After much anticipation, the latest free expansion for City of Heroes / Villains is now entering its final testing phase. Issue 12: Midnight Hour Open Beta started this Tuesday on the Training Room and you can try it now! Please follow the instructions in this thread on how to download and play on the test server.

Also if during your testing you encounter bugs, please use the /bug command in-game to report them. Finally, you are welcome to give your feedback about the beta on our forums.

The full patch notes are available here

Enjoy!

The Student Zone is currently running a 2-weeks free trial for City of Heroes / Villains starting today! Please visit this page to get started on your journey to Paragon City or the Rogue Isles.

“Who’s idea was this anyway?”

It’s pretty safe to say that if it’s not Positron’s fault… it’s mine.

Hi. I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced. I’m Joe Morrissey, some call me Hero 1. I’m a senior designer and the lead writer on City of Heroes. I’ve been on the team just over a year now, coming on during the craziness of Issue 10, helping guide the vision of Issue 11 and now laying the foundation for what is issue 12, “The Midnight Hour”. But before I get into that, let me give you a little background about myself.

I’ve been a writer/designer for about 10 years now, starting at Blizzard North working on Diablo II, the expansion and anything else us “Northies” thought was a good idea at the time. From there I went over to Backbone and learned how to roll up my sleeves and get down and dirty in design. I worked on a number of handheld games the highlight of those being Death Jr. 2. About a year ago, my wife and I found out we were going to have our first kid and that meant a couple lifestyle changes needed to occur. The main one being a job much closer to home. I applied at Cryptic Studios and apparently I “interviewed well”, a fact Positron is quick to point out anytime that I make his life difficult.

“So, why the Midnight Hour?”

The Midnight Squad takes the main focus of this issue. They’ve got some of the coolest history, yet hardly any of it has been opened up to the players. I choose the Midnight Squad because they were seriously crippled by the invasion and therefore were extremely motivated to take action against the Rikti. We did a lot with the Rikti story for Issue 10, but it was only through the single lens of the Vanguard. Now we see a second perspective, through the eyes of those hardest hit from the invasion, the Midnighters.

Rather than retreating further back into their libraries, they are stepping out of the shadows and throwing their pipes and monocles into the fight against the Rikti. The Squad has always been a group of intellects who research, discuss and analyze the world of the unknown, but now they have a purpose. They have an enemy – an enemy who thought them important enough to attack first. An intelligent man might believe there was something to that, something the Midnighters can use to their advantage. Now all that knowledge and hidden power is being turned against the Rikti.

The image I have in my head is of a stodgy old Midnighter rolling a big crate out in front of the Freedom Phalanx. The lettering on the crate reads, “The Arc of the Covenant”. With a smile, the Midnighter asks the group of heroes, “You gentlemen think you could put this dusty old thing to use?”

The Midnight Squad is recruiting and sharing their knowledge with others. Now in the world’s hour of need, the clock strikes midnight. It’s the Midnight Hour.

The Rikti and the Wonderful World of Magic

The landscape of magic and the Rikti have changed. When the Rikti first attacked, they came after magic users first. This showed their hand to anyone paying attention. The Rikti’s greatest weakness was magic. Already the Vanguard use magic in their weapons, the Circle of Thorns are working on their own anti-Rikti spells and now we see what the Midnighters have up their sleeve.

This best comes to light in Montague Castanella’s story arc, “Lost and Found”. Montague is at the University in Steel Canyon. It’s a lower level arc, from 10 – 20, but you get to face Rikti, aid the new leader of Dawn Patrol “Lady Jane”, ally with both the Vanguard and the Traditionalists as well as craft an item that could change the landscape of the game. You get mixed up with a lot of stuff in this arc, which is one of the reasons why I like it so much.

However, one of the standout arcs this issue, if not of the past three I’ve worked on, has to be Darrin Wade’s “Midnight Draws Near”. Wade’s an ex-Midnighter who sells his knowledge and stolen relics in the Rogue Isle. Now the Midnighters come to town and he doesn’t much like it. What starts out as a simple enforcer mission, ends up revealing a darker side to the Rikti and eventually sending you into the belly of the beast against the Midnight Squad. There are a couple nice twists and turns in this arc, leading all the way up to your final conversation with Darrin Wade.

Let’s talk tech: Contextual dialog

Finally, I’d like to talk about some new tech for missions we’re rolling out this issue: Contextual dialog. Contacts can now know specific things about your character or the state of the mission you’re on and give you appropriate dialog to match it. I think almost every new story arc uses it in one way or another.

For example, in the Origin of Power arcs you talk to a representative of each of the five origins. When you get to the contact who is the same origin as you, he or she will have more in depth information for you regarding your specific origin. This new tech also allows for us to make NPCs in instanced maps feel more like actual contacts in the zone. We’re now able to change their dialog depending on events going on in the mission. A great example of this is the Sybil you speak with at the beginning of Imperious’ first mission in Cimerora. She has three different dialog states depending on where you are in the mission.

This tech actually has the potential to replace our current system for handling missions. The design team has a couple of other ways we plan to use contextual dialog but we’re going to have to keep those plans locked up for now.

Thanks for your time. I hope you enjoy the issue. If not, it was Positron’s fault.

Hero 1
Stay True

City of Heroes Lead Writer Joe Morrissey has put together a developer diary telling us about the Midnight Squad, a group of heroes that has appeared in past lore. The Midnight Squad makes their first appearance in Issue 12. Here’s a brief clip:

“So, why the Midnight Hour?"

The Midnight Squad takes the main focus of this issue. They’ve got some of the coolest history, yet hardly any of it has been opened up to the players. I choose the Midnight Squad because they were seriously crippled by the invasion and therefore were extremely motivated to take action against the Rikti. We did a lot with the Rikti story for Issue 10, but it was only through the single lens of the Vanguard. Now we see a second perspective, through the eyes of those hardest hit from the invasion, the Midnighters.

Click here to read the full article.

Four years.

I will say that again in case you misread it.

Four years.

I am pleased beyond all belief that this game continues to prosper four years into its life. Our community is stronger than ever, the game as a whole is stronger than it ever has been, and the future for the game, as well as the franchise is extremely bright.

When I look back upon the game that we shipped in 2004, I can’t help but look at all the things that were missing from it. Things we added immediately, and things we added recently. Badges were not in the initial launch. Heck, level 41 to 50 were not shipped with City of Heroes! As the game has progressed, I think we have added more free features with our updates than any other MMO on the planet. Multiple zones, missions, features and systems have been added to the base game over the past four years, making the game better and better with every update.

Every time I visit the Tailor in the game, I say to myself “Heh, I couldn’t even change my costume when City of Heroes launched.” Every time I Exemplar down to play content with my lower level friends, I note that this too was not a feature in the game four years ago. Now I actively seek out Inventions and Recipes both in missions and on the Black Market. The Invention System worked out very well for both City of Heroes and City of Villains, and was not part of the plan when we were finishing up CoH in the first quarter of 2004. Just over this last six months we’ve also added our Ouroboros Flashback System, Weapon Customization, and more quality of life features than the game had ever seen (until Issue 12).

That’s not to say we haven’t been without our missteps. We’ve implemented a couple things imperfectly (Epic Archetypes and Enhancement Diversification come to mind), which caused a lot of headaches for us down the road. I can’t promise that we will never make mistakes, but I will say we will do our best to ensure that we don’t repeat them.

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 dialogue 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)

Read on for some Fun Facts highlighting four years worth of City of Heroes!

Fun Facts

To highlight the four years of City of Heroes gaming, we bring you some fun facts about the game.

Since City of Heroes launched:

• More than 32 million characters created – that’s 4 times the population of New York City!
• Players have spent a combined 292 centuries playing City of Heroes and City of Villains
• More than 100 million items have been traded through the consignment (auction) houses since they were launched in 2007

Additional items of interest include:

Most Popular Origins
Mutant (25%)
Magic (24%)
Natural (21%)

Most Popular Archetypes
Hero: Blaster
Villain: Mastermind

Most Popular Travel Powers
Fly (34%)
Super Jump (30%)

Most Traded Item (via Consignment House)
Base Salvage:  Alien Tech Salvage

Most Wealthy Archetypes
Heroes: Scrappers
Villains: Brutes

We’ve teamed up with HEXUS.gaming to offer a free 14 day trial of City of Villains. If you don’t have an account yet, visit Hexus now to get your trial and discover Paragon City before Issue 12: Midnight Hour is released. There’s only 2000 trial codes available, so be quick!

Issue 12: Midnight Hour includes the exciting new Villain Epic Archetypes, called the Soldiers of Arachnos. To find out more about the Soldiers of Arachnos, head to our movies section and watch a video report from Longbow high command outlining the new threat from the Arachnos Villain organization!

