Apr 28, 2011

Seven years of City of Heroes statistics

Eurogamer

Three long-standing NCsoft MMOs - Guild Wars, City of Heroes and Lineage II - all share the same anniversary: today.

That's what NCsoft says, but actually the US version of City of Heroes and Lineage II launched seven and six years ago yesterday, respectively.

It was only Guild Wars: Prophecies - the first GW release - that happened six years ago today.

To mark the occasion, NCsoft has gone City of Heroes statistic mad.

Did you know that since COH launch, more than 42 million characters have been created? Sadly, 60 per cent of those are Heroes, the remainder Villains. Scrappers are the most popular Fallen Hero archetypes and Brutes are the preferred Redeemed Villain archetypes.

The top five most played archetypes are Blaster, Scrapper, Tanker, Mastermind and Controller, respectively. The most popular character origin is Mutant.

The statistics show that the community mission-making tools have been an overwhelming success. Developers Cryptic Studios and now Paragon Studios have made a total of 46 Trials, Task Forces and Raids, as well as more than 1600 single or group missions. The City of Heroes community, however, has made more than 375,000 missions. Kapow!

Today, City of Heroes characters hold a combined currency total of 56 billion Influence. The richest characters are Scrappers.

Since that 2004 launch, City of Heroes has offered 20 free content releases.

City of Heroes anniversary celebrations run from today throughout May. Up until 2nd May, Booster Packs and Account Services will be halved in price. There's even some wedding attire on offer so you can celebrate with Will and Kate this weekend. You can join friends on other servers if you like. Plus, there are anniversary badges, a Vanguard pack and loyalty player emotes to mark the occasion.

Account reactivation will happen for from 3rd May to 10th May to all people who left "in good standing". Developer Paragon will host a live Ustream chat tomorrow morning/tonight at 2am UK time to sneak preview the upcoming Booster pack. Don't pretend you won't still be awake.

Guild Wars will celebrate by hosting an all-weekend party in the Shing Jea Monastery. Up until 6th May there will be games, contests, races and all sorts to entertain you. There's also to be six weeks of Guild Wars content price promotions (announced via the Guild Wars website).

There'll be additional content on offer, too, via Fluxes. These will mix-up PVP and encourage experimental character builds. Also coming: the option to use high-resolution textures in town, hard mode quests, mutual friends lists and 30 new tonics.

Lineage II celebrations weren't detailed.

Video: Guild Wars: now and then.

Apr 28, 2011

Celebrating Seven Years of City of Heroes

Kotaku

Seven years ago today, NCsoft and Cryptic Studios released City of Heroes, providing fantasy-gorged massively multiplayer online gamers a new way to waste countless hours of their lives alongside thousands of their closest friends. Let's celebrate seven years of heroes and villains with a colorful infographic and nostalgia-laden anecdotes!

I fondly remember the day City of Heroes went live. I must have spent a dozen hours camped in front of my computer, soaking in everything Cryptic Studios had created. Then I finished creating my character and moved on to the game proper. It was nice enough, but damn if that character creator didn't keep calling me back.

Seven years later more than 42 million characters have been created (some of them not mine) and 15.7 billion experience points have been earned. The game has survived a Marvel lawsuit, a studio transition, the invasion of super villains, and the release of two competing superhero MMOs, including Champions Online, a game crafted by City of Heroes' original development studio.

NCsoft and Paragon Studios has a month of special events and sales laid out for City of Heroes players to help celebrate scratching seven years of the superhero itch. Head over to the game's official website for details.

Apr 18, 2011

City of Heroes’ Incarnate Trials: two weeks later

PC Gamer

City of Heroes launched the game's first series of large-scale raids, called Incarnate Trials, just two weeks ago. We sat down with Nate Birkholz, City of Heroes' Lead Producer at Paragon Studios to talk about what the dev team has learned so far, what's worked well and what hasn't, and how the players have responded to the new addition.

PCG: What was your experience like on day one? Were most players ready to go with full groups, or were they skeptical?
Nate Birkholz: Players were more than ready to go as soon as the servers came up. I hopped onto Virtue, my home server, and immediately started using the Team Up Teleporter to run Incarnate Trials. I spent much of the day playing along with pick-up groups (PUGs) and enjoying the enthusiasm that people displayed for tackling the challenges. I also defeated a couple of Behavioral Adjustment Facility runs back-to-back late in the day, which was very satisfying as a player as well as a developer.

PCG: What size groups have been the most popular in Incarnate Trials so far?
NB: No particular size seems to be more popular . The Behavioral Adjustment Facility requires a League of 12-24 players, and Lambda Sector requires 8-16 players, .

