This summer NCsoft will be attending the Leipzig Games Convention, where players can meet the City of Heroes community team, win swag and go hands on with the hotly anticipated Aion: The Tower of Eternity. Yes, you read right… now read on to find out how.

Paragon City resident 1Damz and supergroup Paragon’s Hope have announced their intention to run The Hero Summer Games. The first event is scheduled for Sunday, June 29th at 19:00 BST (20:00 CEDT), with more events to follow in the weeks following. Participating Heroes will compete for a share of the Influence to be gained by confirming their status as one of the best in Paragon City! Do you have what it takes to shine in any of the events announced?

For all the information on the events, the schedule and the prizes make sure to visit this forum thread.

The Daily Mirror has announced a City of Heroes competition to celebrate the launch of Issue 12: Midnight Hour. One lucky entrant will win their very own uniquely-crafted PC featuring unique artwork hand-painted by Andrew Wildman, one of the artists from the charity Draw the World Together who regularly attends events with us! Four runners-up will receive a free copy of City of Heroes.

Entries close Wednesday, June 25th, so get yours in for the chance to win this one-of-a-kind hand-painted PC!

Starting with Boomtown, there’s a competition launched on Wednesday featuring a Lord Recluse statue as first prize! All you have to do is answer a simple question to be in the running. There are also prizes for second and third, and they have an interview with Lead Designer Matt ‘Positron’ Miller.

Moving on to VideoGamer, there’s another competition to win boxed copies of the game - again by answering a simple question - and another free trial opportunity for those who may not have visited Paragon City or the Rogue Isles yet.

“For Gamers, by Gamers” - that’s the slogan of MyGamersVideo, the new portal featuring self-made game videos for your favourite game!

To celebrate the portal’s kick-off, NCsoft and German Gaming Portal Onlinewelten have teamed up and invite you to create, upload and present your game-video - and win!

All participants get the chance to win exciting prizes - copies of the latest NCsoft games or other exclusive goodies from NCsoft’s treasure chests.

If you want to learn more and participate, just head over to CoHWelten.

Good Luck!

NCsoft is proud to present Guide to Issue 12: The Midnight Hour, a comic book created by two of the game community’s own: Chase Arcanum and Cinder Flame! Explore the highlights and features of Issue 12 in this humorous look at the latest free expansion.

Click here to directly download the comic in PDF format and find out what’s in store for you with Issue 12. Covered in a unique style, you’ll find an introduction to the new content and many other game updates exposed.

If you don’t have the Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the comic, click here to get it.

Issue 12: Midnight Hour has arrived on the live servers and is now open! Immerse yourself in the new Midnight Squad storyline with a host of new missions, and experience Roman-style zone environments unlike anything you’ve seen in Paragon City™ or the Rogue Isles™.

For Villains, we introduce the all-new Villain Epic Archetypes: the Soldiers of Arachnos. Powerset Proliferation brings new powerset choices for all archetypes, and the list of overall gameplay and Quality of Life improvements is, well, lengthy! To see the full list of new features, updates and other changes in Issue 12: Midnight Hour, make sure to check out the patch notes.

In this in depth look at the creation of the new zone Cimerora, Ken Morse takes us behind the scenes and through the seven steps that brought Cimerora from concept to completion.

Local radio stations from the Big City network are now offering free trials to City of Heroes and City of Villains. This is the biggest ever free trial offer for the UK, so it has never been easier to get started on a career as a Hero in Paragon City or a Villain on the Rogue Isles!

Read on to find out how to get yours, or one for a friend…

The Midnight Squad is featured heavily in the next free expansion coming to City of Heroes and City of Villains - Issue 12: Midnight Hour. Make sure you know their history and goals before Issue 12 launches by watching the latest teaser trailer.

After much anticipation, the latest free expansion for City of Heroes / Villains is now entering its final testing phase. Issue 12: Midnight Hour Open Beta started this Tuesday on the Training Room and you can try it now! Please follow the instructions in this thread on how to download and play on the test server.