A previous alert regarding expected Rikti Invasion Force incursions indicated a probable attack between April 25th and May 1st. Warning systems now indicate that the Rikti have brought forward their plans a week, with the full fury of the Rikti Invasion Force set to descend upon Paragon City™ and the Rogue Isles™ starting on Friday, April 18th and continuing through Thursday, April 24th.

For details or to discuss this event with fellow players, please join us on the Official City of Heroes Message Forums.

As we previously announced, we heard the request for a system to allow more characters on a single server and this is our answer.  City of Heroes is a unique game that offers many playstyle options; options that are growing in a large way due to Powerset Proliferation and the addition of the Villain Epic Archetypes in the next free expansion, Issue 12: Midnight Hour. Read on for the full details!

To accommodate playing more characters on your favourite server, we will be including the following features in Issue 12:

• All current subscribers will receive 2 free character slots, each of which can be used on the specific server of their choice. This is to help you make new characters to take advantage of the new features of Issue 12, even if you already have maxed out your “home” server’s character slots.


• 1 free character slot will be granted retroactively on a yearly basis through the current Veteran Reward system.  Every 12 months that a subscription is maintained will unlock an additional free character slot that the user can apply to the server of their choice.  Thus, existing players will be eligible for up to 4 additional character slots at the launch of Issue 12. This will continue into the future for Veteran Rewards given out every 12 months, so you get another slot for 5 years, another one for 6 years, etc.


• Additional Optional Character Slots will be available on a purchasable basis. These are one-time fees, not an addition to your monthly subscription rate. The additional slots can be had at the following price points:
  
  • 1 Optional Character Slot for a one-time fee of £3.49 / €4.99
  • 2 Optional Character Slots for a one-time fee of £5.99 / €8.99
  • 5 Optional Character Slots for a one-time fee of £11.99 / €17.99
• Players can have up to 36 slots per server, with an update to the character selection screen that lets you re-organize your character list by Drag and Drop, as well as easily flip between up to three pages of characters available on that server.  All customers benefit from these great new User Interface features included with the revisions for Optional Character Slots.

The above features are planned to be made available at the launch of Issue 12: Midnight Hour, which is currently in closed beta testing.  Be sure to check out this feature, along with the rest of Issue 12 when we enter the open beta testing period that should be starting in several more weeks.

Following on from today’s press release announcing that Optional In-Game Advertising will be introduced to City of Heroes, we have further details of the reasons behind this new feature and what you, as a player, can expect to be seeing should you opt-in to the service. Brian Clayton, NCsoft NorCal General Manager, explains that all advertising will go through an approval process aimed at ensuring all ads are contextually relevant and appropriate, while also pointing out the opportunities available to use the system in support of the community.

Bringing Optional In-Game Ads to Paragon City™ and the Rogue Isles™

By Brian Clayton, General Manager, NCsoft NorCal Studio

Today we announced our partnership with Double Fusion to provide optional in-game advertising for City of Heroes. I wanted take some time to share some details beyond those in the press release.

In-game advertising is something that we have carefully considered ever since the initial release of City of Heroes in 2004. From our perspective it always came down to a few fundamental questions: Will this technology make our game experience more immersive or less immersive? In other words, is City of Heroes an appropriate environment for it? In-game advertising in other MMOs has sometimes been received as an unwelcome addition, so could we actually find ways to make this a significant win for our customers? And with the plan of reinvesting all the revenue that we make from this, how much will this single (optional in-game advertising) initiative actually allow us to grow our development team?

These are complex questions that can’t necessarily be answered with 100% certainty, but after discussing this for a number of years we believe we’ve found the right partner to bring ads to the game while being sensitive to our community’s needs. I want to make it very clear that we are not “forcing” in-game ads upon our players. Thus, the word “optional” is of key importance. None of our players have to change their game experience in any way if that’s what they prefer. All that you need to do is opt-out via the Options menu in the game.

Having said that, I should make it clear that we are extremely protective of our City of Heroes game experience. Only contextually relevant ads or branding that the development team approves will go into the game. We will be very careful not to break the immersion and feel of Paragon City or the Rogue Isles. Additionally, we are a Teen rated game by the ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board) and we will not be displaying any “mature” ad content like alcohol, tobacco, etc. (Note for Europe: PEGI ratings of 12+ for CoH and 16+ for CoV.)

So, how far do we plan to take these optional in-game ads? Initially, we are limiting ads to the exact same fictitious billboard placements that are already in the game. To get a better idea of this, check out these screenshot examples.

(Current on left, examples on right)

We estimate that this will go live some time this summer. After that, what are our plans? We are definitely looking at how this feature is received by you, the community. If it makes sense, and keeps the same level of quality and immersion we believe the initial implementation does, we may look at other avenues in the realm of optional advertising. There are a whole lot of really fun ideas to consider, but the core game development of City of Heroes is by far our highest priority. Another interesting opportunity that the optional in-game advertising technology presents us is dynamically displaying other billboard content. We can swap in new signs that we create much more easily, and we can even display player-created content! This provides a cool new area for community contests, recognizing great player art, etc.

So beyond all of this, what benefit does leaving optional in-game advertising “on” bring to the players? Why should you not opt-out? All ad revenue dollars go directly to the further development of the game, which means more great content than ever before! As we have made it pretty clear lately, with the acquisition of City of Heroes from Cryptic Studios last November, we are entering a major phase of reinvestment for the game (and brand). Our development costs are ramping up in a major way as we look to literally double the team this year to accommodate big plans for the short, medium and long term. Optional in-game advertising is another revenue stream that helps us to accomplish all of this at no additional expense to our players. Ultimately, we leave it up to you, the players, to decide which experience you prefer. 

In a press release just issued we have today announced a partnership with game advertising provider Double Fusion to implement optional in-game advertising to City of Heroes. Click through for the full press release…

NCSOFT SELECTS DOUBLE FUSION AS GAME ADVERTISING PARTNER FOR CITY OF HEROES

Brighton, England (April 3rd, 2008) – 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.

“Our partnership with NCsoft is a clear showcase for two of our guiding philosophies: bringing value to the player through appropriate use of advertising spaces and bringing new business models to the marketplace by creating new revenue streams that can help fund game development and community support” said Jonathan Epstein, president and CEO, Double Fusion. 

“City of Heroes is a key property for NCsoft and we take great care to grow and nurture our player community,” said Brian Clayton, General Manager of NCsoft’s Northern California studio.  “We are pleased to work with Double Fusion on City of Heroes, as they have demonstrated sensitivity to the needs of our community and fundamentally understand how advertising can bring value to the players when executed gracefully, and in the appropriate context. In addition to allowing any of our players to opt-out if they so choose, their flexible technology will not only allow us to bring brand messages into the game but also provide a fun, new platform for displaying player-created materials.”

The addition of City of Heroes to the Double Fusion network demonstrates the company’s commitment to offering their advertiser and agency partners a wide array of in-game advertising opportunities, to maximizing revenues for its publisher and developer partners and to building a portfolio of top titles among retail PC and console games, massively multiplayer online games, social networks, casual downloadable games, advanced online games and virtual worlds.

About NCsoft Europe
NCsoft Europe (NCE) is headquartered in Brighton, United Kingdom and is wholly-owned subsidiary of Korea-based NCsoft Corporation, the world’s leading developer and publisher of online games. NCsoft operates publishing offices within North America, Japan, Taiwan, China and Thailand and has development studios in Seattle, Austin, California (North America) and Seoul (Korea). NCE recently announced the formation of the first European development studio, based within the UK.

Double Fusion is a registered mark of Double Fusion, Inc.
All trademarks, copyrights, registered marks, brand names, registered brand names, product names, and logos found in this press release are the property of their respective owners, may be registered in certain jurisdictions, and are mentioned in this release for identification purposes only.

The City of Heroes / Villains Development Team is constantly looking at ways we can improve the overall gameplay and “quality of life” for the users playing in the game. One set of improvements that are included in the next upcoming free expansion, Issue 12: Midnight Hour, are to the User Interface and Costume Creator used to create new characters or alter existing character’s costumes.

First, let’s look at what’s changing in the User Interface to create a new character. The improvements are tied to Issue 12’s improved implementation of the “Real Numbers” feature. In Issue 12, players will be able to view the real numbers behind all of their powers.

To allow this, an easy to use button has been added to Character Creation “Show Detailed Info” in the middle of the power selection screen. By clicking this, you gain access to view all the numbers behind the powers in the list as you mouse over it.

What’s more, you can grab the slider at the top of the Detailed Info Display and slide it to various levels to see how the power scales up as you level up! In this picture, you can see how Vengeful Slice will function at level 31.

Also, you can see how the power changes against another player target by clicking the “Show PvP Effects” button.

