Ten Ton Hammer interviewed Matt "Positron" Miller, Senior Lead Producer of City of Heroes about the upcoming expansion Going Rogue, which will allow players to transition from hero to villain and villain to hero.

"This process is not immediate, it's not a switch, it's not a $30 charge. It's a story that you go through. For heroes, it's a fall from grace, for villains it's a redemptive arc. A hero will be a hero for a while and he'll do enough content that he'll become a vigilante... do enough of that vigilante stuff and you'll get kicked out of Paragon City and you'll end up in the Rogue Isles as a villain."

"Villains don't become vigilantes, they become rogues. They become the redemptive sort-of guys that think, ‘Maybe I'm fighting on the wrong side. Maybe I'm not doing everything for the right reasons. Maybe there's a better way for me to use my powers.' They'll get what I term internally as the "Han Solo missions," the heart-of-gold but wears a grey hat type stuff. Eventually if they do enough of that stuff, they'll be invited over to Paragon City to become a full fledged hero. "

Even if you meet the content requirements to change allegiances, there's no danger of accidentally changing sides. "You'll have to purposefully do the content, and purposefully make that transition. So you can kind of ride that middle line I talked about - you can really stay a gray hat, and there will be some advantages to doing so. You can go from one zone to another more freely, but you'll lose some opportunities as well."

In a developer journal at MMORPG the Senior Designer Floyd Grubb focusses on  Powerset Proliferation in the upcoming Issue 16 update to City of Heroes.

For Issue 16: Power Spectrum, we wanted to proliferate more powersets; at least one per archetype. In looking at which sets to shift around, there were a number of considerations that had to be examined. There wasn't a specific rule, it was more the circumstances of development which really guided the decisions. As the art team was busy with Powerset Customization, we tried to stay away from sets that required too much animation or FX work. We also wanted to fill in matching Themes where we could, like with adding Assault Rifle and Traps to Defenders. In other instances we wanted to fill in highly requested options, such as adding Claws to Brutes. In the end though, there are just far too many aspects to cover individually, but I'd definitely like to highlight some examples.

MMORPG reviews City of Villains again and came to a score of 7.8. This is why they decided to do another review of this 'old' game.

Where are all the bad guys?

That was how I felt reentering the world of Cities of Villains and, for an older game, it makes sense. The population has grown up and is PvP-ing and hanging out with the other big kids, so it was a lonely trip back. But even in older MMORPGs, you can see new players or alt players running around, looking to group while they level up fast. You feel immersed in a world populated by others, but being a villain, creating an evil character, running around? It felt, well, kinda lonely.

The uniqueness about Cities is how easy it is to get attached to your particular character, and the desire to take that character to the ultimate goal: PvP -- battling those awfully good guys in the case of Villains.

It seems the Mission Architect system hasn't worked out for City of Heroes, so big changes have been announced:

Greetings everyone,

I wanted to fill you all in on our plans for the Mission Architect badges and also our plans for future badges as well. We really didn’t want the Mission Architect to be an environment that encourages farming for XP, Rewards or Badges, and we thought long and hard about the current Architect badge situation. Ultimately we’d like it to be a place where you go to play great player created content.

So, going forward—beginning with the Mission Architect badges—we’ve decided to move away from “count” badges that might encourage farming and/or aberrant game play. Instead, we’d like to encourage players to try all of our content by offering badges for completing 1 time accomplishments and achievements. What this means for the Mission Architect badges is that many of them are going to be removed in Issue 15. This is because they encouraged farming, because they encouraged aberrant behavior by doing one thing over and over again, they were unobtainable by a large portion of our players, or earning them was completely out of a player’s hands and in the hands of other players.

A comprehensive list follows in the original post.

NCSoft announces a brand new expansion for City of Heroes named Going Rogue. In this expansion villains can become heroes and heroes can become villains.

How does a hero fall into darkness? How can a villain be redeemed?

There's only one way to find out...

Announcing City of Heroes Going Rogue^TM, the new City of Heroes® expansion!

As you walk the line between good and evil, explore the twisted parallel earth known as Praetoria. Encounter alternate versions of familiar foes...and trusted allies.

Get ready for new enemies, new zones, and a whole new way of looking at your character!

There is also a video available of the new expansion like here on Warcry.

Eurogamer has an article about CoX's new misson editor that seems to be a success.

"We are simply astounded at the response we've gotten for it," writes Miller on the official website.

"I feel like everything we have worked on has really been worth it when I see that within 60 minutes we had 360 entire Mission Arcs (each containing up to 5 missions) available for other people to play. By midnight on day one we had over 2600 arcs, and exactly 24 hours after launch we were already at 3800 arcs.

"We did some data mining of our own," he adds, "and 3800 surpasses the amount of content that we, the developers, have made for all of City of Heroes and City of Villains combined. In just one day our users did more than we could in almost five years."

Miller says fans are reviewing each other's work on the forums, furthering the star-based scores implemented in the Mission Architect tools. Players have even produced in-game advertising on posters, comic covers and machinima, we're told.

"We never expected anything like that even in our wildest dreams when designing the feature, and I think that is totally cool," says Miller.

A relative gushing of praise for CoH's content tool.

How can a five year old MMO be the way of the future? Well, besides the fact that City of Heroes already has a plethora of features other MMOs have yet to equal - like epic customisation, effortless teaming, early fast travel etc - it will soon have something that no other MMO can come close to: user created content.

I've already had a go of the engine behind this revolution, the Mission Architect, in open beta. And while I'm not prone to gushing, I'm emotionally at ease proclaiming that it's simply astounding. Ground breaking. Awesome. Hyperbolic, even. And it just gets better with each patch that is rolled out.

Latest update to include mission editor, Oli Welsh article here.

NCsoft has revealed that it will release the next City of Heroes update, Issue 14: Mission Architect, in March.

The update introduces the Mission Architect content editor, delayed from its originally intended release last year.

You'll be able to create and share stories with other players on live servers from hundreds of available maps and thousands of characters, or even create your own custom enemies. You can write all the the dialogue, determine enemy placement and difficulty level, and trigger cascading sequences of mission goals.

Boomtown eye CoH's latest patch.

City of Heroes Issue 13 is really a weird thing. While it does provide both new content and lots of changes and improvements to NCsoft’s superhero MMO, one might just view it as a stepping stone to Issue 14, which will revolutionize the game by letting the players create their own content and share it with everyone else. Not least because the two issues were originally one single issue, which NCsoft chose to split up last year.

But that viewpoint is a bit unfair actually, as Issue 13 gives the game's user base great new features, which have been requested for years. Thus let’s take a look at the latest free issue that comes with the slogan "Power and responsibility".

Eurogamer (once again) with the news.

NCsoft has released an Apple Mac version of its superhero MMO, City of Heroes. It's available as a digital download from the PlayNC store for GBP 9.99 or USD 19.99.

The port is the work of Mac conversion specialists TransGaming, which has also converted EVE Online for Mac. It includes all content for the City of Heroes and City of Villains released to date, 30 days of play time and some exclusive items.

NCsoft has partnered with TransGaming to bring City of Heroes to the Mac platform. The public beta will be simultaneous with the release of Issue 13: Power and Responsibility later this fall. Below is the press release:

SEATTLE and TORONTO, Ontario, October 30, 2008 - NCsoft®,the world's premier publisher and developer of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), today announced a partnership with TransGaming, Inc. (TSX-V: TNG) to bring their award-winning City of Heroes® franchise to the Apple® Macintosh®. The game has been enabled for the Mac by TransGaming, a leading developer of portability technologies for the electronic entertainment industry. City of Heroes for Mac will be available for public beta testing with the release of the game's thirteenth expansion, Issue 13: Power and Responsibility later this fall. The official launch will occur pre-holiday this year with a special digital-only Mac edition of City of Heroes, available across all NCsoft West consumer territories.

"Players will soon be able to join the battle of good versus evil in the most popular comic book MMO on both the PC and Mac platforms -- and in the same game world," commented Brian Clayton, executive producer of City of Heroes for NCsoft West. "Given Mac's fame as a platform for creative people and City of Heroes' unprecedented character customization options, I think City of Heroes is a perfect fit for the Mac gaming community."

