easy to run of of writs there. My last character had nowhere to go but the shadow plane at around level 19, and there's not enough to do there to get you more than a level or two. Maybe an UD version of Guld's Deep Wells?
Non Leadership based settlements. No Evictions basically.
Personally, I think Skal should have an Underdark settlement that acts specifically like Skaljard/Dunmarle for players who are brand new to the game and want to start with Monster races.
Underdark/Andunor can be pretty brutal for brand new players. It doesn't hold your hand at all and it doesn't pull any punches.
Surface / Guldorand have the lovely experience of starting out on Skal first and it's even recommended as the starting zone for all players, but you're forced to start as a Surface race.
Skal has the Skaldark, a very, VERY wide underground that is pretty boring currently, and filled with enemies that could easily be taken care of before level 10.
I really feel like the Skaldark as a whole could use a makeover and that starting UD settlement could be planted down in there somewhere, maybe near the [FOIG] tower so that pushing to escape Skaldark is more of a threat than some whimpy Quaggoth. It surely wouldn't be more than some little encampment that the more intelligent monster races occupy (the players).
There's even a boat that takes you directly to the Underdark server that just got a small update. It's entirely useless to everyone on Skal because your only option on arriving, unless you've been despicable enough to have your character given "Outcast" status...or you willingly want to be a slave. It could be given way better use with a low level UD settlement. The [FOIG] tower could even be a the neutral zone between the two, monitored by DMs much like Dis and Shadovar.
This would also help introduce new players to PvP better than scaring off the one Necromancer that appears every week.
