The Forgotten Zones

I was thinking about this, so I decided to make a list of the top 7 (arbitrary number) forgotten zones in City of Heroes. I'm just doing this for fun and to spark conversation.

Now, bare in mind that I'm not talking about zones that have literally been forgotten, after all most do contain at least one or two items of use.
But they are also more than just zones that don't usually have a lot of people in them (I'm looking at you Skyway). These are, rather zones that almost no one ever goes to any more and don't really come up into thought when you think of the game's zones.

First, an honourable mention:

Brickstown - Now I know what you're thinking "But Z, I go to Bricktown all the time... it has lots of terrible "Kill X Enemy" missions and a moderately popular TF" and you'd be right... but when was the last time you went past the North-West Corner? I rest my case.


7: Perez Park - Long forgotten, the Hollows stole it's thunder like you wouldn't believe.

6: Galaxy City - Considering this is a starting zone... the fact that most have forgotten it even exists stands to testament Atlas Park's popularity.

5: Eden - These days it's pretty much only used to get to the Hive... and if your server doesn't do Hami raids... well, it's not even used for that.

4: Crey's Folly - Originally pretty much only used to get to the Rikti Crash Site (which was itself almost forgotten before it's revamp) now it's only used by people looking for Rikti monkeys and Jurrasik... not that anyone looks for Jurrasik anymore.

3: Terra Volta - Anyone remember the heroside respec mission? No... me neither. Well, if you do, you've probably spent a few minutes in this zone at one point. You'll most likely see it off in the distance in Independence Port.

2: The Troll Tunnels - I would actually bet there are a few who don't actually know these exist, considering the only time you're sent there is in a fairly obscure task force. They lie beneath the Hollows and contain lots of Trolls and explosives and not much else.

1: The Abandoned Sewers - I know for sure that some don't know these exist, given the fact that you get people asking how to find Rikti in the sewers for that one mission, and didn't realise the "abandoned" sewers were a different zone. These were once quite popular when Hatched Kraken rewarded ridiculous amounts of XP for their defeats.


So, I know what you're asking, why didn't I mention Boomtown or Dark Astoria...
Well, Boomtown is probably one of the most well remembered zones, due it leaving a huge first impression on a lot of the older playerbase. For a lot of people it was their first encounter with huge, half toppled sky scrapers billowing smoke.
Also, some of the favourite farming missions have been on Boomtown-esque maps, usually called the "flooded Boomtown" map. So people still remember it.
Dark Astoria also leaves a huge impression, and is one of the most frequently asked for zones to get a revamp, meaning it stays fresh in people's mind. Same with the Shadow Shard (although, a lot of people would be hard pressed to remember each of the four zone's names there).

Anyway, let's see what you guys think.

i agree with all of your list, theres a lot of heroside trial zones which are so underused its not even funny

i think redside is a little better about not having useless zones (unless you count monster island or the abyss, which both are extremely underused unless you like fighting rikti monkeys or DE monsters for fun)

To avoid multiquoting, here's my take.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zikar First, an honourable mention: Brickstown - Now I know what you're thinking "But Z, I go to Bricktown all the time... it has lots of terrible "Kill X Enemy" missions and a moderately popular TF" and you'd be right... but when was the last time you went past the North-West Corner? I rest my case. Actually, it's a very popular spot for Lv30-40 radio teams - god knows it's less of a pain than Founders Falls, even with the door maze section. 7: Perez Park - Long forgotten, the Hollows stole it's thunder like you wouldn't believe. Other than being a frequent mission door spot, the streets are a pretty good Skulls/Hellions sweeping spot. However, it bears the stigma of the forest maze, so most avoid it instinctively. 6: Galaxy City - Considering this is a starting zone... the fact that most have forgotten it even exists stands to testament Atlas Park's popularity. Ohh yeah. Seriously, Galaxy needs some love. 5: Eden - These days it's pretty much only used to get to the Hive... and if your server doesn't do Hami raids... well, it's not even used for that. That, and the Eden trial, which seems to be... ehh, averageish on the TF popularity scale. 4: Crey's Folly - Originally pretty much only used to get to the Rikti Crash Site (which was itself almost forgotten before it's revamp) now it's only used by people looking for Rikti monkeys and Jurrasik... not that anyone looks for Jurrasik anymore. Also, occasional mission doors, but on the whole, it's an oldschool hazard zone - i.e. plenty of room and nothing to do. 3: Terra Volta - Anyone remember the heroside respec mission? No... me neither. Well, if you do, you've probably spent a few minutes in this zone at one point. You'll most likely see it off in the distance in Independence Port. Not sure why anyone would forget the respect trials - even with the occasional freespec and vet rewards, they seem to be ran with regularity. 2: The Troll Tunnels - I would actually bet there are a few who don't actually know these exist, considering the only time you're sent there is in a fairly obscure task force. They lie beneath the Hollows and contain lots of Trolls and explosives and not much else. I wonder when was the last time anyone set foot in there - myself, I only found out about them about six months ago when I ran the Cavern trial. It's a dead end that's so out of the way it's not even funny. 1: The Abandoned Sewers - I know for sure that some don't know these exist, given the fact that you get people asking how to find Rikti in the sewers for that one mission, and didn't realise the "abandoned" sewers were a different zone. These were once quite popular when Hatched Kraken rewarded ridiculous amounts of XP for their defeats. Personally, I ran subsewer teams a while ago - if you're Lv35ish, it's a fantastic place to beat on heaps of Rikti bosses - however, due to its narrow level range, it's pretty situational. Of course, if someone gave us the ability to self-exemplar... {...} Same with the Shadow Shard (although, a lot of people would be hard pressed to remember each of the four zone's names there). Firebase Zulu, Cascade Archipelago, the Chantry and the Storm Palace. Anyway, let's see what you guys think.