In City of Heroes, the most popular comic book inspired MMO on the market, players craft their hero or villain identities and join millions of other player created characters in a constantly expanding universe. Unparalleled character customization is a hallmark of the City of Heroes franchise. Players can choose from hundreds of different powers and thousands of costume options, resulting in near limitless personalization. Players may go it alone or band together with others in super groups.

City of Heroes for Mac was made possible using TransGaming's CiderTMPortability Engine, which acts as a "wrapper" around the game software, enabling it to run seamlessly on Intel-based Macs. The partnership with NCsoft to develop and publish City of Heroes for Mac offers the Mac gaming community its first opportunity to do battle in the streets of Paragon City™ and the Rogue Isles™ in a persistent universe with no differentiation between the PC and Mac. "NCsoft's City of Heroes MMO is an incredible franchise and TransGaming is thrilled to provide Mac gamers the ability to demonstrate their creativity by building their own heroes and villains and immersing themselves in the battle between good and evil," commented Vikas Gupta, CEO & president of TransGaming. "Through Cider, the Mac version will parallel the developments of the PC version, providing all game updates, new features, and storylines simultaneously on both platforms."

Issue 13 for CoH/CoV was previously titled "Architect" with the introduction of player designed scenarios.  It looks like this has been bumped to Issue 14 and the new Issue 13 is titled Power and Responsibility, with offline character progression and selectable character loadouts the key features:

Another character customisation option and City of Heroes innovation, Issue 13 delivers the ability to have two different build-outs for each character, including which powers are selected and which Enhancements are slotted. With this feature it will now be possible for all characters to diversify their game experience by visiting any Trainer and switching the entire build of their character to an alternate one. You can use this separate build for whatever you like: if you wish to use different power selections for soloing and groups, you can do that. This even makes it possible to have different sets slotted for PVP and PVE. This new system gives characters the added depth and flexibility to tackle any challenge!

RPG Vault catches up with NCsoft's Matt Miller for an update on City of Heroes / City of Villains:

Jonric: How did the recent complete merger of the hero and villain portions come about? Were there any considerations against taking this step?

Matt Miller: We've wanted to do this for a while now, especially after NCsoft acquired the full rights to the property. At that point, we enabled all existing accounts with the other side as a gift. From there, the next logical step was making sure that everyone who purchases the game also gets everything.

Of course, one consideration against merging them was the value that people had put into the separate products they had purchased. We made sure that enough time had elapsed since they were both being sold at $49.99 to ensure that players who paid that much had gotten their money's worth.

The next big update for City of Heroes has been announced. Issue 13: Architect - as it is called - brings new features such as mission architect and day jobs. For explanation of this and the full feature list go here.
Otherwise take a look at Zloth's excellent post in our forums about this update.

Thanks Zloth!

NCsoft has announced the inclusion of a microtransaction business model for respecification of your in-game characters' stats. It will cost you the sum of $9.99 per transaction:

City of Heroes has expanded their suite of available purchasable services to include Character Respecs (short for Respecifications). Over the course of leveling up, there are many powers that a character can choose from. A Character Respec allows the character to re-select their powers from their chosen primary and secondary powers, along with any other pools of powers they have access to. To be clear, this optional purchasable Respec does not allow the primary or secondary powerset to be reselected; it functions like existing respecs currently available in game.

Optional Character Respecs are available via the in-game store found at the character select screen for the per transaction price of $9.99 USD.

There are already multiple in-game methods that players can obtain a Respec. Now, if the convenience of purchasing a Respec is desired, it is available. Having a purchasable option has been an often heard desire from the game's customers.

Once players purchase a Respec, they must then visit a Respec Contact in-game to use it, in the same manner as the in-game obtainable respecs are done. The Respec Contacts include: Jack Wolf in Galaxy City and Arbiter Lupin in Nerva.

MMORPG reports that the two superhero MMOs are merging into one game so players of either title will have access to both.

This is the final step needed in preparing the IP for future projects, to be announced later this year. Paragon City and the Rogue Isles have always been a part of the same game universe. When City of Villains launched in 2005 as a stand-alone game, it did not launch with an extra subscription fee, so there has always been this feeling that they are closely related. What’s different here is that NCsoft has taken down the barrier where players had to have a City of Villains serial code to make a villain, and vice versa. Now, it doesn’t matter if you bought Heroes or Villains, you can make characters from either faction and experience their unique game content. Additionally, Heroes now have access to base building, which was previously only available if you had purchased City of Villains.

“In setting the stage for our upcoming plans for the IP, we felt the time was right to truly consolidate the City of Heroes and City of Villains universe,” said Brian Clayton, General Manager and Executive Producer. “We have removed all restrictions that were created when City of Villains launched in order to make way for some really cool content and features we have in the pipeline. This is an evolution of the IP that lays the foundation for what’s to come.”

CoH is next on Eurogamer's list of re-reviews with a fairly positvie 7/10. Reviewed by John Walker.

City of Heroes/Villains is getting on a bit. No, the servers aren't empty, but rather the action is nearer the top end, the higher levels. It's four years old now, but in its third year you would still expect to see those starting areas, Atlas Park and Galaxy City, bulging with newbs, fitting themselves out with their first powers, showing off their explosive buffs in public areas. Returning - it's been a while since I fought crime in these streets - was a peculiarly lonely experience.

NCsoft announce that Midnight Hour has been released.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 21, 2008—NCsoft® Corporation, the world’s leading developer and publisher of online computer games, today announced the release of City of Heroes® “Issue 12: Midnight Hour.” The newest free expansion for current subscribers, Issue 12 brings to life a special covert group from the game’s lore, highly-anticipated Villain Epic Archetypes, more powerset options and character slots for players, plus a whole new Greek- and Roman-inspired zone to explore!

City of Heroes Issue 12, developed and published by NCsoft, brings the Midnight Squad out of the lore and into the game. The Midnight Squad is the clandestine organization of mystics, scholars and mages who hold a secret that could bring the alien group, the Rikti, to its knees. Players are encouraged to help the Midnight Squad uncover the secret that could help save Paragon City™ and the Rogue Isles from further alien assaults.

Part of this secret will be revealed in a new zone called Cimerora, which uses the Ouroboros time travel system introduced in Issue 11. This zone, inspired by ancient Greece and Rome, is only accessible by working with the Midnight Squad. Once the player has access, both villains and heroes must face deadly creatures and defeat an unexpected threat. As a reward for their accomplishments in Cimerora, players can unlock special Greek- and Roman-inspired armor and costumes.

Another key feature in Issue 12 is Villain Epic Archetypes. Now, villains who reach level 50 unlock two brand new epic archetypes; Wolf Spiders and Blood Widows. Wolf Spiders can specialize into Bane Spiders or Crab Spiders, and Blood Widows can develop into Night Widows or Fortunatas. Each specialty enjoys a unique set of wickedly powerful attacks.

Issue 12 also introduces Powerset Proliferation, which vastly increases the variety of villain and hero characters that players can create. Some powersets, previously only available to hero archetypes, are now available to designated villain archetypes, and vice versa. To help accommodate all of these new character options, the development team has opened additional character slots. All current subscribers receive two new character slots for use on the server of their choice. Other slots may be acquired as a part of the Veteran Rewards program, or for purchase. Details can be found on the City of Heroes web site.

“With the introduction of Villain Epic Archetypes, new costume options and Powerset Proliferation in Issue 12, we knew players would want to be able to create new characters,” said Matt Miller, lead designer. “Expanding the number of character slots in this way ensures that our players can use all these new features. We think it’s a great solution that adds value to the service.”

To join the adventures of the most successful comic-book themed game on the market, players can purchase the City of Heroes “Good Versus Evil Edition” game pack at retailers across North America or through digital download at the PlayNC Store. The “Good Versus Evil Edition” includes the complete City of Heroes and City of Villains® games, as well as a set of exclusive bonus items. Customers receive the first month of play free and both games can be played for the single monthly subscription price of $14.99.

For more information about City of Heroes, go to http://www.cityofheroes.com.

Eurogamer have an exclusive video of Midnight Hour.

The Midnighters are the scholarly branch of humanity's resistance against the Rikti, bringing their arcane knowledge to bear against the ravaging alien bastards. Book 12 is their time to shine as they strike back against the invaders which hit them so hard.

Is on the way for CoH, announced on the forums.

