Issue:
Folks are feeling a bit disconnected from Ur. "Home streets are killing the game!" "I miss my neighbors!" "There's no sense of neighborhood!"
Back in the day a lot of us felt a deep connection to where we lived. As a swamp dweller, I deeply felt this connection with other swamp folk. When I lived in Kajuu - I knew the streets there like the back of my hand. I still do. My first house was a tree house on Fairgower lane and I get reminiscent every time I walk down that street.
This is not a home streets suck! post. I love the home streets. I love the fact that I can control a public street and make it mine. I love the routes. I love seeing what others have done. I love that home streets feel alive - more so than the old housing streets ever did for me, and I lived next to one of my best glitchy friends and we spent a lot of time on our street.
Idea:
Tie folks back to a community hub - but don't permanently tie that hub back to them (to avoid the dead community sense).
Create a hub street in each region - perhaps ones with subway stations and bureaucratic halls. Perhaps a street or two away.Throw up a building such as the old apartment towers or the machine rooms. These will be community halls.
People can select ONE hub to be tied to. When a player joins and selects their street style (meadow, bog, or uralia) they are tied to one of the hubs in that region. You can spend a certain amount of imagination to tie yourself to another region (increasing by level? by number of times switched?).
Just as you get a free teleport to and from your home and back to the last place you were in Ur, you can also get a free teleport to your community hub street from any home street (perhaps /hub). And because your brain is so connected to this place, you can teleport to your hub from any place in Ur without using the map but at the cost of energy (just like any of the saved TP points).
The community hall buildings can be used to post notices. There could be a glitchy chamber of commerce inside which would allow you to search for items for sale in the towers associated with that hub (perhaps this could be done for a small fee - this way folks who want to remain a bit more private may do so by just not paying the fee). Perhaps Helga & Uncle Friendly could expand and have little franchise offices offering a small selection of overpriced goods (good for emergency purposes but not enough to detract from player sellers and/or creating things on your own).