March 22, 2006


Issue 7 Images:



High noon in Issue 7



Recluse's Victory and
Dynamic Zone-Wide
Skins



Mayhem Missions:
NCSoft's other Auto
Assault

City of Heroes / City of Villains Issue 7 Preview

by Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle


We've been salivating over the Issue 7 free expansion due out in April / May for the City of Heroes / City of Villains series for weeks now. If you haven't, first check out this visual goodness:

NCSoft / Cryptic invited the press to check out Issue 7 live and in-person at GDC 2006, to which we said, "Hellz yea!" If you were under the impression this is just another kitchy free expansion, let me just say that I've seen retail expansions for major games that don't offer nearly as much. We've tacked the feature-packed "final" fact sheet onto the bottom of this sheet, but let me add my awestruck tenor to the fray.

City of Villains / City of Heroes has always been one of the few MMOs I could play in front of my non-gamer friends and get comments like "Whoa... that's a really cool costume! You can fly?" (instead of the more usual "how long do you spend playing this game each day?"). And speaking of costumes: Issue 7 adds more of that sweet bling, including a tuxedo costume that (I believe) you can unlock as a Hero. Not a Hero? Want a tuxedo? All Hero costumes can be shared by Villain characters and vice versa if you've purchased both games, a very cool "thank you" to those who've bought both games (a thank you on top of the original expression of Cryptic's gratitude and a marketing coup de grace: one subscription fee to play both games!).

The demo started with Grandville - a vertical zone (and we mean vertical zone - it's frikkin tall!) that houses Arachnos headquarters and some of Lord Recluse's failed experiments. As your villainous stature increases, you can (literally) climb the corporate ladder, moving up the vertical zone. To prevent players with flight / jump abilities from getting into areas they shouldn't be in, there's plenty of guards (including a few "beehives" that, when triggered, spawn sentry drones) that aren't shy about offering you a couple damage-laced reasons to leave. With Issue 7, you'll have the opportunity to choose one of the archvillains to be your patron - a one-time choice that can't be undone, so careful study is needed to determine which "patron powers" you want. These patrons also offer exclusive mission content, and if you have a well-organized level 50 supergroup handy, you can even become part of Lord Recluse's strike force- what the devs described as the repeatable, incredibly tough endgame which pits a slew of Villains against all the righteous fury of the Freedom Phalanx. The devs also pointed out a UI enhancement - tabs instead of long, scrolling dialogue boxes. But hold tight, we haven't gotten to the coolest stuff yet...

Recluse's Victory, or what the Heroes know as Atlas Park, is the first PvP zone for the series. Heroes and Villains will vie for 7 strongpoints, called "pillboxes" places around the map. Waypoints to these pillboxes are always one click away (no fullscreen map fiddle-faddling needed) and have 4 heavy turrets a piece, which must be destroyed before the pillbox can be captured (and don't forget that you'll have to deal with PvP aggression in the meantime!). And when the pillbox is captured... I hope you're sitting down for this.... a "temporal anchor" is placed, and the buildings around you dynamically re-skin to fit the faction's vision- reskin not just for you, but for everyone in the zone! In Villain areas, drabness, dead trees, proganda posters, and other signs of Recluse's influence is everywhere to be seen. Even the large Atlas statue turns to, you guessed it, Lord Recluse with arachnid legs wrapped tightly around the world. In Hero areas, it's goody two-shoes cheerful cleanliness, flora and fauna, and Justice League banners. When one side captures all the pillboxes, they get five minutes of victory time to try to gain 1,000 PvP points as everyone jockeys for postion. Doing so yields you temporal enhancements that you can take out of the instance, such as a robotic tank. But the real show stopped is this zone-wide dynamic reskinning. It's never been done before in any MMO, and it's at least as cool as it sounds.