 I can’t tell you how excited I am for our game’s future, and although we have some major announcements yet to be made, one of the things I can talk about is a feature that we are planning. Similar in concept to our character creator, it allows you, the players, to create missions and story arcs for your characters and others to participate in. You’ll be able to pick the map, villain group, and objectives, as well as write the dialog and any clues needed for the missions. When you are satisfied with it, you can upload it and have other players across all servers play it and rate it. Fame will come to the players whose stories rate the best overall. It is features like these that we never dreamed of including when we first shipped, but are excited to be able to offer players very soon.

In the end I just want to send out a thanks to all of the players of City of Heroes and City of Villains. Everyone, from the veterans who have been with this game since it launched (and even earlier for some beta testers!) to the users who just subscribed last week, have made this the most fun game to work on in my seventeen years in the industry. I look forward to reviewing our accomplishments this time next year when we celebrate our 5th anniversary!

- Lead Designer, Matt Miller (Positron)

HEXUS.gaming has partnered with NCsoft in a giveaway of 2.000 14-day trials. A marketing event for the release of the free update "Issue 12: Midnight Hour":

HEXUS.gaming has teamed up with NCSoft to offer all readers the chance to experience the super-powered MMORPG, City of Heroes/City of Villains. To coincide with the release of ISSUE 12: MIDNIGHT HOUR, we have 2,000, 14 day time-trials to giveaway!

Tautology anyone?

A trailer of the new Epic Villain Archetypes - known as Soldiers of Arachnos which are to be released in the game update "Issue 12: Midnight Hour" this spring - is up at GamersHell. The video also shows the new archetypes Wolf Spider and Blood Widow.

GamersHell also have a bunch of new screenshots.

Alec Meer has written an article for Eurogamer about his City of Heroes character named The Entomologist. Here's something on why his character is better than your character:

Alright, so your Level 70 WoW Night Elf means a lot to you. He represents all your time in the game, a visual and statistical incarnation of all your achievements in dungeoneering and ganking and auctioneering over your hundreds of game-hours. His armour is his battlescars, a sign for other players to respect or fear him. But he isn't you. He's just a template someone else made. The Entomologist is me. I made him. From his appearance to his powers to his nebulous personality and back to a thousand new appearance tweaks later on, Ento is my proudest MMO achievement.

General Manager, Brian Clayton and Senior Lead Designer, Matt Miller answers Ten Ton Hammer's questions on the recently announced in-game ads that will start appearing in Summer 2008:

Ten Ton Hammer: Do you believe there will be any sort of fallout from the advertising deal? Will subscription numbers be impacted at all?

Matt: We definitely hope that subscription numbers aren’t going to be impacted at all, and that’s the reason why we made it optional. We want to give players that option to turn the ads off if they feel so strongly about advertisements in their games and continue to play the game like they normally had been in the past.

Those players will still reap the benefits from any money that is earned through this process, but they don’t have to deal with the ads if they don’t want to. We hope that there’s absolutely no fallout from this decision, and it’s really the reason why we put in that optional switch.

Brian: And to just be clear, if we really thought there was any potential to lose customers over this, we wouldn’t have done it. We think that the optional switch is also very compelling to the advertiser since obviously those players in the game who leave the ads on are willing to view those advertisements.

We feel that the one factor (the optional switch) gives players full control over their experience, which is something that we always strive to do within the City of Heroes universe.

I’d also like to make one other point regarding the revenue itself. Generally, what businesses do is take a percentage of their revenue and reinvest it back into their products and services. We do that as a business as well.

However, with the in-game advertising, there’s no percentage of revenue that’s going back into the business. One hundred percent of the revenue that’s generated from the in-game ads is pushed back into the development team and the game. What’s great about that is that customers have an additional way to support the product and service that they love without ever having to open up their wallets. There’s really very few opportunities in the world where the customer can do that.

It really is a huge win if the customers support this campaign. Frankly, it’s more important to us that the customers enjoy the game that they’re currently participating in. So if in-game advertising isn’t for them, we have zero issues with the customer opting out. Whatever works for them is what we want them to do.

To close out this particular topic, I think there’s some speculation that at some point we’ll change from making this an optional idea to making advertising required.

I have zero interest in doing that. The development team has zero interest in that. This is not an icebreaker to get people to buy into the idea then force it upon them at a later point. Our expectations are that in-game advertisements are 100% optional for as long as we’re going to be having in-game ads in City of Heroes.

NCsoft has announced plans to bring in-game advertisement to City of Heroes/City of Villains. They do so in cooperation with the advertisement company, Double Fusion:

Leading independent game advertising provider Double Fusion has entered an agreement with NCsoft®, the leading developer and publisher of online computer games, to represent the successful comic-book inspired massively multiplayer online game, City of Heroes®. Double Fusion will provide the technology and sales force to bring brands into the popular online role-playing game which takes place in a modern urban setting, an ideal environment for unobtrusive in-game advertising.

Double Fusion and NCsoft are focused on providing value to the players through this advertising partnership. While real world ads will lend realism to the urban world of City of Heroes, NCsoft also plans on taking advantage of Double Fusion's technology to display player-created content within the game. The publisher will dedicate all advertising dollars it earns to fund further game development for the online title, yet still allow players to opt out of advertising in order to provide flexibility to community members.

GameZone has a preview of some new powersets that is to be released for City of Heroes/City of Villians. Here is the introduction to the preview:

Hello everyone!

I, Doctor Brainstorm, have unlocked the secrets of the universe! In the coming weeks you will see a lot of powers used by archetypes who never had access to them before, and I wanted to give you some forewarning of what you can expect/achieve with this new Powerset Proliferation!

With all the coming new powersets, I know you are anxious to find out who got what, and that is exactly what I am going to tell you. I will also go into a little detail on the “hows and whys” that certain choices were made.

NCSoft have published details of Midnight Hour the latest content patch for the game.

Games32 catches up with City of Heroes/Villains programmer CW Bennett to discuss the user interface overhaul.

Q: Please give us an overview of this new feature.

A: Well, we basically integrated some "tools" into the in-game U.I. which display the numbers behind the game's combat systems. The Combat Attributes Window lists all the important attributes of the player and shows their current value. It also shows the source and contribution of buffs. The Combat Monitor Window is a lightweight window that can unobtrusively be left up all the time (unlike the Combat Attributes Window), so you can watch selected buffs change during combat. Additionally, more information can be found through buff icons that show their actual effects on the player, and in the combat log where hit rolls have been added.

Matt Miller answers questions about the planed XP curve smoothing coming to City of Heroes/Villians.

Q: Please tell us what exactly this XP Curve “Smoothing” means.

A: Well, the leveling speed “curve” looked like a jagged mountain slope more than a smooth line. There were some levels in City of Heroes and City of Villains that just took players longer to get through. This was due to a variety of reasons, mostly in the realm of available mission content. We have tried to add new content in those areas over the past few updates, but a stronger hand was needed in some of the real problem areas. We went in and, through data mining, determined how long characters “lived” (existed) at any given level. This pointed out exactly where our problem areas were and exactly how we could address them. In addition we did a near global increase to the XP earned for defeating enemies. This will have everyone leveling faster than previous issues.

The official City of Heroes forums bring word that Issue 11: A Stitch in Time is to be released...today.

We are pleased to announce that Issue 11: A Stitch In Time will be made available on the Live City of Heroes servers on Wednesday, November 28th. All servers will be coming down for extended maintenance starting at 7 AM Eastern (4 AM Pacific) and we estimate they will be back up by 1 PM Eastern (10 AM Pacific).

Sean Fish, aka "Manticore", talks about his work as a City of Heroes designer and his involvement with the game's lore and creative process.

Greetings from the shadows to all you CoH & CoV fans! Sean Fish here…aka Manticore. I have been part of the City of Heroes family for a long time, wrangling story and design since about a year before launch. I’ve worked with Matt “Positron” Miller for most of that time and have known him even longer than that. (How many of you knew I was the Best Man at his wedding?) A little less than a year ago I got married, moved to Texas, and started working at NCsoft on a new MMO project. I never entirely let go of my ties to City of Heroes though. I kept in touch with the project through my work on the Top Cow comic as well as helping out as a story resource for the stalwart team that has been kicking so much tail and delivering awesome content Issue after Issue to you players.

NCsoft has announced they have taken sole ownership of the previously jointly-owned City of..  property:

AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 6, 2007—NCsoft® Corp, the world’s leading developer and publisher of online computer games, today announced the formation of a new development studio in Mountain View, California. The announcement comes as the company begins a renewed push to further develop the City of Heroes® property, which is now 100 percent owned by NCsoft. Previous to today, ownership of the intellectual property (IP) was split between NCsoft and Cryptic Studios, the original developer of the project.

