In my 5+ years of CoH play, we usually spend at least a double handfull of missions that send us to Dark Astoria to chase down one or another vile villain that has chosen to hide their nefarious activities in this desolate haunted zone. It's also the home of the Banished Pantheon, so many mission arcs that deal with this villain group will involve defeat X missions here as well as the usual door missions.

Our play group often talks about the buildings that pop up out of the fog and ambush them. (Just their excuse for not watching where they were flying/jumping/teleporting/running, not actual ambushes by ambulatory buildings...)

There's a rich back story to the zone, which used to only be known if you did one of those arcs that dealt with the zone, and thus got handed the 'briefing' about it. Now there is a briefing person in there that will give you some of this information, so you don't miss out just because you didn't happen to get the contact that sent you there.

This, and other Hazard Zones in CoH are often the 'forgotten' or 'avoided' areas of the game. Others are Boomtown, Crey's Folly and Eden. The first and last of those you could, like with Dark Astoria, play your whole journey on CoH from level 1 to 50 without ever going to them.

Boomtown you often get sent to for that one Defeat X mission from the Boomtown Security Chief. Same with Eden, get sent to the Eden Security Chief and end up with a Defeat X inside Eden. But never have any reason to return there.

There ARE rare missions at higher levels that will send you off to some door in the depths of Boomtown, Dark Astoria, Crey's Folly and Eden... but not many.

And there's The Hive... a zone beyond Eden which, if you are not into doing 'raid content' you are likely NEVER to go to it... it's the home of Hamidon. (The villain side version of this is in The Abyss, off of Grandville... and The Abyss is, likewise, a zone a villain never need travel to.)

Personally, ever since the developers revamped The Hallows (once a zone no one WANTED to go to, but everyone got sent to at least once), and then revamped Faultline from a Hazard Zone into a FUN, FUN alterative low-mid level city zone with GREAT missions, I have wished for more content for the other underused Hazard Zones of Paragon City.

Thanks for reminding us all that Dark Astoria exists, and that City of Heroes is not alone in the world of MMOs in having under used and sometimes 'forgotten' areas.