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Engadget Distro Issue 13 takes on Stephen Elop, the Kindle Fire and Lenovo's Ultrabook
This week's issue of everyone's favorite weekly magazine (we checked, it's legit), Engadget Distro, brings with it our very first Q&A, and what better subject to start things off than Mr. Stephen Elop? Sitting down with our own man in charge, Nokia's CEO gets candid about leading the outfit's restructuring, Lumia's launch on American soil and the death of MeeGo. As if he wasn't busy enough trotting the globe to meet with international businessmen, Tim also took time out of his busy schedule to bring you his review of both the Kindle Fire and the Galaxy Tab 8.9. We've also got our review of the Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket, Lenovo's take on the Ultrabook, the IdeaPad U300s, another installment of In Real Life and Ross Rubin take on the tablet wars. So don't just sit there, get to downloading!
Eurogamer gets their hands on Issue 13 of City of Heroes
Eurogamer recently went in-depth with the City of Heroes huge Issue 13 update, checking out the new day jobs, leveling pact, and dual-spec options. However, not everything was rainbows and sunshine with the large new update, in the opinion of Eurogamer.With servers in Europe that are suffering from lack-of-player-itis, Eurogamer points out that there's nothing in this new update that can really attract players back to the game. Even if players do come back for the new day jobs and content, they're not being rewarded for playing the game. Leveling pacts and day jobs reward the player for not playing the game, which doesn't do much for low server populations.
Meet the ultimate City of Heroes Issue 13 guide, Infoman
Walking down the street, you're suddenly stopped by a man wearing a fedora and trench coat. "Hey you, yeah you!" he spits out in hushed tones. "Uh, what's up?" you respond cautiously."Yo, the name's Infoman," he looks about nervously, like someone may be watching him, "check out the merchandise" opening his jacket to reveal countless links for articles all about the recent City of Heroes' Issue 13 update. Everything from the Positron interview at Joystiq to in-depth fan-made videos of all the new systems added into the game."It's all free, take whatever ya like." says the calm street walker, who now seems like a pretty nice guy. "I'll take that Floyd 'Castle' Grubb interview about the new powersets." you say. He nods, hands it over and says, "I gots more if'n you want it, kid. Be down at the docks." and struts off down the street whistling a tune.
The 26 Shields of City of Heroes
When we logged into City of Heroes to check out the new Shield powerset released in yesterday's Issue 13 patch, the one thing that we were not expecting was to find 26 shield types to choose from. It took us quite a while to settle on a shield, as our impulse was to have them all. Once we did make our selection though, it dawned on us that we should share this amazing catalogue of bodily protection with the rest of the world.We'd like to stress that this isn't every mutation of all the shields, otherwise this would be called "The 4,532 Shields of City of Heroes" and that just doesn't have the same ring to it. Plus, we value what little social lives we actually have. So without further day we present to you, our dear Massively readers, the 26 shields of City of Heroes.%Gallery-38575%
Joystiq asks Positron about keeping City of Heroes competitive
Yesterday brought us the launch of City of Heroes Issue 13: Power and Responsibility. This is arguably the third major launch in the last month. So the question on Jason Dobson's mind is how is CoH keeping pace with the the largest games on the market? And Positron (a.k.a. Matt Miller, Senior Designer at NCSoft) answers. He sounds proud of the separatist nature CoH seems to enjoy in comparison to what he dubs the monotonous "sword and sorcery" games. Even now, four years in, they have one of the most complex and thoroughly enjoyable character creators around, a loyal player base, and plans for future releases. There's even a Mac version of the game in beta right now, with future boxed releases in the works for 2009.Coming soon-ish will be the magic Super-Booster pack and Issue 14: Architect. You may recall that Architect was originally going to be Issue 13, but it was pushed back in September to allow more time for development. Last we heard Issue 14 will be released in Q1 2009 and it seems Issue 15 will be released shortly thereafter, in time for the fifth anniversary of the game (April 2009). Or was that a reference to the Fifth Column we spotted...?
One Shots: Happy Prestige refund day!
