city-of-heros
Latest
Atari acquires Cryptic Studios
In a piece of news that comes out of nowhere, Atari has announced that they've bought Cryptic Studios, the developer originally responsible for creating City of Heroes. Right now, Cryptic has three upcoming games: Champions Online, Star Trek Online and a third unannounced title. As part of the acquisition, Atari will have access to Cryptic's technology for use their games as well as for their website portal.However, the most interesting part is that after an initial USD 26.7 million upfront payment to Cryptic, they stand to earn even more money through a performance-related bonus. How much? Try another USD 20 million in cash or stock, so long as the 2010-11 revenues of Champions Online and Star Trek Online outperform specific undisclosed targets. It would appear that Atari is expecting Cryptic's upcoming games to perform fairly well, and to launch fairly promptly. We can only hope, Star Trek and Champions fans.Phil Harrison, director of Atari, has said in the past that the company's main focus would be online games and digital delivery. So while this news isn't out of the ordinary in that respect, it certainly came out of the blue. This also may fuel the fire of the rumor that Cryptic is bringing both of their upcoming titles to the PS3. There's no word yet on whether or not this affects the 2k Games publishing deal made for Champions Online.[Thanks, Stan]
City of Heroes Issue 12 announced!
The folks at NCsoft, as their first major act stewarding City of Heroes/City of Villains, have dropped news of a HUGE new patch to the game. Issue 12: Midnight Hour will introduce a swath of brand new content to the game, along with an enormous array of new features: A brand new faction called the Midnight Squad, a group of mystics and scholars. Missions from levels 10-20 to support the new organization. Time Travel missions, from level 35-50, tying into the earlier Midnight Squad content. As you may have guessed from the above image, you'll be tangling with the best that the Roman Empire has to offer. New Roman-themed costumes will be unlocked as a result of your time-traveling escapades! Villains will have the chance to create epic archetype characters after they make it to max level, much like the heroes have the archetypes the Warshade and the Peacebringer. The villain epics will be called Wolf Spiders and Blood Widows. Both heroes and villains will be getting more powers added to their archetypes! It doesn't sound like these will be all-new powers, but that archetypes will have some new options from already existing powersets. Tons of additional goodies like a revamp to the Hollows zone, a "Level Up Bonus" and displayable stats! Additional information is available in CoX Lead Designer Matt Miller's letter to the community. There he outlines some things that have been going on behind the scenes since the NCsoft acquisition, as well as his hopes for the outcome of Issue 12. This is fantastic stuff, and to me seems like a thrown gauntlet now that Marvel is out of the picture. With DC still quite a ways away, City of Heroes is going to be the only superhero game on the block for some time. Are great updates like this enough to get you back into the game?%Gallery-18214%