Also if during your testing you encounter bugs, please use the /bug command in-game to report them. Finally, you are welcome to give your feedback about the beta on our forums.

The full patch notes are available here

Enjoy!

The Student Zone is currently running a 2-weeks free trial for City of Heroes / Villains starting today! Please visit this page to get started on your journey to Paragon City or the Rogue Isles.

City of Heroes Lead Writer Joe Morrissey has put together a developer diary telling us about the Midnight Squad, a group of heroes that has appeared in past lore. The Midnight Squad makes their first appearance in Issue 12. Here’s a brief clip:

“So, why the Midnight Hour?”

The Midnight Squad takes the main focus of this issue. They’ve got some of the coolest history, yet hardly any of it has been opened up to the players. I choose the Midnight Squad because they were seriously crippled by the invasion and therefore were extremely motivated to take action against the Rikti. We did a lot with the Rikti story for Issue 10, but it was only through the single lens of the Vanguard. Now we see a second perspective, through the eyes of those hardest hit from the invasion, the Midnighters.

Click here to read the full article.

TVG have the latest on Issue 12: Midnight Hour in this Dev Diary written by Senior Designer Joe ‘Hero 1’ Morrissey. Joe goes into a little more depth about the history of the Midnight Squad and their history with the Rikti, before revealing a morsel of new information about contextual dialogue technology that will be used in Issue 12 missions.

Four years.

I will say that again in case you misread it.

Four years.

I am pleased beyond all belief that this game continues to prosper four years into its life. Our community is stronger than ever, the game as a whole is stronger than it ever has been, and the future for the game, as well as the franchise is extremely bright.

When I look back upon the game that we shipped in 2004, I can’t help but look at all the things that were missing from it. Things we added immediately, and things we added recently. Badges were not in the initial launch. Heck, level 41 to 50 were not shipped with City of Heroes! As the game has progressed, I think we have added more free features with our updates than any other MMO on the planet. Multiple zones, missions, features and systems have been added to the base game over the past four years, making the game better and better with every update.

Every time I visit the Tailor in the game, I say to myself “Heh, I couldn’t even change my costume when City of Heroes launched.” Every time I Exemplar down to play content with my lower level friends, I note that this too was not a feature in the game four years ago. Now I actively seek out Inventions and Recipes both in missions and on the Black Market. The Invention System worked out very well for both City of Heroes and City of Villains, and was not part of the plan when we were finishing up CoH in the first quarter of 2004. Just over this last six months we’ve also added our Ouroboros Flashback System, Weapon Customization, and more quality of life features than the game had ever seen (until Issue 12).

That’s not to say we haven’t been without our missteps. We’ve implemented a couple things imperfectly (Epic Archetypes and Enhancement Diversification come to mind), which caused a lot of headaches for us down the road. I can’t promise that we will never make mistakes, but I will say we will do our best to ensure that we don’t repeat them.

I can’t tell you how excited I am for our game’s future, and although we have some major announcements yet to be made, one of the things I can talk about is a feature that we are planning. Similar in concept to our character creator, it allows you, the players, to create missions and story arcs for your characters and others to participate in. You’ll be able to pick the map, villain group, and objectives, as well as write the dialogue and any clues needed for the missions. When you are satisfied with it, you can upload it and have other players across all servers play it and rate it. Fame will come to the players whose stories rate the best overall. It is features like these that we never dreamed of including when we first shipped, but are excited to be able to offer players very soon.

In the end I just want to send out a thanks to all of the players of City of Heroes and City of Villains. Everyone, from the veterans who have been with this game since it launched (and even earlier for some beta testers!) to the users who just subscribed last week, have made this the most fun game to work on in my seventeen years in the industry. I look forward to reviewing our accomplishments this time next year when we celebrate our 5th anniversary!

- Lead Designer, Matt Miller (Positron)

Read on for some Fun Facts highlighting four years worth of City of Heroes!