City of Heroes-City of Villains

News this morning from NCsoft Europe makes it official - it's all-access for City of Heroes and City of Villains players! Now you can enjoy both factions without needing the serial code as was required in the past.

"In setting the stage for our upcoming plans for the IP, we felt the time was right to truly consolidate the City of Heroes and City of Villains universe..." said Brian Clayton, General Manager and Executive Producer.

Read the complete press release below!

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

Senior Art Lead for the City of Heroes/City of Villains (CoX) franchise, Ken Morse has posted the latest in a series of Developer Diaries for the superheroic MMO from NCsoft. Entitled "Stretching the Genre: Creating Cimerora," the diary covers the mythical and mythological land of Cimerora from conception to realization. The Greek and Roman lore based zone makes for a fantastic contrast between ancient footsoldiers of the era and the time-travelling, superheroes of the game's current timeline. Click the thumbnails below for full-sized concept art and gameplay screenshots and then read on for Ken Morse's full developer diary:

Gameplay Screenshots

Concept Art

Stretching the Genre: Creating Cimerora
By Senior Art Lead, Ken Morse

As the Senior Art Lead, it’s my job to figure out how to turn Positron and the rest of the team’s ideas into visual realities. Coming from both a film and environment art background, I am always excited when the opportunity to create new settings for the game presents itself. A Task Force inspired by ancient Greece and Rome, however, was genre-stretching territory we’d never ventured into before, and presented some serious challenges.

Could Heroes and Villains of every imaginable variety fit into an ancient, fantastic setting? Would Cimerora feel as connected to the Hero and Villain experience as Atlas Park or Mercy Island? Would it be exciting to see super powered battles between leather and bronze clad warriors in sandals versus Heroes and Villains in tights? I’d like to give you a glimpse into the process that took Cimerora from concept to completion!

Stratics Central: This is your first content update produced since NCsoft purchased CoX. How does it feel? Were there any thoughts that fans might be looking at this update a little more critically?

Matt Miller: Oh yeah, we had the plans for Issue 12 before the acquisition, and we were very nervous about them being the first thing they saw out of the new studio. Fortunately we were able to get some major Quality of Life improvements into the mini-update that was 11.5, and we were able to fast-track Villain Epic Archetypes into 12, and beef up the Issue substantially over our initial plans.

NCSoft is proud to announce another anniversary, this one for their title City of Heroes. Today marks the fourth year since the launch of City of Heroes, and to celebrate, the NCsoft team has created a City of Heroes / City of Villains calendar for all their fans! This downloadable calendar features each of the 12 “Issues” that have been launched since the games release, one for each month of the year.

In addition, Matt “Positron” Miller, who gives an interesting tidbit of information about one feature the team is working to introduce at some point in the next few months:

“…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…”

For all you CoX fans, here's some interesting trivia:

NCsoft auctions for the Child’s Play charity have reached more than $2500... help surpass that to help this wonderful charity!

What you need to know about the sale of City of Heroes and City of Villains and the future of Cryptic Studios.

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.

Today NCSoft announced today that it had fully acquired the City of Heroes IP which had previously been co-owned by NCSoft and Cryptic Studios. NCSoft also announced the opening of a new studio in North California with former members of the City of Heroes team from both NCSoft and Cryptic Studios.

Cryptic posted the following on Gamasutra:<blockquote><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/GamasutraJobs/~3/147469432/viewjobrss.asp">Game Studio looking for a Quality Assurance Manager - Cryptic Studios, Inc. Los Gatos, CA, USA</a>:<P> "<img src="http://jobs.gamasutra.com/media/accounts/153/CrypticLogo2.jpg" align="right" />We are currently looking for a full-time Quality Assurance Manager. The quality assurance department at Cryptic Studios is responsible for assuring a high level of quality and excellence in the company's products.