April Letter - "The old days"
They still send you all over the place because they're the same "old days" contacts and the same "old days" missions that they're talking about. If a contact hasn't had their missions revamped, then they are an "old days" contact, even if you can do it all today.
What they're talking about is revamped content (generally centralized) vs old content (sending you all over the place).
Paragon Wiki: http://www.paragonwiki.com
City Info Terminal: http://cit.cohtitan.com
Mids Hero Designer: http://www.cohplanner.com
"...and contacts regularly sent you to a different zone for every mission and were very private about their cell phone numbers."
Don't take this the wrong way - I love COH and think the Devs do a great job - but this comment really shows how little they go back and look at older content.
I recently levelled up 2 new heroes by doing contact missions and holey crap they still send you all over to hell and back for every mission. I had a Kings Row contact that didn't send me to a single mission in Kings Row - all 8 or so missions were in other zones - for no story reason I could see.
Now I know barely anyone does this content any more do possibly their time is better spent working on other aspects of the game but I wonder why people don't do this content - takes far to long with too little reward. Keep the missions in the same zone as the contact unless for story reasons it absolutely needs to be in a different zone.
Maybe people would stop hanging out in AE asking for PL teams and instead team up for missions at the lower levels if it was a viable time/reward option.