City of Heroes / City of Villains tag:www.cityofheroes.com,2008-03-03:25 2008-12-20T02:32:40Z City of Heroes wins Massively.com Award. 25.13529 2008-12-20T00:25:50Z 2008-12-20T01:28:18Z It's nearing the end of the year and Massively.com has recently announced their "Best of 2008 Awards." NCsoft and the City of Heroes Development Team were pleased to hear that City of Heroes made it... Ex Libris City of Heroes & City of Villains Most Improved Game 2008 Award Join our community discussion of: What was your favorite 2008 feature?]]> City of Heroes Holiday Promotion! 25.13528 2008-12-19T23:43:18Z 2008-12-20T00:20:35Z Introducing City of Heroes Holiday Special Offer* In the spirit of the holidays, we are offering additional months when you subscribe for a 6 or 12 month plan. These can be "stacked" one time on... Ex Libris Introducing City of Heroes Holiday Special Offer* In the spirit of the holidays, we are offering additional months when you subscribe for a 6 or 12 month plan. These can be "stacked" one time on top of your current subscription plan. To take advantage of this offer log in to your PlayNC® Account and you will see the special offer from your City of Heroes game account page.
    • Subscribe for 6 months get 1 month free.
    • Subscribe for 12 months get 2 months free.
*Offer ends at 11:59PM EST, January 25th, 2009. Join the Community Discussion]]> Hit the Slopes this Holiday with City of Heroes!! 25.13513 2008-12-18T01:34:40Z 2008-12-20T00:21:54Z Heroes & Villains alike are hitting the slopes attempting to set new speed records on our enhanced ski slopes. Come out and join the festivities and be rewarded as well as gain opportunities to share... Ex Libris the winter event here!
      By simply logging in between December 15th, 2008 and January 4th, 2009, players receive the following:
    • The Holiday Spirit Temporary Power. This temp power grants 48 hours of 25% Debt Protection.
    • The Frostbitten Badge
    • The Holiday Cheer Temporary Power. Use this power on another player to give them a random, Mystery Gift - possibly a Temporary Power, a sack full of Influence or Infamy, or possibly a winter themed hat.
Join up with the rest of the community to discuss this years Winter Event.]]> City of Heroes 'Mac' Open Beta! 25.13502 2008-12-16T21:57:21Z 2008-12-17T00:02:29Z The City of Heroes Development Team and TransGaming Media are pleased to announce that Mac users will now be able to test out City of Heroes for the Macintosh. Lead Designer, Matt "Positron" Miller made... Ex Libris Matt "Positron" Miller made an Announcement today on the Official City of Heroes Forums that Open Beta for Mac has now begun. We'd like to welcome Mac player's to the City of Heroes Open Beta. You can learn more about the Mac Special Edition at http://www.cityofheroes.com/macbeta/]]> Winter Event Starting "Soon!" 25.13482 2008-12-11T01:39:19Z 2008-12-20T00:23:23Z It's Holiday Time again in Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. This year join the festivities and be rewarded as well as get the chance to reward others. By simply logging in between December 15th,... Ex Libris It's Holiday Time again in Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. This year join the festivities and be rewarded as well as get the chance to reward others.
      By simply logging in between December 15th, 2008 and January 4th, 2009, players receive the following:
    • The Holiday Spirit Temporary Power. This temp power grants 48 hours of 25% Debt Protection.
    • The Frostbitten Badge
    • The Holiday Cheer Temporary Power. Use this power on another player to give them a random, Mystery Gift - possibly a Temporary Power, a sack full of Influence or Infamy, or possibly a winter themed hat.