With the many additions of costumes over the years to City of Heroes and City of Villains, it can be hard to find all the parts and pieces of various costume “sets.” For instance, you want to make a Jester themed character using the all of the various Jester costume items.

Currently, you’d need to look through all the different categories to find each of the Jester items. Now, you can simply go to the “Costume Sets” user interface and select which set you want from a convenient pull down list.

As you can see, there are many different sets to choose from on the pull down, and they make great starting off points to develop a new character costume. Of course, you can just go with the Random button and hope for something good too!

Everyone will have the opportunity to check out these improvements once we enter the closed beta. While you may not be able to log all the way into the closed beta, everyone who configures to connect to the Training Room Test Server will be able to get to character select and character creation to check out these great new improvements! 

If you thought the character creation system was already brilliant, you’ll really enjoy the updates planned to be introduced with Issue 12: Midnight Hour. From streamlined costume creation allowing you to choose a full costume set with a single choice, to detailed information about the powers you are choosing, the new character creator makes creating that perfect Villain so much easier! To get all the information and view six new screenshots detailing the changes, head over this way.

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.

From a development angle Plant Control just made sense for a Controller. I mean, it has the word “Control” right in the title! Controllers also get access to Thermal Radiation, to keep those spores, trees, and fly traps enveloped in the growing warmth of their own solar powers, as well as being a good thematic match to the current Fire Control powers they have access to.

With these formerly villain only powersets now in the hands of a heroic archetype, we also find out that the opposite is now true. Brutes get access to Battleaxes and War Maces, weapon-based powersets that they have been asking for. And with Issue 11’s Weapon Customization they have all the different implements of destruction at their disposal that Tankers do. For their secondary they get access to Super Reflexes, which is very good at helping them generate Fury while avoiding damage.

Now before I go on a lot of Brute players have been asking for Ice-based powers, and I should point out that in the City of Villains beta, there were… problems… with Ice Brutes. You see, when Ice attacks land, they tend to slow down the attacks of the opponent. For Tankers this is fine, but Brutes live and die by their Fury bar. The Fury bar relies on attacks coming in on you at a steady pace, and so slowing down that pace with Ice powers is self defeating. Ice Brutes had problems generating Fury, and so they were cut from City of Villains, and sadly won’t be returning, even in this new Proliferation.

Now on brighter news, Storm Summoning was a natural fit for Corruptors who want to be masters of the elements. Nothing better than corrupting Mother Nature herself with new, evil, uses for Gale, Freezing Rain, and Hurricane. With the addition of O2 Boost, we villains now have another avenue of healing available to us as well. To couple with that, Corruptors get Electrical Blast as a Primary power set for their lightning based attacks.

And that brings us to Psychic Blast Blasters. I know a lot of jaws dropped when they saw this was going to be a reality, but Psychic damage is one of those “all or little” damage types. It is either highly resisted, or not at all. The “newish” Secondary set of Mental Manipulation gives some moderate control options as well. This will shake up the PvP game for sure, and the developers will be keeping a VERY close eye on this powerset to make sure that it is not overpowered in the hands of Blasters.

And then there are other Archetypes we have not discussed at all before. Tankers will get Dark Armor and Dark Melee as Primary and Secondary powersets, so they have an avenue into Negative Energy damage that was previously unavailable to them. Scrappers get nice matched sets as well with Fiery Melee and Fiery Aura, another “newish” set allowing players to make better themed characters.

Stalkers get to share in their Brute cousin’s love for all things electrical with their own version of Electric Melee and Electric Armor. Assassin’s Strike and Hide have stealthily made their way into these powersets giving the Stalkers the tools they need and love.

I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss Dominators. They get access to Earth control, which of course keeps them grounded for their new access to Electricity Manipulation as well. All the villain electrical effects are of course tinted in the evil red that City of Villain players have come to be familiar with.

Finally Masterminds get access to the Storm Summoning Secondary powerset along with Corruptors. Yes, yes, I know a lot of Masterminds were looking forward to the possibility of Kinetics as their new choice, but the gods are not that crazy… yet. They will have to settle for the knockback of a well placed Gale or Hurricane instead.

Oh, I seem to have forgotten about Defenders. They now get access to Cold Domination and Ice Blast allowing them to put Ice and Glacial shields on their allies, as well as throw Ice Bolts and Freeze Rays. I always said it would be a cold day in Paragon City when Defenders would get access to Cold-based powers, and I guess my prediction came true!

There you have it, the final word on Power Proliferation… next week I will do my best to answer any burning questions you have left about these new powersets

List of New Primary and Secondary Powersets added in Issue 12

Blaster
New Primary - Psychic Blast
New Secondary - Mental Manipulation

Corruptor
New Primary - Electrical Blast
New Secondary - Storm Summoning

Controller
New Primary - Plant Control
New Secondary - Thermal Radiation

Dominator
New Primary - Earth Control
New Secondary - Electricity Manipulation

Defender
New Primary - Cold Domination
New Secondary - Ice Blast

Mastermind
New Secondary - Storm Summoning

Brute
New Primary - Battle Axe
New Primary - War Mace
New Secondary - Super Reflexes

Stalker
New Primary - Electric Melee
New Secondary - Electric Armor

Tank
New Primary - Dark Armor
New Secondary - Dark Melee

Scrapper
New Primary - Fiery Melee
New Secondary - Fiery Aura

If you missed the articles on Total Video Games late last week, we’ve now got both available here for your reading pleasure! Find out how Dr. Brainstorm made extra powersets available for all Archetypes and which specific powersets you can look forward to using in future!

Radio address to the Rogue Isles from Dr. Brainstorm

Ehhem, fellow super beings of the Rogue Isles, Dr. Brainstorm here.  I’m broadcasting from an undisclosed location to announce my latest breakthrough!

Many of you have inquired as to my whereabouts since I brought you the wonders of the invention system.  I have good news for you all!  Upon completion of the Hypothetical Framework the universe revealed to me a profound secret.

Late one night in my lab, as I placed the final piece of Rikti technology into the Hypothetical Framework, a glorious vision appeared before me.  The Framework revealed to me a mystical subterranean web, invisible to the naked eye.  This network represents the sacred geometry of the earth, threads of energy that converge to create vortices of power over particularly special places and even people.

Somehow my Hypothetical Framework opened an access portal onto this mystical network, an energy based control panel for super power distribution.  Knowing we must harness this newfound information, I built a monitoring system into every invention workbench.  Every time an invention is made, I am able to tap into the power network, gathering information about this mystical nexus.

Based on the information gathered through your workbenches, I have determined that every super powered being taps into these energy threads at their own resonance.  This individual frequency determines what powers each hero or villain can gain mastery over.  No matter our origin, each of us accesses our available powers in a unique way.

Since that day, I have diligently worked to alter these restrictions placed so unfairly upon us.

Using my newly built kinetic capacitor I discovered a way to alter the resonance of these energy strands.  After the er…massive release of energy generated in my lab with the kinetic capacitor, I appear to have sufficiently altered the resonance of these energy lines.  Despite the minor….mishap in the lab, I am proud to announce that I, Dr. Brainstorm, have opened the door to new powers here on the Rogue Isles, allowing new super powered citizens of the Rogue Isles to access an additional primary and secondary power to choose from!

Longbow Report on the investigation of an explosion in a Crey lab.

RE: Peregrine Island Explosion
From: Agent Crimson, Alpha-Black Unit

During a recent mission to prevent Malta raids on Crey science facilities, a hero I work with was alerted to the existence of a secret Crey lab.  I was unable to locate the lab until last week when I intercepted reports of an explosion under the streets of Peregrine.  Upon locating the entrance to a subterranean facility, I discovered the remains of what appears to have been a well-equipped laboratory.  Inside I found the badly charred remnants of a large mechanical device.

I also located a security system and was able to extract surveillance video.  This video was passed onto Dr. Advance in the science and technology division and I have included his interpretation of the video below. 

Shortly after the explosion, I began to receive reports of new heroes able to use previously inaccessible powers.  I am convinced that these are connected and will investigate further.

RE: Security Video Report
From: Dr. Advance, Longbow Science and Technology Division

This video, although highly degraded, appears to show Dr. Brainstorm activating a massive Resonance Manipulator, also known as a kinetic capacitor. Many scientists have proposed that it might be possible to create an oscillating energy field able to reach a strength of over 10,000 megateslas - roughly equivalent to a neutron star.

While this device is clearly not of that magnitude, the size and blast radius of the ensuing explosion suggests that Dr. Brainstorm managed to generate close to 2,000 megateslas.

It has long been understood that even heroes who gain their abilities through technology, nature, or science are somehow special, the pinnacle of human achievement.  Many theorize that these super-powered beings are connected into some sort of power nexus beyond our comprehension.  Although the exact nature of this energy grid is unknown, I believe that it acts as a control network for super power distribution.

