City of Heroes to venture underwater?

Sometimes the tiny unannounced changes are the most fun. City of HeroesIssue 12: The Midnight Hour, currently in Open Beta, has sneaked a little extra feature in under the radar.

Ordinarily, characters in CoX who fall into the water simply splash about on the surface. You can swim around there, but diving has been impossible, with the tantalizing exception of one narrow shaft in Grandville. This had been the only place where characters could submerge completely, although there was no underwater swimming, just a very surprised Coralax on a coffee break.

But now, the Catacomb tileset (found mostly in Cimerora missions) has introduced a room where characters can not only submerge, but swim around underwater. This simply hasn't been possible before. When this was first discovered, a spontaneous pool party broke out, with characters jubilantly diving under and swimming about. Never mind the actual mission; this was much more important.

It was later discovered that about seven of the Devs had been invisibly watching and taking note.

Players are now excited at the prospect of possible future underwater adventures. It seems unlikely that the Devs would introduce underwater swimming if they didn't intend to make more use of it. Aquatic superheroes and supervillains are well established in the genre. CoX even has its own amphibious race of coral creatures, the Coralax - initially mentioned in the context of epic archetypes - along with implications that a second race dwells below the sea with them.

And what are we to make of rumors that Atlantis has been mentioned somewhere in the content of Issue 12?

Face down the forces of evil! Give good a quick jab to the jaw! Massively has all the CoX Issue 12 news you can handle. Make sure to check it out!