The new studio will be built around key members of the City of Heroes team from NCsoft and Cryptic Studios including the art, programming and design team leads.

“We’re happy to announce that NCsoft has acquired full ownership of the City of Heroes IP,” said Brian Clayton, NCsoft executive producer and manager of the new studio. “Our plans are clear. We are now in a position to make a major reinvestment in the City of Heroes product line. With our existing Cryptic and NCsoft team as the core, we will be able to run our current service without any interruption to our players, expand our studio to deliver triple-A content, and take City of Heroes to new heights.”

NCsoft will soon be announcing formal plans for the City of Heroes IP, which will include expansions and sequels to the popular comic-book inspired massively multiplayer online (MMO) game.

Matt Miller, Lead Designer on the City of Heroes project and formerly with Cryptic Studios said, “We’re thrilled to be bringing the CoH franchise to the next level. And we couldn’t be more pleased to be working completely under the NCsoft banner. We feel that City of Heroes’ best days are in front of it.”

For more information about City of Heroes, go to http://www.cityofheroes.com.

WarCry has word that NCSoft and Cryptic Studios will be wiping all character debt for CoH/V players following the release of Issue 11: A Stitch in Time.  Futhermore, players with one side of the 'City of' coin will be granted access to the flipside.  Meanwhile, the official site has been updated with news of a respec overhaul with the new issue.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun looks back at the creation of City of Heroes with a Jack Emmert interview pulled from the archives.

“Initially, City of Heroes was the brainchild of two people: Rick Dakan and Michael Lewis,” notes Jack, clearly dodging the Secret Identity issue, “They were childhood friends, and they had an idea for a superhero MMO. They’d been a little disillusioned by the fact the genre had remained pretty much fantasy based, when there was so much opportunity for growth. Michael Lewis became quite successful in a videochip company, he sold it, and gained investment money to found Cryptic Studios. Rick asked me to join them – so I was sort of employee number 2.”

Drop by the City of Heroes or Villains site for a glimpse of two new power sets added to the game with Issue 11: Stitch in Time.

Cryptic Studios has released a lengthy developer diary from Matt Miller discussing weapon customisation in Issue 11: A Stitch in Time.

One of the most often requested features for the “City Of” games is power customization. We already offer some of the most extensive costume customization of any MMO on the market, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg for what our players desire. They want the ability to customize every single bit of their character, including how their powers look.

Unfortunately, the animation and effects system that City of Heroes was built on didn’t lend itself well to customizing power blasts or altering the color of the fire attacks. Numerous powers have baked-in elements that would require a nearly insurmountable effort to get power customization to work at the level our players have come to expect. When faced with this fact, we decided that we would much rather devote the animation and effects time into new powers and new effects than going back over older powers and giving them a purely cosmetic facelift.

When it came to adding new powers to the game, Jack Emmert, the Creative Director at Cryptic Studios, suggested that we poll the players to find out what they wanted in the way of powers. We knew we wanted to do a melee set and a defensive set so that the melee archetypes (Tankers, Scrappers, Brutes, and Stalkers) could get some much needed love. When we reviewed the results of the polls, the defensive set that the players wanted the most was Shields.

The players wanted it, but we were pretty sure that the players all had different ideas of how it would be implemented. We did a straw poll within the dev team, and everyone had a different idea of what the “shield” should look like. It was so varied in responses that we didn’t think we could make a shield that would satisfy even a quarter of the people who wanted the set. That’s when the animation team did some investigation on the way our weapon powersets were rigged up.

The team came back with very promising results: they were able to swap weapon geometry fairly easily and still keep the animations intact. With this hurdle cleared we just needed the UI time to get the costume creator working with the new weapon altering abilities and we would be able to let players choose their own shield graphic when they were working on the costume for their character!

Alas, the actual animation time involved in getting the Shield set done was too much for Issue 11’s schedule, so the powerset itself was shelved for a later issue. However, we decided to use this functionality with any and all weapons that were currently available in powers, and with Dual Blades as the new melee powerset in Issue 11, it was only logical that players could alter the left and right weapons for powersets that used both hands.

The initial tests were very promising; using models ripped from the game, our development team was rediscovering existing powersets with new graphics. Although it was strictly a cosmetic change, no alteration of damage type or the like, new weapon models really made some of the older sets feel different and breathed new life into them! Choosing a Warhammer for the War Mace powerset doesn’t alter any of the powers, but does give your character a lot more distinction. And since these are chosen on a per-costume basis, characters can have different weapons for their different outfits, if they so desire!

The goal was that every weapon power would get their default weapon, an archaic or mystical version of the weapon, and a high-tech or more modern take on the weapon. We succeeded in this area with many powersets, and even were able to add a bunch of weapons that we had in the game already so the players could further customize their characters.

We then decided that certain weapons should be “unlocked” as rewards for achieving milestones. These would be the weapons that were closely identified with enemies in the game; the Thorn sword from the Circle of Thorns, the Red Cap’s daggers, Rikti swords, etc. These “prestige” weapons are earned through normal play so that archetypes that use them could further customize their character. Additionally, players who obtain these exclusive weapons could be seen, at a glance, as having overcome these opponents.

All in all we are very pleased with the implementation of Weapon Customization. We are always happy when we can give players something they have been asking for. Players can expect to see more and more weapons added to the costume creator as the game moves forward!

Following is a list of powersets and their respective weapons that are currently planned for testing in Issue 11. This list may well change during the testing process.

Assault Rifle
Assault Rifle
Merc. Assault Weapon
M-14/M-380
Tactical Assault Weapon
Tommy Gun
Council Assault Weapon
Council Sub-Machine Gun
Nemesis Rifle
Vanguard 'Redding' Rifle

Axes
Battle Axe
Pickaxe
Hatchet
Shovel
Rikti Axe

Dual Blades
Scimitar
Longsword
Falcata
Khopesh
Gladius
Redcap Dagger
Faer Dagger
Dragon Dagger
Katana
Wakazashi
Ninja Blade
Tanto
Sai
Rapier (Right Hand Only)
Main Gauche (Left Hand Only)

Bows
Recurved Bow
Arcane Bow
Compound Bow

Claws
Hero Claws
Villain Claws
Fury Claws
Talsorian Blades
Shadow Blades

Katanas
Katana
Ninja Blade
Fantasy Blade

Maces
War Mace
War Mace 2
Flanged Mace
Studded Mace
Warhammer
Sledge Hammer
Baseball Bat
Club
Shillelagh
Skull Club
Bone
Carnival Mallet
Shovel
Tech Mace
Fantasy Mace

Pistols
Semi-Auto
Revolver
Magnum Revolver
Revolver w/Laser Sight
Match Compensator
Tactical Sidearm
Flintlock
Mini-Uzi

Pulse Rifles
Pulse Rifle
Crey Pulse Blaster
Rikti Blaster
Rikti Rifle
Retro Rifle

Broadswords
Broadsword
Flamberge
Shadow Bane
Cutlass
Thorn Blade
Tsoo 'Katana'
Rikti Sword

WarCry talks to Melissa Bianco and Vince D'Amelio from the City of Heroes team.

Warcry.com presents City of Heroes developers Melissa “War Witch” Bianco and programmer Vince D’Amelio. Melissa answers questions about building and designing City of Heroes zones while Vince provides insight into his programming duties on the project. You can pose questions to Vince about the programming side of City of Heroes development that he will answer in a future article.

Melissa “War Witch” Bianco answers zone building questions.

Vince D’Amelio talks City of Heroes programming.

MMORPG.com chats to Matt Miller, Lead Designer for City of Heroes/Villains, about the upcoming content release, Issue 11: A Stitch in Time.

Missions that allow characters to travel through time are called Oroboros Missions. Naturally, the first question I was what Oroboros meant. To be honest, it sounded to me like one of these silly fantasy-style names that really don't have any meaning. Matt set me straight, informing me that it is actually the proper name for that classic image of a serpent eating its own tail. He told me that the symbol represents infinity. There's more info available on this symbol on Wikipedia. Matt told me that this was the perfect name for the Menders of Oroboros, as it represents the classic time paradox of the end creating the beginning. "Like if someone went back in time and became his own father."

