Today’s update to City of Heroes and City of Villains includes two new additions to the UI designed to reveal the numbers that drive the game’s combat systems. Programmer CW Bennett answers some questions on the new feature in this short Q&A.

Matt ‘Positron’ Miller has answered a range of questions about the upcoming “XP Curve Smoothing” changes for City of Heroes and City of Villains. Covering everything from what it means as your character levels through the expected implementation date for the live servers, this Q&A should make sure you are ready for this landmark improvement!

The world of City of Heroes and Villains is soon to be rocked by the return of the Rikti. Over at CVG you can get a glimpse of what the future holds in the first Issue #10 video, and learn more about how Issue #10 came about straight from the horse’s mouth. Well, from lead designer Matt ‘Positron’ Miller, anyway:

With Issue 10 we decided to advance the storyline. Like any ongoing game we have many unresolved plot threads and each is a great opportunity for introducing new game content. Our first thought for Issue 10 was to bring back the 5th Column, a villain group that disappeared when the Council was introduced in Issue 3. But in the end we decided to focus on one of the greatest threats to Paragon City and the Rogue Isles, the aliens known as the Rikti.

You can read the full Dev Diary over at CVG now - you’ll find a link to the Issue #10 teaser video on the upper right-hand side of the page.

As the second Rikti War draws closer, lead designer Matt ‘Positron’ Miller has been chatting to GameDaily about the momentous events that will soon shake the foundations of the City of Heroes and Villains universe:

According to CoX lore, being cut-off from their home world kept the current Rikti in check. What will keep them from overrunning the world once they have access again?

The Rikti have very limited access to the home world, and they don’t have the ability to create portals large enough to bring in their mother ships. They can only bring in their smaller destroyers, and even those portals aren’t entirely stable. They’re stealing Portal Corp technology to try to get their portals working, in addition to circumventing the magical shield that still exists between the two dimensions [from the first war]. So they have intermittent access to the home world, not the end of the world all over again.

You can read the full interview over at GameDaily - and you can try out Issue #10 for yourself on the Training Room right now.

The fifth instalment of the current series of ‘Ask a Dev’ - where you, the players of City of Heroes and Villains, get a chance to ask the Cryptic development team about the past, present and future of our favourite games - is now available on Boomtown.

First, you can read Jay’s answers to questions from players in the US and Europe about costumes and character art. Then find out more about world designer Melissa ‘War Witch’ Bianco - and submit your questions for her to answer in the next instalment.

In a week or so, we’ll collect all the questions from European and US players for War Witch, so be sure to email send your questions to Boomtown soon!

The fourth part of the new series of ‘Ask a Dev’ - where you, the players of City of Heroes and Villains, get a chance to ask the Cryptic development team about the past, present and future of our favourite games - is now available on Boomtown.

First, you can read Serdar’s answers to questions from players in the US and Europe. Then find out more about character artist Jay Doherty - yes, the one who does the costumes - and submit your questions for him to answer in the next instalment.

In a few weeks, we’ll collect all the questions from European and US players, pick the best ones and pester Jay until he answers every last one. It’s a tough job, but we really are that dedicated.

City of Heroes and Villains Lead Designer Matt ‘Positron’ Miller has been talking more about the Inventions system that will be introduced in the upcoming Issue #9 with MMORPG.com and GameSpot.

Over at MMORPG.com you can learn more about the history of Inventions, the basics of how the system will work, and see an example of one of the ‘enhancement sets’ that heroes and villains will be able to collect to give their characters new and unique abilities and bonuses:

We determined that adding mini-powers to your existing ones had a lot of potential, as the sky would nearly be the limit on what we could accomplish with these new Enhancements.

Read the full Inventions article at MMORPG.com.

GameSpot, meanwhile, has quizzed Matt about many aspects of the Inventions system - in the course of which, he reveals that the Auction system, which will make it easier for players to buy and sell Inventions and the materials required to make them, will work across servers:

The consignment houses are all cross-server. This means that someone on the Virtue server could be selling recipes and salvage to someone on the Justice server. This will result in a wealth of items to buy, and a wealth of buyers to sell to.

Read the full Q&A at GameSpot.

The third part of the new series of ‘Ask a Dev’ - where you, the players of City of Heroes and Villains, get a chance to ask the Cryptic development team about the past, present and future of our favourite games - is now available on Boomtown.

