Xzero45

Who's been offended by the 5th Column?

He's in the new tutorial. Hero area, helping and directing civilians to safety.

wut

Chill out a sec, man. Way to over react.

First, when's this been foreshadowed by the devs or in game? I'm honestly curious.

Second, what tears? I'm not raging, only was having a quick discussion with one poster and asked someone else an honest question.

Third, I'm not totally against co-op. In fact, I even suggested making one of the four Shard zones co-op. I never said anything stupid like "zone fairness". What I do expect, though, is for the Shard to continue telling a good story that can incorporate villains without the rehashed "Let's team the heroes and the villains up again, and make the villains into good guys the entire time" plot. Best way to do that, take one of four zones that aren't being used, give it to the villains so they have something special to call their own. I still don't see how anyone's being punished if no content is being removed, and we're all going to get more content overall if the devs decide to focus some time on the Shard.

'kay

Chill out a sec, please, for starters.

Second, you're missing all the other Praetorian zones, which are co-op as well. Might not have co-op content, but heroes and villains can still enter, mingle around, and do zone events. Not to mention the new Dark Astoria will be co-op.

Third, the whole "heroes and their sworn enemies band together to fight a common foe" shtick is getting real old. It's been used against the Rikti, 5th Column and Romans with aliens, Snaptooth twice, Lord and Lady Winter, all the Incarnate content, the dark god Mot in the upcoming Dark Astoria, and the First Ward story arcs. It'd be great if the devs took a break from having villains and heroes be best buds.

Kind of unnecessary, but okay.

I'm being honest and not trying to have attitude, but what exactly is it about all four zones that makes you wish bluesiders get to keep 'em all? If it's the content, it doesn't have to be removed, but instead moved into one central zone, like Firebase Zulu. And if it gets updated, the devs have been huge on keeping the original version in Ouroboros so it's never really gone.

If it's the scenery, although I do agree it's nice to look at every now and again, you can still wander the zones in mission maps that I'm sure would be made or if one of them is turned into a co-op zone with a new storyline. The zones look relatively the same anyway, though.

Or is it just you don't want blueside to have less? I'm honestly kind of curious what your specific reason is.

I never said get rid of the content. You can easily just move existing TFs to the one hero Shard zone, which would make them more easily accessible anyway. Maybe they could even update the TFs themselves while they're at it so they aren't 12 missions that are all the exact same as the last. That'll definitely interest more players into wanting to actually consider running them.

And how would it be any easier that way? They would still have to do the same work to set up entrances and exits, and the current content is geared towards heroes, so they'd have to rework the missions and TFs so that you aren't treated as a hero regardless of your status, both in mission text and alignment. I mean, I guess they could just open the doors and say "Here's your shard, but it's only hero content." but that'd be horribly sloppy and half-*****, considering villains and rogues wouldn't be able to actually play anything, just fight the random spawns.

Best option I can see is move all existing content to one zone, make that the hero base. Have Arachnos occupy another zone, make that the villain HQ. Story could be they're tapping into Rularuu's power. The other two zones could be, like someone mentioned, Incarnate PvP and Co-op where heroes and villains fight back Rularuu himself. Much like it'll be in the new Dark Astoria, there will be choices you can make along the way if you're heroic or villainous so that you aren't railroaded into being the good guy.

Thing is, all these zones being lost is really just the old unused clutter being cleaned out of Blueside. The only people that used GC were people that didn't want the massive popularity that was AP. DA was rarely used, and many people complained of the fog impeding travel. The Shadow Shard has four zones, only one of which really has anything going on in it. I'm pretty sure no bluesiders would lose sleep losing one or two of the zones if it meant getting actual, legit, fun content there.

Because the villain and hero Ouroboros's actually are different. Aside from the 5th Column TF and Ramiel's arc, all the content given out is geared specifically toward you being a hero or you being a villain. That would require new tech that has contacts give out different missions based on alignments, a heap of work to actually combine the zones, not to mention the whole echo of Galaxy/Dark Astoria thing, which I believe, though could be wrong, is only supposed to be available to heroes.

Plus we just do not need a new co-op zone. We have too many as it is.

Just gotta play that waiting game, then.

Ugh, I'm kind of sick of dogs at this point, to be honest. They've already busted out two dog pets plus a dog-form for players. Let's use that four legged rig for some other animals/creatures/abominations so CoH isn't over saturated with dogs..