city-of-heroes posts

While City of Heroes players are awaiting more word on the release of the super hero MMO's next commercial expansion pack Going Rogue, the development team at Paragon Studios have whipped up a nice mini-expansion for the game. It's the latest in the game's Super Booster packs that this time focuses on martial arts characters.

The $9.99 expansion pack adds a ton of martial arts costume pieces that will allow players to make the ninja or samurai warrior of their dreams in the game. It also comes with new character emotes and even a new power, Ninja Run, that lets you move faster and jump higher than normal. Time to do some slicing and dicing.

After the failures of games like Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault and Dungeon Runners to find an audience, NCsoft has to be happy with the early sales success of Aion in the US and Europe. This week the Korean-based publisher announced that the fantasy MMO sold 500,000 copies in the US after its launch and 470,000 more copies in Europe. In fact sales of NCsoft's games overseas exceeded its local sales for the first time in the company's history.

That caused NCsoft to record a profit of $39.8 million in its last fiscal quarter that ended on September 30. That's a nine-fold increase in profits compared to the same time period a year ago.

Last week's Hero Con has come and gone but the info revealed at the fan fest for City of Heroes has been pouring out of the MMO's official message boards. A lot of the info reveals developer Paragon Studios' plans for Going Rogue, the upcoming commercial expansion for the long running super hero MMO title.

The expansion, which will allow players to turn their hero characters into villains and vice verse, is currently due for release sometime in the second quarter (i. e. spring) of 2010, with a beta test to begin sometime earlier in 2010. The expansion will also include new power sets, new factions, and a optional graphical upgrade. You can check out the game's message boards for all of the info revealed at Hero Con.

[Via Massively]

One of the cool things about massively multiplayer games is the ability to generate live events and nowhere is that more evident than during Halloween where a number of MMO games stage live events filled with monsters and otherwise supernatural events. We've already reported on Champion Online's Blood Moon event and Star Wars Galaxies' Death Troopers but our sister site Massively has been keeping track of other MMOs holding similar events.

• Fallen Earth is letting its players fight off zombies in their Days of the Dead event which you can see above this post. That event begins next week.
• Everquest II players is holding its Nights of the Dead event from now until November 9 with decorations, special item drops and more.
• Warhammer Online players get serious with their Daemon Moon Rising event that begins on October 23. Look for a new public quest called Daemonball Rally among other things.
• City of Heroes players have their own unnamed Halloween event beginning on October 20. Heroes will face a wave of enemies when they destroy a Haunted Sigil and are rewarded with a "ghoulish surprise" if successful.

With the release of Cryptic's new MMO, Champions Online, there are now two superhero MMOs on the market. The first is Cryptic's old game, City of Heroes (now under the direction of Paragon Studios under NCsoft), and the distinctions between the two are very striking. If you don't have the money to throw down on subscriptions to both games, though, you probably want to choose just one. That's where we come in. We've played both Champions Online and City of Heroes extensively, and here's a comparison for what you want. Do you prefer character customization or content? We know the right game for your tastes.

Earlier this year, NCsoft announced that they would be launching a Guest Author program for their super hero MMO City of Heroes, allowing major outside talent to create new storylines for the game via the Mission Architect tools. Today NCsoft announced that acclaimed comic book author Bill Willingham will be added as one of the first people or teams involved in the Guest Author program.

Willingham is best known for his work on Fables, the DC Vertigo comic that takes a new spin on familiar fairy tale characters. He will be creating a City of Heroes mission called The Quest for Magic. He joins Red Vs Blue creators Rooster Teeth and PvP comic strip creator Scott Kurtz in making new missions for the MMO. All are scheduled to be made available to players of the game for free beginning on October 13.

In related news, City of Heroes is allowing all inactive accounts in good standing to be reactivated from now until Sunday at 11:59 pm PT. Also all characters will receive double their normal experience points during this weekend.

NCsoft and Paragon Studios are ramping up for the annual Hero Con event where fans of the super hero MMO City of Heroes will get together with the game's dev team, learn more about upcoming plans and in general have more fun than fans of MMO titles are allowed to have under law. This week, NCsoft announced that all attendees of Hero Con will get a chance to receive a special item.

That item is an invite to the closed beta test for City of Heroes: Going Rogue, the upcoming commercial expansion to the game that was announced earlier this year. The expansion itself will be shown in a "sneak peak" panel at Hero Con for the first time in public. Tickets for the event are still being sold; it will be held at October 24-25 (with some pre-con activities on October 23) at the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose, California. By the way you have to physically attend the show to get your closed beta invite. That's because NCsoft wants you to sign an NDA on site before you get the beta invite.

[Via Massively]

The retail game web site GoGamer.com is launching yet another mis-named "48 Hour Madness" sale on its site. It's mis-named because the sale will actually end at 3 am ET on Tuesday morning. However don't let that throw you; they have some excellent price cuts on lots of current and older PC game titles.

Among the game you can get on the cheap (or at least cheaper) are Champions Online for $39.90, Anno 1404 (also known as Dawn of Discovery) for $20.90, City of Heroes for $18.90, Painkiller Black for just $4.90, and Stronghold Legends for a mere $3.90. There are some other deals on both PC and console titles so make sure to check out the entire sales list.

The newest Cities of Heroes update, Issue 16: Power Spectrum, went live today and players on both the heroic or villainous sides can now further customize their powers with different colors to better match they costumes and theme. Additionally, Issue 16 brings new power combinations and further mission customization.

Download HD City of Heroes Issue 16: Power Spectrum Trailer (35 MB)
Check out all City of Heroes downloads

City of Heroes players have yet another big content update to check out today. Developer Paragon Studios and publisher NCsoft have launched "Issue 16", the new free update to the long running super hero MMO to their subscribers.

As we have previously reported the big new addition in Issue16 is power customization. Players will now be able to not only make cool super hero characters in the game but will also be allowed to customize the power effects with different colors and even some different kinds of animations. Some of the game's archtypes will be getting some new powerssets to use thanks to the Issue 16 update.