The official City of Heroes site has been updated with a preview of Issue 11: A Stitch in Time.

Issue 11: A Stitch in Time reveals that all that is and was is not as it should be! The mysterious Ouroboros organization, a group of beings from the ends of time, enlists the aid of Heroes and Villains to rewrite the past. Heroes and Villains are able to travel through time using the new Ouroboros System, which opens the gates to both new and existing content for players. Issue 11 also unleashes two brand new power sets: Dual Blades and Willpower, giving Heroes and Villains a slew of new power options. Additionally, Dual Blades offers Weapon Customization – taking the “City of” Character Creator to the next level! And the Inventions system is enhanced with new “Very Rare” Purple invention sets.

MMORPG.com's Jon Wood takes the City of Heroes 14 day trial out for a spin and finds much to like in Cryptic's superhero-themed MMO.

City of Heroes is, in my opinion, one of the most casual-friendly MMOs on the market. It’s the kind of game you can log into for 30 minutes or for 4 hours. It’s the kind of game that you can easily solo, or you can play with a group (always more fun if you have the time). I could go into more detail on more aspects, but this is already turning into more than just a glance, so I will leave you with this recommendation:

If you’re looking for an MMO that does things a little bit differently, CoH is worth a shot. You can get a CoH 14 day trial here at MMORPG.com, just follow this link and give this three year old game a shot.

Curse and Badge-Hunter.com serve up screenshots of the new Issue 11 power sets while the official City of Heroes site hosts a discussion of the upcoming content update. 

NCSoft has updated the PlayNC site with two new FAQs covering the recent addition of character transfers and renaming to City of Heroes/Villains.

Can I transfer a character from one account to another? I had this old account I'm about to get rid of, but I'd like one of the characters from it.
Character moves from account to account are not currently part of this feature, sorry. 

Given the interest in names and the Character Rename feature, what is going on with character name purges?
As we announced on July 31^st here, the names for characters below level 6 on retail game accounts that have been inactive for over 90 days will be changed to unreserved status. For complete details, please reference the previous announcement.  

The official City of Heroes site has been updated with a new villain backgrounder featuring the Warriors.

The Warriors are a fierce street gang in Paragon City. They operate primarily out of the Talos Island and Striga Isle zones. Their membership is wide and varied, and they don’t seem to discriminate based on ethnicity, race, or religion. The one common trait that all members share is the ability to fight and to fight well.

Matt Miller, Lead Designer of City of Heroes, looks back at the design decisions that lead to Issue 10.

With the decision made to use the Rikti for Issue 10, and bring Vanguard into the limelight, we knew it was the perfect opportunity to bring Hero 1 back from the Rikti homeworld, albeit a little changed.

Head on over to the official City of Heroes site for a look inside the Issue 10 "invasion" zone.

Matt “Positron” Miller narrates a tour of the new Rikti War Zone in this movie for Issue 10: Invasion, the 10^th free expansion since the launch of City of Heroes in April 2004. Meet the Vanguard, Earth’s last line of defense against alien, extra-dimensional, or even astral threats. Beyond the Vanguard base are areas of heavy fighting, including the redesigned crashed Rikti mother ship. Heroes and villains both help the Vanguard, and can cooperate on a new joint task-force. They will need to cooperate if they want to survive the 2^nd Rikti War!

This one's for our European readers.

Wednesday 25th July/...NCsoft® Europe and Cryptic Studios™ have released the newest expansion to City of Heroes®, Issue 10: “Invasion” where City of Heroes and City of Villains™ players join forces to thwart an attack by the evil Rikti™ aliens bent on the destruction of the Earth. The expansion, free to current subscribers, includes a major redesign of the Rikti Crash Site zone as well as a Rikti co-op task force where heroes and villains team up to defeat the toughest alien bosses.

The kick off invasion featured in Issue 10 continues the City of Heroes tradition of global events, and in this case the Rikti attack in constant waves through most of the games’ zones and threaten both Paragon City™ and the Rogue Isles™.

“The Rikti maintain a very powerful position in the lore of City of Heroes and the Rikti invasion event we had during the beta stage of the game is still talked about by veteran players,” said Matt Miller, Cryptic Studio’s lead designer for City of Heroes and City of Villains. “We felt the time was right and it fit into the narrative of the game to unleash another invasion -- with a vengeance -- and transform the Rikti Crash site into the heart of the new alien incursion.”

The Rikti Crash Site zone has been renamed the Rikti War Zone and is the epicenter of the Rikti’s assault on Earth. The Rikti War Zone, designed for player levels 35 to 50, allows both hero and villain players to work together on missions. Centered around the crashed Rikti mother ship, the Rikti have a variety of new powerful weapons including Rikti Pylons and UXBs or “unexploded bombs.” The Rikti Pylons are heavily armed defensive points surrounding the crashed mother ship which need to be defeated in order to gain access to the ship.

Issue 10, however, provides players with powerful new tools used to combat the Rikti. The Vanguard base established in the Rikti War Zone includes a special Vanguard Workbench that allows players to create special costume pieces as well as Vanguard Support Machines, or “heavies”, that serve as deadly pets in altercations with the Rikti.

“This expansion unleashes total war where aliens and earthlings get great new weapons to bludgeon each other with. We think this will be great fun,” Miller said. “The fact that both heroes and villains need to join together to defeat a common enemy is a comic book convention that helps to add greater depth and excitement to City of Heroes and City of Villains.”
The Rikti co-op task force, set for player levels 45 to 50, can be obtained from the leader of the Vanguard in the Rikti War Zone and delivers high-level adventures for teams composed of both heroes and villains.

To join the battle against evil aliens, players can purchase the City of Heroes “Good Versus Evil Edition” game pack at retailers across Europe, which includes complete City of Heroes and City of Villains games, as well as a set of exclusive bonus items. Customers receive the first month of play free and both games can be played for the single monthly subscription price of £8.99 / €12.99.

For more information about City of Heroes Issue 10 to http://eu.cityofheroes.com/

Matt Miller takes a closer look at the City of Heroes/Villains storyline and how it is being advance with Issue 10: Invasion.

With Issue 10 we decided to advance the storyline. Like any ongoing game we have many unresolved plot threads and each is a great opportunity for introducing new game content. Our first thought for Issue 10 was to bring back the 5th Column, a villain group that disappeared when the Council was introduced in Issue 3. But in the end we decided to focus on one of the greatest threats to Paragon City and the Rogue Isles, the aliens known as the Rikti. We had revealed a lot about the Rikti in the past, but there was always the looming specter of a second Rikti War. There were already plenty of missions that involve shutting down attempts by stranded Rikti to contact their homeworld. For current players, Rikti are a familiar enemy and remain a giant pain in the butt.

GameSlave awards City of Heroes/Villains a princely 8.5/10.

Hitting the streets is immediately satisfying. The busy world of Paragon City is densely populated with NPC lawbreakers and victims, meaning that if there are not a lot of people online on your server, you can always find something to do. Your powers (which you select at the start of the game and add to as you progress through the levels) allow you to beat up baddies to your hearts desire and, later in the game, to do fancy stuff like flying about. In fact, knowing the fun that is to be had, the developers allow you to fly pretty early on in the game. In the city itself, everywhere you turn, people are smashing up cars, stealing handbags or beating up innocents. It doesn't feel like work; it feels like you're saving the day. Of course, what you're really doing is gaining experience points - it's just you barely notice as it's so much less of a bore than it often is with other MMOs. But, while the game is quite solo-friendly, the real rewards lie in the team-based missions. Lots of experience is there for the taking, whether it be by thwarting bank robberies, rescuing hostages, defusing bombs, or just good ol' beating up thugs.

Play.tm reviews the current state of the game for City of Heroes and Villains players.

With City of Heroes and City of Villains now almost three and two years old respectively it's perhaps a strange time to be giving these already firmly established MMO's the review treatment, but with the recent release of the latest free update, issue 9, now seems as good a time as any to re-assess them and see how they hold up in today's significantly more crowded MMO marketplace. To cement their already obvious links both games now come in the same single DVD pack and your subscription fee covers both titles effectively giving you two games for your money, albeit two games cut from very similar cloth. For the uninitiated, and as their names suggest, both titles centre around taking your created hero or villain and trying to either protect or rule the streets of Paragon City depending on which one you're playing. It's a simple yet fundamentally brilliant idea for an MMO that holds up now just as well as it did at launch. It's also unashamedly fun, stripped of some of the more complex MMO features it gives a much purer experience for those fresh to the genre or anyone jaded by the serious complexity of other titles. By concentrating solely on the bits people who want to play superhero games are most interested in, namely superpowers and character abilities, rather than any of the more involved economics of other MMOs, COH/V manages to deliver a pair of finely focused games that understand what their audience wants and aren't ashamed to provide it by the bucket load.

