While the two games have basically been linked for a while now, NCSoft has made it official today. Their super hero MMOs City of Heroes and City of Villains are now merged into one game product. People who own one of the two games can now access all of the content of the game they didn't already own and all copies of both games sold at retails stores and online will gain access to both games.One of the more interesting features in this merge is that people who play as heroes can now have access to base building, which is something only City of Villains players had access to until now. It also will lead into future updates and projects for City of Heroes that will be announced later this year.[via email press release]...

NCsoft will be spanning the globe this summer to show off their ever expanding MMO lineup. As we mentioned last week, they will be at the San Diego Comic Con (July 23-27, booth #5209) with stations up and running so that attendees can play the superhero themed City of Heroes, Richard Garriott's sci-fic epic Tabula Rasa and mech-mashing Exteel. Fanzine artist Dave Hamann will also be on hand to draw City of Heroes' character sketches for players.A few days later, July 29 - 31 in Brighton, England, NCsoft Europe will be showing the media its highly anticipated fantasy, wing-sprouting MMO, Aion: The Tower of Eternity. This will be the first time western journalists will have seen Aion since the summer of 2007, and things have changed. Three weeks later (August 20 - 24) Aion will be on display again at the Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany (Hall 3, Booth B20). The last stop on the NCsoft bus ride will be at the Penny Arcade Expo (booth #642) in Seattle, August 29 - 31. PAX has become a pretty significant gaming con, and for NCsoft to show up with many of the their games (Aion, Exteel, Dungeon Runners, CoX, Guild Wars, and Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa) says a lot. What's more, Guild Wars' fans will be treated to a special player tournament while Exteel and Dungeon Runners' teams will get play sessions in the special LAN area. There will also be speaking sessions in the auditorium for fans to learn more about their many MMOs....

Utilizing City of Heroes / City of Villains in your next machinima creation could land you a 2009 Toyota Matrix S. GameTrailers.com and Toyota have teamed up to award one creative director the new, fully loaded, ride for the best machinima using NCSoft's super hero or villain MMO. Submissions are to uploaded to GameTrailers.com from July 1st through August 10th with winners announced during Spike's GTTV on September 12th.For full contest details and rules check out GameTrailers.com....

The original developer of City of Heroes now has some new executive blood. Cryptic Studios announced today that it has brought in former Sony Onine Entertainment exec John Needham to be its new CEO. Needham was previously Sony Online's senior president of Business Development and Operations and had worked in various positions at Sony since 1994.Cryptic Studios is the original developer of the still popular super-hero MMO City of Heroes as well as its follow-up City of Villains. Cryptic sold off their interest in both games to publisher NCsoff late in 2007. After an aborted attempt to make a Marvel super hero MMO for publisher Microsoft, Cryptic is currently working on Champions Online, a MMO based on the pen-and-paper RPG that's currently scheduled to be released in spring 2009.[Via Gamasutra]...

This has been an exciting week in PC gaming! The release of Mass Effect, more information on the highly anticipated StarCraft II, and Valve has decided to let us back things up via the upcoming Steam Cloud service. (This is, of course, after most of us spent last week playing On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness - Episode One.) Going into this weekend we figured it would be a no-brainer as to what most of the Big Download staff would be playing....Steven Wong, our fearless all around bad-mutha and Managing Editor is playing Mass Effect as we expected, but will be adding a side of Age of Conan and possibly some City of Heroes or City of Villains in the mix. Samuel Axon, blogger and caffeine fiend will be kickin' it old-school in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Deus Ex. John Callaham and David Craddock, aside from being our esteemed (and crazy workaholic) leads, will both be spending time playing on Steam. John's planning on spending time in Team Fortress 2, and David's got his sights set on jumping into the Get a Life mod for Half-Life 2. (Well, and he'll be checking out some mods for WarCraft III for an upcoming column, but that's work.) As for me, I have a copy of Mass Effect for my PC, and of course will be continuing my own all-over-the-place MMOG adventures for Massively. How about you all? Will you be jumping into Mass Effect as well, or are you still playing through OtRSPoD? Perhaps you're more interested in fragging the crap out of people in TF2 after a (not very) long week? Tell us, What aRe yoU Playing this weekend? ...

Players of NCsoft's long running super hero MMO titles City of Heroes and City of Villains now have some new stuff to play with. The latest free expansion for both games, Issue 12: Midnight Hour, has now reached the public servers and is available for all players in the game.Just in case you are not familiar with what is in the new expansion, Issue 12 adds new Roman Empire style maps and costume parts to the game along with a new Midnight Squad mission, new powersets, a new Epic Villain Archtype and more additions, gameplay features and changes. You can download a Midnight Hour trailer right here at Big Download.[Via Blue's News] ...

NCsoft's' two super hero MMO titles City of Heroes and City of Villains continue to be among the most popular titles in the genre and the development team also continues to extend the game with new content. The next planned free expansion is titled "Issue 12: Midnight Hour" and now Big Download has a new gameplay trailer showing off some of what will be included in that update.Midnight Hour is currently in beta testing and will add new Roman Empire style maps and costume parts to the game along with a new Midnight Squad mission, new powerset, a new Epic Villain Archtype and more. Look for the update to officially go live in the very near future but in the meantime check out the new trailer at Big Download.Download the 720p version of the City of Heroes Midnight Hour trailer at Big Download nowDownload the 1280p version of the City of Heroes Midnight Hour trailer at Big Download now...

City of Heroes and City of Villains scribe Shane Lacy Hensley has been tapped by publisher FireSky to head Superstition Studios. Hensley, who is famously known for creating such pen and paper RPGs as Deadlands, will lead development of a new MMORPG that has yet to be detailed.Prior to the promotion, Hensley was the creative director of Superstition where his vision and key hiring decisions made him the "perfect" candidate for the promotion, according to FireSky senior vice president of product development Rod Nakamoto. "With Shane's leadership, success is a given for Superstition Studios."Without giving specifics on Superstition's mysterious upcoming release Hensley explained his work with the studio is helping to fulfill a career-long dream. "FireSky and Superstition Studios have given me the creative freedom to build the game I've been dreaming of since I entered the video game industry back in 1992."Currently FireSky is developing Stargate Worlds, based on the long running science fiction series Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, which is now accepting beta sign-ups....

Korean based MMO publisher NCsoft has revealed its latest financial results for the first quarter of 2008 and it's a bit of a mixed bag. Revenue for the quarter was $84.3 million, up 4 percent from the same period a year ago. However, the publisher's net profit was $7.7 billion which is down 43 percent from the same period a year ago. In terms of the higher revenue NCsoft stated that one of the reasons was the continued high sales of its fantasy MMO Lineage II which had "record high sales" in the last quarter compared to its launch way back in 2003. Continued high sales of Guild Wars and City of Heroes and a reduction of costs like advertising also helped with the revenues. The company's lower profit was hit by a one time reduction of costs because of NCsoft's decision to break ties with Spacetime Studios and not publish their upcoming sci-fi MMO Blackstar (Spacetime recently announced it had reacquired the Blackstar IP from NCsoft and is continuing to develop the game).NCsoft's major new release for 2008 seems to be the title Aion which is currently scheduled to be released in Korea later this year A line of casual titles is also in the works to be released this year as well. One interesting item of note is the breakdown of sales from individual NCsoft games. Lineage, Lineage II, City of Heroes/Villains, and Guild Wars were all but not Tabula Rasa which indicates that sales of that recently release game have yet to significantly impact the company's results....