The Dead Zone and other unused or bad areas.

Yes Faultline was in the original release. Well, maybe I2. But the old map looked almost nothing like the current one. Back there it was nothing but deep narrow canyons with jagged outcroppings that you could get stuck on. There were perhaps 5 places in the whole map where you could get back up to the surface once you fell in if you didn't have a travel power. The narrow canyons were packed mostly full of CoT and the areas above were packed with Vahz groups who always had 1 or 2 Eidolons in them. There were also some groups of clockwork up above.
The only missions there were when contacts in other zones sent you to hunt something. And those contacts always sent you there when you were to low a level to manage it on your own. Sort of like the hunt CoT in Perez missions.

The old Faultline still exists somewhere but a code was added to it so that if you wound up there somehow you were instantly transferred to the current Faultline. Like how if you log out in the chalet and it is removed before you log back in you get transferred to Pocket D.

I wish they had just allowed people to be able to stay in there like they did with the Paragon Dance Club and the RCS.

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Don't count your weasels before they pop dink!

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I think your reasoning is flawed. The RWZ is one of the biggest, newest and most popular areas of the game prior to I12 going live. The reason for the change isn't that the zone is a failure, it's that Cimerora is the new kid on the block and shares the same entry requirements of the RWZ by being for 35-50 players.

Faultline turned out to be unpopular for the reasons you mentioned because its in an obscure corner of the game world compared to other places. A lot of players don't even know Faultline exists despite it having some excellent story arcs and great scenery.

The Shadow Shard in general is also a hidden secret, many people don't know its there because the Rularuu are a bearly mentioned group and none of the missions really send you there. Yes, it's a zone with tons of potential but none of it realized but we knew that for ages.

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A problem that these zones share is that they are dead end zones. The zones do not connect to anywhere else, like Steel or Talos, so you don't get any through traffic. People only go to Striga or Faultline to run the zone contacts. If someone is not aware of these zones they can be easy to miss. Croatoa suffers a bit from this as well, but you at least can see it on the Greenline selection screen.

All of these zones would benefit from having regular contacts send you on an occassional mission there once in a while.

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I started out on CoV, and stick with it mainly because I prefer the smaller number of zones with shorter travel times between missions.

I don't like CoH because while it may have more quantity of zones and missions, there's a lot of unfocused and poorly thought out stuff to wade through. For instance too many missions that all feel the same, send you adventuring across too many zones with long travel times, and too many "kill X mobs" type of filler.
When it comes to zones, there are too may useless or redundant zones. And most all of them are far bigger than they need to be.

I also hate the disjointed travel system in CoH where you've got everything set up on different lines with some places only accessible from one zone. It might make sense for other MMORPGs, but not CoH.

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Firebase Zulu: Portals and store contacts for selling were added to the four Shadow Shard zones around Issue 5 (August 2005). More was promised but has yet to be delivered on. A quasi-addition to the zone is the massive Nemesis base added for a villainside story arc (but is only available there).


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It appears in the RWZ arcs as well. (Dark Watcher IIRC)

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Thanks for the correction. I haven't run Dark Watcher's arc yet and hadn't seen any discussion of his Shard missions.

And for those asking about Faultline, it was in the game at launch in a vastly different state. Check this ParagonWiki article for a look at the zone pre-Issue 8.

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I think there needs to be a time travel arc to take you to original Faultline so people could see it. Assuming the original zone is left over somewhere in the files. It was a HUGE zone so you wouldn't need all of it, but enough to show people how HORRIBLE getting around Faultline used to be.

It could give a nod back to how Statesman wanted to have a trial where heroes stopped the Circle from destroying the dam and unleashing all the pent-up magical energy of Faultline to raise Orenbega back to the surface. That would be bad news for Paragon City and the Mu Mystics inside Arachnos would be none too pleased to have their ancient blood enemy resurrect their dead city.

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Here's a video of the old Faultline. It was a very evocative zone, but really hard to get around in without a vertical travel power.

I'd like to have a chance to run around in it again as well. Maybe Ouroborous can provide...

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