Contacts in Talos handing out inappropriate missions

I ran into this today with several contacts in the 20-24 range -- they wanted me to go to the Security Chief for Dark Astoria. I finally took this mission from one of the contacts and went to the Security Chief, who handed me the mission "Keep peace in Dark Astoria, Defeat 20 Banished Pantheon".

It's hard to believe that, standing as he is in front of the closed and locked barricade sealing off Dark Astoria, the Security Chief for Dark Astoria is unaware that the zone is no longer one into which it is appropriate to send level 20-24 characters.

Going to Echo: Dark Astoria, I found that the BP there counted for the mission, but being able to get to the zone depends on either having access to a supergroup base with a telepad linked to Echo: Dark Astoria, or possessing an Ouroboros portal. Making the ability to complete the mission dependent on having a particular item in your supergroup base or having one specific power (admittedly, one that's pretty easy to get) seems a little squirrelly.

Additionally, why would the Security Chief be sending you off to defeat mobs in a temporal echo of the zone? Nothing you do there is going to affect the reality of the zone in any way, so sending you there is a pointless exercise. And would the Security Chief even know that the temporal echo exists? If he really is still the Security Chief for Dark Astoria, he should be standing near the portal to Dark Astoria over in Peregrine Island, and contacts should be directing heroes to him at level 50, not in the early 20s.

It's a bug.

The devs didn't do as good a job as they hoped when they cleaned up all the content that shipped you off to Dark Astoria.

Sounds like an oversight if I ever heard of one!

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

I got an answer back from the support ticket I opened. Apparently having characters receive missions in a zone that is no longer accessible to them, and which can only be completed in the "temporal echo" of the zone -- requiring that you either have the Ouroboros Portal power or have access to a supergroup base with the Pillar of Ice and Fire to even get to the zone -- is "working as intended".

Basically, the devs took the quick-and-dirty way out, and didn't bother to adjust any of the missions that were in Dark Astoria, relying on the ready availability of Ouroboros portals for characters to be able to get to the "Echo: Dark Astoria" zone where they can complete them. And, in the process, shafting Rogues again; a Rogue on a team of heroes with a mission in "Dark Astoria" is unable to participate, as the hero and villain Ouroboros zones are still disjoint, and the redside Ouroboros zone provides no way to get to either Echo: Galaxy City or Echo: Dark Astoria.

Or they have been able to determine that very few people still do the old missions and those that do know what's going on.

Once again I wish that they had not bothered with the "echo" version in Ouroboros. Instead they should have done one of three things:

1. Kept the Talos entrance and let it lead to the old version of the zone. At level 20-29 Mot hasn't awakened yet. This is the standard "levelling up means time passes" method of storytelling we've seen since day one. The new zone would be accessible through the portals as usual.

2. Kept the Talos entrance as above but let people choose which version of DA they want to enter when they click the guards.

3. Use the dynamic zone tech to display an open door leading to the old version of DA to non-incarnates, and a closed heavily guarded door to incarnates, possibly with an npc standing there to explain what has happened and to refer the visitor to the upcoming TUNNEL entrances.