City of Heroes

By James Egan Syp puts forth his ideal WAR feature set, which includes capturable and trainable pets similar to World of Warcraft's system and the player-created content and sidekicks of City of Heroes. Syp would also like to see WAR include an in-game music player like EVE Online, and other features d...

By Adrian Bott What NPCs and storylines from your MMOs would you like to see the developers return to? Are there any characters whose stories just beg to be fleshed out more? What zones could do with more stories? What quests deserve an extra chapter? And the final question: given the tools, would you wri...

By Michael Zenke Urban exploration and free running are activities normally associated with the real world. In recent years, however, MMOs such as Everquest 2, Age of Conan and World of Warcraft have become a digital stage for the arts. With entire new virtual worlds to explore, no risk of injury and no phys...

By Adrian Bott Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of VillainsOne of the most eagerly anticipated features of City of Heroes Issue 13: Architect is the Mission Maker, which will let players build their own story arcs for others to play through. There's been a torrent of speculation about what...

By Shawn Schuster The second, and arguably largest day of PAX 2008 is behind us, and we thought we'd get you up to speed on our ongoing expo impressions. Saturday was packed with some exciting panels from the MMO developer community, such as one accurately called "NCsoft is kicking @r$e at PAX!" This panel wa...

By Adrian Bott The only place where City of Heroes has 'raid content' anything like other MMORPGs is arguably the Hamidon, with the Rikti Mothership coming a close second. Originally a molecular biologist called Hamidon Pasalima, this horror underwent deliberate mutation to become a single cell of t...

By Adrian Bott Filed under: Super-hero, Galleries, Screenshots, City of Heroes, City of VillainsWhen City of Heroes Issue 12: Midnight Hour came out, it brought with it a new co-operative Task Force that many players thought was the best yet. Its popularity hasn't waned at all; there are still groups r...

By Adrian Bott Filed under: Super-hero, Video, City of Heroes, City of Villains, LoreWith the announcment of City of Heroes Issue 13: Architect, we now have player-made missions to look forward to. The Mission Architect system will allow players to indulge their creativity, creating whole story arc...

By Adrian Bott Other games have 'rested' systems, too. Age of Conan has 'fresh kills', where a set number of the first kills of the day net you extra XP (so long as they're a challenge), and something similar was popularized in World of Warcraft long before.

By Adrian Bott Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of VillainsAs the City of Heroes community fell upon and devoured the news of Issue 13: Architect like a pack of wild crack manatees, the developers occasionally ran out from under their desks to answer a question or two. The merits system in pa...

By Krystalle Voecks 1:00 PM, City of Heroes/City of Villains: Player meet-up Pulchritudinous people of Paragon City, and rambunctious rabble of the Rogue Isles -- come and meet your fellow fearless friends at the City of Heroes and Villains gathering. ...

By Adrian Bott The 'Cap run' is the City of Villains equivalent, a super-quick trolley dash through the Virgil Tarikoss Strike Force in Cap Au Diable. Although it takes slightly longer than a Fast Katie - and yes, this has been used as an argument that the CoX developers are biased in favor of heroes, belie...

By Adrian Bott Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of VillainsThe speculation that built up following Positron's haiku is over. NCsoft has announced its new free expansion for City of Heroes/Villains: Issue 13, Architect. The main focus is the Mission Architect feature, by which players ca...

By Adrian Bott City of Heroes is still taking on players at a healthy rate, and remains one of the most well-loved games on the market. It doesn't work quite like some other games, though, and new players will find it useful to be aware of the differences. If you're used to games where the tank-healer-DPS tri...

By Adrian Bott Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of VillainsConfused? Stay with us. Matt 'Positron' Miller, lead developer of City of Heroes, loves to drop hints to the player base about coming content. Sometimes these hints come in the forums, and sometimes they get fed through the much-lo...

By Krystalle Voecks Snow? in this dog days of fall? Sure -- if you're talking about snow that appears in a game world. Of course, today's One Shots doesn't show snow so much as a graphical glitch in CoX, but we think Jeff T. has a point. He writes: NCSoft always said weather was beyond the City of Heroes/Villains game...

By Adrian Bott City of Heroes took a radically different approach. (It could hardly not do so, what with comic book heroes superspeeding and flying all over the place.) The individual zones were much smaller, and characters could take 'travel powers' at level 14, which would get them from place to place i...

By Shawn Schuster The interesting thing about this audio is it's recorded live at the convention in German and English. Each question is answered in both languages, so if you're wondering what Guild Wars is in German, it's Guild Wars. Also, be sure to follow along with the latest Games Convention happenings...

By Adrian Bott Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of VillainsBoth the EU and US forums are home to excited speculation after the discovery of a curious new Invention Enhancement type listed in the City of Heroes Auction House. The drops aren't yet available in-game, but it's a fun quirk of the...

By Adrian Bott Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, HumorCity of Heroes has a feature missing in some other games: a space to write your character's biography, or 'bio' as it is often called (not to be confused with the other meaning of bio, which causes characters to go afk in the mi...

