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City of Heroes: Going Rogue information revealed at Hero-Con
City of Heroes teased fans for most of October, promising big information on Going Rogue for those attending HeroCon, and they didn't disappoint. The welcome address last Saturday lived up to expectations in a big way. The community relations team presented nearly an hour of information, screenshots, and video covering the high points of Going Rogue. They began with the all-important process of transforming your hero to a villain, or vice versa. Rather than pushing a button or purchasing the transformation from the store, players will be able to stay in character and experience the fall from grace or redemption of their character as they work through a series of moral missions. New powersets (Demon Summoning and Dual Pistols), signature characters and enemy groups were introduced to the crowd, as well as some cool new costume pieces. An extensive look at Praetoria came in the form of a first look at the eye-popping graphics upgrade as well. All of the exciting new information begs the big question: When? Going Rogue is aiming for a release in Q2 2010, with beta coming in five waves in early 2010. After seeing the information from Hero-Con, we're as excited as you are for this expansion and will be letting you know as soon as more specific information is available. For the time being, check out the City of Heroes forums for an extensive (and impressive) rundown of all the current Going Rogue information.
NCsoft and Paragon Studios announce HeroCon 2009 for October
Paragon Studios and NCsoft today announced that HeroCon has been expanded to a two-day convention and will be taking place on 24th- 25th October. This year's event, which is taking place in San Jose, California, is the 2nd HeroCon and offers a chance for fans of City of Heroes to meet up and share their passion for the game. As if you needed anything else to tempt you into attending, the tickets cost $79.99 and there's even a goody bag which includes a special con t-shirt and an exclusive in-game item.The event promises pre-con activities on the Friday night as well as developer panel discussions, live mission event and contests, social events with the development team and there's even a rather posh-sounding banquet dinner with live entertainment and an awards ceremony. As usual Matt "Positron" Miller and Paragon Studios head, Brian Clayton, will be doing a community address as well as the usual round of interesting announcements – hopefully including something about the Going Rogue expansion.For more information on the event and where to stay, check out the official site.
Hero Con attendees to be granted future CoX closed beta access
Closed betas, a relatively recent addition to City of Heroes issues, are a pretty mysterious business. For a start, nobody knows exactly what the selection procedure is. You can even be picked for closed beta for one Issue and not included next time around. As there's often at least a few weeks between closed and open betas, the closed beta testers get a serious head start on checking out the new awesome. As well as doing some serious focused testing, of course.However, now closed CoX beta access is being offered as an added perk of attending HeroCon. Whether this will include Issue 13: Architect is not certain: 'Given the timing of Hero Con this may include Issue 13 closed beta, but will also include access to the future closed beta of Issue 14!' This is on top of the permanent Carnival of Shadows Harlequin costume power.For those who can make it to the event, it's a spectacular perk, especially since the benefit appears (so far as we can tell) to be ongoing. Those who can't will have to fall back upon the old-fashioned method of getting into a closed beta: crossing your fingers and hoping really hard. We can predict with total confidence that some players will be unhappy about this; after all, we have just had an epic thread about the relative fairness of giving away permanent costume powers with con attendance.
NCsoft announces Hero Con '08
If there's one thing that characterizes the City of Heroes community, it's the willingness of the developers and community staff to interact with the players and fans. Following on from the success of previous Meet and Greet events, CoX players now have details of the long-awaited Con in the Bay Area, Hero Con '08. The gathering's set to fill a day and a night, and will include ringside seats for Lead Designer Matt 'Positron' Miller and NorCal studio manager Brian Clayton's latest Annual Community Address. Will they let slip any details of coming Issues? They haven't said, but the players are hardly likely to let them keep quiet about it - and it's hard to see what else the 'exclusive upcoming announcements' could refer to.NCsoft are providing experienced counsel as well as entertainment, with 'Q&A, Round Table Discussions, and Workshop sessions provided by "City of Heroes" game creators and players'. This not only offers a chance to get an insight into the games design process, it also raises the exciting topic of player designed content once again. After all, with the player generated content system described by Alex 'Lighthouse' Von Minden as 'chief among the coming features' that will be heading to CoX in the near future, what better brains could aspiring content designers pick than those of the developers themselves?HeroCon is set to run on Saturday, October 18, 2008 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Santa Clara.