PCG: Are you happy with how the difficulty scaling has worked so far? Is one extreme of group size seeming to have an easier or more difficult time than the other?
NB: We’ve been very happy. The numbers, as well as our personal experiences in the game, indicate that the scaling is working very well. In fact, both the smallest groups and the largest groups have been able to earn the “Master of..” badges that we award for completing the Incarnate Trials as close to perfect as possible.

PCG: What’s your personal preference for raid size?
NB: I like about sixteen players. I feel like that size gives a great cross-section of archetypes and gives a lot of tactical flexibility. Fortunately, the endgame scaling is working well, as I noted, so it’s fun with any number of players, but that size just feels right to me.

PCG: What boss encounter design do you think has been the most successful so far? Are there any encounters that you feel need to be tweaked?
NB: Players were regularly defeating the Siege and Nightstar battle first, but we expected to see that. The Marauder battle is more integrated into how successful you are with the rest of the Lambda Sector Incarnate Trial, so we knew it would take a bit longer to get into the groove of his fight. We are seeing players defeat Marauder now that more and more people are familiar with how the event works.

PCG: What are the most popular Incarnate Powers so far?
NB: The Judgment and Lore powers are very visual, and players are really digging them a lot.

PCG: What are your personal favorite Incarnate Powers?
NB: As a tank, I really dig the Interface powers. The debuff proc I have been using reduces enemies’ chance to hit, and that quickly adds up to some real survivability for me and my team.

PCG: Looking back at the first week of the new endgame, what lessons have you learned already?
NB: We have had the Incarnate Trials in beta since last Autumn, so a lot of the really big lessons are well behind us. One lesson we learned during beta is that players are very determined to defeat any encounter, no matter how big the challenge. They will keep trying to win even after the tide of battle has clearly turned against them and they're no longer making headway. Players underestimate their power and skill at times, but that doesn’t affect their spirit.

PCG: How are you going to apply that lesson to future content?
NB: We learned that every stage of an Incarnate Trial has to have a way of ending , or players will just keep going--until server maintenance if they have to.

PCG: If you could summarize the average player’s feedback on the patch so far, what would it be?
NB: “We want more Incarnate Trials!”

What do you think, heroes and villains: Is everything peachy in the Incarnate Trials, or what would you like to see changed?

Apr 6, 2011

City of Heroes Issue 20 brings raids

Eurogamer

Through Issue 20 - out now and free - original superhero MMO City of Heroes has finally welcomed raids to its spandex mix of action.

These Incarnate Trials are scalable, and so can be tackled by groups of eight all the way up to 24. With these encounters come new Incarnate Powers - four tiers of them - to modify existing powers as well as add completely new ones. Apparently these can make you stronger than the legendary City of Heroes characters themselves.

Issue 20 also allows, for the first time, groups of 48 heroes via a League system (a fancy name for a raid).

The story pinning these new toys together revolves around Emperor Cole, the naughty dictator of a place called Praetoria. You'll deal a blow to his operation by smashing his Behavioural Adjustment Facility to bits.

Incidentally, you will need City of Heroes' Going Rogue expansion to play the Incarnate Trials and unlock the Incarnate Powers.

In video game years, City of Heroes is older than Esther Rantzen, having launched in Europe a week before World of Warcraft - 4th February 2005.

Created by Cryptic Studios but now developed by NCsoft off-shoot studio Paragon Studios, City of Heroes has managed not only to survive but also to flourish, shrugging off strong and direct competition from Champions Online and DC Universe Online.

A trademark for City of Heroes 2 was spotted a year ago to this day. NCsoft responded a day later, not ruling out the possibility of a sequel.

Video: City of Heroes' Issue 20 patch.

Apr 5, 2011

Issue 20 launches, brings raiding endgame to City of Heroes

PC Gamer

City of Heroes has been the patron saint of Superhero sim fans for the last seven years, providing them a safe haven to create new heroes or villains , develop elaborate backstories and experience the life of a masked crusader (for good or evil) in a mature environment since 2004. Cryptic (the original developers) and Paragon (currently in charge) have injected a lot of content into the game in the past seven years, but one thing that neither developer added to the game, before today, was raids. With today's big expansion, Issue 20, Paragon introduces the endgame staple of MMORPGs to CoH, with a few unique twists to make their own stand out.

The most surprising element of the new raids, labeled Incarnate Trials, is their ability to scale to the number of players you bring in the raid. Grab anywhere between 7 and 23 fellow players and the encounters will scale their difficulty (not just hit points, but the number of adds that spawn and other boss mechanics) to match the size of your group. Even better, the new League system is a nostalgic tip of the hat to old-school raiding, allowing you to form groups of up to 48 players to tackle content together. Content scaling is very difficult to balance, but if done right, I believe it provides the best compromise for players: no matter what size raid you prefer, you can play it. I'm looking forward to hearing from City of Heroes' newly-elected raid leaders about how well the difficulty-scaling works.