You can start by reading the Q&A with Jack ‘Statesman’ Emmert based on the questions submitted in the previous instalment, then head over to this page to learn more about Cryptic Producer Serdar Copur, the next dev in the series, and email in your questions for him.

In a few weeks, we’ll collect all the questions from European and US players, pick the best ones, then tie Serdar to a chair and shine a bright light in his eyes until he answers every single one. Actually, that last bit about the chair and the bright light probably won’t be necessary, but you get the general idea.

Marking the release of Issue #8: To Protect and Serve, Lead Designer Positron speaks to Computer Games Online about the latest free content update to City of Heroes and City of Villains:

Issue 8 gives a lot of the bells and whistles that Villains enjoy over to Heroes. Heroes get a random mission pool similar to the newspapers in the form of the Police Band missions, as well as their own version of the Mayhem Missions, called Safeguard Missions. We did a lot in this issue to bring parity in terms of features to both sides.

You can read the full interview over at Computer Games Online.

German site Onlinewelten has an interview with Cryptic’s Melissa ‘War Witch’ Bianco available for download. Filmed at the recent Brighton Player Meet, the interview covers a wide variety of topics, from her first job at Cryptic to the future of wings in City of Heroes and Villains.

Onlinewelten is a German site, so the interview features our very own Amboss translating Melissa’s answers on the fly, but it’s easy for English speakers to follow. You can download the interview here (click on where it says ‘Zum Videointerview’ at the bottom of the news story).

Please not that you’ll need the XviD codec to watch the interview - if you don’t have it, you can download it for free from XviD Movies.

World of Roleplayers Radio is proud to present an interview with Matt ‘Positron’ Miller, Lead Designer of City of Heroes and City of Villains for Cryptic Studios, to be aired on Friday morning, October 27th, 2006 3am BST.

SteelDragon had the opportunity to speak with Positron about City of Heroes and City of Villains and some of the thrilling Features coming to these ground breaking games, just as the release of the games begins packaging as one MEGA game of “Good vs. Evil”.

Hear it at www.wor-radio.com through any internet connection by clicking “Tune In” for either Winamp or Windows Media Player at the top of the page. 

At our recent Brighton Player Meet, the chaps from Boomtown sat down with our special guest, Melissa ‘War Witch’ Bianco from Cryptic Studios, to talk about City of Heroes and Villains, her role in them and much more.

The full article covers everything from how Melissa became War Witch to her favourite zone and some hints of what can expect in the near future. You can read it here.

Matt ‘Positron’ Miller, Lead designer of City of Heroes and City of Villains at Cryptic Studios, has been chatting to Boomtown about the upcoming Issue #8: To Protect and Serve. He talks about several of the new features that will be introduced, including Safeguard Missions, the heroic equivalent of the Mayhem Missions from City of Villains:

The main objective is to stop a bank robbery that is already in progress. Once you complete that, you can then go around an instanced area of Paragon City stopping crime, and earning bonus rewards.

You can read the full interview over at Boomtown.

Wondering what’s coming next to the world of City of Heroes and City of Villains? Over at GameSpot UK they’ve been asking Cryptic’s Lead Designer, Matt ‘Positron’ Miller exactly the same thing:

Well, first off, we did a major overhaul to the City of Heroes zone Faultline. It includes new contacts and missions, as well as a better street-hunting experience. We also have brought the randomly generated missions that we had in City of Villains (which villain characters got from the newspapers and brokers) to hero characters. The City of Heroes version is called “police band missions”, and these can lead players into safeguard missions where they must protect Paragon City from vandals and stop major crimes in progress.

You can get more information about the upcoming Issue #8: To Protect And Serve by reading the full interview.

Those hard working folk over at Woot radio have just published the latest edition of The Jester’s Court, their regular podcast that takes a look inside the world of MMORPGs. In this latest edition the Woot team got the chance to chat with none other than Crytpic Studios’ own Matt ‘Positron’ Miller.

But! This is no ordinary interview. Positron takes a defiant stand against the threatening mob of uncertainty, and lets forth a blast of facts which divulge such a huge list of information on Cryptic Studios’ future plans, that summarising it all here would be impossible.

Amongst the incalculable abundance of truly interesting tit bits we find mention of trench coats, wings and jetpacks, plus the name of Issue 8, and plans for future events,

To learn what the future has in store for the heroic citizens of Paragon City, and villainous denizens of the Rogue Isles, download the latest edition of The Jester’s Court.