the-hollows
Latest
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Spotlight on the Trolls
The low-level gangs that heroes face in City of Heroes follow a pretty set pattern. At the absolute bottom are street thugs with a little bit of superhuman muscle at the very top, just enough to remind you that you are in a city swarming with mutants and magic and all of that fun stuff. One step up, however, and you start to find gangs that are just a little more vicious, ones that genuinely couldn't thrive at all outside of the superheroic milieu. That's where the Trolls sit -- as a group of legitimately superhuman street thugs mostly kept in line by their own issues. The Trolls are most likely the first villain group out of the starter areas that you'll encounter in numbers, if for no other reason than the simple fact that they're swarming the Hollows. You're also likely to start running into them if you deal with the Skulls long enough because the Skulls are what keeps the Trolls up and running. Trolls aren't like their lower-level counterparts -- they suffer from a disease, and feeding that ailment is the source of their power and reputation.
CoH's Hollows gets a facelift
The Hollows. Long a zone of contention for those who don the tights and cape in the City of Heroes. This zone quickly became a bane to every low level toon for several reasons: it couldn't be soloed, players were forced to go there to get missions, it was a pain to travel through without getting whacked multiple times, framerates were often poor... the list goes on. Well, Melissa Bianco (5-year veteran Level Designer on the CoH team) wanted to change it... and change it she did. In fact, there are so many changes it's impossible to list them all here. You really need to go check Melissa's new dev diary to get the full rundown. Needless to say, veteran players will love the new and improved Hollows. It's been simplified, streamlined and now reflects the style of Striga, Faultline and other zones in that it's more of a hybrid zone (part city spawns, part hazard).