MMORPG.com has updated its City of Villains gallery with seven new images. 

MMORPG.com has a nice rundown on the City of Heroes Issue 10 information recently released by NCSoft and Cryptic Studios.

RIKTI WORLD INVASION

Issue 10 begins with a World Event that spans across numerous zones in both Paragon City and the Rogue Isles, as the Rikti return in devastating waves. They are armed with new, brutal weapons and seek to establish a beachhead on Earth, presumably to save their lost brethren and to finish what they started the first time ... the destruction of Earth!

Jay Doherty, Art Director for City of Heroes, answers a few community questions at WarCry.

Community Qestion: If you could only design three more costume pieces ever for City of Heroes and Villains, what would those be?
Jay Doherty: A chef costume set, an evil clown costume set, 1930’s robot costume set

Community Qestion: We've seen costume pieces in a samurai theme, a pirate theme and many other themes. If you had all the resources in the world, what theme would you love to see in the game personally?

Jay Doherty: Cowboy, really. I didn’t make those cowboy boots without wanting to finish it up. But seems to me that players would rather have other things before I finish that one up.

MMORPG.com has posted a video tutorial of the new inventions system recently added to City of Heroes/Villains.

Boomtown has been quick to get a review out of Issue 9 for City of Heroes, praising the new Inventions system:

As every other issue before it, Breakthrough comes with tons of small improvements that just make life better. Take the trainer in Peregrine Island (cool-looking Castle) or the fact that you can now sell enhancements in Kings Row. The City of experience feels smoother than ever. There can be no doubt, though, that Inventions have not only put life back into the "City of" franchise, inventions have also secured the games as a whole. No new zones or archetypes could have had such a big impact on the community, which is buzzing right now and that is always something that draws new players to a game.

Issue 9 has been released for City of Heroes/Villains and the official site has the details .  Here's a snippet on the invention system.

Using the highly anticipated Invention system, players acquire and collect “loot” in the form of Salvage and Invention Recipes. These are used together to invent uber-enhancements, costume pieces, and more. This creates a world of new activities, rewards and character evolution!

City of Heroes is three years old and Cryptic Studios and NCSoft are having a party .

Three years ago City of Heroes exploded into the Online Gaming scene! Countless hours and many thousands of players later it is still going strong!

To commemorate this milestone, we invite you to join us on the Training Room test server April 27th to party with the NCsoft Community and Cryptic Development Teams.

Here are the details:

What: Official 3rd Year City of Heroes Anniversary Party

When: April 27th, 4pm to 8pm Pacific (7pm to 11pm Eastern)

Where: Training Room Test Server – for details to connect, See this post!

Costume Theme: ‘Secret Identity’ – Dress like your alter ego!

Be sure to tune in to www.w00tradio.net to hear live broadcast from the party floor!

Discussion is here!

Cryptic Studio's Jay Doherty talks about creating wings for CoH/CoV characters.

It's safe to say that wings are one of the most difficult player costume pieces to make for the game. There are two basic "rigs" for the wings which we call internally "Bat" and "Eagle." Depending on the wing; the proper rig will be used. When designing our new wings, I had to make sure that every wing looks good both in its flying state and resting state (You will not understand the giant pain in the butt it is to do that). The hardest wing to make was the Angel, just because it was the first one I made (we introduced Angel and Demon wings first as part of our Veteran Rewards program). One of the coolest things about being a character artist is making sure everything looks tight and I wanted to make sure that every wing looked different from far away and close up; so to achieve that I tried giving every wing a distinctive Silhouette.

Inventions are only one of the new things being added to CoH/CoV with the upcoming release of Issue 9 .

Using the highly anticipated Invention system, players acquire and collect “loot” in the form of Salvage and Invention Recipes. These are used together to invent uber-enhancements, costume pieces, and more. This creates a world of new activities, rewards and character evolution!

A new installment of Ask a Dev is online at the City of Heroes WarCry site.

arthurh3535: What is the hardest 'programming' thing that you want to eventually add to the game?

Serdar Copur: Blue-sky questions are so much fun. The most difficult thing to develop that I would like to add to our game is a completely new database architecture which allows every single player who plays CoH & CoV to be able to play on the same game server. This means no more server selection screens, no more re-rolling because your real life friends are not on the same server as you, and no more trouble finding a group at 3:00 AM because everyone else is sleeping. It’s not an impossible endeavor but my programming team assures me that there is nothing more time consuming and complicated that we could develop for our game at this point. I guess we can always dream.

Christopher Bruce, one of the developers at Cryptic Studios, has posted a new journal at Curse Gaming in which he discusses redesigning the Hamidon.

When we first created Hamidon, we started by making a trial that was, for all intents and purposes, impossible, save for one strategy designed by Geko, our lead powers and critters designer. Because the Hamidon would spawn a Mitochondria bodyguard for every character in the cytoplasm when reduced to 50% (and 25%) health, Geko’s plan involved the players coordinating their tactics so only a minimum number of characters were actually inside the cytoplasm, effectively reducing the re-spawn to a manageable level. Also, since the Mitos were immobile, characters could perform a multi-pronged assault so that when the Mito re-spawn occurred, they could force the Mitos to spawn on one side of the Hamidon, leaving one side undefended.

Issue #9 for City of Heroes/Villains is titled Breakthrough and has been previewed at Games Radar and Killer Betties.  According to Games Radar, Breakthrough will offer "upgrades for all":

Issue 9 will introduce the never-before-seen Invention system, which will allow players to boost their masked marauders with crafted costume pieces, new powers, gadgets, and more. Items and powers will be created via Recipes, and raw materials for these goodies will come in the form of “salvage” drops from enemies.

...and more on Inventions from Killer Betties:

Most of the time your inventions will only affect one ability at a time, but as you look around you will be able to find recipes that will allow you to build super inventions that will affect multiple abilities and traits at once. Obviously, these will be the big inventions people will be working for, and the great thing is that these never expire, so you'll always have this attribute boost to your character. You will also be allowed to trade your inventions across servers, and you can put buy in orders by setting the object type or pay price. So, you can go on Friday and say I want "X invention for X price" and if it comes around it will auto buy it for you so you don't have to physically be around to buy it up.

Ten Ton Hammer offers up some impressions of Issue #9 of City of Heroes/Villains.

While developer Cryptic Studios is deep in development on their Marvel Super Heroes MMO for publisher Microsoft they continue to expand on their first games, City of Heroes and its companion game City of Villains. During GDC last week the game's publisher NCSoft showed the media what's coming up in the next free content update, called "Issue 9: Breakthrough" and it will contain features that many players in both games have been waiting a long time for Cryptic to introduce in the game.

Boomtown has two parts of a multi-site community Q&A on City of Heroes with the answers supplied by Jack "Statesman" Emmert and producer Serdar Copur (Part 3 and Part 4).  Links to the first two parts don't seem to be around so presumably they were some time ago and these are the only current ones.

Next on the City of Heroes Issue #9 trail is Strategy Informer, also with a Matt Miller interview:

NCsoft: Give us an introduction into what Issue 9 will offer players for both City of Heroes and City of Villains.

Matt Miller: Well, first off we have the Invention system, which adds a whole new dynamic to the game. Heroes and Villains will collect salvage and recipes by defeating enemies. In keeping with City of Heroes “casual friendly” game design, the collecting of these items adds extra spice to the gameplay of defeating foes, rather than becoming a hardcore task of “grinding,” “camping” or hours of “raiding.” With this salvage, players can use the recipes to assemble an all new class of Power Enhancements or costume pieces (depending on the recipe), which they can then use. Unused recipes and salvage can be sold at the new Consignment Houses (for Heroes) or the new Black Market (for Villains). Next we have a revamp to the Hamidon encounter. For those not familiar with the Hamidon, it currently is one of the big “raid” encounters in the game, requiring a large group of heroes to overcome. We’ve changed the way Hamidon plays to improve the experience and also made an attempt to make the encounter better for smaller groups of characters. In addition, the Villains get their very own “Hamidon zone” in the Abyss. Finally we have Statesman’s Task Force, which allows Heroes to take the fight to Arachnos. This is on par with the Lord Recluse Strike Force and has the same reward pool to choose from at the end.

