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An advance peek offered for the next City of Heroes Super Booster
The fifth Super Booster for City of Heroes has been the point of some debate. Players have known for a long time that it was going to be a mutant-themed pack, but that doesn't imply a great deal beyond having something vaguely organic going on. Luckily for players, the Facebook fan page for the game has been posting preview images to help players get a sense of what's going into the pack. And the best part isn't just that it has a set release date of June 24th -- it's that players might get to pick it up for free a day early. On June 23rd, the City of Heroes team will be giving away two codes per hour via their social networking outlets -- Facebook, Twitter, and the official forums. Where the codes will appear in the five-hour timeframe is a mystery until it happens, encouraging players to stay alert and keep their eyes on all of the above. For US players, the codes will be given away between 1 PM and 5 PM PST, while EU players will see the codes being announced between 5 PM and 10 PM British time. Keep your eyes peeled for your chance to get the newest booster a day early!
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Does whatever a spider can (VEAT levels 20-50)
Welcome back to our conclusion of A Mild-Mannered Reporter's guide to spiders! After last week's long discussion of the various builds possible for the villainous epic archetypes, we're back to blast through to the end of the unique leveling missions. And it's a pretty interesting string, although like much content in City of Heroes it starts to slow down a bit as you get higher in levels. But it also has the nice story interplay of the best content available on the Rogue Isles, the constant back-and-forth as untrustworthy people stab each other in the back. For players or readers coming in late, we left off at the conclusion of the level 20 arc, where you delivered the Eye of Chronos to Fortunata Hamilton. She tells you that the process of seeing whether or not you truly are a Destined One will take time... which is true if you turn the mission in before level 20, but otherwise it apparently takes two seconds. Of course, there's a good reason for that.
Exclusive: The moral genesis of City of Heroes: Going Rogue
While the Praetorian areas designed for Going Rogue are new, the actual concept of Praetoria has been in City of Heroes for quite some time. Of course, as it existed in the game prior to the upcoming expansion, it was simply the Mirror Universe ported over to the game world: all the good guys were now bad guys. (Presumably the inverse was also true, but we never found out one way or the other.) Yet Praetoria, as it's being billed now, is a region of contrasts, where good and evil aren't so easily conveyed. So how did we get from one to the other? How did the simple moral inversion become a question of totalitarian safety versus dangerous anarchy? The best answers come straight from the source, and they're right here. In an exclusive developer diary by John "Protean" Hegner, designer and mission lead for Going Rogue, we get a peek at the process that went into fleshing out the limited view we had of the alternate Earth. Entitled "Shaving the goatee off the Praetorians," it's excellent reading for any City of Heroes fan, so take a look on past the break.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: There's a spider in my room (VEAT level 24)
I want to give everyone a bit of an idea for how these illustrations come into being. After the first installment of the ongoing guide to villainous epic archetypes was on the plate, I let Ms. Fienemann know what I was planning so she would know what to draw. Once she drew that title image, I immediately laughed and noted how the middle soldier was sad. His name was Terry, and Jim and Earl (the other soldiers) were being jerks to him and not giving him even, like, a little bit of their lunch after Terry had fronted them both for coffee earlier in the week. This week, Jim and Earl continue being mean to Terry despite not being in the drawing. And that just makes it funnier. Where were we? Oh, right, leveling your epic villain archetype in City of Heroes. Or more accurately, making the big central decision to leveling your spider. By the time you hit 24 -- not very long after the last installment -- you're going to be neck-deep in a free respec that leads into unlocking the additional career paths for your character. Unfortunately, you're going to have to choose one or the other.
Winners of "Declare your Loyalty" contest announced for City of Heroes
Sometimes you notice them and sometimes you don't, but the background touches in City of Heroes are always there. They're little reminders that you're moving through a city full of people. The Rogue Isles has its share of shady billboards and decorations (including no-questions-asked investigators and a minion recruitment service), while Paragon City has law firms and socially-conscious advertisements about the Rikti. And Praetoria has propaganda for Emperor Cole... and against him. That's the crux of the now-concluded contest to declare your loyalty in artistic form for Going Rogue, and the winners of said contest have been announced. There are three winners in each category, for both Loyalist propaganda and Resistance subversion. Two of the pieces of Resistance graffiti and one of the Loyalist billboards have also been adopted by the developers -- they will be featured in Going Rogue, albeit in a slightly-altered form. The gallery of winners showcases both the original submissions and the slight alterations made for the appearance in-game. City of Heroes players who haven't yet picked a side -- or those who are just interested in seeing some nicely-done propaganda pieces -- should head on over to take a look.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Questions versus answers, no holds barred!
