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Massively (www.massively.com) has great City of Villains news, photos, videos and more
Thursday, Nov 12
Mission Architect contest launched in City of Heroes
If you like creating content, the Mission Architect system in City of Heroes offers a lot of venues for your creativity, and it's certainly one of the most-touted features of the game. Now, you might be able to get more than just the joy of having other people play through your creation as a pr...
Monday, Nov 2
How much is riding on City of Heroes: Going Rogue?
At the six-year mark, City of Heroes is still moving forward, with City of Heroes: Going Rogue targeted for release in the second quarter of 2010. It's certainly not the oldest game to receive an expansion, but Vicarious Existence has an interesting point to be made: exactly how much is rid...
Tuesday, Oct 13
City of Heroes brings heroic treats and villainous tricks
Facing off against legions of werewolves and zombies is certainly not out of the ordinary for a character in City of Heroes... but facing off against hordes of them in alliance with Jack-O-Lanterns, Eidolons, and Shivans can only mean one thing. The annual Halloween event is kicking off once...
Guest author missions launch in City of Heroes
If you spend some time in Architect Entertainment today, be sure to drop your opinions on the three new missions down below in our comment box. Inquiring minds want to know how the missions are!Guest author missions launch in City of Heroes originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 13 Oct 20...
Wednesday, Sep 30
Double experience and account reactivation weekend coming to City of Heroes
Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Patches, News items So, if you were a City of Heroes/Villains subscriber in the past, this weekend is your chance to re-download the game and check out the cool new additions like Architect and Power Spectrum. Customizable power...
Saturday, Sep 5
City of Heroes announces Guest Author Program for Mission Architect
When the devs introduced the Mission Architect to City of Heroes, it was their first step towards embracing player-generated content and adding new dimensions to the game experience. They've announced that the next step with Mission Architect is to have a Guest Author Program where "co...
Thursday, Aug 27
City of Heroes Issue 16 now in open beta
If you're interested in checking out the ways you'll be able to extend that signature City of Heroes depth of avatar customization to your powers as well, see NCsoft's instructions on how to get into The Training Room (the City of Heroes test server) and you'll be tweaking the look of your E...
Wednesday, Aug 12
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 s...
Friday, Jul 31
Score some cheap NCsoft game time
If you, like us, are always looking for a way to save a few dollars in your monthly MMO budget, then you may be glad to hear this news. After all, replacing all those robot minions when they get trashed can be really expensive - or maybe that's just us. In either case, if you're an avid City of Heroe...
Sunday, Jul 26
SDCC 09: City of Heroes devs on the future of player-created content
We caught up with City of Heroes game designers Joe Morrissey and Matt "Positron" Miller who shared with us a bit about how things have changed in the game in recent months, and gave us some info about the content and features on the way in Issue 16: Power Spectrum.Gallery: SDCC09: City of Her...
Monday, Jul 6
Loyola University professor drives City of Heroes/Villains players crazy, all for sociology
Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Culture, PvP, News items, Academic, Virtual worlds Thanks Petterm, Scopique!]Loyola University professor drives City of Heroes/Villains players crazy, all for sociology originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 07 Jul 20...
Monday, Jun 29
The 5th Column returns as City of Heroes Issue 15: Anniversary goes live
Issue 15: Anniversary also marks the return of The 5th Column and The Reichsman, and thus new missions at levels 45-50 -- with Villain Strikeforce and Hero Taskforce arcs, depending upon which side of the law you're on. NCsoft has more info about Issue 15 on their Anniversary overview site...
Wednesday, Jun 10
City of Heroes dev blog talks character customization
is proud to host a new dev diary from the folks at Paragon Studios. This particular dev diary was written by Christopher Bruce, Senior Lead Animator/VFX Artist for City of Heroes, and it pertains to the character customization options that have been improved with Issue 15. Enjoy!