The system launches with two Incarnate Trials, both revolving around taking down the corrupt dictator of Praetoria, Emperor Cole. You can ransack his secure prison the "Behavioral Adjustment Facility," where you have to stop the prisoners from escaping while taking down the massive guards, or blast your way onto a military base in the Lambda Sector to battle Cole's genetically-engineered super soldiers. Either way, it ain't gonna be easy.

Luckily, you're getting some added power to help tackle 'em. The Issue also adds new tiers of Incarnate Powers: endgame-only ability slots that add extra oomph to existing powers or open up new options altogether. For those not quite ready for the endgame, the Issue also adds 2 lower-level Task Forces to tackle as a group. The official launch trailer is posted below. Be sure to let us know what you think of the new raid content in the comments below, or email us!

Feb 22, 2011

City of Heroes Animal Pack Giveaway

PC Gamer

Capes and masks are overrated. Too few superheroes and villains sport giant horns, flowing manes or blood-encrusted hoofs capable of smashing skulls. The animal kingdom is a terrifying place (don't believe me? Just imagine how many deadly spiders have crawled across your sleeping body at night), and it's about to be unleashed in City of Heroes, via the latest Animal Pack.

Contest: The pack is released tomorrow, and we'll be giving away 20 copies as soon as it launches--read on to find out how you can win!

The Animal Pack will add 60 new costume patterns, 6 new emotes, 2 new auras and one new traveling power to the game for all you Twilight roleplayers: Beast run (go Team Jacob!). The rest of you have a righteous task set before you: use the Animal Packs to make anything other than werewolves to dilute the effect of these Twilight fans on the lovely City of Heroes playerbase.

The pack will be launching tomorrow for $10, but only chumps pay money for booster packs when PC Gamer is giving them away for free! To earn one of the 20 codes we have to give away, all you have to do is tell us in the comments below what animal in the entire spectrum of our furry friends would make the scariest villain, and what their signature attack/pose/catch phrase would be. We'll select our favorites at 10 AM PST on Wednesday and email the codes to them.

Feb 11, 2011

City of Heroes Animal Pack price, date

Eurogamer

Want to play a superhero MMO but concerned you can't create an eagle-man? Worry no more, citizen - the City of Heroes Animal Pack is nearly here!

Due 23rd February for the price of £6, this add-on introduces the alluring ability to build a superhero using the best bits of the best beasts on our planet. No, not hamsters and ponies and chihuahuas - I'm talking tigers, minotaurs (they're not even real they're so brilliant!) and birds with really sharp beaks, not rubbishy old gammy-legged pigeons.

You can pick from more than 60 costume parts and patterns grouped broadly under Feline, Avian, Minotaur and Wolf categories (wolves are absolutely mental they're so cool!), plus six new emotes: Savage, Hiss, Sniff, Feature Burst, Fur Burst and Feather Fly.

It's not all cosmetic fluff, either; there's a new Beast Run travel power available at character level four. There are also new auras dubbed Flea and Beastly Rage.

City of Heroes, seven years old in Europe and nearly eight in the US, is no longer the only superhero MMO on the block. Defeated challenger Champions Online has turned free-to-play, and DC Universe has just swooped in.

Will beast bodies be enough to see them off?

Dec 1, 2010

City of Heroes gets invasion in Issue 19: Alpha Strike

PC Gamer

The Praetorian invasion has kicked off in City of Heroes with the arrival of Issue 19: Alpha Strike. The free update will add a series of new missions for level 20 players, as well as new animations for many superpowers and free respec tokens for everyone. Read on for more details.

Issue 19 takes the fight to the city of Praetoria, added in the recent Going Rogue expansion. New characters and zone encounters offer a ton of new missions, and many cosmetic tweaks have been made in the form of a suite of new animations for many of the game's most popular powers. Even more option have also been added to the Mission Architect that lets players create their own missions.

High level players can start improving their powers using the new Incarnate system. Those who have taken the Incarnate quest can then tackle the new super-challenging Task Force missions in Praetoria. On top of all this every player will receive a respec token. If you use it you'll get another one on December 8th, making the Issue 19 update a great opportunity to rebuild old characters. The extensive list of updates can be found over on the City of Heroes site. Here's a trailer outlining many of the new features.

Nov 9, 2010

There's a Full Serving Of City Of Heroes In Every Box Of Utopios

Kotaku

Just when I was afraid breakfast would be lost to me forever, UPS Man arrives to save the day with an extra-large box of Utopios. And guess what? There's a prize inside.