By Adrian Bott Have you ever had a frightening moment in an MMO? Did any creature make your heart rate go up the first time you encountered it? Should MMOs build in deliberate shocks and surprises? Or are you made of sterner stuff? Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

By Adrian Bott Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of VillainsNot content with just a Myspace page, City of Heroes now has an official Facebook presence. Players from around the world can take advantage of this well-renowned social networking tool to share their enthusiasm for NCsoft's gam...

By Kyle Horner Moving away from the more mechanical workings of the game, Cryptic lets us know that roleplaying will indeed be supported through social hot-spots in Champions Online. If you've ever played around with City of Heroes for very long, then you'll know that Atlas Park was -- aside from a newbi...

By Adrian Bott City of Heroes has no open PvP as such. It all takes place either in the Arenas, through the Arena kiosks in Pocket D, via friendly 'instant' base raids, or (most commonly) in one of the four designated PvP zones. Each one of these has a different theme, and features a minigame whose rewards hav...

By Adrian Bott Filed under: The Daily GrindA survey that asked for player feedback on several hypothetical City of Heroes features included the possibility of a 'rogue' system, in which your character's actions in the game would dictate whether they swing to the hero side, the villain side, or a grey a...

By Adrian Bott Remember that sense of 'something big around the corner' that we mentioned? We're getting it again. NCsoft had assured players that there was going to be some serious reinvestment in the City of Heroes IP. They weren't kidding. With competition coming up from at least two angles, it looks li...

By Alexis Kassan A few of weeks ago, there was another double XP weekend in City of Heroes and City of Villains. In fact, not only was it double experience from each "arrest," but it also provided twice the Influence (or Infamy for you villainous folks out there) such that you got double of most everything you...

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By Adrian Bott Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Expansions, Patches, Rumors Please note that the following article concerns information that is as yet unconfirmed by any official source, but we feel it is sufficiently well substantiated to report.

By Samuel Axon Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Patches, News items NCsoft released a new patch for City of Heroes/City of Villains and published the update notes on its website yesterday. Like this post's title implies, most of the changes are tweaks, refinements, and fixes....

By Adrian Bott Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Events, in-game, Patches, RumorsWhen the City of Heroes Zombie Apocalypse hit the Test Server some days ago, speculation ran wild as to why the developers were testing out a Halloween event so early in the year. Could it be that th...

By Adrian Bott Hot on the heels of the announcement that City of Heroes will now be providing character respecs for a fee, the Test Server has been tweaked so that purchaseable respecs for characters there will be free of charge. Previously, the only way to test out a new build was to copy a character with a s...

By Samuel Axon Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Business models, News itemsNCsoft announced yesterday that players of City of Heroes are now able to purchase respecs (opportunities to rollback character development decisions they've made in their characters' lifetime...

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By Adrian Bott Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Events, in-gameYesterday, the City of Heroes test server was host to a terrible event. In one city zone after another, both in Paragon and the Rogue Isles, the dead rose to devour the living. The skies turned blood red, and hordes of...

Related articles from Develop, Qj.net, VirginWorlds MMO, PlayNC, MMO Clerks, Warcry.com and more.

By Massively Staff Let's face it, getting time cards for your favorite game is a necessity. It's up there with the milk, bread, and eggs that you need for your daily survival. We have enough stories about MMO withdrawal to fill a shopping cart, so why not sell our addiction where we can easily grab it?

By Massively Staff Plenty of MMOs use instances. Although it's pretty fundamental to the genre that a massively multiplayer game will involve shared spaces and content, sometimes it makes sense for a game to create either separate versions of common spaces, or private sub-spaces where the environment is...

By Massively Staff Filed under: Massively highlightsTesting out Age of Conan's new PvP system We give em' two big thumbs-up, and we hope you don't think super-hero and villain MMOs are overplayed. One very cool thing ...Brief glimpse of City of Heroes Issue 13

By Adrian Bott Bizarre as it may sound, that's the title by which the NCSoft developers have taken to calling City of Heroes Issue 13. Or so players learned while listening in to the Dyyno test over on mmorpg.com, in which lead developer Matt 'Positron' Miller took viewers on a tour of Cimerora and talked th...

By Michael Zenke Get the podcast: iTunes] Subscribe to Massively Speaking directly in iTunes (MP3) RSS] Add Massively Speaking to your RSS aggregator. Digg] Like the show? Digg it. MP3] Download the MP3 directly. VW] Listen at VirginWorlds.com Listen here on the page:

By Adrian Bott Filed under: Super-hero, Podcasts, City of Heroes, City of VillainsStephen 'Rockjaw' Reid, Creative Concepts manager at NCSoft Europe, has put episode 2.5 of the NCSE podcast up for our perusal. This new episode follows up on the wildly successful MiniCon, focusing on the aftermath of t...

By Adrian Bott Filed under: Betas, Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Patches, PvE, Rumors Sometimes the tiny unannounced changes are the most fun. City of Heroes Issue 12: The Midnight Hour, currently in Open Beta, has sneaked a little extra feature in under the radar.

