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]...

Ah, E3. The time of year when game writers go into overdrive. The next week ahead will involve long nights, lots of transcription, and spending quality time with the lovely and talented C8H10N4O2 -- caffeine. We here at Big Download will be no exception to this, and as such, we bring you the E3 roundup for WRUP; the "dude, where's my plane" edition.Our fearless Managing Editor, Steven Wong suggested a networked game of Diablo II before we all jumped on planes this weekend, but several of us who still had packing to do just looked at him funny. As such, he's been hanging out in Civ4 and City of Heroes. John Callaham figured he'd take the "jump in, frag someone, jump out" route and opted for a little Team Fortress 2 to ease the stress. David Craddock was one of the people who thought Steven had a good idea, though and replied to Steven's request with "Is there any other game besides Diablo II? Yes - there's Diablo III. But that's not out yet. So I play Diablo II. Always. For long time." On the writer side of the table, both Rafe Brox and Xav de Matos expressed plans to spend some time in WoW. Of course, Rafe said he'd also be playing with power tools, and Xav expressed the intent to play the "omg, get caught up on features" game, which this blogger certainly knows all too well and will be joining him in playing. James Murff is relaxing (not having to jump on a plane) with some zombie love in Survival Crisis Z. When he's not buried in brains, he'll be hopping between Team Fortress 2 and Dwarf Fortress. And of course, most of the crew will be playing the uber-leet Sleep Deprivation game. Luckily, we've all managed to beat that game several times over and we've memorized the content. So, readers -- What aRe yoU Playing this next week? Will you play Sleep Deprivation with us and stay glued to the tubes for all the news, or will you instead kick back with your favorite game and relax?...

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....

We have always wondered what would happen if we encountered something like Aladdin's genie where he would give us three wishes which he would make come true. We would naturally wish for a trillion dollars, live forever and have one trillion more wishes but that's just us. 1Up.com's latest feature article asks a number of notable game developers what three wishes they might want. Unlike our more practical ideas, they were asked about their top three wishes in game development.Chris Delay of Defcom developer Introversion has a wish we all want to have come true; "For me, the ultimate dream as a game designer is Star Trek's holodeck." That would be awesome. Todd Howard of Bethesda Softworks has a somewhat more mundane wish: "A standard platform across all consoles and PCs for games." Yep, we are all for that. Matt Miller, the lead designer of City of Heroes wants to "Eliminate bugs." In games, we assume, which is good for us (we like some bugs in real life, though). Check out the article with more comments from folks like Warren Spector, Chris Taylor, Brad Wardell and more....

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....

Big Download's sister site Massively.com has all the news you'll need about MMOs. Here's the best, brightest, and most interesting stuff from the last week, all in one convenient place for your MMO minute. Blizzard unleashes a storm of Lich King informationAfter months of silence on their in-development World of Warcraft expansion, Blizzard has unleashed a furious Winter gale made of pure information. All Points Bulletin to become Grand Theft Auto Online?Eurogamer is reporting on rumors of what could be the holy grail of online gaming: a Grand Theft Auto massively multiplayer game. CoX Issue 12: Midnight Hour enters Open Beta!As of yesterday, all City of Heroes players can access the twelfth expansion, Midnight Hour, on the Test Server. ...

NCsoft's long running super hero MMO City of Heroes may not have its original creators, Cryptic Studios, behind it anymore (they are working on their new MMO Champions Online) but the new NCsoft back City of Heroes dev team continues to expand the title. In a message on the game's official web site, City of Heroes producer Matt Miller revealed a new major feature that will be added to the game in the near future.That feature happens to be a mission creator which will allow players to make their own super hero adventures from within the game. According to Miller, players will have the freedom to pick their map, villain group and objectives and even put in new dialog and clues for their new missions. Players will even be able to rate the new missions once they are uploaded. This is yet another example of how user created content is slowly getting into the MMO genre. So far there is no word on when the mission creator will be made available.On another City of Heroes note, this week is the game's fifth anniversary and Miller gave out some stats on the game's history so far such as the fact that over 32 million characters have been created in-game so far. That's a lot of spandex....