Multiple prizes, actually. Inside the box was a copy of the City of Heroes Going Rogue Complete Collection, which features City of Heroes, City of Villains, and the latest expansion for Ncsoft's superhero MMO. There was also a Heroclix figure, a graphic novel, and a relatively flattering sketch of myself in superhero gear.

At least I think that's me. It's missing the plugs and the nose ring. McWhertor suggested the suit was actually a full-body Slurpee cup, and that's a dream I am never letting go.

Oh yeah, and there was a bag of cereal in there too. I'll eat, you look through the gallery.

There's a Full Serving Of City Of Heroes In Every Box Of Utopios

Oct 27, 2010

The best events in MMOs this Halloween

Global Agenda: Free Agent

Halloween is fast approaching, the spirits are getting restless and trick or treaters are preparing to walk the earth in search of sweets. It doesn't matter how good their costumes are, they're not going to be able to compete with some of the Halloween events happening in the gaming world. Guild Wars, Aion, City of Heroes and Global Agenda are all running special Halloween events. Read on for an overview of the horrors that lie in store.

Guild Wars - The Return of the Mad King of Thorns

The Mad King is preparing to visit the kingdom of Tyria, and his spirits are already at large. Head to Lion's Arch or Kamadan and search for the Mad King's steward, he'll be the one dressed in candy. You'll hear news that the Mad King's Lunatic Court are hatching a plan to release the seals that keep their pumpkin headed leader confined for most of the year, turning the world into an everlasting Halloween party. It might sound like a good idea, but with special Halloween items on offer for completing these special quests, you'll probably want to put a stop to their mischief for the loot.

Come October 31st the Mad King of Thorns will make several appearances at the Lion's Arch and Kamadan, launching a series of ridiculous and deadly games. If you win, you get a special Halloween hat, if you lose, you suffer instant death (until you respawn, of course). If you're especially eager to get into the halloween spirit, a couple of ghoulish new Halloween costumes will be on sale at a reduced price until November 21st. For the full run down of Guild Wars Halloween events, check out the Guild Wars Halloween page.
Aion - The Harvest Revel

It's Halloween and someone has stolen all of the sugary treats. Even the winged immortals of Aion need sugary treats, so it's time to get them back, by beating the sugary crap out of some nearby wildlife. The Shulacks who were entrusted with watching the sweets instead ran off with them, and started gifting them to local animals. As a sugar obsessed member of the immortal race of Daeva, it's up to you to get them back. Retrieve enough goodies and you'll be rewarded with Revel Chocolate and the Pumpkin King's blessing, both of which grant powerful buffs to your character. You'll also get mystery boxes which could contain anything from potions from scrolls to enchantment stones. The event will kick off on October 27th. For more information on where to find the Halloween quests, check out the Aion Harvest Revel wiki.
City of Heroes - Monster Invasion

Zombies are invading all cities and dimensions in City of Heroes, spewing onto the streets, milling around, eating passers by and generally stinking up the place. Smite them with lasers, riddle them bullets or immobilise them with firm and repeated facepunches for special Halloween rewards. Look out for the circles of power that are appearing all over the place, these will summon much larger monsters into the world. You'll need a team of superheroes to take them down.

You'll also be able to do a bit of your own trick or treating, going door to door in Paragon city. If you're lucky the occupants of the home you pester might just give you a rare costume set. If you're really lucky you might get your very own slightly rubbish inanimate rock, which can then be thrown at enemies for very little damage. If you get a trick, you could find yourself fighting a horde of enemies, defeat enough of these and you'll be able to combine Halloween salvage to gain an additional costume slot for your character.

If you get your hands on one of the classic costumes, go door knocking while wearing it, and you might get a tip off for a special new quest, a mission to find the mysterious Malleus Mundi artefact. There are a ton of badges and awards to be earned in the event, which will last until October 31st. Check out the full list of rewards on the City of Heroes Halloween 2010 event page.
Global Agenda - Oasis Checkpoint of Doom

A crate load of new masks are up for grabs in Global Agenda's Halloween event. If you're over level 30, you'll be able to boot up the game between October 27th and October 31st play a new Defence map in the Raid list called the Oasis Checkpoint of Doom. This map will pit you and nine others against waves and waves of incoming enemies. Defeat them and you could win yourself one of thirteen new masks. If you defend well enough and take down the final boss, you'll get a guaranteed mask and along with a slew of other rewards.

For more information on the Oasis Checkpoint of Doom check out the Global Agenda site. If you fancy getting involved you can join the PC Gamer US editors for some epic base defence action in the Play With PC Gamer event later today.