We interrupt your regularly-scheduled guide to playing a spider for a number of questions and answers, and possibly several comic book sound effects! (Okay, it's not exactly "interrupting" anything when I said that it would be here this week, but humor me.) As usual, the community has taken the opportunity to ask me a number of City of Heroes questions, and I have used my magical time-looker-forward tube to find the vast majority of the answers. So with that having been said, let's get into the down and dirty, shall we? Superfan asked: "Massively suspects the game has only 40,000 active subscibers right now?" No, the quick math done by one Massively writer suggested it as a possible figure, based on some generous margins and assuming everyone's subscription is on a one-month-recurring basis as opposed to the plethora of other subscription pricing plans available. The goal was to create a vague idea of how many subscribers on an active basis the game might have at the moment, since we no longer get actual subscription numbers for the game.
Exclusive City of Heroes developer diary on the design of Dual Pistols animation
Even if you hate the ranged powers in City of Heroes with the heat of the sun, it's impossible to deny how stylish the animations for Dual Pistols look. The amount of movement in every single power makes the set feel organic and action-oriented, regardless of any other mechanical elements. But what went into making one of the marquee power sets for Going Rogue look so fluid and interesting? Nelson Tam, an animation artist for Paragon Studios, was the mastermind behind the gun-fu on display for heroes and villains alike. In our exclusive developer diary, "How John Woo Inspired my Gun Fu," he explains how the animations came to life, from the earliest point of conception to the finished product that players can enjoy. City of Heroes players have clamored for the set nearly since the launch of the game, but as the diary explains, it wasn't necessarily quite so easy to get it to look right in the game. Click on past the cut!
City of Heroes launches first video diary for Going Rogue
The time of Going Rogue draws very close for City of Heroes players, and we've still only scratched the surface of what there is to know. It's always a tense time when you're getting close to a new expansion, especially one that's rewriting some of the most fundamental rules about the game. While the first in a series of new video developer diaries from Paragon Studios won't necessarily make the time before release pass any faster, it will help give us a clearer picture of what's coming around the bend. For players who have never played the game before, the diary helps give an overview of where the game is and where it can go from here -- including the realm of the Super Lumberjack. (We can only assume that making one allows you to also be super okay.) Veterans can enjoy a solid look at Praetoria, as well as what can only be described as glowing costume pieces. Once the veteran players finish squealing in delight, they can take a look on past the break for the first City of Heroes video diary for Going Rogue, which is targeted for release in July.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Spiders on the wall (VEAT levels 1-20)
I've been talking about it more often than not these days whenever I mention City of Heroes, but in case it wasn't transparently obvious: I like spiders. Not actual spiders, mind you -- those generally merit a kill-on-sight order from me -- but the epic archetypes that villains get? Boy, I can't get enough of those. They're like sliced awesome, complete with sweet armor for the soldier side of things and buttcapes for the widow ladies. (And creepily form-fitting armor for the male widows... y'know, let's just pretend that we didn't go down that road.) What's struck me as odd, however, is that there's relatively little written up about partaking in the sheer joy of being a faceless cog in Arachnos who decided to strike out and hit the big time. With more players than ever able to access the archetypes, and more players still when Going Rogue goes live, now seems as good a time as any to take a hard look at our eight-legged friends and jackbooted oppressors. Today, we're going to go over the basics of starting a new Soldier or Widow, including powersets and the early missions.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: We're all in this together
Community can be a funny thing. We pick the community we're in -- in this case, City of Heroes -- but we don't pick any of the other members. Sometimes they're all really stand-out folks, and sometimes... well, sometimes your choices are between Flower Power, Slug-fest, and Hammer Time. Lucky for us, the community that's formed itself around our favorite superhero MMO is pretty darn good at its worst and outright awesome most of the time. (And a proper shout-out to our community for the game right here, while I'm at it.) To be fair, we're a bit on the lean side at the moment. After all, we're not getting another update for a couple of months and we almost all know it. Issue 17 is pretty awesome, but we also know that Going Rogue is just around the corner, and so most of us are focused a bit more on the future. But we've still got a lot to talk about in our day-to-day adventures. That both helps everyone to feel that much more welcome, and it helps facilitate this week's look at some of the noteworthy community threads that have been cropping up lately.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Gonna be the future soon
This week's listening, if you by some chance didn't catch it, will be from the inimitable Mr. Jonathan Coulton. Not because the song is all that thematically appropriate (I did not leave a note on War Witch's desk, for starters), but because it's Jonathan Coulton. And it offsets the tone of this article, which is going to be... well... kind of negative. Not negative in the sense that City of Heroes is dying, because it's not. The game is full of life, flush with energy and diverse ideas. Rumors of its death have been greatly exaggerated for well on a year or so now, and I personally couldn't be happier about the state of affairs. For every problem it has, it has five or six great points, and every time I'm cresting a hill on my enjoyment there's another hill of sliced, buttered awesome in front of me. But City of Heroes is going to need to start taking steps to ensure its long-term sustainability. It needs to start realizing that their good fortune is not going to last. And so today will be a bit negative, as the long-forgotten second part of the anniversary column... where we look to the future, and see what needs to happen.
