The Hollows

[TheOtherTed]

So empty.  So sad.  :(

[Generator]

You can "thank" the DFB trial for that.  :(

[Legree]

I started playing City of Heroes just after the revamp, back when every contact would send you there at level 5 or 6 ("Have you heard about The Hollows?")  That intro is long gone, so I'd imagine the only people doing that zone now are those who like it for what it is - which if you ask me is the best reason to do any content.

 

Even so, just about every day I've seen people in LFG forming teams for Frostfire, and there's always plenty of interest.  The last time I joined one the team lead put a message in LFG  to fill the last spot and got 15 (!) replies.

 

You can "thank" the DFB trial for that.  :(

 

I don't think that's entirely fair.  Even before DFB it was far faster/smoother to do the initial City Hall contact (or street sweep) then head to Kings Row and start doing radio missions at level 5 or 6.  I love the Hollows - it's one of my favourite zones and you can be sure I ran my first new hero there as soon as I could - but even I wouldn't run it on every character.

[Snakebit]

You can "thank" the DFB trial for that.  :(

 

Oh I do....I do.

[TheOtherTed]

Where now the Trolls and the Outcasts?  Where now the Pumicites swarming?

Where now the capes and the heroes, and the Frostfire teams forming?

They have passed with Talshak the Mystic, with Flux and Julius mourning;

The Caverns of Transcendence lie empty, for bitter vets are scorning.

 

Anyway, I get what Legree said - after one too many Hollows runs, I remember being all to happy to do radio missions.  Still, there's a ton of nostalgia there, and even with the changes made (a hospital and trainer, greater variety in enemies, etc.), it still has an "old school" feel, and IMO is still a lot of fun.  It really is too bad that there isn't a "pointer mission" to it - I wonder if any true newbies even knows it exists.

[PaxArcana]

You can "thank" the DFB trial for that.  :(

I don't think that's entirely fair.  Even before DFB it was far faster/smoother to do the initial City Hall contact (or street sweep) then head to Kings Row and start doing radio missions at level 5 or 6.  I love the Hollows - it's one of my favourite zones and you can be sure I ran my first new hero there as soon as I could - but even I wouldn't run it on every character.

Exactly this.

 

Radio missions killed the Hollows.

 

DFB is just a matter of finally putting the coffin in the ground.

 

(And I say this as a "Hollows Baby" - that's where I first learned about how to get from A to B without drawing aggro, with my wee little 6th- and 7th-level Blaster, pre-Hover even, exploring the whole zone via Sprint.  LOVED the place once I got that figured out.)

[Jeneki]

The Atta mission is even more ridiculous now than it was before.  Back in the day I could get ~3 levels from that one mission alone, and now that anyone can double xp anytime it's nuts.

[wjrasmussen]

The hollows ruined Kings Row before DFB ruined the hollows.

[Legree]

The hollows ruined Kings Row before DFB ruined the hollows.

 

Kings Row, where level 5 heroes, fresh from completing their initial City Hall contact's missions, are asked to fight level 10 Vahzilok or Circle of Thorns.

 

All I can say to that is "Frostfire arc team LFM!"

[GamerKate]

I’ve done the Hollows arcs ten times in the past few weeks, getting alts up towards lvl 15 to take them to BB for shivans.

 

Hate the pumicites but I’ve grown to love Frostfire and his moron. :D

 

MCM

[Abraxus]

I intentionally try to take in a much content as I can, but not necessarily everything on every character.  I'll do Atlas on one, Kings on another, Hollows on still another.  I am guilty of using DFB, like most, but with so many Alts, I manage to take in much of the available content intentionally.  You might not see it, but I think others do something similar.

 

If, somehow, all of the players on all 5 servers could somehow be concentrated on 1, you would see higher populations in every zone.  But, since we are split into separate instances that host maybe 2,000 players each at their peak, things are spread out a little thinner. 

 

DFB is not the necessarily the death of other content.  It is just another choice provided to players.  The majority choose that as a way to blow through their formative levels.  But, for those of us who love every aspect of the game, we still make a concerted effort to experience as much of it as we can.  Because, in all honesty, it could all end tomorrow, and we remember what that feels like.  Obviously, the likelihood is that it will be around for a long time to come, but we cannot afford to take that for granted again...so I don't.