Friday, May 29
City of Heroes senior designer Bruce Harlick on return of The 5th Column
Have a look at Bruce Harlick's developer diary on City of Heroes Issue 15: Anniversary, for more about what he describes as "a story that's worthy of the return of one of the biggest threats to ever hit Paragon City and the Rogue Islands."Gallery: City of Heroes Issue 15: Anniversary
Thursday, May 28
City of Heroes Issue 15: Anniversary open beta begins
NCsoft has announced that City of Heroes Issue 15: Anniversary has entered open beta. They write, "We are pleased to announce that City of Heroes content Update Issue 15: Anniversary has gone straight into Open Beta phase. Now is your change to celebrate the return of The 5th Column by playi...
Friday, May 15
The Daily Grind: How do you choose a side?
This morning I'm finally getting 'round to installing City of Heroes. But while the game downloads and patches, I've been reading the manuals and trying to figure out which side I want to join. Normally I follow my friends or take the moral high-ground by picking the 'good' side.
Tuesday, May 12
NCsoft announces City of Heroes: Going Rogue expansion
For the first time ever, Heroes can become Villains, and Villains can become Heroes. This is yet another groundbreaking game mechanic that the Paragon Studios folks have introduced in a recent whirlwind of exciting new features. Look out Champions Online and DC Universe Online; City of H...
Tuesday, May 5
Matt "Positron" Miller prepares his radioactive banhammer against mission architect abusers
The team wishes to remove the rewards some characters may have gained through powerleveling, all the way up to removing access to characters that were solely leveled up via mission architect exploits. Past working on a player by player bases, some badges will be changed while others may b...
Wednesday, Apr 29
Samuraiko releases City of Heroes: History in the Making video
It's a fascinating video which is superbly edited and features a catchy soundtrack. You also get to see twenty of the biggest in-game happenings which seems to revolve around the demise of numerous villains and a couple of heroes. This is one of those cases when a video says more than a thousa...
City of Heroes 5 anniversary homage contest announced
One Free Year Subscription to City of Heroes One City of Heroes Wedding Pack One City of Heroes Super Booster I: Cyborg One City of Heroes Super Booster II: Magic One City of Heroes Hero Gear Kit One City of Heroes 5 Year Anniversary T-Shirt
Tuesday, Apr 28
Massively Exclusive: An anniversary chat with Matt Miller
You've got five great years of City of Heroes under your belt. What's it been like watching your MMO grow and develop over that time? How about staying together through everything your team has been through, to finally becoming Paragon Studios?
City of Heroes celebrates their 5th Anniversary with Issue 15
In addition to this, the Paragon Studios team is adding in a series of costume-changing emotes for players, supplementing the ones recently introduced in the Magic super booster. Also, for those of you who are as addicted to the character creation part of the game as we are, there are 20 new...
The Daily Grind: Your favorite Heroic or Villainous memories?
Has it really been five years since we started patrolling the streets of Paragon City, searching for villains to defeat in City of Heroes? Our calendar says yes, even if those first memories seem like yesterday. In the last five years, we've seen lots and lots of missions, defeated tons of e...
City of Heroes: Architect Edition giveaway
Everyone's favorite superhero MMO, City of Heroes, turns five years old today! And while NCsoft is holding their own celebrations, at Massively we're marking the occasion by giving away three copies of the game's new Architect Edition (worth approximately $20). So for those of you who'...
Friday, Apr 24
City of Heroes spill the beans on their 5th birthday celebrations
Yes another one of NCSoft's MMOs is celebrating its birthday this week and this time it's City of Heroes. Celebrating its fifth birthday on April 28th and continuing through May, the devs have plenty planned in an attempt to reward existing players and tempt back lapsed heroes and villain...
Wednesday, Apr 22
NCSoft adds its titles to Steam
If you're one of those gamers who prefers the digital minimalist approach as opposed to having game boxes everywhere then you're in luck. MMO-giant NCSoft have announced they will be offering their titles -- including City of Heroes, Guild Wars, and Lineage -- via Steam. They're also plan...
