General News

Ever watch those videos where various FPS characters say stupid things and think to yourself "I can do better"? Now's your chance to do so, and win a new car in the process:

On behalf of Toyota and GameTrailers.com we are proud to present the Matrix Machinima Contest: Get In Touch With Your Dark Side!

Make a Machinima video with City of Heroes / City of Villains and have the chance to win the grandprize of a 2009 Model year Toyota Matrix S filled with good stuff! Act now! Submissions can only be uploaded to GameTrailers.com from July 1st through August 10th. Winners will be announced on Spike's GTTV on September 12th.

Click here for the contest details and rules!

So get your minions, sidekicks and henchmen ready, load up on hard drive space and make a Machinima masterpiece!!!

I look forward to seeing the good entries. And the bad ones, too, I guess. But mostly the good ones.

Some good news for those of you who like to follow the CoX community's creative impluses. NCSoft has released the newest issue of the fanzine:

We are pleased to announce the latest edition of the City of Heroes Fanzine!

The Fanzine is a collection of player submitted art, comic and stories from City of Heroes fans. If you are interested in submitting material for consideration for the next Fanzine, please visit the Fans Submission Guidelines web page.

Featured in this issue are tales from a horrible pick-up group, a character origin story, and plenty of artwork from the various heroes who guard (and the villians who attack) Paragon City. Check it out!

Short and simple update from NCSoft today:

On Tuesday June 24th, 8:00AM CT (6:00AM PT) all North American Servers will be brought down to update to Patch 17.200800612.1T.

The estimated downtime is 2 hours, we apologize for the inconvenience.

The actual patch, which went up on the Training Room roughly a week ago, should include the following patch notes:

Build 17.20080612.0

Tuesday, June 17, 2008



COMBINED

Powers

• Circle of Thorns Behemoth Invincibility toned down slightly. It now provides roughly 8% defense per target.
  
  
• Corrected animation time issues with Drain Psyche and Energy Absorption.
  
  
• Fixed a minor delay for the hit effects/damage on Martial Arts - Crippling Axe Kick
  
  
• Willpower / Rise to the Challenge will now root the player while activating. This was done to ensure it follows the same rules as other toggle powers.
  
  
• The animation used by Spine Burst and Thorn Burst will no longer prevent the next attack animation from playing.
  
  
  
  

User Commands

• Added /sync command which attempts to get the client and server back in sync when the client allows movement but it isn't reflected on the server. (When out of sync, the player will be able to move around, but cannot see other players or NPCs, and other players cannot see them).
  

CITY of HEROES

Powers

Blasters

• Blasters / Defiance - Found a bug in the formula used for calculating Blaster Defiance buffs. The following powers have been altered as listed:
  
  
• Fistful of Arrows (slightly weaker)
  
  
• Rain of Arrows (slightly stronger)
  
  
• Zapp (slightly stronger
  
  
• Power Burst (stronger)
  
  
• Bitter Freeze Ray (slightly stronger)
  
  
• Shout (stronger)
  

CITY of VILLAINS

Powers

Corruptors

• Corruptor / Electric Blast / Voltaic Sentinel - Corruptor version of Voltaic Sentinel now benefits from Enhancements.
  

Dominators

• Dominator / Electric Assault / Thunder Strike: This power should no longer accept endurance modification sets.
  

Stalkers

• Fixed Stealth Suppression from Assassination Attacks
  

Tailor

• Weapon customization: Rularuu bow should now be obtainable by Villains
  

Got to say, /sync is going to be VERY nice to have, the way things have been lately.

Whether you're looking for some new desktop wallpaper or wondering when the next planned Double XP Weekend is, these calendars are worth checking out for any CoX player:

It's a new month and a good opportunity to change your desktop to the June City of Heroes 4 year anniversary Calendar!

Click here to view the 4 year anniversary calendar wallpaper page.

Choose the June calendar and save the image as your desktop and enjoy a retrospective view from City of Heroes!

Upcoming dates to watch for include a Rikti invasion starting June 13th, Positron's bithday on the 16th -- and, of course, Father's Day on the 15th. Try not to forget that last one.