[echosam]

I've tried to make sure at least one alt does each zone. My attitude is, if NC shuts all of this down tomorrow, I want to have gotten to re-experience as much of it as possible. I took Live for granted, this time I'm going to get proper closure, if it comes to that. If not, still gonna experience as much as possible.

[Abraxus]

In short, play like there's no tomorrow, because one really never knows!

[Solarverse]

I started playing City of Heroes just after the revamp, back when every contact would send you there at level 5 or 6 ("Have you heard about The Hollows?")  That intro is long gone, so I'd imagine the only people doing that zone now are those who like it for what it is - which if you ask me is the best reason to do any content.

 

Even so, just about every day I've seen people in LFG forming teams for Frostfire, and there's always plenty of interest.  The last time I joined one the team lead put a message in LFG  to fill the last spot and got 15 (!) replies.

 

You can "thank" the DFB trial for that.  :(

 

I don't think that's entirely fair.  Even before DFB it was far faster/smoother to do the initial City Hall contact (or street sweep) then head to Kings Row and start doing radio missions at level 5 or 6.  I love the Hollows - it's one of my favourite zones and you can be sure I ran my first new hero there as soon as I could - but even I wouldn't run it on every character.

 

Oh but it is fair. The evidence rules strongly in favor of blaming DFB. What stopped players from going to the Hollows so much initially was the Hollows Revamp. Before the Revamp, teams were flourishing in the Hollows.  It got considerably worse after DFB. Nobody wants to put the blame on anything that the majority of the players love doing, but the proof is there, all you had to do is watch it happen and unfold.

 

Hollows has become a dead zone due to DFB. It was drying up after the revamp, even though people on the boards say they like Hollows better after the revamp, but the evidence of what people on these boards say, do not add up to what is being seen in game. I have come to understand that people on the boards want to appear important, so they will say things that doesn't add up in game. This has become obvious. And yes, DFB is a great deal to blame here because that is what the evidence shows us.

 

Before the Revamp, Hollows was not packed like it once was, but you always seen players running around in Hollows, willing to team for the several different things there is to do in there, especially missions leading up to Frostfire. I never had any issues forming groups to run Hollows...until the Revamp.

 

After teh Revamp, despite what players on the forums say, the zone died. You might see one, maybe two players in the Hollows doing things. It was pathetic. The revamp did nothing to change Hollows and the traffic Hollows got. It made it worse. However, I could still find people through the search function to put together teams with relative ease for missions in the Hollows.

 

Now we enter DFB...and now we have posts such as this one spawning from the direct interference with DFB.

 

How do I know all of this? Because I am an Altaholic, and the Hollows is part of my regular routine of leveling up. I have actually seen these things unfold.

 

The evidence proves otherwise. It is very much the fault of DFB and AE. People will always take the path of least resistance. This is why DFB and AE is so popular. However, all they have accomplished is creating dead zones and lazy play.

 

I warned the original Devs this would happen as a direct consequence of allowing AE missions to grant xp. I was ignored. Now we have exactly what I had warned against. DFB should have only been given a lock out timer. Since it was not given a lock-out timer, we now have dead lowbie zones.

[Legree]

The evidence rules strongly in favor of blaming DFB.

 

It really doesn't.

 

I don't doubt there was a golden age of the Hollows, with easy teaming and taxibots and such.  I also don't doubt that this was over before I started playing in Aug '08, from first hand experience of the zone at that time and afterward.

 

Now I never played before the revamp, which came with Issue 12 - May '08, a few months before I started the game.  So I don't know when that golden age ended, because I wasn't there, but I can certainly take an educated guess, and it has nothing to do with AE (Issue 14 - April '09) or DFB (Issue 21 - Sep '11.)  It has everything to do with Issue 0 (April '04) and Issue 8 (Nov '06.)