Monday, Apr 13
A Mountain of Missions
A four day weekend spent largely in the new City of Heroes Mission Architect suite has been something of a startling eye opener for me. Like a great many people, I was always of the opinion that when it comes to User Generated Content, there was basically nothing an MMO could do wrong; the more...
Friday, Apr 10
Paragon City streets unusually quiet as meta-humans flock to Architect Entertainment
So far, it seems, NCsoft's City of Heroes/Villains Issue 14 Mission Architect feature has been a cracking success. The zones containing Architect Enterprises have been stuffed to overflowing with users learning the system, creating missions and trying missions out.
Thursday, Apr 9
City of Heroes shows off Issue 14 Architect in new video
Brian Clayton, general manager and Executive Producer for City of Heroes/Villains said "We are very excited for City of Heroes to be the first-ever MMO to offer this revolutionary new system to our players. Within two weeks of opening the beta version of Mission Architect to our communit...
Wednesday, Apr 8
City of Heroes Issue 14: Architect is live
Much of our recent coverage of City of Heroes has focused on the Mission Architect, and with good reason. Issue 14 brings player-created content into the superhero MMO, placing the tools the developers have used to create missions in the hands of the players. Essentially, players can crea...
Monday, Apr 6
GDC09: Mission Architect in-depth
At GDC recently, Joe Morrissey, Senior Designer at NCsoft and Lead Designer for Mission Architect talked to an audience about the challenges of implementing a user generated content system in a 5-year old MMO. Afterwards, we had a chance to sit him down and ask a few questions of our own. But...
Wednesday, Apr 1
April Fools' 09: City of Heroes goes old school
Have you ever felt that the character customization options in City of Heroes are just too much? Sometimes they can just be too overwhelming, right? I mean, who wants to sit there and make a character that looks different from everyone else? Seriously, that's such a burden. So NCsoft has so...
Thursday, Mar 19
The Daily Grind: Are you going to check out the I14 open beta?
The wait is over for many City of Heroes and City of Villains players - Issue 14: Architect is now out on the test server as an open beta, just ready for you to jump in and try your hand at creating missions and story arcs. In the mood to create a mission where players get to battle your very own evil...
Wednesday, Mar 18
City of Heroes Issue 14 open beta has begun
City of Heroes has announced the open beta phase for Issue 14: Architect, which allows players to customize their own missions, at long last bringing player-created content to the superhero (and supervillain) MMO. The NCsoft announcement reads: "Now is your chance to play and give feed...
Thursday, Mar 5
Putting MMOG research under the ethical microscope
An interesting and informative paper titled Playing a Good Game: Ethical Issues in Researching MMOGs and Virtual Worlds has just been published in the International Journal of Internet Research Ethics. The paper examines a number of ethical issues encountered when researching MMOGs...
Thursday, Feb 26
Full details on Mission Architect system for City of Heroes
Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Patches, News items Today, NCsoft has lifted the veil on their Mission Architect system coming in the free Issue 14 update for City of Heroes -- which is currently looking at a March 2009 release.
Friday, Jan 23
Twice the experience for Paragon's heroes this weekend
The good news is that if you're looking to escape all those worldly frustrations this weekend, City of Heroes has just the treat for you. All the Heroes and Villains of Paragon, recently having taken on Day Jobs of their own, are getting a break in the form of a weekend stuffed full of double ex...
Monday, Jan 19
Is City of Heroes in-game advertising missing its mark?
Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Business models, Culture, Economy, Events, in-game, MMO industry
Saturday, Jan 17
Crunch numbers like the bones of villains in City of Heroes
Back in Issue 12, City of Heroes added the ability to see the exact statistics of your heroes to the game -- a feature that had been shrouded in mystery since the game's inception. Until that fateful patch, no one knew exactly how the statistics system in CoH worked or how things were calculat...