I propose that this video shows Dr. Brainstorm attempting to open a conduit onto this energy grid.  By generating this massive energy field, it appears that Dr. Brainstorm is attempting to pull the earth’s cosmic balance off kilter.  Clearly he did not anticipate the ensuing explosion as he barely escaped the destruction.

The explosion suggests that this energy grid relies on a delicate balance that must be maintained.  In upsetting the balance of the earth’s geodesy Dr. Brainstorm may have caused a rift.  Although I do not yet fully understand the implications, I remind you that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Crimson tells me there are reports of heroes able to access new powers.  If heroes are able to access new powers it seems likely that the same may also be true for the villains of the Rogue Isles.

Community member Lady_Leprechaun has launched a great new community event: the Supreme Superbeing Awards. Going beyond just a simple costume contest, this event aims to award the Villain (or Hero) with the best combined character concept. Judging will cover all aspects of a Villain’s (or Hero’s) costume, name, title, biography and more! The event will take place on the Training Room on Sunday, April 6th at 19:00 BST (20:00 CEST). For all the details, visit the Supreme Superbeing Awards page on ParagonWiki and then head over to the Villain and Hero sign up forum threads to pre-register!

An exclusive broadcast recounts a massive explosion and the details behind it from none other than Dr. Brainstorm! Read the fiction behind one of the most anticipated features of Issue 12: Midnight Hour, the next free expansion to City of Heroes and City of Villains! Find out all the details Total Video Games, and check back soon for part 2 of this feature!

Hello there. I’m Melissa Bianco, Level Designer on the City of Heroes team, and some of you may know me as War Witch. Having worked on City of Heroes for over five years, I can tell you that we know a lot more now that we did at the beginning and zone design is a good example of that. The Hollows has been one of those zones that I’ve wanted to take some time and revisit. In the past, there have been several common complaints about it: The content is repetitive and not all that interesting, framerate is poor, enemies are too hard, players can’t solo it, and they’re forced to go there to get missions!

So I wanted to go in and make some spawn changes, and make us all a lot happier with the zone. Going in, there was little in the way of outside resources (Art and Tech were heavily booked with the Issue 11 material) available to rework the zone, and I had a small window of opportunity to get the work done in. In the end I just jumped in with both feet and started reworking the zone. I started by gutting every spawn in the Hollows and starting from scratch.

Spawns Changes

This is what I did (by neighbourhood):

Cherry Hills

This is the first neighbourhood players encounter when they enter the zone from Atlas Park.

The spawns for this neighbourhood are now like City zone spawns, not Hazard. So they’re based on 1 - 3 players. The level range is now 5 - 7 only.

I wanted to make the transition from City zone to Hazard zone less painful, especially since new players are ‘forced’ to go there by a Contact. I made this neighbourhood a standard ‘city’ spawn zone. What this means is that I made the spawns “do-able” by solo players up to groups of three, which is pretty standard for a city zone. I also kept the roads free of bad guys so that, within reason, players could get around Cherry Hills without massive difficulty.

I added some fresh blood (er...meat?) to The Hollows. There were piles and piles of Outcasts and Trolls and Trolls and Outcasts. Both villain types are kind of tough, so I wanted to add some flavour and some variety! So I added Skulls, Hellions, and Lost to the mix. Also, you may run into Paragon Police or Longbow, but since they’re allies, they’ll help you out. The heroic presence (Longbow and Paragon Police) is small, so that they don’t kill steal too much. However, gone are the canned animations of the Paragon Police. If you drag a villain back to them, now you’ll definitely get a reaction, if the Police Drones don’t get them first.

Four Seasons

This neighbourhood is also a “city” sized spawn neighbourhood. The level range for this neighbourhood is now 8 to 10 only. I’ve also brought in Hellions, Skulls, and Lost to the mix here.

Red River

This neighbourhood was pretty much vacant of spawns entirely. Not anymore. Now there are Hydra, Coralax, and some Trolls wandering around. The Trolls seem to be paying special attention to the dam. The spawns here are also for 1 - 3 players so they shouldn’t be too difficult to solo or for small groups. The level range of this neighbourhood is 8 - 10 only.

Eastgate Park

There weren’t too many changes to this zone other than to make them more standard in terms of spawning ‘rules’. No piggy backing of spawns near other spawns so that the place is lagged down and it’s a blanket of bad guys. Players should have some room to breathe again as they make their way through this neighbourhood. This neighbourhood is level 10 - 12 only. The spawns range anywhere from 1 to 5 players. It’s not a consistent city-sized spawn, there are hazard elements, but there is a ‘possibility’ of a small spawn for the solo players. Also, I always throw spawns into EVERY neighbourhood that are three villains maximum so players should be able to find something to kill as a solo player.

Vahzilok have moved into the neighbourhood, but usually only at night and in a very specific location. The Legacy Chain have a presence there too, a heroic group of mystical heroes who are there to help, not hurt the heroes of Paragon City. They want to get to the bottom of the Circle of Thorns threat as we do. There might another reason, too, but they won’t even give that up to Longbow. PPD have a small presence at the entrance from Skyway City so they’re pretty much watching the door.

Grendel’s Gulch

Now we’re getting to the pain. Admittedly, the spawns in this neighbourhood were entirely too difficult. They were even too difficult for a ‘hazard’ zone (3 - 5 players). They have been seriously toned back and the groups shouldn’t be so close to each other so that if you trigger one, you don’t trigger the one next to it, too. These have been made a bit differently. They spawn anywhere from 1 to 5 players. What this means is, you MIGHT get a big group of Igneous or you MIGHT get a do-able solo spawn size. It depends on your team size and the luck of the draw, really. Also, except for some surprises, you should see the Igneous well before they ever see you.

In the guts of the Gulch, the spawn levels are 13 - 15. However, around the perimeter (to accommodate the Talshak mission), there are a set of spawns that are 11 - 12 only. These guys are clearly defined as they are the only spawns in the entire Gulch that are face down in the ground taking a dirt nap. If players want to drop down and go deeper into the Gulch, they do so at their own risk.

The Trolls are brave (or dumb) enough to move into the Gulch. They either haven’t noticed that the rocks are deadly or they don’t care. There’s also a very small presence of Devouring Earth, in the form of some Bees, but they’re so minor and easy to kill it’s barely worth mentioning.

The Vahzilok have also crept into the Gulch, but they tend to keep their distance from the interior of the Gulch and hang back near the perimeter, where the dirt is soft and shovels are plentiful.

I made no changes to the Caverns.

Eastgate Heights

This is another combo city/hazard neighbourhood. The spawns are for 1 - 5 players. The level range is also 13 to 15.

Originally, this area was fully dedicated to Circle of Thorns, but I brought in Skulls, Hellions, and Trolls who tend to flesh out the edges of the zone, but as you get closer to the tops of the peaks, it’s all Circle all the time. There are also some Tsoo but they’re sneaky, and you never know when they’re going to drop in. Since there is such a large Circle presence, there is also a Legacy Chain presence to thwart them.

Missions Changes

Mission Doors

I pulled every single mission door from the zone and reassigned it to a specific contact AND that contact’s neighbourhood. What this means is; no longer will players have to fly across the deadly Grendel’s Gulch at Level 5 for their Frostfire mission at the other end of the zone, dodging spawns that can make mincemeat of them in a few short hits.

I’ve added mission doors to Grendel’s Gulch (caves), Eastage Park (manhole covers), and Eastgate Heights (caves, CoT) so that players continue to remain within their own neighbourhoods in which their contact is located. The exception is Meg Mason, who is located in Cherry Hills and will send players across the zone, depending on their level.

Repeatable Missions

I added a new contact to the zone, an undercover operative named Meg Mason, who has the skinny on all the gangs in the area. She hands out repeatable missions for each neighbourhood. Meg Mason is located in Cherry Hills by the abandoned water tower on the hill where the Supergroup Teleport exit point is.

Contacts

Since I gutted the entire zone’s spawns, when I went back in to populate the zone, I made a very wide path to the contacts. A very wide path. I also added Meg Mason, as I mentioned above, to Cherry Hills.

Parting Words:

Although I began this diary by listing a lot of common complaints, I’ve always felt that the zone had promise. It just wasn’t being realized! So my goal was to simplify, streamline and liven it up. Now that the Hollows is a bit of a hybrid zone (some city spawns, some hazard), I think it’ll be a lot more welcoming.  And even though I think players will miss putting their Hero on Hover while they go for coffee and wait to get to the Frostfire entrance, they’ll be happier that he’s much easier to access now.  The Hollows now fits the style of Striga, Faultline, et al in that the missions the contact gives are now in line with the neighbourhood difficulty.  Plus, Meg Mason is a breath of fresh air for people who just want to get out and do one-off missions. Once you’ve had a chance to try it out, I’d love to hear your feedback in the game or on the boards!