City of Heroes explores crime and punishment, Praetoria style
We're getting closer and closer to the launch of the second major expansion to City of Heroes, Going Rogue. While the official site has been a bit silent of late, no doubt in focusing on the game's six-year anniversary, it's just updated again with another look inside the utopia of Tyrant. The most recent update focuses on both a group and an individual, as has become the norm, with players getting a clearer look inside the head of Marauder and the ruthless criminal organizations that form the Syndicate. When Tyrant made his push to eliminate all crime, he succeeded in driving the crime families and organizations nearly to ruin -- but they've banded together to form the Syndicate, to continue their illicit trades while striking out against Cole's government. Marauder, meanwhile, is the perversion of the jovial Back Alley Brawler. Also known as Praetor White, he leads the Powers Division, the team of super-powered individuals that take on threats Praetoria's police force cannot. Take a look at the official site for more information on both of these potential allies and enemies, and keep your eyes peeled for more information as City of Heroes rockets toward the Going Rogue launch date.
Facebook MMOgraphy: First impressions of The Agency: Covert Ops
Every two weeks, Facebook MMOgraphy brings you the latest news, guides and analysis about MMOs on Facebook and Facebook apps associated with MMOs. SOE's upcoming spy MMO The Agency has been long in the making. We've been covering it at Massively for quite some time now. Though it's not quite ready to launch yet, SOE has surprised us this week with a Facebook gaming app, The Agency: Covert Ops. Though Covert Ops is a Facebook app based on an MMO, it's not an MMO itself. There is no real time interaction with other players, for example. However it does provide light entertainment for those who enjoy the spy genre and has the same tone and feel of their upcoming MMO title. The Basics The core of the game is leveling your spy via missions. The missions follow a storyline and some of them are accomplished simply by having the correct resources needed, others require you to complete a minigame. Rewards include in-game cash, experience for your character and components to build better equipment. Every mission requires a certain amount of Cover to complete and when you run out of Cover, you need to allow it to replenish over time or buy more through a microtransaction store. Pop ups provide a tutorial to walk you through the gameplay flow and videos explain minigame play.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Everybody needs a question answered sometime
If you haven't read Jason Vuic's excellent history of the Yugo, you're doing yourself a disservice -- at least, if you have any interest in terrible cars, history, or just the crazy stylings of Malcolm Bricklin. What does that have to do with today's bevvy of City of Heroes questions, hot on the heels of our anniversary? Well, not everyone can afford the Batmobile. There are places where the Paragon Monorail (aka Justice Mass Transit) won't take you. And on those occasions, well, you truly wish that you'd just dropped the ten dollars on the Martial Arts booster or taken the darn travel power. Onward! Dashel asked: "When will Blasters get more secondaries, original or proliferated?" Soon! Maybe. I've heard tell that we may well be due for another wave of powerset proliferation with the release of Going Rogue, although that's far from a confirmed fact. So Blasters can expect to get some more love there. But we don't have any idea of exactly when we'll see more secondaries as opposed to more primary sets. The trouble is that as Blasters have been designed, they have the undesirable trait that Masterminds share: they've got a setup for one of their sets that nobody else shares.
A video retrospective of City of Heroes
We're still not done celebrating six straight years of City of Heroes, and likely won't be entirely done until July. Even that's largely because we'll have something else to celebrate... but we're getting ahead of ourselves. While we here at Massively took our own look back through the changes in the game over the years, the Samuraiko Productions team has put together something well worth spotlighting: a visual walk through the changes, additions, and updates the game has had over the years. The six-minute walk through history starts out at the very first build, complete with now-archaic UI elements and some questionable fashion choices, and heads straight on through to the upcoming Going Rogue and Issue 19. While there are occasional anachronisms, the video itself gleefully plays with those slight discrepancies, focusing instead on the broadening and expansion of the game. There are also little in-jokes and cameos here and there throughout the film. Whether you're an old fan, a new player, or just want to see a tour through history, take a look past the cut for this excellent trip down memory lane for City of Heroes. [Thanks to Samuraiko for the tip!]