Join up with the rest of the community to discuss this years Winter Event. ]]> Ten Ton Hammer Shows Exclusive Video! 25.13459 2008-12-05T03:18:51Z 2008-12-05T03:25:56Z Ten Ton Hammer has been pounding out the news lately for NCsoft and City of Heroes. Last week we had Dalmarus post up his article City of Heroes Universe Revisited. This week they are hosting... Ex Libris City of Heroes Universe Revisited. This week they are hosting our exclusive Day Jobs Video! Stop by Ten Ton Hammer and give them a warm heroic or calculated villainous welcome.]]> Joystiq Interviews Positron 25.13446 2008-12-01T23:25:27Z 2008-12-02T15:31:51Z Joystiq interviews Matt "Positron" Miller about all things City of Heroes in the now and coming future. Working on your skills while offline, making missions that suit your personal tastes, pulling rabbits from your hat,... Ex Libris Joystiq interviews Matt "Positron" Miller about all things City of Heroes in the now and coming future. Working on your skills while offline, making missions that suit your personal tastes, pulling rabbits from your hat, and all on a Mac. Matt answers questions about Merits, Mac, Mission Architect and Magic, Oh My! Check out the article linked above and join in on the Community Discussion.]]> Announcing the City of Heroes "Create a Character" Costume Contest Winner! 25.13416 2008-11-19T23:27:15Z 2008-11-19T23:31:19Z This Fall Palit and AMD partnered with the City of Heroes® team to present the "Create a Character" Costume Contest. First a list of finalists was chosen from over a thousand entries and presented to... Palit and AMD partnered with the City of Heroes® team to present the "Create a Character" Costume Contest. First a list of finalists was chosen from over a thousand entries and presented to the players for a vote. Now the players have spoken, and the grand prize winner has been selected. Congratulations to SWIFTWING from the Virtue server! See the winner here.]]> Boomtown Interviews Positron About Issue 13 Features! 25.13393 2008-11-12T22:51:31Z 2008-11-13T20:33:36Z Boomtown one of Europe's premiere gaming news and gaming communities resource outlets recently caught up with Senior Lead Designer Matt "Positron" Miller. Catching the cape of this Hero is no small feat so Boomtown's interviewer... Ex Libris Boomtown one of Europe's premiere gaming news and gaming communities resource outlets recently caught up with Senior Lead Designer Matt "Positron" Miller. Catching the cape of this Hero is no small feat so Boomtown's interviewer Jakob Paulsen worked to unravel as many mysteries as possible about 'City of Heroes' upcoming release of Issue 13: Power and Responsibility. Positron speaks of PvP, day jobs, shields, pain domination, inventions, powers, and more resources for the NCsoft studio that is focused on bringing 'City of Heroes' on to bigger and better ventures like the upcoming Mission Architect. Check out the article here: City of Heroes Issue 13 interview Join the community discussion here: ]]> Letter from Positron: Issue 13 Enters Open Beta! 25.13372 2008-11-06T15:00:45Z 2008-11-06T15:15:35Z Good day everyone! As you can all see now, Issue 13: Power and Responsibility is now in Open Beta. This means that anyone and everyone who has an active City of Heroes account can try... Alex von Minden Issue 13: Power and Responsibility is now in Open Beta. This means that anyone and everyone who has an active City of Heroes account can try out the issue on the Training Room server. We're just a few short weeks away from releasing this to the Live servers, so we are hoping you will all try Issue 13 and report any bugs you find so we can have a smooth release. If you aren't familiar with connecting to the Training Room Test Server, you can find instructions on how to do that on the Training Room Forums. I'd like to take this time to go into more on the designs for some of the new stuff in Issue 13. Patron and Epic Power Pools: First off, we've made some changes to the Villain Patron and Hero Epic Power Pools. We know that these have been out of balance for a while, so in bringing Patron pools up to the same level as Hero pools, we've made a lot of changes to both side's high level powers. We did extensive datamining on power choices, how they were being utilized, and damage outputs. In the end we tweaked several powers and removed some, replacing them with (what we think) are far more useful ones. We were very cautious in removing powers; it's not something we ever do lightly. We only do it where there was a huge disparity in how often it is chosen over another power. That to us points to severe problems with that power even being in that pool to begin with. Merit System: Next up, we have a new Merit System for playing through content in the game. Players will no longer need to "farm" particular missions or Task Forces for a specific IO. Now you can accumulate Merits and simply purchase that IO outright from the new Merit Vendors sprinkled throughout Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. Practically everything you do in the game earns you Merits now and the amount you earn is based on our datamines on how long particular things take to accomplish in our game. This means that really fast Task Forces or Trials will earn you fewer Merits than ones that take longer to complete. Merits don't have a level associated with them either, so you can earn