Friday, Jan 16
Third video out for City of Heroes and Villains
Thanks to the team at NC NorCal, we have a bit of superhero and supervillain fun for your Friday. They're winding up their three-video set to celebrate the launching of the Mac client for City of Heroes and City of Villains with this video titled "I'm a Hero, I'm a Villain: Sidekick." This time...
Monday, Jan 12
NC NorCal brings on another Hero vs Villain video
To celebrate the Mac client going gold, NC NorCal has produced a trio of videos showing off City of Heroes in the style of the Mac commercials. Last week we got to meet their hero and their villain, who gave us a few giggles as they introduced themselves. This week, NC NorCal has expanded it just...
Thursday, Jan 8
Hands on with the City of Heroes Mac Client
Filed under: Betas, Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Hands-on Recently NCsoft gave us the chance to get our hands on the beta version of the City of Heroes Mac client, letting us finally run around Paragon City and the Rogue Isles from the comfort of Mac OS X.
City of Heroes Mac client goes gold
To celebrate this momentous occasion, those Very Silly People at NC NorCal have produced a very special video for the Mac fans in the house. Of course, anyone who owns a Mac (or a TV for that matter) has undoubtedly seen a similar video, but it took the City of Heroes & City of Villains deve...
Friday, Jan 2
Why you should be playing City of Heroes: Emotes
Filed under: Super-hero, Screenshots, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Opinion, Humor, Why You Should Be Playing Sure, almost all MMOGs have emotes. They've been there forever. But much like the incredibly involved character creator, City of Heroes boasts a wide range of very silly and...
Wednesday, Dec 31
One Shots: Friends for the Holidays
Ah, the winter months, when folks love to gather together and hang out by the fireplace while the snow rages outside. Of course, if you're in a place where there is no such thing as snow during December like I am, you can enjoy it vicariously in games like City of Heroes and City of Villains! Thi...
Thursday, Dec 18
City of Heroes saves the day on the Mac
Mac users, have no fear! City of Heroes is here! Yes, the original superhero MMO is swooping down onto Apple computers everywhere as NCsoft releases the City of Heroes Mac open beta test, with a release date set for January of 2009. Now Mac users can join in the fight for Paragon City or create...
Tuesday, Dec 16
Massively's best of - Most improved game of 2008
In short, it's been an awesome year for the Heroes and Villains of Paragon City, and with Issue 14 Architect planned for next year, it looks like 2009 is on track to rock, too. Hats off - and capes on - for the City of Heroes & City of Villains developers!%Gallery-9156%Continue reading Ma...
Friday, Dec 12
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.
Wednesday, Dec 3
City of Heroes Issue 13 goes live!
Months in the making, delayed when the Mission Architect was pushed to next year, finally finally, City of Heroes Issue 13 is live! Yesterday saw the servers go down for one of the largest content pushes ever by the NCsoft development team. The patch notes are up on the official site, and the...
Monday, Nov 24
The Daily Grind: Should MMO companies offer severance packages?
As we're now aware, NCsoft has recently made the decision to shut down Tabula Rasa after the first of the year. As an attempt at goodwill - or more likely retaining at least some of the departing Tabula Rasa player-base - they've offered a 'severance package' of sorts to the players. This pack...
Saturday, Nov 15
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...
Thursday, Nov 13
CoH Merit Reward system explained pt. 2
It seems like your choice to move to this meta-currency system is an increasingly common design choice in MMOs. Do you see this as a trend in the industry, or did you have ulterior motives for going in this direction aside from satisfying your players?
Friday, Nov 7
City of Heroes Issue 13: Power and Responsibility enters Open Beta
A couple of days ago, the latest free expansion for City of Heroes was opened up to public testing. Although the main feature that was originally planned, the Mission Architect, has been put back to issue 14, it's still quite a sizeable package. The main features of the new expansion are a Day...
Monday, Nov 3
Massively.com giveaways: City of Heroes Ultimate Hero packs
MMO players, you all know and love City of Heroes. NCsoft currently runs the only superhero MMO on the market, and over the years the developers of City of Heroes/City of Villains have taken this game to some pretty interesting places. To celebrate the game and its players we have five fantas...
