The First Four

As Shooty and Bang-Bang said in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it isn't easy being a cop.  Especially in Kings Row.

Late on during the live run of City of Heroes the low level blueside zone of Kings Row got a makeover.  The Skulls had several new mob types added to their ranks, along with new story content, and on the streets they are now often found clashing with the cops, and the cops are usually getting the worst of it.

It does beg the question - why would anyone want to be a cop in Paragon City?  In a place where even the common street criminals are necromancers or in league with demons, and the Capes get the credit for everything anyway, there's surely got to be an easier way to make a living.

The Kings Row reworking added a lot of new atmosphere to the zone, which is something some of the other early blueside zones could also have done with.  KR was already probably my favourite of the first four regular* heroside zones - especially in those areas where I can leap from rooftop to rooftop in classic hero style.

*By which I mean the main levelling zones, not the hazard zones such as The Hollows, Perez Park and Boomtown.

As for the other three of these early zones...

Atlas Park

There is no more iconic location in all of City of Heroes than Atlas Park.  Even as a player who leans toward redside I can't argue this.  It's where we all started, and I'm absolutely certain that when the game returned last year it's where we all came back to.  I've no doubt that just about every returning player rolled a hero first, if for no other reason than to hear that fanfare again.

AP is a good zone, well laid out, easy to navigate (the statue of Atlas in the centre of the zone is hard to miss) and the location of some fun early missions.  Those first few levels do go by quickly, so I'm never there for more than an hour or so, but it's always an enjoyable hour.

Steel Canyon

This zone and Skyway City share the 11-20 level range, but somehow I always end up here first.  I like SC - the layout is distinctive and I can find my way around without having to look at the map too often, and I always enjoy the music, even if it's a little strange that it shares some tracks with the Pocket D nightclub.  Still, that does give the zone something of a bustling, metropolitan vibe.

Although the zone does have a distinct visual identity - it's a fantastic zone to see on a character with flight - it does have the problem that the missions set there are mostly generic and disconnected to the zone itself.  This is very common on blueside, due to a lot of it being the oldest content in the game, and it's perhaps why these zones aren't generally as memorable as those on redside.

Skyway City

Speaking of redside... I must admit I know Skyway City mostly from running the villainside mayhem mission that takes place there, from which I can say that my main impression of it is that it's a hell of a place to try to move around in without a travel power.

Not that I dislike that, and when I'm in the mood I do enjoy crossing Skyway with nothing but running and jumping, though on this character I've been leaning on her travel powers quite a bit.  No, I don't dislike Skyway City, I just rarely seem to have any reason to go there, or do anything much when I am there.  It's the Galaxy City to Steel Canyon's Atlas Park - an alternative, but not one that's really necessary.

Well, Galaxy City before it got smashed to bits by meteor strikes, obviously...