Merits in your low-level career, and save them up to purchase IOs that will be most useful when you are level 50. The choice is now in your hands, and out of the random drop tables these missions had previously. Bases: We've made some changes to the way players deal with bases. Overall things got a lot less expensive, Prestige-wise, in bases. This means that smaller SGs should be able to accomplish more with their bases now. If your SG wants to take advantage of the new, lower, prices, you're going to have to do a little work in selling the older items, and buying the new, lower priced items. It's an unfortunate artifact of the way the base system was designed that we can't just refund your SG the difference straight away. We've also eliminated the need for Base Salvage. Now everything in bases can be built with Invention Salvage. You will even be able to convert all that extra Base Salvage into Invention Salvage to help get rid of the extraneous items your SG has probably accumulated. This change will help smaller SGs build cooler stuff faster, as well as give large SGs a benefit for all their hard work so far. Don't worry, the storage containers in bases will now be able to hold a small amount of Invention Salvage as well now. Leveling Pact: We're adding in a brand new feature for new characters and new players to get acclimated to the game with Leveling Pacts. Characters that are level 5 and under can form a permanent bond that will evenly split all XP they ever earn, keeping them in perfect level sync their entire careers (unless they decide to break the Pact). It's superior to Sidekicking because the split happens even if one half of the duo isn't on-line! They will be able to log in later and be treated to the XP they would have earned had they been on-line and playing with their partner anyway. This is the perfect way for a couple of close knit buddies to make sure they always have characters "in sync" even if one plays more often, or at different times, than the others. This feature will initially launch with the low-level limit on initiating Pacts, as well as only being able to Pact two characters together. It's a brand new way of dealing with our reward system, so once we are happy with how things are working out, we can look into raising the maximum entry level on Pacting as well as the number of characters that can be Pacted together. PvP Changes: We've also overhauled our PvP system in such a way that the changes do not affect PvE. We've ignored PvP as "good enough" for long enough. The previous systems were "ok" and have a very vocal and devoted fan-base, but we plan on incorporating more and more PvP features into City of Heroes and City of Villains. In order for us to do that we really need a solid foundation of the core PvP gameplay. We are trying to make PvP more accessible to new players, while giving experienced PvP'ers the advantage that comes with formulating tactics around the new systems we're putting in place. PvP from now on will be on our priority list. If something isn't working out, we'll be in there tweaking it and making it work, for the entire future of the product, not just Issue 13. Multi Builds: Be sure to check out the new "Multi-build" feature. You can access this feature by visiting any level-up Trainer in the game. Here you can make an alternate build, or switch between the builds that you have. We are initially launching this feature with only two builds available to work with, but the feature has the capability of dealing with more, should we ever find a need for third, fourth, or more, builds. Day Jobs Finally, I want to talk about Day Jobs. These are rewards your character earns for logging out for extended periods in certain in-game locations. These rewards are varied, depending on the job your character was working on. I hope that you all find these as fun and exciting as we had in designing them. I look forward to the role-playing that players will do incorporating their "Day Job" into their crime fighting (or crime committing) regime. Play Issue 13 Open Beta Now On the Training Room! I am sure you will hear from me more as we get closer to launching Issue 13 to the Live servers, but for now, have a blast trying out these features and helping us polish them up for their final launch to Live in the coming weeks. Matt "Positron" Miller Lead Designer]]> Battle of Good vs. Evil Coming to the Mac! 25.13343 2008-10-30T15:30:58Z 2008-10-30T15:49:49Z Today, October 30th, 2008, NCsoft announced a partnership with TransGaming, Inc. to bring the award-winning City of Heroes franchise to the Apple® Macintosh® computer platform for the company's western territories. The Mac version will be... Alex von Minden Issue 13: Power and Responsibility this fall. The official launch of the Macintosh version is planned to follow shortly thereafter via a special digital-only edition. For more details, please click here to read the full press release. Here's an excerpt:
"Players will soon be able to join the battle of good versus evil in the most popular comic book MMO on both the PC and Mac platforms...and in the same game world," commented Brian Clayton, executive producer of City of Heroes for NCsoft West. "Given Mac's fame as a platform for creative people and City of Heroes' unprecedented character customization options, I think City of Heroes is a perfect fit for the Mac gaming community."
