Imperial who?

Are we talking present; or in general?

I guess my answer for both would still be Imperial City, even though I strongly believe District Flags were a terrible idea… man… Town Flags were worse.

Back in the day as a new player, that was how you worked on your Assault and Support as you learned how to PvP. You went to your favorite town for dailies and fought other inexperienced players, and everyone had EQUAL risk, often encounters were friendly, and when they weren’t, they were truly exciting.

Those towns were our haven away from all of the maxed out PC transfers as we learned how to play the game, and that experience died with nothing to replace it.

It’s also sad to think that new players will never understand how great of a feeling it was to fight other players also in weak gear over a Delve for scaled leveling and actually win… an experience that died with One Tamriel.

People say Vengeance is an onboarding experience, yet, it doesn’t hold a flame to what we once had.

I like both and prefer the one that has a lot of players and that's Cyrodiil.

Imperial city as an environment is the best designed PVP zone I've played in any game. There are so many unique structures and terrain to utilize, it really makes the engagements feel more enjoyable than the average cyrodiil open field or tower skirmish that everyone has done a million times.

The sewers in particular are magical. The tight tunnels, the huge variety of different rooms, molag bal himself. I've had fights in both areas that I can distinctly remember to this day, 5+ years later.

Even the telvar and the PVPVE style of the zone are cool because it makes it feel alive, and like there is a reason to be there even when it's on the quieter side.

It is tragic to see the state it has gotten to today. I really wish they'd invest the time in a full mechanical and reward structure overhaul to make it something that could be attractive again. But with the talk of this "mid size zone" they've mentioned, I doubt we'll ever see a rework to IC.

Cyrodiil is actually enjoyable for me (at least until the ballgroups show up.) Imperial City is non-stop stress that I only endure when I need Tel Var for some reason.

Most of the time Cyro, because there are more people.

Too many outright predators in IC.

I play mostly Cyrodil, but my guild has a weekly IC event. Sometimes we play in IC more than once, it depends on whether we can get good fights in there. But mostly it is either just dead (so we farm Telvar for a bit before going to Cyrodil) or one alliance has a zerg advantage, in which case, there's not much of a point and staying and trying to fight. Occasionally there will be good fights in there, and when that is the case, we stay longer.

Unfortunately, IC has kind of devolved into a game of ambush, with nightblades and bombers just looking to hit weak targets, and there's few sustained fights. If your a tougher brawler, your opponents tend to run, scramble, hide in stealth, and kite in buildings for hours on end, and that kind of fight is not really engaging or fun.

When populated, IC has the best PvP the game has to offer.

The problem is it's never populated. ZOS killed IC when they made it so that you could only spawn in districts that your alliance owned. It made it so that as soon as one side of a fight got the upper hand or a good grouo kill, the fight ends instead of allowing for reinforcements to come back in.

PvP is further hindered with the cheesy method of instantly avoiding fights by queueing into Cyrodiil as soon as people think they can't win a fight, completely invalidating the entire risk vs reward of the zone.

ZOS fixing both of these issues would go a long way towards bringing back big sustained fights in IC.