Level Designer Melissa “War Witch” Bianco gives us a blow by blow account of what is changing in the Hollows with the “Gameplay Makeover” for the zone that will be included in the next free expansion, Issue 12: Midnight Hour. With copious amounts of detail about spawn changes, the reasons behind the changes, new repeatable missions and more this is definitely worth reading!

THE MIDNIGHT SQUAD

JOIN THE MIDNIGHT SQUAD (LEVELS 10 - 20)
The clandestine organisation of mystics, scholars and mages, known only as the Midnight Squad, seeks to rebuild its numbers since the devastating assault of the Rikti Invasion. The Midnighters hold a secret that could bring the alien assault to an end, but without the help of the Heroes of Paragon City™ it will remain Lost forever.

NEW ROMAN-STYLE ZONE MAPS (LEVELS 35 - 50)
The Midnighters hold many secrets within their walls, including a highly coveted Ouroboros crystal, enabling them to travel to the far reaches of time. There is a familiar threat in an ancient land and the Midnighters need the help of both Heroes and Villains to stop it. Players step foot upon the ancient land of the Roman Cimeroran Peninsula, where they battle deadly creatures, defend an ancient city and ultimately come face to face with the enemy of time itself. Throughout this journey players uncover the mysteries of power and the origins that guide them today.

UNLOCK ROMAN-STYLE ARMOUR COSTUMES
Through their accomplishments, players unlock the new Roman themed armour costume set.

VILLAIN EPIC ARCHETYPES

Infiltrate the Arachnos organisation from within! Upon reaching level 50, Villains unlock two new Epic Archetypes; Wolf Spiders and Blood Widows. They have their own unique storyline and missions, power combinations and costume sets. Branching powersets allow the Wolf Spider to specialise as either a Bane Spider or Crab Spider and the Blood Widow chooses from the Fortunata and Night Widow branches. Each brings with it unique costumes for your Arachnos duties, as well as your new found role as a Destined One.

POWERSET PROLIFERATION

Using his newly built Resonance Manipulator, the Villain scientist known as Dr. Brainstorm™ has discovered a way to alter the energy strands which connect every Hero and Villain to their powers. This discovery has not only opened the door to new powers for his fellow Villains in the Rogue Isles™, but has also done the same for the Heroes of Paragon City ™! Specifically, new characters of almost every Hero and Villain archetype gain access to an additional primary and secondary powerset that they didn’t have access to previously. Details to come!

HOLLOWS ZONE “GAMEPLAY MAKEOVER”

Significant changes have been made to the Hollows zone to make it more fun! NPC encounters have been rebalanced, including new spawns, new villain groups, mission door improvements, and a mobile hospital has been added to the entrance of the zone.  Additionally, Meg Mason, a new contact, has been added to give out repeatable missions.

MAJOR GAMEPLAY IMPROVEMENTS

• Eight configurable new power trays let players customise their User Interface by placing them anywhere on the screen.
• Contact display redesign: Contacts are now listed separately as Active and Inactive, and players can sort contacts by a range of criteria including Name, Zone, and Level Range.
• Inspiration Conversion: Right click an inspiration to convert three of that kind into any one inspiration of another kind.
• Level Up Boost: Upon reaching enough XP to level up (at all levels), one of each type of large inspiration is immediately cast upon your character, and health and endurance bars are immediately filled.
• Chat improvements: Right click on character names in chat window to ignore, add to friends list, invite to team, etc. Drag any item (enhancement, inspiration, salvage, etc.) into the chat window so that you and others can click a hotlink to view the complete info box.
• More Real Numbers: Players can now display stats on powers before they choose them enabling more informed power selection and new temporary powers allow players to display enemy stats.

Issue 12: Midnight Hour, the twelfth upcoming free expansion since the launch of City of Heroes, will introduce a host of new content, challenges and features!

For all the details, click here.

It’s been a very busy last four months or so for us since NCsoft acquired the City of Heroes franchise and we formed the NorCal studio in Mountain View, California. We offered everyone who was working on the game at Cryptic a position within our new studio and were thrilled when they all accepted employment. This meant that we could all work on the game we have loved and laboured over in a brand new studio, which is fantastic.

NCsoft NorCal has a great start-up feel, but the fact remains that most of us have worked together on this same project, for years beforehand. It’s a very unique situation, and a lot like forming a brand new company with a collection of people that you have worked well with in the past. There is a very social and fun atmosphere here in the studio that suits our close-knit family of designers, artists, engineers, and producers extremely well. Great ideas are bouncing off the walls here, and all the new hires we have added in the past couple months are very excited to be working for such a vibrant team.

Things have not been standing still in City of Heroes. In February, we were able to host a very special event on Valentine’s Day; a live, in-game wedding between two of our major characters, Manticore and Sister Psyche, controlled by Sean and Jennifer Dornan-Fish respectively. I controlled Positron and other developers took over other signature characters. We executed nearly ten run-throughs of the wedding throughout the day, and about a thousand players were able to witness the event. It was very exciting, and we feel like the hard work really paid off for our community.

We also held a Double XP weekend in February during which we saw some of the highest server concurrencies ever in the history of the product. This was possible in large part due to the hardware upgrades we made in the beginning of 2008.  We were able to get more players playing, rather than lagging out, during the exciting weekend.

As Lead Designer on the project, I have had a lot of control over what happens in the City of Heroes game, but in the past I still had hurdles to get some great ideas actualized. With the new studio, a lot of ideas that we had that couldn’t take hold under the old management are being implemented into the game with outstanding results.

For instance, in February we launched a “between Issue” patch that added a lot of quality of life features to the game. For the first time you can see the real numbers behind your characters and their powers, what they mean, and how City of Heroes uses them. You can now see the exact details on how your character stacks up against another by simply looking at the numbers behind how your powers work. Another quality of life feature is the smoothing of the levelling rate in the game. We have done extensive data mining showing us where the problem levels were, and how long players would tend to be “stuck” there. With this, we were able to alter the defeat rewards of the enemies in the game so that the problem levels were less of a problem. In general the overall speed of levelling was increased by around 25% so players can expect faster results in a typical play session.

Of course that’s not entirely where our development efforts have been going; we have a lot of long-term goals and we have been diligently working toward them. We are excited about the possibilities that a single owner brings to the table. Being “under one roof” is affording us more flexibility than ever before and it’s fun having direct contact with all of the different departments here at NCsoft working hard to continue the game’s success. And with our new studio we can confidently plan for Issue 13, 14, and beyond, and hire the people that will make those Issues and goals happen.

For the immediate future, however, I am pleased to announce “Issue 12: Midnight Hour” for City of Heroes, which will be going into closed beta testing soon. “Midnight Hour” brings with it a slew of exciting new features including the long anticipated Villain Epic Archetypes, which will be available to anyone who achieves level 50 in City of Villains. The current Hero and Villain Archetypes will benefit from Powerset Proliferation, where we took over twenty existing powersets and gave them to Archetypes that didn’t have access to them before. If you ever wanted to play a Controller with the powerset of Plant Control, now is your chance! Psychic Blasters are now a reality, as well as Axe and Mace wielding Brutes. With Powerset Proliferation players now have even more character combinations to choose from.

We’ve overhauled the difficulty of the Hollows, one of the first additional zones that was ever published for City of Heroes. Gone are the days of players skipping the zone because it was simply too hard for them to get around in, as they will find the enemies are much more manageable while soloing or in small groups. We have even added a bunch of repeatable missions for characters to play in this newly configured zone.

Additionally, there is the Midnight Squad. This organization has always been in the lore of City of Heroes, but never realized in the game itself. The Midnight Squad takes the limelight in Issue 12 with missions that explore the origins of superpowers, as well as using Ouroboros (the time-travel organization introduced last Issue) to pop back to the Cimeroran peninsula of the ancient Romans. There players will uncover a mystery that has been festering for over two millennia, as well as unlock the awesome Roman Armour costume set for their characters.

Finally, I should note that Issue 12 also includes a number of quality of life and gameplay additions for our players. We built upon the recently added “Real Numbers” feature by adding in the ability to see the numbers behind your powers. We’ve also improved the User Interface by adding new power trays that can be placed anywhere on the screen. There are several more of these cool additions that you can read about on our Issue 12: Midnight Hour Game Update page. 

Issue 12 is shaping up to be a great issue but that’s just the start of things to come. Issue 13 and beyond are going to be huge additions to City of Heroes, introducing new systems as well as a ton of new content for all levels of play. We couldn’t be more excited about the journey ahead for City of Heroes and I look forward to giving you more details this year!