Older players nonwithstanding, I still think Boomtown should be in there somewhere - like Galaxy City, it's known-of, but nobody ever goes there, especially since there are very few missions that take you there, and nothing of interest.

An open letter to NCsoft

I'd like the Troll Tunnels to be made into part of the Hollows - like the Faultline tunnels, but going under the whole zone.

And the same with the sewers - make the normal sewers into a tunnel-style network under each zone, but not joining together, and keep the Abandoned Sewer Network as the city-wide linking zone.

Hmmmmm... I find myself in Crey's Folly quite often, actually. Aside from many of the better late-game arcs having door missions appear there, it's great for Defeat X of Y missions - and not just for Rikti. Nice closely-packed squads of Nemesis soldiers, for example.

You pretty much nailed it OP.

But gosh, Perez Park, Boomtown, and Dark Astoria bring back some memories.

Perez and Boom were the places to go for teaming. I remember roaming around with like 5 fire/dev blasters when smoke grenade was OPed. *Wipes tear* Street sweeping... Good times.

And I used to solo the mass groups of BP in Dark Astoria on my Fire/Fire blaster. That too was some good times.

Man how this game has changed...

I often use Galaxy as a starting zone especially for concept toons I want to get a feel for. Get there at lvl 2 and run around til lvl 5 and I'll have at least half an idea if I'm gonna stick wtih the guy.

I think on Union there's a lot of RPers meet under Galaxy Girl

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Brickstown is always my level 30-40 levelling zone. I hate Founders so much.



Other than that I agree with the list. DA is at the top of any list of mine in terms of needing a revamp / some content (keep it as a Hazard Zone though, my Claws/WP scrapper lived in there for his 20s)

In Founders, I liked to play "Sniper Battle" with my AR/Elec. Remember the game Silent Scope, vs that one sniper boss? Same thing, except you can move this time. Bonus points if I could catch a Sniper unawares, then drop Ignite patches under him from around a corner. Great fun. People talk trash about the snipes, especially AR's, but pah upon them.

A few months ago during a double xp weekend, I got on a team that wanted to sweep Rikti in the Abandoned Sewers. That was the first time I've ever been there in years of playing. When I got a character anywhere near 35 for the first time, the phat xp in the area had already been adjusted and the place subsequently abandoned.

All my characters start off in Galaxy. I like the layout better, and I never have given a care for running on a lowbie sewer team anyway. It usually is quite sparse in population, sadly.

I usually play redside, but I do have a couple of heroes that got up into high levels (one all the way to fifty, two years ago), and I've never been in Terra Volta, Eden, Troll Tunnels or the Abandoned Sewers. At least not that I recall, I may have peeked into one with a PUG or something and the memory didn't stick.

From time to time I think about digging out that dusty ol' Kat/Regen scrapper and poking around for these areas I haven't seen...

I'm all for zone re-working, such as they did for The Hollows - as opposed to a complete revamp. My scrapper I mentioned up there never got a chance to see the old Rikti crash site (I think he hit 50 on my first mothership raid), and I've always been a bit worried I might have missed a cool map or something. RWZ is great and all, but... I still wonder.

I disagree with Galaxy, I much prefer starting there.

Another zone that needs some love is Dark Astoria.
4 contacts with a short 4-5 mission arc, and maybe a TF.

I always go to Crey's Folly for my aura missons. Freaks, Rikti and DE are all common there.