Tuesday, Oct 28
Mega-makeover for City of Heroes site
The new-look site brings an end to the days of separate front pages for City of Heroes and City of Villains, now that all players have full access to both. Devotees of the villain side still have their red-themed forums of evil, however; though we're not sure if this will continue once the for...
Friday, Oct 17
Floyd 'Castle' Grubb gives a Q&A on the new CoX power sets
Castle, famous in City of Heroes for being the guy who designs and fixes the powers, has prepared a Q&A on the new powersets coming with CoX Issue 13: Power and Responsibility, now deep into Closed Beta: Shield Defense and Pain Domination. Though controversy over proposed PvP changes...
Wednesday, Oct 15
Video showcases new CoX powersets for Issue 13
Filed under: Super-hero, Video, City of Heroes, City of Villains, ClassesThe two new powersets in City of Heroes Issue 13: Power and Responsibility are Pain Domination and Shield Defense. Pain Domination finally gives Villains a dose of the healing and buffing power that Heroes had wit...
Tuesday, Oct 14
City of Heroes PvP changes explained at length
Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Patches, PvPFloyd 'Castle' Grubb clearly does not know the meaning of fear. He's now unveiled a detailed breakdown of the foreshadowed changes to powers in City of Heroes PvP, and they're so radical it will probably be like playi...
Thursday, Oct 2
Floyd 'Castle' Grubb delivers the goods on CoX power changes
Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Game mechanics, Patches, PvEAs the wait intensifies for City of Heroes Issue 13: Power and Responsibility to go into closed Beta, powers guy Floyd 'Castle' Grubb has provided a breakdown of some of the main PvE powers changes. No...
Wednesday, Oct 1
Massively talks with NCsoft about CoH changes, Austin studio shakeup
Filed under: At a glance, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Guild Wars, Tabula Rasa, Guild Wars 2, Massively metaMassively and NCsoft have had the chance to touch base several times in the last week or so, and we wanted to be sure to put it all together in one place. If you're a fan of NCsoft's ga...
Thursday, Sep 25
Super Boosters and beyond in City of Heroes
recently had the chance to talk with City of Heroes executive producer Brian Clayton and Lead Designer Matt Miller about a multitude of CoX topics. One of the points we covered was the downloadable optional content, such as the recent Cyborg Pack.
Brian Clayton and Matt Miller: Page 3
we're getting rid of the Base Salvage out of the game, because a lot of the players were getting confused with the Invention Salvage, since they both get the same kind of message." And in addition, one of the things we're doing is we're getting rid of the Base Salvage out of the game, because a l...
Friday, Sep 19
The five most annoying griefs in CoX, and how they were quashed
As a rule, we don't like to highlight griefing behavior here at Massively. For the most part, it's not only puerile, it's tedious. But our ongoing mission to highlight aspects of City of Heroes lore and culture wouldn't be complete without a mention of some of the ways players have tried to br...
Friday, Aug 8
City of Heroes: Saga of the Reichsman
Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Fan art, LoreThe Reichsman is an enigma. There probably hasn't ever been another character in City of Heroes history whose popularity was so disproportionate to his presence in the game. Game developer Joe 'Hero 1' Morrissey has...
Thursday, Jul 24
Brief glimpse of City of Heroes Issue 13
Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, PatchesIGN 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 t...
Saturday, May 31
City of Heroes re-review for Issue 12
Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Game mechanics, Patches, Reviews, OpinionIf you haven't noticed, recently Eurogamer has been doing a series of re-reviews for the most popular MMOs, especially older ones. The City of Heroes/City of Villains games are a perfe...
Thursday, Apr 24
Massively Speaking Podcast Episode 2
Filed under: World of Warcraft, Betas, Podcasts, Age of Conan, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Lord of the Rings Online, Culture, Events, real-world, Events, in-game, PvP, Massively SpeakingMassively Speaking Episode 2 runs down news and features from Massively.com for the week of...