Matt “Positron” Miller, Sr. Lead Designer for City of Heroes at NCsoft NorCal, discusses what’s happened since NCsoft fully acquired the franchise, and looks ahead to Issue 12: Midnight Hour and beyond. Click here to read the full article.

Welcome the newest member of the NCsoft Europe line-up: The Podcast. In Episode One, Stephen ‘Rockjaw’ Reid takes a look at what the European City of Heroes Community Team has planned for the next couple of months. From running for charity to a massive Easter weekend MiniCon event featuring a range of great activities, it looks like they’re a busy bunch!

Staying with the City of Heroes theme, there’s an interview with the stars from the recent in-game wedding event that saw Manticore and Sister Psyche tie the knot. Matt ‘Positron’ Miller, Sean Dornan-Fish and Jen Dornan-Fish answer questions from Rockjaw covering a range of ‘City of’ topics.

Closing out the featured content, Rockjaw corners Martin Kerstein, Guild Wars Community Team Lead, for a brief look into the Guild Wars bonus mission pack. Finally, there’s a challenge for all of you: “The NCsoft Europe Podcast” is an uninspiring name, so Rockjaw is inviting everyone to send him their ideas for naming this new feature. Got something witty? You might win a prize!

You can download the Podcast in audio and transcript forms from PlayNC.

The looming threat of the Rikti Invasion Force still hangs like a dark pall over Earth.  Despite the best efforts of humanity, aggressive Rikti incursions still plague the planet.  Advance warning systems indicate the Rikti are massing for attacks on the following dates throughout the year:

• March 7th through March 13th

• April 25th through May 1st

• June 13th through June 19th

• August 1st through August 7th

• Sept 26th through Oct 2nd

• November 14th through November 20th

Prepare for a desperate battle to save Earth from the Rikti Invasion Force! Aggressive Rikti forces will attack Paragon City and the Rogue Isles with increased frequency at any time during the above dates! 

Some important items to remember about Rikti Invasions:

• When Zones within the cities are under attack, a world-wide alert will be issued by Vanguard. This alert will show up in your Chat window on the System channel, warning you in which zone attack is imminent.
• While the invasion is occurring, players do not receive debt while outdoors in an invaded zone.
• Those in that zone that do not wish to be at risk of Rikti attack are asked to take shelter immediately. They can do so by leaving the zone, or moving inside buildings or under cover (overpasses, parking garages, etc.).
• The combative inhabitants in a zone will move off the streets and to safer locations when a Rikti Invasion takes place.
• Rikti bombs appear to be unstable and not 100% reliable. Some do not explode on impact and only embed themselves in the ground. These bombs have been noted to detonate after a time, so take caution when you see these. They can be disarmed or delayed by inflicting damage upon them.

COMBINED NOTES

TASKS

• The size of spawns in Task Force/Strike Force missions will always be based on the number of players in a Strike Force/Task Force, regardless of whether they are logged on or not.
  
  • Spawns for Task Forces/Strike Forces no longer have a minimum size that they will not scale below.
    
    • 8 Person Task Force Example,
      
      • If a group of 8 players begin an 8 player Task Force, and 7 people LOG OFF, then the Task Force will still scale to the 8 players still attached to the Task Force (regardless of whether they are logged on or not).
      • If 6 players QUIT the 8 person Task Force, then the Spawns will scale to the remaining 2 players on the Task Force.

CITY OF HEROES

Powers

• Blasters
  
  • Blaster PVP Damage for some attacks was still off after the fix in the previous build.  They are now corrected.  This includes Explosive Arrow, Havoc Punch, Ice Bolt, and Fireball.

CITY OF VILLAINS

• Rikti Homeworld Portal should no longer be targetable via pet exploitation.

When you’re in the heat of battle, the smallest delay can be the difference between life and death. Sana Security’s Primary Response SafeConnect not only protects your PC against malicious software, it also makes light use of your memory and CPU, leaving you with the resources you need to seal victory!

Head over to Sana’s website and find out how Primary Response SafeConnect can help protect your PC, without killing performance. The full press release can also be found over at PlayNC!

Costume

• Fixed issue with Wedding Veil. Previously it was 2-tone (matching one colour to the colour of the character’s hair), and it was opaque. It is now mono coloured, translucent, and not linked to the character’s hair colour.

Heroes and Villains alike can now get involved in activities such as DJ Zero’s Pocket D Jubilee and Ganymede’s missions. The Spring Fling events will run for the next two weeks, finishing on February 29th. To get involved in some extra special events make sure to head over to Mercy Island and speak with Zev Scalamore. Zev, under direction of Arachnos, needs Villains to complete some extra-special dirty work for him!

Don’t forget the live wedding of Manticore and Sister Psyche of Friday, February 15th at 6:00pm GMT (7:00pm CET).

Ready for a Spring Fling? This year’s in-game event commences on Thursday, 14th February and will feature new content and the highlight of this year’s Valentine’s Day celebrations: the super-powered wedding of Manticore and Sister Psyche! Keep some time free this Friday evening from 6pm GMT and make sure you have the Training Room ready so you can be present for this historic event.

Just in time for the special celebrations, there is a new Wedding Pack available for purchase offering new costumes and emotes.

Manticore and Sister Psyche to be wed!

On Friday, February 15th, 2008 Paragon City will rejoice in a celebration of love and union between two of its luminary Heroes. Manticore™ and Sister Psyche™ will celebrate their devotion to each other with a very special live wedding ceremony to be held on the Training Room (test server). The Heroes will be controlled in real life by Sean Dornan-Fish, who you know as the persona behind Manticore, and his wife Jennifer Dornan-Fish. Matt “Positron™” Miller will be on hand to officiate the ceremony, along with many other signature characters from the City of Heroes universe.

Beginning at 6:00pm GMT on the Training Room, and repeating until 7:00pm, we will present the wedding ceremony live. We invite anyone who is interested to come out and partake in the festivities! However, please keep in mind that each presentation of the ceremony will only accommodate approximately one hundred participants. Gaining access to the wedding event will be simply the luck of the draw for those in the zone when it begins. Heroes and Villains, look for the ushers in Atlas Park and Mercy Island (there is one usher in each zone).

Spring Fling Begins

Valentine’s Day also kicks off this year’s annual Spring Fling event, including DJ Zero’s Pocket D Jubilee. Just head over to Pocket D, the space between Paragon and the Rogue Isles, where DJ Zero will be playing host again. Ganymede, Emissary of the God Eros, will be back, hoping to harness the primordial force of love, allowing Hero and Villain alike to lay down arms and join together to complete a host of missions.

Outside of the Pocket D, and in conjunction with the live Wedding event, players will find new Hero and Villain contacts in Atlas Park and Mercy Island. Sela Vermont, wedding coordinator of Manticore and Sister Psyche, sends Heroes on a special wedding gift reconnaissance mission while Zev Scalamore, under direction of Arachnos, enlists Villains to do his dirty work.

Event Timing:
Start: Thursday, February 14th at 9:30am GMT / 10:30am CET
Finish: Friday, February 29th, 9:30am GMT / 10:30am CET

New City of Heroes Wedding Pack

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, we are excited to introduce the City of Heroes Wedding Pack! Available for £5.99/€8.99 on the PlayNC Store, this pack includes two new formal wedding costumes and four celebratory character emotes, offering Heroes and Villains the tools to celebrate in style! 

We have updated the game with a new patch featuring many improvements, updates, corrections and other improvements. Primary amongst these are the new interface options for showing the “Real Numbers” that drive the game, and the “XP Smoothing” that should see characters advancing at a more even rate. For more details on these two exciting changes, read the recent interviews with CW Bennett and Matt ‘Positron’ Miller.

The full patch notes for this update can be found here.

Today’s update to City of Heroes and City of Villains includes two new additions to the UI designed to reveal the numbers that drive the game’s combat systems. Programmer CW Bennett answers some questions on the new feature in this short Q&A.

Q: Can you tell us about yourself and what you do on the COH dev team?

A: My name is CW and I’m a programmer on the City of Heroes/City of Villains development team.  I’ve been working on (or near) the team for the last five years.  I implemented most of the original U.I. and I’m currently a general gameplay programmer.

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 combats 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.

Q: Can you take us into the process of implementing this? What were your goals? What steps did you have to take to get to the final version?

A: Originally all of the power descriptions and combat numbers were obfuscated and hidden away because we assumed that the details would be confusing to players and we were trying to make a game that you could just play without reading the manual.  However, we eventually realized that in other games, comparing weapons/armor items was made easier (not harder) if they showed the actual combat numbers.  In addition, there is enough data exposed that everything else could eventually be determined by persistent players. The existing “easy to use” references are still there in game – if you don’t want all this extra detail, you don’t have to be bothered with it. But, for those who yearn for all the nitty gritty details, it’s all there for you!  Hopefully exposing the numbers will help give players additional information they can use to make combat and power decisions.

