Free Praetoria!

Praetoria 1-20 should be free-access content. The zones are deader than dead, some great story content is going fallow and if I were someone to purchase the content now I'd feel honestly cheated - because it's just a slog to go through.

Opening it up to free players would mean there'd be a bit more life there. Probably not much more thanks to the DIB trial, but as it stands it's only slightly more active than Boomtown.

the main reason the zones are dead IMO is that you are literally locked out of all other game content until lvl 20, the furthest you can go is to pocket d

while if you are hero or villain you can go almost anywhere including praetoria

A freemium first time player mistakenly going into the barren, more difficult content of Praetoria would probably be the worst way to retain that player.

We've been working to free Praetoria since I19

I would like to play it, but I like to team.
If there were enough players to team there I would do it.

but letting free players access it won't solve the problem.
double XP in Praetoria might do it

but really the problem is that the bulk of players will go where they can team. With Praetoria divided out you will have either it or the lower levels of Paragon dead. The only real solution is to let players go back and forth, but that would be weird with the storyline

I would hope that the devs would work more on getting more population Villain side vs worrying about Praetoria. Besides, how relevant will Praetoria even be once we've finally finished with Tyrant and we're dealing with Battalion?

If DfB could be accessed from there, or it had its own version of DfB, it would be fine. The reason it is not played is because the mobs are harder (much harder), and the leveling is a bit slower. The stories there are much better than the 1-20 content for much of the rest of the game.

As much as I like DfB, it has hurt the low level game. It can be run from 1-20 pretty easy, and a lot of people just do that.

Praetoria's great... for VIP soloers.

Yeah, I have to agree that it's time to open it up to Free players. Also, the restriction on leaving until you're 20 needs to go away. It only impedes grouping.

With purchase of two Taiwan's.

Having Praetoria as a separate faction/zone which splits up the player base was a horrid idea. It has to be right up there with Han shooting first.

I guess the devs didn't learn with villains and splitting the player base there. They compounded the issues with Praetoria.

For me, those zones are a tremendous waste of resources. Even way back I was hoping they would just add several new TFs all with original art and ideas. Nope. We're bogged right back down into this linear, continuous Coming Storm/Praetoria non-sense.

Imagine if they put in those arcs into Atlas/Kings and Mercy/Port Oakes?! Revamp the starter zones and add new TFs/trials with original art/maps. Maybe something a bit more stunning and epic than a city or caves or warehouse would've been nice.

Ah well. I like some of the aspects of GR but a lot of it seems like an epic waste IMO.

I think the other problem is that they shot themselves in the foot with regards the main reason you'd play through Praetoria.

To get the Villain ATs/Hero ATs onto the opposite side without having to wait 4 days.

Now the new tutorial lets you make that choice out of the gate or if you skip the tutorial, at the creation screen.

So the reason why quite a few people would play the content was completely nullified (much to my own personal enjoyment, the storylines in Praetoria were good but the difficulty curve was way off for what it should be).

Controllers were a pain to solo with though, you had atleast 1 faction whose lts and bosses would completely ignore mez at a level where mez and subpar damage is about the only thing going for a Controller solo

I always thought Praetoria could have made use of a few task forces. Throw in some well-written task forces and you might see some activity there.