Tuesday, Apr 8
Opinion: CoX In-game Ads: The bandwidth/revenue equation
DJ Templar: Speaking about revenue, the initial announcement states that all the all the revenue generated by ad sales in this program go towards City of Heroes development, City of Villains development, and there's been some people that say "well sure it is, it's being used for all sort...
Opinion: CoX In-game Ads: Content control
DJ Templar: Speaking of advertisers, you did mention that -- because City of Heroes/City of Villains carries a Teen Rating by the ESRB -- certain more mature advertisers such as tobacco companies and alcohol and that sort of thing wouldn't be included. Do you have -- I know this is early day...
Podcast: CoX In-game Ads: How to make 'em, where to see 'em
Filed under: Podcasts, City of Heroes, City of Villains, InterviewsDJ Shecky: Alright. And as a followup to that, I had a couple of people -- namely one of our other DJs -- had come up with the thought of "is there going to be a separate little piece of software that's going to be installed for t...
Podcast: CoX In-game Ads: Opting in for reinvestment
Filed under: Podcasts, City of Heroes, City of Villains, InterviewsDJ Templar: Gotcha. One of the pastimes with some of the people on the forums has been taking the monthly fee that each person pays, the current total subscriber count that's been reported, multiply that, and say "okay, N...
Podcast: CoX In-game Ads: Selective placement, self-promotion
Filed under: Podcasts, City of Heroes, City of Villains, InterviewsDJ Shecky: Somebody posted this one up on the Cape forums. Obviously there's a limited amount of places that ads can be placed in the Rogue Isles, etcetera. Are you going to be adding in more billboards? For instance, one of...
Podcast: CoX In-game Ads: The wrapup
Filed under: Podcasts, City of Heroes, City of Villains, InterviewsDJ Shecky: I think this is a good spot for us to collect our thoughts, and go over and make sure that we've covered all these questions before we start to wrap things up. What about you guys?
Podcast: NCsoft answers your questions about in-game advertising
As promised, we have a full transcript from The Cape's podcast covering in-game advertising. Be warned: at 44 minutes of speech, the transcript is huge. To make it easier to digest, we've split the transcript into 7 discrete sections. So that it's easier to follow, the DJs have their speech i...
Saturday, Apr 5
Podcast: The Cape envelops in-game advertising
Filed under: City of Heroes, City of Villains, Interviews Yesterday, The Cape Radio -- specifically DJs Templar and Shecky -- took the time to interview Brian Clayton, the General Manager of NCsoft NorCal studio, Matt "Positron" Miller, the Senior Lead Designer for City of Heroes, and...
Monday, Jan 21
The lights are out in the City of...
Time for a little nap. All of the US game servers for CoX have been brought down for extended maintenance. NCsoft is anticipating a full 6 hour downtime window, which started at 6 AM Pacific (9 AM Eastern) this morning. The lengthy downtime is required in order to upgrade the server hardware ta...
Saturday, Jan 12
City of Heroes state of the game '08
Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Patches, News items The team behind City of Heroes have put up their 2008 state of the game announcement. It consists of all sorts of gooey fun bits, so listen on in for all of the scoop.
Tuesday, Nov 20
The leet CoV trailer
Have you ever wondered what our super heroes would sound like if they spoke more like we do in game? Well, Kill Ten Rats has reminded us about an oldy-but-goody remix of the City of Villains trailer, leet-speak style. I'm not sure how I missed this one, but I am sure those of you who play CoX will...
Wednesday, Nov 7
The Daily Grind: NCsoft takes over Paragon City
Filed under: City of Heroes, City of Villains, MMO industry, New titles, Opinion, The Daily Grind, Marvel Universe OnlineNews broke (right here on Massively, by the way) yesterday that NCsoft has bought up the City of Heroes and City of Villians IPs from creator Cryptic, and it's free st...