The Midnight Hour, the newest free expansion for NCSoft's MMO City of Heroes, went live yesterday:

Issue 12: Midnight Hour, the highly anticipated 12th free expansion for City of Heroes and City of Villains is now available to all current subscribers. Log in, patch up and play the exciting new release!

For more information please visit:

Official Press Release, “NCsoft Covers New Ground in City of Heroes”

Issue 12 Information Links

For those who haven't been following, the Issue 12 patch introduced Powerset Proliferation, which radically increased the variety of powersets available to each archetype; a revamp of the Hollows newbie zone; epic villiain archetypes; the introduction of the Midnight Squad hero group, and much more.

Could Issue 12 be hitting the servers tomorrow? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, something's happening with them:

On Tuesday May 20th at 6:00AM CDT (11:00 AM GMT) All North American City of Heroes & City of Villains servers will be brought down for an extended maintenance.

The anticipated downtime is approximately 5 hours.

Hoping it is Issue 12 myself, of course, but see you when they come up either way.

The Midnight Hour is drawing ever nearer:

The next free expansion coming to City of Heroes and City of Villains, Issue 12: Midnight Hour, has entered Open Beta Testing. This means any and all subscribers to the game can log into the Training Room and try out the many additions and improvements included in Issue 12 for themselves! If you haven’t been to the Training Room before, click here for instructions on how to configure your computer to do so.

To read the many changes in the current version, join us on the Official Message Forums to view the patch notes.

Hope to see you there.

Wow. It's been four years since City of Heroes first came out on store shelves and Atlas Park first knew the joy of an endless wave of blasters sending bursts of flame or ice or lightning or generic comic book energy against anyone who dared to try to steal a purse. It seems Matt "Positron" Miller is impressed too:

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.

And lest you think for a second that the next four years won't be just as packed with heroic action, NCSoft has announced the important dates planned so far for the next year:

April 28th, 2008 marks the fourth year since the launch of City of Heroes. To celebrate this achievement, the NCsoft NorCal team has created a City of Heroes / City of Villains calendar for fans of the game. This downloadable calendar features each of the 12 “Issues” that have been launched since the games release, one for each month of the year.

The calendar also includes an Anniversary message from Matt “Positron” Miller, along with important dates for the next year, including:

• May 6th, 2008: Issue 12: Midnight Hour enters Open Beta Testing
• July 18, 2008: Double XP Weekend Begins
• October 20, 2008: Halloween Event Begins
• December 15, 2008: Winter Event Begins
• January 23, 2009: Double XP Weekend Begins

To view these dates, plus many more from the lore and history of City of Heroes, visit the 4 Year Anniversary Calendar web page. From all of us at Stratics, congratulations on four years of beating down the bad guys (or the good guys for those of you who play City of Villains).

Rejoice, altaholics and "i've got 50s of every archetype, how am i supposed to take advantage of Powerset Proliferation" people alike, for NCSoft has the cure you have long waited for. Well, not so much 'cure' in the former case, but I'm sure you'll like it anyway:

NCsoft NorCal Studios is pleased to announce the pricing and details for the coming Optional Additional Character Slot feature. 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. To accommodate playing more characters on your favorite 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 $5.99
  • 2 Optional Character Slots for a one-time fee of $9.99
  • 5 Optional Character Slots for a one-time fee of $19.99

• 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.


To discuss this announcement, please join us on the Official Message Forums.

Yes, you read that right. 36 slots for you to come up with thinly veiled ripoffs of popular DC and Marvel characters. Or your own original creations, if you can come up with that many.

More information about Issue 12's new content has been revealed by NCSoft in the past few days, including an improved character creation system:

Issue 12: Midnight Hour, the next free expansion for City of Heroes includes a number of refinements for the game. Among those improvements is a streamlined Character Creator including additional power information and an easy to use costume set selector.

Click here to read all the details!

But that's not all. The full list of Powerset Proliferation changes has been posted as well:

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.

Seems scrappers won't be running around with huge axes after all. Guess I owe someone five bucks.