Finally, one of my original, comparatively meager complaints against City of Villains was the lack of truly villainous content. All that changes with Mayhem Missions. Whereas you used to get a bank or casino heist mission after completing five newspaper (randomly generated) missions. These special missions will go into the regular rotation, and Mayhem Missions will take their place. Basically, you grab a team of villains, enter a special instance, and wreak as much havoc as you can within a given timeframe. Commit federal no-nos like destroying mailboxes, municipal no-nos like fire hydrant destruction, and those innocent civilians wandering around... heh. It ain't GTA, and you can't defeat them, but you can sure make them run scared. Discrete thresholds based on how much damage you do award bonus time. Just about everything is destructible, including buildings! Set them on fire through setting bombs in side missions, or (in another side mission) raid a local shop for the phat loot. Sneak past roving cameras (which, when activated, spawn waves of the newly formed local police force) and break into vaults and secure areas. The rewards and loot you earn are considerable for the minimal time investment (20-30 min, though features like this are still being fine-tunes), and you'll want friends to gang up for your raids so you'll be invited to their Mayhem Missions.

Also in the line of cool announcements: City of Villains will soon support the AGEIA physics acceleration in both its hardware and software forms, so expect to see a lot of gravity-aware effects coming soon. These enhancements will be available to every gamer meeting the current minimum specs, so don't go buy one of those sweet Dell XPS desktops on CoV's account!

The TenTonHammer final word: if all goes as planned, this is easily the coolest free expansion we've ever seen. Listen to audio from the Issue 7 demo session if you like and feast your eyes on the "final official" feature list as promised:


City of Villains™ / City of Heroes®
Issue 7: “Destiny Manifest”
New High Level Zones

  • Grandville (Levels 40-50, PVE, COV only) – A vertical zone, Grandville contains Spider City, the capital of Arachnos™, where players encounter mutated Arachnoids and a huge new cast of characters including Lord Recluse™ himself!
  • Recluse’s Victory (Levels 40-50, PVP, COV and COH) – Recluse’s Victory represents the villains’ assault on Paragon City™. Heroes and villains battle for control points, use heavy artillery to their advantage, and watch the zone change dynamically as a result of their efforts.

Mayhem Missions (Villains only) - Take villainy to the streets of Paragon City with tense new timed missions among destructible environments, which also unlock multiple random events. Players harass citizens, rob stores, destroy property, plant bombs and battle the police in these exciting open-ended timed missions. Causing extra mayhem results in bonus rewards!

Other New Missions (Villains only)

  • Over 300 new missions, including new custom missions, take villain players from levels 40 to 50. Choose signature villains as Patrons to unlock more exclusive mission content and additional unique powers!

Patron Powers (Villains only)

  • Villain players can select unique new Patron Power Pools based on the specific signature villain that they select (Scirocco™, Black Scorpion™, Ghost Widow™, Captain Mako™). For example, Captain Mako’s Spirit Shark power releases lunging shark spirits towards opponents!

New Power Sets! (Villains only)

Introducing new Power Sets with which players can expand the choices of some of their favorite villain archetypes.

  • Electric Melee, Electric Armor (Brute)
  • Thug pets (Mastermind)
  • Dark Armor, Dark Melee (Stalker)
  • New Base Features (Heroes and Villains)

Players can take their bases to the next level with Storage Items, Empowerment Stations, Supergroup Banners, and Base Color Tinting.

Quality of Life Features: (Hereos and Villains)

New Global Chat and UI features improve the overall ‘City of’ experience.

CoH Art Upgrades (Heroes)

City of Heroes gains reflective windows, added bump and specular mapping, a variety of higher resolution textures, and full screen depth of field effects.

New Costume Items

  • Details to follow.

Title: City of Villains™ / City of Heroes®
Publisher: NC Interactive
Developer: Cryptic Studios
Category: Massively Multiplayer Online
Website: www.cityofvillains.com / www.coh.com
Pricing: Free Update for Subscribers
Release: April 2006

© 2004-2006 Cryptic Studios, Inc. and NC Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved. City of Heroes, City of Villains, Arachnos, Paragon City, Lord Recluse, Scirocco, Black Scorpion, Ghost Widow, Captain Mako, and all associated logos and designs are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cryptic Studios and NCsoft Corporation. NCsoft, the interlocking NC Logo, and all associated NCsoft logos and designs are trademarks or registered trademarks of NCsoft Corporation. Cryptic Studios is a trademark of Cryptic Studios, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our City of Villains Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Jeff joined the Ten Ton Hammer team in 2004 covering EverQuest II, and he's had his hands on just about every PC online and multiplayer game he could since.

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