 

Issue 0 - launch.  On a whim I've been running my most recent blueside alt through only Issue 0 content, because I've never done that before and I thought it'd be fun.  It is, but if you pass on the newer contacts and radio missions it becomes blindingly apparent that Issue 0 levelling was clunky as all hell.  It sends you to Kings Row at level 5 to hunt level 10 CoT and Vahzilok.  It sends you to Perez Park to take on five times your weight in Hellions just to get to the equally large number of CoT you're supposed to be fighting.  It throws contact after contact at you and they're all interchangeable non-entities who bounce you back and forth, back and forth from zone to zone, hunt mission to hunt mission, until it's a refreshing change to get a door mission in the zone you're already in.  A door mission, not even a story arc.

 

As I said it's fun, but it's as oldschool MMOing as it gets and I imagine when the Hollows came along and provided a more focused levelling experience for those early levels players flocked to it.

 

Then Issue 8 came along, with radio missions, and suddenly you don't have to do the Hollows anymore.  It's a great zone, but with no travel power it's easier to run radio missions and safeguards than it is to fight your way across the Hollows for the umpteenth time.

 

That's my read of it - the Hollows was popular because the Issue 0 content was clunky, and the Hollows became less popular once radio missions offered an alternative to fighting Frostfire and Atta yet again... and none of this has anything to do with AE or DFB, and I know this because I ran the Hollows months before AE, and years before DFB, and I couldn't get a team together to run the Caverns of Transcendance until that character had levelled (the regular way) to 50.  The Hollows had already had its day, before AE.

 

For whatever it's worth I'm not defending AE or DFB.  I've ran DFB once on Homecoming - to see what all the fuss was about, and on a character I haven't played since.  As for AE, I doubt I spent more than 2 hours tops in an AE building on live, and the only time I've entered one here was when a story arc sent me there for 30 seconds.  I've long since made my peace with AE and so long as it doesn't bother me I'll try not to bother it.

 

The game moves on.  Players move on to new things.  For all I've said some unkind things about the Issue 0 content I'm glad it's still there to experience, so I can find the hidden gems in among the hunt missions and the hazard zones... and I'm glad the Hollows is still there too, for those who want to experience that.

[Solarverse]

 

/snip

 

I'm not going to say I am wrong, but I will say that pretty much everything you wrote can be added to what I already said...and between the both of our interpretations of what caused this, we have summed it up nicely.  :)

[Gobbledygook]

I’ve done the Hollows arcs ten times in the past few weeks, getting alts up towards lvl 15 to take them to BB for shivans.

 

Hate the pumicites but I’ve grown to love Frostfire and his moron. :D

 

MCM

 

I laugh every time I watch that cutscene.

And at what you said. +1 Inf to you, sir.

[RikOz]

Hate the pumicites

Yeah, what's with those things? Are they programmed to always run around behind you?

[Thorazine]

After running DFB on every alt for my first week, I've decided to slow it down and smell the roses like I used to.  So I create, skip the tutorial, enter atlas, hit P2W, and then head to Prometheus Park to kill Hellions for my first couple levels.  Then it's on a to a contact to get started.  I left before the end of the game and there is honestly so much new to me all those fast levels in DFB made me feel like I'm missing something.  Yes it's good leveling, has temp powers, and badges, but I just need to slow down and enjoy things and Hollows is one of those places.  Just wish it wasn't a ghost town like the OP said.

[Erydanus]

The Hollows revamp was very popular on live when it happened. A lot of people really went nuts on those repeatable missions Meg gives you. No the spawns are no longer set up to be 50% higher than the standard for a hazard zone is, they're now only about 2-3x what a normal city zone should have. They are chopped up into many small patches which means finding the right ones is tougher since War Witch moved the mobs around a lot.

 

You still get introduced to David Wincott if you walk up to the City Hall contacts and do their classic starting missions. You also can get him through the find a contact function.

 

Bottom line, if you want to do the Hollows you can, and the Merit payout is VERY HIGH and worth doing.

[joyispunkrolex]

There's no zone in the game that I'd see removed before the Hollows. Screw that whole zone. The mobs that spawn there are boring to a one. The zone itself is ugly and lacks any sense of verticality and the storylines are boring. There are better ways to get merits and there are better zones for that level ranges and yes that does mean I'd rather wander around the maze in Perez Park.

 

If I had my way, they'd move the Shivan crap to the Hollows and let us have Galaxy City back.