Next on the City of Heroes interview train is TotalGaming, with Matt Miller again stepping up to talk about Issue #9:

Q: What made you use the name “Breakthrough” to describe the free expansion?

A: Several reasons. First, it shows off the invention system by declaring a scientific breakthrough in getting better Enhancements into the hands of Heroes and Villains. Next, we have Hamidon breaking through in another part of the world, and finally we have the Heroes breaking through the Rogue Isle defenses in Statesman’s Task Force.

Cryptic's Issue #9 for City of.. is the subject of a new conversation at Boomtown with Matt 'Positron' Miller:

Q: Give us an introduction into what Issue 9 will offer players for both City of Heroes and City of Villains.

Matt “Positron” Miller: Well, first off we have the Invention system, which adds a whole new dynamic to the game. Heroes and Villains will collect salvage and recipes by defeating enemies. In keeping with City of Heroes “casual friendly” game design, the collecting of these items adds extra spice to the gameplay of defeating foes, rather than becoming a hardcore task of “grinding,” “camping” or hours of “raiding.” With this salvage, players can use the recipes to assemble an all new class of Power Enhancements or costume pieces (depending on the recipe), which they can then use. Unused recipes and salvage can be sold at the new Consignment Houses (for Heroes) or the new Black Market (for Villains).

Next we have a revamp to the Hamidon encounter. For those not familiar with the Hamidon, it currently is one of the big “raid” encounters in the game, requiring a large group of heroes to overcome. We’ve changed the way Hamidon plays to improve the experience and also made an attempt to make the encounter better for smaller groups of characters. In addition, the Villains get their very own “Hamidon zone” in the Abyss.

Finally we have Statesman’s Task Force, which allows Heroes to take the fight to Arachnos. This is on par with the Lord Recluse Strike Force and has the same reward pool to choose from at the end.

Cryptic's Matt Miller speaks to MMORPG.com about Issue #9 for City of Heroes/Villains:

MMORPG.com:

Give us an introduction into what Issue 9 will offer players for both City of Heroes and City of Villains.

Matt Miller:

Well, first off we have the Invention system, which adds a whole new dynamic to the game. Heroes and Villains will collect salvage and recipes by defeating enemies. In keeping with City of Heroes “casual friendly” game design, the collecting of these items adds extra spice to the gameplay of defeating foes, rather than becoming a hardcore task of “grinding,” “camping” or hours of “raiding.” With this salvage, players can use the recipes to assemble an all new class of Power Enhancements or costume pieces (depending on the recipe), which they can then use. Unused recipes and salvage can be sold at the new Consignment Houses (for Heroes) or the new Black Market (for Villains).

Next we have a revamp to the Hamidon encounter. For those not familiar with the Hamidon, it currently is one of the big “raid” encounters in the game, requiring a large group of heroes to overcome. We’ve changed the way Hamidon plays to improve the experience and also made an attempt to make the encounter better for smaller groups of characters. In addition, the Villains get their very own “Hamidon zone” in the Abyss.

Finally we have Statesman’s Task Force, which allows Heroes to take the fight to Arachnos. This is on par with the Lord Recluse Strike Force and has the same reward pool to choose from at the end.

WarCry kicks off a new interview/profile series with the developers of City of Heroes.  First up is Lead Designer Matt "Positron" Miller.

So who is Matt Miller?

Matt started in the computer game industry in 1993 at Domark Software (which eventually turned into Eidos Interactive). He started out as a game tester and did phone support for the company’s brand new U.S. office. He worked on many titles at the company including Flying Nightmares, Absolute Zero, Thief: The Dark Project, Revenant, and Joint Strike Fighter. He stayed at Eidos until 1999 when he moved to southern California to work at Prolific Publishing where he was the Producer for Shrek: Fairy Tale Freakdown and Shrek: Swamp Kart Speedway. Finally Matt ended up at Cryptic Studios in 2003 where he was brought on as a Mission Designer, and eventually a Systems Designer for the project. After the release of City of Villains, Matt was promoted to Lead Designer when Jack Emmert moved into the role of Creative Director for the company. Matt is an avid comic book reader and loves the fact that he is able to bring the vibrant and explosive world of comic books to life every day for thousands of gamers across the globe.

MMORPG.com catches up with Jack Emmert of Cryptic Studios in part 2 of its City of Heroes discussion.

MMORPG.com (Techleo): What are your impressions of Issue 8? Would you like to see more variety in Mission goal-types than saving hostages, blasting a baddy, or searching for stuff?

Jack Emmert: Like to? Sure! New mission types take time to design, code, then implement. We’re always working on new twists and turns. I7 brought villain players the joy of Mayhem missions while I8 provided heroes with the challenge of Safeguard missions. Each brought some new stuff into play. So rest assured, we’ll keep delivering fresh, innovative content.

Head on over to the official City of Heroes site for the latest on this year's winter event plans.

Winter is blowing in across the bay to Paragon City, and settling on the Rogue Isles like an icy blanket. New presents and threats await both heroes and villains this holiday season.

By simply logging in and visiting Paragon City or the Rogue Isles between December 14th and January 2nd*, your character will receive the Cold Front badge and a Fuzzy Earmuffs costume piece, so you can look stylish and keep warm while patrolling the streets (or committing nefarious deeds!).

You’ll also receive the Holiday Spirit Temporary Power, which grants 24 hours of Debt Protection.

And what’s more, you’ll receive the Holiday Cheer Temporary Power – a real gift of giving. You have to target another player and use Holiday Cheer on them. It will reward them with a random, Mystery Gift – possibly a Temporary Power, a sack full of Influence or Infamy, or maybe even a very recognizable hat.

GamersInfo.net takes another look at City of Heroes and City of Villains.

With the recent resurgence of the superhero genre, and the release of the Good vs. Evil edition, it is perhaps time to take another look at the City of Heroes/City of Villains games. Almost 3 years have past since upstart developer Cryptic released their comic book themed MMORPG; let’s examine how well it stands up.

Visually the game still gets the job done. The added details from City of Villains, as well as the addition of ragdoll effects for enemies, are nice touches, and the semi-stylized comic book look of heroes and villains remains fresh. The costume creation system in particular still shines as the absolute best in the field, with new additions appearing in each Issue lately. The new content added in Issue 7 and the upcoming Issue 8 promises more exciting visuals executed with Cryptic’s standard of excellence maintained.

MMORPG.com talks with Jack Emmert, the head of Cryptic Studios, about the launch of Issue 8 and his beginnings in the game industry.

MMORPG.com:As we begin this new series, can you tell us what first inspired you to want to create City of Heroes? An apple from a tree, a light bulb above your head, or did you watch too many Batman with Adam West re-runs?

Jack Emmert:I've been a huge comic fan since I was 8 years old. For several years, I worked in a comic book store! I still read 75 or so comics a month; my collection is around 20,000 strong. However, City of Heroes wasn't my brainchild. Rick Dakan, one of Cryptic's founders, came up with the idea for a comic hero MMORPG.  

With Issue 8: To Protect and Serve now live, the City of Heroes site has been updated with all you need to know about the new expansion.

Issue 8: To Protect and Serve, the eighth free expansion since the launch of City of Heroes® in April 2004, introduces a host of innovative features, gameplay improvements and player programs. Issue 7: Destiny Manifest allowed villains to wreak havoc in the PvP zone Recluse's Victory and physics-filled Mayhem Missions. Now it's the Heroes' turn to take back the streets!

Issue #8 for City of Heroes/Villains is the subject of MMORPG's latest article, which specifically looks at the upcoming Veteran Rewards system:

Introduced with the "Issue 8: To Protect and Serve" expansion to City of Heroes and City of Villains, Cryptic Studios will be implementing a Veteran Award system that rewards players based on how long they've had an activated account for the duo of games. These rewards range from costume pieces to special powers to extra base items, including a lot of novelty items that City of Heroes and Villains fans have been anticipating since the opening of the game.

That's right, we're talking wings.

IGN takes a closer look at Issue 8 of Cryptic Studio's dynamic duo, City of Heroes and City of Villains.

