Where'd Paragon city/Atlas park go??

I played for a couple weeks several years ago and was blown away by the gameplay, the fun, the community. Log in, head over to Atlas Park with a couple of other random noobs, blast some mobs and wonder at all the combinations of costumes/ATs/powersets, goggle in wonder when some level 35 hero flew over and buffed everyone. Anyway, I wound up not playing because my computer and internet connection were not up to it.
Cut to this weekend, more capable computer and recently boosted internet connection. Roll up a sweet storm/ice defender and show up in....Praetoria?? Very few mobs, cops that shoot when rescued (I'm getting now there's some story arc stuff going on), and no other players??. I played for 4 or 5 hours and saw ZERO other toons (on Pinnacle). Is there a way to get from Praetoria to Atlas Park? Where the heck did everyone go?? Has CoX died a slow death??

Your first character is required to start in Praetoria if you start a new account with Going Rogue. Roll a second character and you'll be able to choose Paragon City or the Rogue Isles.

BUT

Keep in mind several things:

1. The game has changed a lot. Hanging out in Atlas underneath the statue is no longer "the thing", except maybe on Freedom or Virtue (I wouldn't know, I steer clear of those...erm..."servers").

2. Most people are playing their 50s, are not in Atlas Park. They're running content to make progress in the new endgame system, so they're spending most of their time on Task Forces, not hanging out in zones.

3. A lot of activity is coordinated in global channels. On Pinnacle, you'll want to join PinnBadges (ask a mod to unsilence you, being silenced is default for joining PinnBadges due to certain...problem members), and also Cozmic's Playground. You'll find both to be the main hubs of activity on Pinnacle, but again, keep in mind that the endgame is the new shiny, so most people are focusing on that right now.

4. Yeah, player population is probably down from whenever the last time was that you played (sounds like it might have even been pre-CoV). But it's also a lot more spread out, across new zones, and inside new missions. Not seeing people hanging out in the city doesn't mean the game is dead.

Yes, once your Going Rogue character gets to level 20 in Praetoria they will be asked to choose to be a hero and go to Paragon or a Villain and sent the Rogue Isles.

Travel has gotten easier over time so even low level characters in Paragon of Rogue Isles may not be hoofing it to and from missions. Direct to mission teleporters, Pocket D teleporters, Ouroborus teleporters, base teleporters, market teleporters, unified tram and ferry systems (no dash in Steel or Skyway between stations in Paragon or between ferries in the RI anymore). Then you have players who practically live at AE (player designed mission center) or the markets.

This is on top of the already instanced missions so you have to go out of your way to find other players about the zones because you will rarely see them running from mission to mission anymore.

There are also a lot of old time players left so even zone events are rarely attended anymore. Trolls, ghosts, fires, the occasional Rikti invasion or Zombie outbreak is simply taken in stride, the way you rarely pay any attention to street crime anymore.

As DarkGob mentioned, the new level 50 content has been drawing the most attention lately which sadly means that there are fewer old timers around to help new players or fill PUGs.

There was also a time just after the market system was added that spam from gold sellers became a real problem. One way players tried to avoid spam was simply to hide from search while still being visible to friends and SGs. Eventually the majority of spam vanished but I'm not sure how many players bother to do a global unhide.

And quite a few still prefer to get their level on in AE.

The players are there, but there are a lot more places to hide out in now.

Here is a hint on picking servers. When you log into the game the servers are ordered from top to bottom from lightest load to highest load. Although load also figures in things like how many zone events are taking place it primarily matches how high the population is at the time. So if you just randomly picked the server at the top of the list then you picked the server that was least busy at the moment.

Once you have played a character then the last server you played on will always be the top one on the list but the others are still in order from least to most busy.

Freedom and Virtue are always the two most busy servers. Freedom consists mostly of power gamer types. People who play the game to be playing a game and to gain levels and enhancements. And unfortunately the least intelligent of those types tend to be the most vocal. Freedom has many good players but thanks to the broadcast chatter in Atlas it has come to be known as Freedumb. Don't be discouraged by any braindead or openly hostile chatter you may see there though. As I said Freedom has many good players. You just have to sift through a lot of chaff to get to them.

Virtue is the unofficial role playing server. Most people there are very friendly and eager to help out newcomers. There are some players though who look down on anybody who doesn't role play or role plays poorly by their standards. These types are easily avoided since they tend to congregate in the same exact groups and spend all their time rping in pocket D. There are also however many roleplayers who are open to interacting with anybody whether roleplayer or not.

I myself primarily play on Virtue and only roleplay occasionally. Despite it being the roleplaying server you pretty much have to actively look for a roleplaying team if you want to be on one. It's not likely to happen casually.

If you can remember the username and password of your old account, you may be able to reactivate it, and continue with either the characters you had before, or new ones you can start in Paragon City or the Rogue Isles.

Otherwise, as others have said, level one of your characters to 20, and you will be able to leave Praetoria and return to the familiarity of Paragon City. You will have outlevelled Atlas Park by then, but you can start a new character to go through the early levels there. Basically the new expansion requires you to start in the new area (making sure they get their money's worth out of the development) but once you get to 20 you "unlock" the previous start areas.

If you've been away from the game so long you never heard of City of Villains, you may not know that the Rogue Isles is a start area too. There are five new archetypes you may not have seen before, and they are only available "as villains", while the old archetypes are only "for heroes". In Preatoria you get to choose from all 10 ATs, so you might want to try them out. They depend a lot more on their Inherent powers and have more of a specialized feel than the old hero ATs.

So, when you get to 20, when you go back to the character creation screen, you'll see three options for "Create a Hero", "Create a Villain" or "Create a Praetorian". You can go from there.

This may be another reason why players are so spread out. Back in the "good old days" everyone was starting in Atlas Park, and there were still plenty of newbies working on getting to the higher levels. Now there are players in Praetoria, players in Paragon City, players in the Rogue Isles, 50s working on the Incarnate content, players in the Mission Architect playing crafted missions, players in Pocket D role playing, in Oroborous doing Flashbacks of old missions, or in Wentworths and the Black Market trading, and at the University crafting.

There are way more zones in the game than there used to be, and a lot more to do. You just need to find a good SG, or get onto some good global channels to help you get in touch with people doing the same thing you're doing.

Three things for the new or returning player:

1) www.paragonwiki.com
2) /joinchan N P C (include spaces) for the New Player Council. A channel full of new and experienced players who want to help you out. Trial accounts cannot join these channels.
3) The help channel is /hc Your Question. Get your question answered by other players.

I've been here over six years, and this game keeps getting better.