When I started working on the numbers, I decided I’d approach things from the order of easiest to hardest to implement.  All players have a list of final calculated combat attributes on them already so exposing that was an obvious first step.  Next step was looking over all the buff/debuffs and back calculating them.  In doing this, I realized that the information could be displayed on the buff icons in the status window, and incorporated that feature as an unexpected extra. 

Adding the hit rolls to the combat window happened because Back Alley Brawler (another dev) saw the attribute monitor and wanted something that would tell him what his chance to hit any target was going to be.  Unfortunately, your final chance to hit involves not only all the player buffs and all the target buffs, but is also different for every power. Each power has its own accuracy modifier and additionally could be slotted differently.  Since the game can’t predict what power a player will end up choosing, I added the next best thing and showed what the actual chance to hit was.

Q: What aspect of this will make players most excited and how can they take advantage of this feature?

A: It helps level the playing field a bit for players that don’t go to out of game tools like City of Data or Mid’s Hero Designer. It makes it easy to see the cumulative effect of various set bonuses. It can help players make power and slotting choices because they can better understand just what those powers or enhancement slot choices are actually doing. Just the other day, I was playing a low level Warshade and used the Combat Attribute window to help me decide how to slot Dark Nova.

Also, for us here on the Development Team, it gives us an elegant in-game tool to double check powers and the changes that we make to them.  If they are behaving unexpectedly the tool makes it much easier to find bugs.

Q:Some players are happy with the game the way it is. Does this force players to play the game any differently?

A: Not at all, if you are interested in the numbers they are now available, but they are not forced on to you.

Q: Does this feature make City of Heroes any more or less like the other MMO’s out there?

A: This adds functionality that is more like other MMO’s, which have traditionally been heavily number based. But like I said, the great thing about this feature is that players who want this type of information have it now, others may just want to keep playing as they always have.

Q: Is there anything else that you want to say about this feature?

A: There is more to come! (^_^)b

Is your Hero or Villain still deciding what to do this Valentine’s Day? Evolution Radio may have the answer in Pocket D on the Defiant server, hosting their Valentines Masquerade Ball from 8pm GMT this Thursday. Visit a Tailor to obtain suitable attire, and then join Evolution Radio’s DJ Stryker in Pocket D for music, activities and prizes! If you intend to attend, make sure to head over to the Evolution Radio forums to place your requests for specific music.

City of Heroes / City of Villains

Feature

• Combat Attribute Window
  
  • This window displays all the character’s current attributes.
  • It can be accessed by clicking on the “Powers” text on the Powers Icon Tray.
  • Players may also access the Combat Attribute window with the following command: “/toggle combatnumbers”
  • Below each attribute is a list of all powers affecting the attribute and the power’s contribution.
  • There should be tooltips for every attribute thoroughly explaining them.
  • Each attribute can be sent to the Attribute Monitor window (via right-click context menu)
  • Masterminds can right-click their pet and view their pet’s attributes.
• The Attribute Monitor window is a minimalist window designed to be unobtrusively left up at all times.
  
  • Up to 10 attributes can be monitored.
  • You can drag the window to any part of the user interface.
  • You can right-click on elements to re-order or remove them.
  • If there is a monitored attribute, the window will stay open. If all attributes are removed, it will close
• If you right-click the buff icons by the health bar the context menu should list everything it’s actually doing.

Tasks

• Players can now drop missions as often as once every 3 days.
• Fixed a bug where players that weren’t level 35 or higher could get missions in the Rikti War Zone through the Ouroboros device.
• Fixed an issue where Task Force/Strike Force members could buy from contacts using cell phones.
• Fixed bug that caused some flashback missions to spawn enemies for a group size of 8, regardless of the size of the group.
• Fixed Flashback story arc “Alone In The Darque” – it was not awarding a gold star on completion, or counting for any Challenge badges
• Spawns in Task Forces, Strike Forces and Trials will now spawn enemies for at least the minimum size required to start the Task Force, Strike Force or Trial.
  
  For example, if a Task Force requires 4 players to start and a team of 8 start the Taskforce, the spawns will spawn for a team size of 8. If 4 players drop out of this Task Force leaving only 4 players left in the team, the spawns will adjust to a team size of 4. If 2 more players leave the Task Force leaving only 2 players, the spawns will remain at a team size of 4, since that is the minimum size required to start the Task Force.

Game

• XP Curve Adjustment: Enemy XP values (and Influence/Infamy dropped) have been increased across nearly all levels. The size of the increase directly relates to datamined leveling speeds for characters, so levels where characters have found themselves ‘stuck’ or ‘slowed’ will have enemies of that level’s XP increased more than other levels. Enemy Levels with the greatest increase in XP rates are: 13 to 20, and 36 to 50. Other levels have had smaller, but still significant, XP and Influence adjustments. This may mean that characters will find it impossible to do ‘all’ the content of a given level range before outleveling it.
• Debt incurred for being defeated has been lowered by 20% across all levels.
• Experience rewards were removed from Rikti Portals. To compensate for this change, the Rikti Communications Officers who summon them now give greater experience when defeated.
• Experience and Influence rewards were removed from the Ouroboros Flashback mission “Welcome to Vanguard”
• For Windows Vista Users: Added Vista compatible cursors for when the game is run in Full Screen mode. Vista users will no longer need to use the “-compatiblecursors 1” line in their CoHUpdater.exe shortcut to make their cursor appear.

Bases

• Keeping track of what goes in and out of base storage bins has been improved. When you query any of the storage bins in your base (invention, inspiration, enhancement, etc.) they will now show a unified log for anything stored in all shared bins within the base. This change addresses a stability issue with the previous log file system that only impacted extremely large bases.

Powers

• Ouroboros Portals can no longer be opened in the Ouroboros zone.
• Ouroboros Portals may no longer be summoned in PvP Zones.
• Ouroboros Portals will no longer aggro critters.
• Using your Summon Ouroboros Portal power while your portal still exists should no longer cause the power to fail.
• Tweaked Group Flight to help alleviate latency issues with the power.
• Moment of Glory: Removed Health crash and Heal resistance. Reduced Recharge time to 240 seconds (four minutes). Decreased Protection, Resistance and Defense durations to 15 seconds.
• Flares for Blasters and Dominators range increased from 60’ to 80’
• The Recharge time for Choking Cloud has been reduced from 90 seconds to 20 seconds.
• Taunt Aura powers, such as Invincibility, no longer accept Taunt IO Set Enhancements.
• Increased damage on Force Field Repulsion Bomb. Previously, it was Minor damage (scale 0.1) and it is now Moderate damage (scale 1.0) The Endurance cost of this power increased slightly, as a result of this change.
• Super Strength Rage no longer has an Only Affect Self period. Instead, it is given a huge damage reduction coupled with the inability to use Temporary Powers for 10 seconds as its ‘crash’ effect. Be careful if using Rage while wearing a disguise, such as a Freakshow Disguise or the Holographic Projector, as this crash will disable those effects!
• Super Reflexes powers which granted Defense Debuff Resistance were, in most cases, not increasing that resistance when enhanced. This has been corrected. In other words, your Defense slotting will now also increase your resistance to Defense Debuffs
• Force Field Repulsion Bomb Knockback changed to Knockdown.
• Force Field Repulsion Bomb now accepts Damage Enhancements
• Vahzilok Disease should fade after 3 hours now.
• Nictus Hunter Quantum Array Guns bonus damage against Kheldians is no longer irresistible.

User Interface

• Characters below 10th level cannot send emails.
  
  • Characters that are not high enough level to send emails can now delete emails they receive.
• Added two buttons to the Log In screen.
  
  • Manage PlayNC Account – Clicking this button will launch the default web browser and take players to the PlayNC.com website to add more time or upgrade their City of Heroes account.
  • View Community Website – Clicking this button will launch the default web browser and take players to the City of Heroes website.
• Auction House
  
  • Sort by Rarity filter added.
  • Get all Influence / Infamy button added.
• Combat Channel (found on the Chat tabs)
  
  • Hit rolls have been added to the text in the combat channel.
• Context Menu for Buff Icons added (found underneath the Health and Endurance bars, and to the right of the team member list when grouped.)
  
  • The Context Menu for Buff Icons shows the effect of the buff.

Veteran Rewards

• 45 Month Veteran Reward added. This reward grants a free respec.