Personally I can't stand Brickstown. It's ugly, has annoying pipe/tunnel mazes that'll trip you up and the giant crowds of "prisoners" milling around the Zig is both ridiculous and depressing. Makes you wonder what you're even arresting folks for.

Although I'd be hard-pressed to defend putting it on the list, in my own world Skyway largely forgotten. Obviously I'll go there for the TF but I never take anyone on mission arcs there and never do radios there. The architecture is both annoying and ridiculous -- what's with the superhighways that run a mile and then convert back to two lane roads? What possible purpose would they serve even if they had traffic on them? "Hey, this zone needed a gimmick so here's some nonsensical road construction just to irritate you as you try to find your contact".

I'm always in Brickstown in the 30-40 range. There are always radio teams there. I don't know why you would call it forgotten; it's no more forgotten than Founder's Falls.

I've run the respec trial probably 8 times in the last five months. People run this all the time. Granted, they don't spend a lot of time in TV, but still... you make it sound as if nobody ever heard of it.

You might as well call Striga Isle a forgotten zone. For all that it has two very nice task forces and series of missions leading up to them, most people never go there, and it's usually pretty empty when I visit. Quite a bit more empty than some of the zones you list.

Personally I think for a large portion of the population it's the PvP zones that are lost and forgotten.

But of all the zones you list, there's one that I haven't set foot in in more than a year, maybe two. The troll tunnels. You see, there are no exploration badges there. ^_^

I prefer Founders' Falls over Brickstown. And, snipe(r) hunting is fun. I love my snipe power.

I solo and hunt/street sweep a lot so some of the zones mentioned are ones I am in fairly often, especially Perez. You can get a few defeat badges there. I avoid Boomtown, though.

I sort of Disagree with Bricks since I play there frequently and it usually has a good population but that aside good list. You could almost add Faultline and Croatoa to it.

When they revamped Faultline it was the flavor of the month zone and was always crowded. I still go there occasionaly cause I like doing Penny's missions and getting access to limited SOs before level 22. But when I am there I rarely see many people around at all and almost no chatter in broadcast. Not to say no one uses them and Faultline does have some really good missions against AVs but it's no where near as popular as before.

Croatoa used to be very popular but now it's tought to even find anone doing a Katy Hannon TF in zone. Even I don't go there as much as I used to. I like GM battles so I'll hop in and take out Eochia and Jack but the accolade is very involved and finding 333 Ghosts is a pain with only 2 door missions total involving them. *Rolls eyes* especially since street hunting for them can ONLY occur after dark! Plus with a lot of players spending 30-40 minutes trying to find Sally twice so you can swat her on the nose to get the accolade? LOL I have several characters that still don't have Geas of the Kind one cause flying around the lake for half an hour looking for COH's version of the Loche Ness Monster is not my idea of a good time.



Oh and I do know Terra Volta is seeing plenty of Respecs.. May not be much else going on and a Respec only takes about an hour but people are in and out. Also a good place to hunt Lost Bosses. And as mentions the Numina TF does take you to Eden for it's last 3 missions and plenty of people are doing that these days as they work toward task force Coimmander.


Fact is there is so much more content now that depending on the player so zones get skipped simply because you can't do it all. Heck I recall at level 19 on my MA/Regen scrapper I actaully ran out of missions from all 5 contacts and had to street hunt and run dorr missions in PvP to get to level 20 so my contacts in IP and Talos would tallk to me. Of course that was back before Radio missions and XP boosters like Patrol XP. I soloed so much I ran myself out of content. Now between Task Forces, Trials, even Ouro missions have affected it. Players used to have to BEG contacts for that "badge" mission now they run to Ouro and simply do it without ever doing any other mission the contact may have. People that want to team are going to go to the zones with the most players since that's where they stand the best chance of finding one.. so some zones suffer. Hey look at what happened to the Hollows after radio missions started. "let's see I can go to the Hollows and run Dave's missions trying to solo a huge mobs of Outcast and Trolls solo so I can then try to run half way across the zone to get at his door missions .... Or I can go to King's row and after 3 door missions have a raptor pack. What should I do?" LOL

OP,

I disagree about Brickstown. I go there all the time in the 30-40 range and do tons of missions and street sweeping.

Lewis

I think there are far, FAR too many forgotten/underused zones in this game for the Devs to even CONSIDER adding new zones.

I went through the list of CoH zones on Paragon Wiki and I've got a total of 15 zones.

• Abandoned Sewers
• Boomtown
• Cascade Archipelago
• The Chantry
• Crey's Folley
• Dark Astoria
• Eden
• Firebase Zulu
• Galaxy City
• The Hive
• Perez Park
• The Storm Palace
• Striga Isle
• The Troll Tunnels
• Terra Volta