By Michael Zenke Filed under: World of Warcraft, Betas, Podcasts, Age of Conan, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Lord of the Rings Online, Culture, Events, real-world, Events, in-game, PvP, Massively SpeakingMassively Speaking Episode 2 runs down news and features from Massively.com for the week of...

By Michael Zenke Massively Speaking" episode one sees co-leads Krystalle Voecks and Michael Zenke, writer Kyle Horner, and accomplished podcasting veteran Shawn Schuster setting down to a banquet of MMO news. Check out our commentary on the Lich King alpha announcement, LOTRO Book 13, and City of Hero...

By Jonathan Northwood DJ Templar: Speaking of advertisers, you did mention that -- because City of Heroes/City of Villains carries a Teen Rating by the ESRB -- certain more mature advertisers such as tobacco companies and alcohol and that sort of thing wouldn't be included. Do you have -- I know this is early day...

By Jonathan Northwood Filed under: Podcasts, City of Heroes, City of Villains, InterviewsDJ Shecky: Do you guys have an idea yet of what sort of bandwidth consumption this is all going to wind up taking? Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

By Jonathan Northwood Filed under: Podcasts, City of Heroes, City of Villains, InterviewsDJ Shecky: I think this is a good spot for us to collect our thoughts, and go over and make sure that we've covered all these questions before we start to wrap things up. What about you guys?

By Jonathan Northwood As promised, we have a full transcript from The Cape's podcast covering in-game advertising. Be warned: at 44 minutes of speech, the transcript is huge. To make it easier to digest, we've split the transcript into 7 discrete sections. So that it's easier to follow, the DJs have their speech i...

By Jonathan Northwood Filed under: Podcasts, City of Heroes, City of Villains, InterviewsDJ Shecky: Alright. And as a followup to that, I had a couple of people -- namely one of our other DJs -- had come up with the thought of "is there going to be a separate little piece of software that's going to be installed for t...

By Jonathan Northwood Positron: I have sign-off on the ads, as does Ken, as does Brian, and Ross, and I say no to any sort of real-money transaction companies right off the bat. Brian: I agree. Positron: Correct. Lighthouse: Yeah. Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

By Jonathan Northwood Filed under: Podcasts, City of Heroes, City of Villains, InterviewsDJ Templar: Gotcha. One of the pastimes with some of the people on the forums has been taking the monthly fee that each person pays, the current total subscriber count that's been reported, multiply that, and say "okay, N...

By Jonathan Northwood Filed under: City of Heroes, City of Villains, Interviews Yesterday, The Cape Radio -- specifically DJs Templar and Shecky -- took the time to interview Brian Clayton, the General Manager of NCsoft NorCal studio, Matt "Positron" Miller, the Senior Lead Designer for City of Heroes, and...

By Krystalle Voecks The WarCry Network is reporting that Cryptic Studios (the original development company that created City of Heroes) has launched a new website and associated forums for their recently announced Champions Online superhero MMO. LOTS more LotRO to come; Turbine extends LotR license

By Akela Talamasca Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Super-hero, City of Heroes, Culture, Comics, Humor, Comic WatchOn the previous Comic Watch, we gave some love to the incredible output of Aaron Williams. One of these, Backward Compatible, has stepped up with another MMO-based comic. This time,...

By Akela Talamasca Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, MMO industry, New titles, News items, Marvel Universe Online, Champions OnlineStop the presses! Eurogamer tackles the scoop by Game Informer magazine that Cryptic Studio's new MMO, to be developed for both PCs and consoles,...

By Eli Shayotovich Filed under: MMO industry, Professions, Making money, News items, Virtual worldsAs we mentioned a few days ago, the gang at Dungeon Runners is looking for a few good dungeon builders. Turns out, NCsoft in general is looking for some new blood in their Austin (TX) office as well as their two...

By Akela Talamasca Filed under: Fantasy, Super-hero, Video, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Guild Wars, Culture, Fan art, Events, real-world, Opinion, RoleplayingFor those who are unfamiliar with the Memorabilia event, it's a pop culture convention held in the UK thrice yearly. For the Winter 2007 co...

By Eli Shayotovich Time for a little nap. All of the US game servers for CoX have been brought down for extended maintenance. NCsoft is anticipating a full 6 hour downtime window, which started at 6 AM Pacific (9 AM Eastern) this morning. The lengthy downtime is required in order to upgrade the server hardware ta...

By Eli Shayotovich Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, Fan art, News items, Crime Hear ye hear ye... calling all writers and artists, the City of Heroes Fanzine is looking for a few good submissions to include in their next issue! Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

By Amanda Rivera Have you ever wondered what our super heroes would sound like if they spoke more like we do in game? Well, Kill Ten Rats has reminded us about an oldy-but-goody remix of the City of Villains trailer, leet-speak style. I'm not sure how I missed this one, but I am sure those of you who play CoX will...