For anyone interested in pre-ordering the Mac version of City of Heroes, please visit Gametree Online. Additionally, If you are interested in getting an early look at the Macintosh version of City of Heroes by taking part in the open beta test, click here to sign up! To discuss this announcement, please join us on the Official City of Heroes Message Forums. ]]> Matt Miller talks with Gamezone.com about Issue 13 25.13342 2008-10-29T20:54:03Z 2008-10-29T20:55:55Z In a recent article, City of Heroes Lead Designer Matt "Positron" Miller, along with Senior Designer Floyd Grubb, talk with Gamezone.com about features of the coming free expansion, Issue 13: Power and Responsibility. Here's an... Alex von Minden What other little goodies are you packing into Issue 13 that maybe you have not talked about yet? We've done a lot of quality of life features, like revamping the Badge UI, or tweaking the locations of some NPCs. A good chunk of time was spent setting up this year's Halloween event, and that is taking place on the Live servers right now! This year's Holiday event features some new "ski runs" for players to try out in Pocket D. Please click here to read the full article on Gamezone.com To discuss this article, please join us on the Official City of Heroes Message Forums.]]> Dev Diary: Issue 13's New Missions 25.13341 2008-10-29T19:23:27Z 2008-10-29T19:39:31Z Gaming website Ten Ton Hammer.com presents an exclusive first look at a Development Diary from City of Heroes Senior Game Designer Bruce Harlick titled Designing the New Missions in Issue 13: Power and Responsibility. In... Alex von Minden Designing the New Missions in Issue 13: Power and Responsibility. In the article, readers get a behind-the-scenes look at how the new missions included in the coming free expansion, Issue 13, were designed. Here's an excerpt:
Since Daedalus is the Cimeroran version of Positron and the greatest craftsman of his age, I wanted his second arc to feature some sort of crafting or item creation. So the first act has the hero investigating a threat, the second act sends the hero to create a device to help protect Cimerora from the threat, and the final act lets the hero protect Cimerora while Daedalus employs the device to prevent the threat from reoccurring. In the second mission, the "crafting mission," I delved deeper into our dialog tree system and had a lot of fun writing the Crey Energy Fabricator Mk I. Although it is only a machine, I could hear its voice and get a sense for its personality as I wrote its dialog. I think the sequence there works better than a "get the salvage and go to an invention table" type of crafting mission.
Click here to read the full article on Ten Ton Hammer.com! If you are interested to know more about the man behind the missions, be sure to read Bruce Harlick's Ask a Dev article. To discuss this announcement, please join us on the Official City of Heroes Message Forums. ]]> Welcome to the Redesigned City of Heroes Website! 25.13329 2008-10-27T22:09:44Z 2008-10-27T22:17:31Z We'd like to welcome you to the newly re-designed City of Heroes Website! The new website incorporates all the elements from the old CityofHeroes.com and CityofVillains.com under one roof! Be sure to visit the below... Alex von Minden
  • Signature Heroes
  • Signature Villains
    • Also, you may want to visit the Media section and grab yourself a new wallpaper. Be sure to check back often as we are working on more new additions to enhance the new website over the coming months! If you have comments about the new website, or to report an issue with the new functionality, please join us on the Official City of Heroes Message Forums. ]]>     Halloween Event On Now! 25.13302 2008-10-18T17:34:37Z 2008-10-23T20:35:05Z 2008 Halloween Event Has Begun! As a special thank you to all City of Heroes and City of Villains players we've begun this year's Halloween Event early! We've had such a great weekend at Hero-Con... 2008 Halloween Event Has Begun! As a special thank you to all City of Heroes and City of Villains players we've begun this year's Halloween Event early! We've had such a great weekend at Hero-Con with the players that came out to our event and wanted to give something back to everyone else playing online! Now through November 2nd, enjoy the 2008 Halloween Event! This year's event has a new twist with a group of unwanted guests looking to spoil the trick or treating, Zombies! Zombies These homely fellows seem to be literally rising from the ground beneath us and attacking heroes, villains and citizens without discrimination. Their taste in fashion is despicable, not to mention the flies and the smell! Be sure to have the zone event channel added to one of your chat tabs in-game to see the event notifications and take part in all the fun! Badges, Temporary Costumes and Other Rewards But know this! With new challenges come new rewards! All of last year's trick or treating goodies are back this year. Heroes and Villains can collect Classical Costumes (and wear them) for Trick or Treating throughout the city. Badges will be available for those who collect the most Classical Costumes. It's almost enough to make heroes and villains set their differences aside. Almost. Old Enemies Return Ravenwing Cabal's Annah will be in Croatoa to explain more about some of the activities, as will Granny Beldam in Nerva Archipelago. The fun begins today, October 18th, and continues through Sunday, November 2nd at 11:59pm EST.]]>