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.

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!

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!

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.

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…

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.

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!

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!

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!