Two years on, and City of Heroes/Villains is still the most characterful MMORPG going. Sure, it doesn't have the ultra-dungeons of World of Warcraft, the minutely-balanced combat of Guild Wars or the endlessly evolving politicking of Eve. It doesn't, in fact, have a whole lot beyond beating people up. But there is one other thing, fundamental to its charm - it makes you feel important. After all, what other game has passing citizens comment, "I heard The Entomologist [or insert your own hero name here] saved us all"? That they're saying this to a musclebound man in a cape and mask, with antennae sticking out of his forehead and a giant yellow 'E' on his chest, yet fail to twig that hey, maybe he's this famous Entomologist guy, doesn't really matter.

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Launched a year ago, City of Villains offers players the chance to live out their dreams of world domination as a supervillain.  The official site commemorates the launch with an anniversary Q&A with Lead Designer, Matt Miller.

Q: What are some of the most valuable things that you have learned over the first year of City of Villains?

A: I learned to listen more to the users. We have lot of very passionate players in the game, and their insight and feedback can be really valuable as the design progresses. There are a lot of good ideas out there that help us prioritize our feature lists and at times will lead us in new directions that we might not have thoroughly considered. There are a lot of different desires the players have for the game, and it’s great to be able to deliver for them.

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NCSoft and Cryptic Studios have released details of the third tier of veteran rewards to be made available to long-term City of Heroes / City of Villians players as part of the Veteran Rewards Program which will launch along with Issue 8: To Protect and Serve.

Boomtown talks with Melissa Bianco, one of the designers at Cryptic Studios about the company's MMORPG, City of Heroes team.

How important is the European community feedback when you are sitting at your desk designing?

Everybody’s feedback is important, I mean you can’t obviously make everybody happy all of the time but I do show up on the boards as you guys have noticed. Although I may not post as often as I’d like to I do like to get your feedback. European feedback is very similar to American feedback because everybody has kind of the same game play experience and the same issues that they have to deal with, so it is very important to me.

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Boomtown: Issue 8 will introduce new Safeguard missions that work like the newspaper missions in City of Villains. What are the typical objectives of these missions?



Matt Miller: The main objective is to stop a bank robbery that is already in progress. Once you complete that, you can then go around an instanced area of Paragon City stopping crime, and earning bonus rewards.

ng in the future?

Jack Emmert: First, we think it's now time for MMORPGs to make the leap into consoles. There have been a few notable attempts, but I think publishers and developers will begin making a concentrated effort. The success of Xbox live (which is fantastic) underscores that the console market is ready for an online commerce. Plus, the next generation of consoles has the technology to support MMPa "!s.

Second, I think you'll see an expansion of MMORPGs beyond the traditional fantasy genre. You've got under way a Pirate, Star Trek and Stargate MMO so I don't think I'm saying anything too controversial there!

A preview of City of Heroes/Villains Issue 8 has been posted at the official site:

Issue 8: To Protect and Serve, the eighth free expansion since the launch of City of HeroesA in April 2004, introduces a host of innovative features, gameplay improvements and player programs. Issue 7: Destiny Manifest allowed villains to wreak havoc in the PvP zone Recluse's Victory and physics-filled Mayhem Missions. Now it's the Heroes' turn to take back the streets!

Cryptic's Matthew Miller speaks to GameSpot about the Issue 8 Update for City of Heroes / Villains:

GS: Give us an overview of the additions and enhancements that will be included in the upcoming Issue 8 update for City of Heroes and City of Villains.

Matthew Miller: Well, first off, we did a major overhaul to the City of Heroes zone Faultline. It includes new contacts and missions, as well as a better street-hunting experience. We also have brought the randomly generated missions that we had in City of Villains (which villain characters got from the newspapers and brokers) to hero characters. The City of Heroes version is called "police band missions," and these can lead players into safeguard missions where they must protect Paragon City from vandals and stop major crimes in progress.

Next, we have the "veteran rewards" program, which gives perks and thank-you gifts to players for their characters based on how long they've been playing the game. There is a new set of rewards every three months. Finally, we added arena kiosks to the Pocket D area, so heroes and villains can more easily challenge one another in the arenas.

OnlineWelten let us know their City of Villains portal has a CoV contest with a Collectors Edition and other goodies on offer.

IGN takes a closer look at City of Villains' Mayhem Missions.

The problem I had with City of Villains when it first launched was that it wasn't sinister enough. As a nefarious flying meanie, I was hoping to be more destructive and disruptive. Instead, I too often found myself fighting thugs and factions just as I had in City of Heroes (where it made more sense to me). Perhaps Cryptic Studios agrees with this sentiment, as Issue 7 of City of Villains introduces Mayhem Missions. We took a guided tour through one escapade just recently and got some cool video clips and screenshots of the anarchy, so don't forget to check that out.

Those of who you've played CoH or CoV know that missions are delivered to you by either visiting a contact or reading the newspaper. Originally, after a few random missions, you would get the opportunity to rob a bank. Basically, Mayhem Missions are bank-robbing adventures on steroids. Instead of running in, beating up a few police officers and pounding on a bank vault door, the action starts as soon as you set foot in the zone. The area will be crawling with police, and Longbow squads will regularly pop in and try to put a stop to you. Since a Mayhem Mission is timed, you don't want to get bogged down searching for baddies to fight, but a successful battle will add more time on the clock, as will destroying groups of parked vehicles, and fire hydrants and pay phones.

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GameSpy revisits City of Villains and examines how "Issue 7: Destiny Manifest" has changed the game.

"Issue 7: Destiny Manifest" is the latest update to City of Heroes and City of Villains, and while it's ostensibly aimed at both sides of the MMO, a quick glance over the features of this update shows that this one is aimed squarely at the villains. That doesn't mean that heroes should feel neglected, however, because for all intents and purposes, Issue 7 finally makes City of Villains feature complete, a more than worthy partner and opponent for its brighter, happier counterpart. First, Issue 7 jacks up villain power levels. Villain players can now reach level 50, and attendant new ability sets and powers have been added to the game to take advantage of them.

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We recently got some hands on time with some of the different components that will make up Issue 7: Destiny Manifest, which some have taken to calling "Issue 1" for City of Villains since it is aimed squarely at the villainous side of the City of... universe. Wait till you get a load of the all the new toys! There's something for everyone - a new PvP zone, new costume pieces, new powers, destructible environments, and the last ten levels that finally raise the villain cap to level 50! So without further ado...

Prima Games and NCsoft have chosen to provide the update for the City of Heroes and City of Villains strategy guides digitally free of charge to the community. By working with Jack Emmert, Cryptic Studios and NCsoft, Prima has created a high quality guide update that will be useful to all CoH and CoV gamers, from novice to expert.

Click here to download the guide now!

MMORPG.com takes a look at Issue #7 for City of Villains/Heroes, having played the new PvP zone, Recluse's Victory:

Issue 7 of City of Heroes/Villains will introduce a new crossover PvP zone for characters of levels 40 to 50: Reclusea "!s Victory. Last week I was able to attend an event in this new zone, try out the PvP, and speak with Cryptica "!s Matt Miller (Lead Designer) and NCSofta "!s Mike Crouch (PR Manager).

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It's a preview event on the Test Server for Issue 7 of City of Heroes/Villains. Issue 7 (aka "Destiny Manifest") is the latest in the regular updates the most spandex obsessed of games. It's mainly centred on Villain content, but with enough elements to stop the Heroes complaining. For example, a new player-versus-environment zone, Grandville, is being added for Level 40+ characters, containing the Spider City. Timed Mayhem missions involving (er) smashing. A mass of new missions and patron powers, including new power sets for villains (Thug pets for masterminds, Electric armour and melee for Brutes and Dark Armour and Melee for Stalkers). And so on, included a general art upgrade for the slightly-dragging-behind City of Heroes.

The official City of Villains site has word of a new contest.

Are you the type of gamer that plays only on relentless and invincible? Do you wish you could turn your difficulty slider up to 11? You think you have a group of street-smart, hero-crushing hardcore villains that can take on any challenge?

Well put your villainy where your mouth is and try your hand at the City of Villains(TM) Reclusesa "! Strike Force Challenge! The winners will be the first team to successfully complete the entire Lord RecluseïÆ A¤ Strike Force on the Test Server and complete the entry process which allows us to verify completion of the Strike Force

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