With Issue 13 hitting the live City of Heroes and City of Villains servers yesterday, many of the players who are fond of base building were immensely happy to see a refund of Prestige; the "cash" that allows players to buy more goodies for their base. (Or in some cases, larger bases!) Of course, the down-side to this is that base builders are still relegated to using magic desks during base building to float objects for now. Today we're showing off a screenshot taken by this blogger - who admits she's a total base-building fiend - having a quick sit-down break between stacking layers of desks to the ceiling. The mission creator in Issue 14 (and hopefully the items to help us float objects in bases easier) can't come fast enough for us!We love to see what people have done with guild housing, supergroup bases, and more! So if you've built up something cool, why not snap some screenshots of it and send that in to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com! Add in a quick description of what we're seeing (or a longer one if you want to explain your cool building tricks) what game it's from, and your name. We'll show it off to our readers, and your work will get a larger audience than just your group of friends and allies.%Gallery-9798%
NCsoft: Customization, tights separate City of Heroes from competition
As more publishers continue to enter the ever-crowded MMO market, it's become increasingly difficult for some titles (even those with heat vision and a magnetic colon) to remain relevant. Joystiq recently unmasked Matt "Positron" Miller, and spoke to the senior designer for NCsoft NorCal at length about the company's plans for both City of Heroes and Villains. Specifically, we touched on what NCsoft is doing to separate its super-powered MMO duo from the competition, something he said the company is currently "stressing." "City of Heroes still has one of the best character customization systems ever made," boasted Miller. "It seems that a lot of new MMOs are stuck in the 'gear = looks' paradigm that games like Everquest and Ultima established. City of Heroes offers billions (no exaggeration) of possible costume combinations right from level 1." Take that, gear. Look for our complete interview with Miller on Monday, where he opens up on a number of other topics, from next week's Issue 13 update to microtransactions and what took so long to find capes to fit users on the Mac.
Community manager for City of Heroes resigns
After making a statement about PvP changes in City of Heroes that didn't sit very well in the development team, community manager Lighthouse has decided to step down from his job and pursue other opportunities outside of NCsoft. Lighthouse had apologized for and retracted the statement made a week prior to his resignation, but the popular rumor seems to be that his departure wasn't a matter of choice.No matter the reason, it's always difficult for a community to lose its liason with a game's development team. With the Issue 13 update just around the corner, we hope that something can be done in order to make sure the players have a voice when it launches.
City of Heroes developer addresses scheduling, Issue 13 rumors
When the City of Heroes Zombie Apocalypse hit the Test Server some days ago, speculation ran wild as to why the developers were testing out a Halloween event so early in the year. Could it be that they would soon need the Test Server for Issue 13? It was an exciting possibility, but it's not to be. City of Heroes developer Back Alley Brawler, otherwise known as Christopher Bruce, has provided a series of illuminating posts that explain what's actually going on.A revamped version of the Winter Event, along with 'other surprises', still remain to be tested for the current Issue before Issue 13 will show up. As far as timing goes, it's possible that Issue 13 may not be ready to go live by the time the Winter Event needs to happen, which is why the events are being tested for the current Issue.
Brief glimpse of City of Heroes Issue 13
IGN have been talking to NCSoft at ComicCon, and have come away with a few pieces of intel about City of Heroes Issue 13. Most surprising is how it's described as the last free Issue for 2008. There's only been one issue so far this year, which was Issue 12: Midnight Hour, so by rights there ought to be one more - unless NCsoft are hinting at some sort of paid expansion? Or it could just be a communications blip.As well as confirmation of the anticipated ongoing Power Proliferation, we find out a little more about the Mission Maker. The number of foes with which you can populate a mission is, understandably, capped (no endless flow of XP there, then) and we're intrigued by the possibility that you can decide what impact the mission has on the world around you. It's our opinion that this may simply refer to the dialog the NPC pedestrians come out with as you pass by - 'I hear Captain Guacamole stopped a raid by the Fifth Column on the Founders Falls cappucino shop!' - but it could be more wide ranging than this. The ability to 'choose who you work with' also has lots of potential. Though it's not explained in the article, it may well mean NPC allies could be added, such as Lady Jane, Fusionette, Doc Delilah, Ohmtown, Becky the Tarantula Mistress and all the other stalwarts of the CoX missions. It would be features like this that prevented the Mission Maker from simply being a 'newspaper/radio mission generator' as some players have feared it will be.
Hints keep coming for future content in CoX
It's a month and a half since City of Heroes Issue 12: Midnight Hour went live, and by now the developers will have been hard at work on Issue 13 for some time. While there has been little in the way of concrete information, over time the Developers have given out a multitude of hints and comments that have enabled us to put together a speculative look at some of the coming content. As we'll see, there's been a lot more hinted at concerning powers and game systems than new mission content or zones.The safest bet for Issue 13 is the introduction of the Shields powerset, which Back Alley Brawler has described at length: 'Shields will be a defensive powerset, not an AT. They'll also be useable with any unarmed or right handed weapon powerset... because Shields require their own combat mode animations, they have to work with every attack power, every buff, debuff, hit reaction, pool power, ancillary power, and patron power that might be used while holding a shield out in front of you. So the bulk of work on Shields is just all the animations.' The bulk of those animations were completed with Issue 12, as many of the Cimeroran NPCs use shields. Since the NPC hero Blue Steel is famous for his shield, we'd be surprised not to see him play an active part in the game at last.