Inventions

• Ultra Rare Enhancements and their Set Bonuses should now work at all levels if exemplared.
• Ultra Rare IO Enhancements now correctly state they cannot be slotted until level 50.
• Fixed inconsistent Salvage requirements on new Issue 11 Recipes (Level of recipe did not match level of Salvage needed for it)
• Allowed slotting level range for Crafted Enhancement Set - Sniper / Extreme Measures should now be correct.
• Allowed slotting level range for Crafted Enhancement: Boost Set: Red Fortune should now be correct.
• Energy Manipulator: Chance to Stun will no longer have any effect on PVP targets.
• Achilles’ Heel: Chance for Resistance Debuff should no longer accidentally debuff the caster
• Touch of Lady Grey: Chance for Negative Energy Damage will no longer damage the user in certain cases.
• Endurance Modification IOs should now affect endurance draining powers such as Short Circuit.
• Performance Shifter: Chance for +Endurance is no longer resistible. If your powerset includes Endurance Drain resistance, you will now see full benefit of this enhancement.
• Force Feedback Chance for Recharge should no longer display the wrong Icon on the status effect bar.
• Absolute Amazement: Chance for To Hit Debuff was buffing enemies To Hit Value. This has been corrected and it will now properly reduce an enemy’s chances to hit.
• Absolute Amazement: Chance for To Hit Debuff when slotted into a pet summoning power would sometimes proc on the caster. This has been corrected.
• Karma: Defense/Recharge was inadvertently giving global recharge bonuses, rather than adding recharge only to the power in which it was slotted. It behaves correctly now.
• Dampened Spirits: To Hit Debuff/Endurance Reduction was using an incorrect table lookup to determine its To Hit Debuff value. This has been corrected.
• Corrected an issue which would prevent you from slotting Dark Watcher’s Despair: Chance for Recharge Slow or Touch of Lady Grey: Chance for Negative Energy Damage if you had Gaussian’s Synchronized Fire-Control: Chance for Build Up already slotted in any power.
• Endurance Modification IOs were always applying the End Mod value on a single attribute IO. For Multiple attribute IO’s this was not correct! The buff amount from multiple attribute IOs has been corrected they follow the established rules.
• Fixed an issue which could cause Confusion powers to cause aggro if they were slotted with the Contagious Confusion enhancement.
• Changed display name of ‘Debilitative Action: Recharge/Immobilize’ to match what it actually does. It is now ‘Debilitative Action: Immobilize/Endurance Reduction’
• Fixed bad descriptions in Recipes
• Many cases where the Recipe name did not match the resulting Enhancement have been fixed.
• Updated display names of all IO Set Bonus powers to be more user friendly.

Server Transfer

• Clarified Character Transfer warning to indicate that Arena kiosk ratings do not transfer with a Server Transfer.

Graphical Effects

• Full animation for Whirling Hands (as well as all other powers that share this animation) has been restored.
• Summoned Snow Beast will no longer play their spawn animation twice when summoned.
• Oil Slick will now display a ‘Defense Debuff’ graphic effect on targets.

City of Heroes

Powers

• Scrappers
  
  • Scrapper Martial Arts Crippling Axe Kick had its recharge time listed as ‘Fast’ when it should be referred to as ‘Moderate’. The help text has been corrected.
  • Scrapper Invincibility was set to use the wrong operator for its Taunt Aura. This has been corrected and should be back to its I10 effectiveness.
• Blasters
  
  • Energy Blast Power Bolt for Blasters had a 5% chance to not deal the smashing portion of its damage. This has been corrected—it should now always do the smashing damage, assuming the power hits a target.
  • Devices Auto Turret did not have a Defiance modifier active. This has been corrected. It now adds ~39% damage buff when successfully cast.
  • Devices Web Grenade now properly stacks its Defiance modifiers.
  • Repaired Ice Blast Blizzard for Blasters. Its Endurance Crash was inadvertently removed.
  • Blasters irresistible damage in PVP reduced from 33% to 10%
• Defenders
  
  • Defenders version of Voltaic Sentinel duration set to 60 seconds.
• Tankers
  
  • Frozen Aura for Tankers now has a damaging component.
  • Tanker Dual Blade Taunt recharge rate was set to 3 seconds, instead of the 10 seconds all other Tanker Taunt powers are set to. This has been corrected.
  • Increased radius of Ice Melee Frost from 7’ to 10’.
  • Increased radius of War Mace Crowd Control from 5’ to 8’.
  • Decreased radius of War Mace Shatter from 10’ to 8’, but increased its arc of attack from 20 degrees to 45 degrees.
• Controllers
  
  • Force Field Repulsion Bomb for Controllers no longer benefits from Containment.

Animations

• Fixed issue with some Archery and Trick Arrow animations not playing correctly at all times. Specifically if the power required the weapon to be drawn before activating.

City of Villains

Powers

• Masterminds
  
  • Mastermind Robotics Pulse Rifle Burse was doing Negative Energy Damage instead of Energy Damage. The damage type is now correctly set to the Energy type.
  • The following Mastermind commands have been added to facilitate sending inspirations to your pet.
    
    • /inspexec_pet_name [pet name] [insp name]
    • /inspexec_pet_target [insp name]
• Stalkers
  
  • Fixed an issue with Stalker Dual Blades One Thousand Cuts that was causing it to have less than desired area of effect. The new radius is 10’.

Graphical / Sound Effects

• Resolved issue with a shared wristband activation sequence that was resulting in sounds being shared between powers such as Robotics Masterminds and the portable workbench/Ouroboros portal summon.
• Transitioning from running forward to strafing left or right has been fixed for Dual Pistols.

Matt ‘Positron’ Miller has answered a range of questions about the upcoming “XP Curve Smoothing” changes for City of Heroes and City of Villains. Covering everything from what it means as your character levels through the expected implementation date for the live servers, this Q&A should make sure you are ready for this landmark improvement!

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

A: Well, the levelling 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 levelling faster than previous issues.

Q: What made you decide to implement this?

A: Our players had legitimate complaints that certain levels acted like brick walls in developing their characters. We wanted to eliminate those walls wherever possible, and in the process speed up levelling for everyone.

Q: Does it fundamentally change anything about the game?

A: Definitely, players will see more progress on their XP bars in the same amount of play time they are used to. In addition, levels where they felt “stuck” should go by MUCH more quickly now.

Q: Are you concerned that this will allow players to level up too quickly now?

A: That’s always a concern, but we are always looking to add things for max-level characters to do to improve themselves. In addition, the Ouroboros (flashback) system allows players to go back and play content they may have missed, so even if they have outlevelled a story arc or a badge-given mission they can go back and get it.

Q: When will this go live?

A: We expect this to be live before Valentine’s Day.

Q: Is there anything else that you want to say about this?

A: I am really excited about being able to bring this improvement to the players. This is nothing but a hugely positive step for the ‘City Of’ games.

NCsoft Europe had a massive presence at the Memorabilia Winter 2007 show last November, with bargain games on sale, live demos and in-game characters brought to life - both in person and by the Draw the World Together artists.

Plenty of players from across Europe came and enjoyed the show, but if you couldn’t be there, see what you missed in our exclusive video - now showing in the Movies section.

Thank you to everyone who came to the show and donated money to Draw the World Together, who were as always raising money on behalf of EveryChild. Between frantic sketching by our artists (drawing your in-game characters) and the never-ending efforts of Ms. Liberty and Ghost Widow (posing for pictures ‘in the game’ ), we managed to raise over £2,300 for charity - smashing our previous all-time records for a single show. As always, every single penny donated goes to EveryChild.

As well as watching the video, don’t forget to visit the PlayNC Gallery to see all of the sketches that were created during the show, and our Flickr photoset showcasing some of the players who managed to get ’in the game‘.

We’ll be on the road again in 2008 so keep an eye out here on the official site for details!

Villains, prepare to plot your take over of the world in double time! The ever popular Double XP weekend returns! 

Starting on the morning of Friday, February 8th, all defeat rewards, including experience, prestige and infamy will be doubled!  This will continue through the weekend to conclude the night of Sunday, February 10th. Make sure you have a good block of time to set aside, as this weekend will be a great opportunity to boost your abilities for future plotting and villainous activities!

The New Year is always a time for reflecting upon the year past, as well as setting goals and outlining plans for the year to come. In looking back, we feel that 2007 was a banner year for City of Heroes. Three major free expansions, among the 21 total game updates over 12 months, made for exciting times! We added a completely new game system with Inventions, bringing “loot” and strengthening our economy, and invited players to fight off an alien invasion and travel through time, among other things! Click the links below for highlights:

• Issue 9: Breakthrough!
• Issue 10: Invasion!
• Issue 11: A Stitch In Time

Additionally, in 2007 we expanded our services by offering Character Renames and Transfers. We are looking to add more such conveniences to facilitate a great gaming experience.

Then, in November of ’07 we announced the exciting news of the consolidation of the City of Heroes franchise under the NCsoft banner and formation of the NCsoft NorCal studio to support it: A New Age Dawns. As Brian Clayton, Executive Producer and NCsoft NorCal Studio Manager, alluded to in his Dev Blog, there are some big plans in the works for the game and the franchise. While we’