City of Heroes launches "Declare Your Loyalty" contest
Any City of Heroes fan will likely recognize and have an answer for the question "Loyalist or Resistance?" It's all part of the ongoing campaign for the game's upcoming expansion, Going Rogue, and ties to the main storyline -- whether you're a Loyalist of Tyrant's totalitarian utopia, or a no-holds-barred Resistance member willing to topple Tyrant at any cost. Paragon Studios is taking the campaign one step further to celebrate both the impending release and the six-year anniversary: they're letting players make a permanent mark on the world of Praetoria based upon their allegiance. There are two halves to the contest, based upon one's affiliation. If you're a Loyalist, you are tasked with designing a suitable propaganda poster for Emperor Cole, extolling his virtues and those of his society. On the other hand, Resistance members will design graffiti to spread the message of freedom and encouraging others to rise up. There's a lot of fun to be had with the contest, and the prizes are pretty substantial -- even without the fact that the best entries may very well wind up in Praetoria when Going Rogue launches. Take a look at the full rules, and start declaring your City of Heroes affiliation -- the contest runs until May 14th.
An interview with veteran supergroups in City of Heroes
Today is rather the day of City of Heroes, and with good cause -- six years old, with many changes and exciting new parts in the wings. And the game is still open to new players of all sorts, with plenty to enrapture players who've never once set foot in Paragon City. But there's also a special place for players and groupings that have been around for nearly all of the game's lifespan -- something that's quite an accomplishment for more than half a decade. We were lucky enough to have a chance to speak with two veteran supergroups as part of the anniversary celebration: ICONS and Fusion Force. To help compare and contrast responses, we asked both groups the same set of questions, and what follows is their responses. Some of them are close to one another (for instance, everyone seems to want to go into space), but others are very different, even with similar amounts of experience. Whether you're a City of Heroes veteran yourself or just curious about the game's history, jump on past the cut for our chat with some of the game's longer-running player groups.
Issue 17 of City of Heroes goes live with launch trailer
Today is a big day for City of Heroes. Not only is it the six-year anniversary of the game, with celebrations taking place both in-game and out, it's also the launch of the much-awaited Issue 17. Dubbed "Dark Mirror," the update features the graphical tweaks collectively known as Ultra Mode, as well as new story arcs and missions, improvements to Mission Architect, and a whole host of additional changes. It's also the release of the awaited Demon Summoning powerset, which is available to everyone who has prepurchased the upcoming Going Rogue expansion. Behind the cut is the official trailer for the update, which should help whet the appetite of any fans anxiously awaiting the update to complete downloading. Aside from highlighting the visuals of Ultra Mode in real-time, it shows off some of the mission content, including the full-scale war against the Freakshow pictured above. There's also the doppelgangers and the Positron task force to show off -- and only a couple more months until the game's second major expansion. Click on past the cut to see the trailer, and enjoy the new changes that help keep City of Heroes fresh six years out.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Six (years) in the city
It's strange to think that City of Heroes is older than my car. But that's only the tip of the iceberg, as the game is six years old as of today and still running strong. Oh, sure, there are some signs of aging here and there, some parts that don't fit quite as well as they did back when it launched... but the game holds up pretty darn well. And that's astonishing, considering that it launched a full year before the game that generally gets the credit for starting new paradigms of MMO design. Of course, you can go further back and point out that a lot of the "innovations" that The Game Which Shall Not Be Named included were present beforehand, and you'd be correct. But after the EverQuest era of game design, City of Heroes stood as a vanguard of a new design philosophy. It was a game with unparalleled customization at the time, a game that put forth the idea that you could be just as cool at Level 1 as you could at max level. So how have things changed? How far have we come in the years? There's almost too much to cover to go over everything... but we can hit the big points.
Reminder: City of Heroes developer chat today
They've got an anniversary coming up, but no one can accuse the team over at Paragon Studios of resting on their laurels. The studio responsible for City of Heroes is hard at work on the next major content update, several anniversary celebrations, and they're still stopping to reach out to their fans. In not very much time at all, it will be time for a live chat with the development team of City of Heroes via their forumspring.me page. A few fans submitted questions to us, and we passed along three of them to the development team -- but that doesn't mean that there's no chance of getting other questions to reach their ears. So hurry on over to the City of Heroes question submission page, fire off the best question you can think of (after enabling JavaScript if you've got it turned off), and keep your eyes peeled for all of the answers. With Melissa Bianco, Matt Miller, Jesse Caceres, and David Nakayama all fielding the questions, there's sure to be some interesting information to be had.
