NCSoft

Purchasing and playing NCSoft titles such as City of Heroes, Tabula Rasa, and Exteel just got easier. Teaming up with InComm, a technology firm that develops markets and distributes stored-value gift and prepaid products. Target, Best Buy and Rite-Aid will be the first stores to carry cards.

Purchasing a card doesn’t just give you game time either, but will give purchasers access to special in-game items!

NCSoft, the company behind such MMOs as City of Heroes and Lineage II, have announced that they will be putting in an appearance at the San Diego Comic Con:

July 23-July 27th members of the City of Heroes team will be at Comic Con to share in the fun. Stop by the NCsoft booth # 5209 to meet up with Lighthouse, Ex Libris, and Blue Steel from the City of Heroes & City of Villains team.

Be sure to ask for your Pocket D VIP Pass to gain access to the Pocket D Jubilee event scheduled for Saturday July 26th. The VIP Pass will also unlock a special in game item that was selected for this show only.

At last, an answer to the question of whether or not Iron Man could beat up Positron? Probably not, but it should be worth going to anyway.

Positron (or Matt Miller, as he is known in an obscure little place called reality), the lead developer for NCSoft's popular superhero-themed MMO City of Heroes, has recently been interviewed by his bosses in an attempt to find out just what it is he's working on. That or this is a clever stunt to release information on the upcoming Issue 12 to the playerbase. One of the two, anyway:

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 labored 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.

A good read for current and returning players alike.

Stratics Central's Nelson has just gotten off the phone with NCsoft’s Brian Clayton regarding the company's acquisition of of the City of Heroes IP.

The City of Heroes IP, previously jointly owned by NCsoft and Cryptic Studios – the original developer, also includes City of Villains. Though NCsoft has acquired the City of Heroes IP, they have not acquired Cryptic Studios. However, the vast majority of the CoH/CoV team from Cryptic Studios will be joining NCsoft NorCal.