NCSoft buys CoX = Freebies!

Hobbes

I saw that NCSoft have bought out Cryptic Studios City of Heroes/Villians.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=548

Here is a list of what will happen to players when it happens (so far)
- All players with City of Heroes retail accounts will now have access to City of Villains,
- all City of Villains retail accounts will now have access to City of Heroes.
- Players that didn't previously have access to "the other side" will find that they do now.

After the launch of Issue 11: A Stitch in Time this Fall
- Removing Debt from all characters and giving you a fresh start
- all Supergroups will receive an additional 20,000 Prestige per Supergroup member."

Here is some details on the new patch.
http://uk.cityofvillains.com/game-guide/feature-updates/3320/

Ivan

Awesome, I might actually reactivate my account and give CoV a whirl. Didnt much like it in beta, but I'm sure its gotten better since then

Banjo

They've also taken the entire dev team (barring, I think, Statesman) to form a new in-house studio to develop CoX so the future's looking bright.

The story arcs and missions in Villains (excluding randoms given by the newspaper) tend to have more variety and polish. A real feeling like your part of a larger story rather than just grinding out the levels. Apart from all that crap at the start with snakes That said, the revamped Faultline in CoH has some great arcs and frequent recurring villains and teamups with NPC heroes. It's worth coming back to. Villains is still a little more City of Solo since most of the archetypes can be self sufficient.

Issue 11 should be released towards the end of this month, including customisable weapons for users of swords, rifles, claws or maces. There's also the new Willpower and Dual Blades pri/sec for tankers, scrappers, brutes and stalkers - including the introduction of a combo system that rewards the use of particular attack chains with secondary damage/status effects.

I think I'm due a couple of Refer a Friend trials if anyone wants a go, can't be arsed to buy the game and doesn't care about a 2.4 GB download. Just remember to create the maximum number of paycheques - I mean characters - so that I can cash in on December 10th when the 20K membership bonuses are handed out

LoLth

hmmm, what about the people who already paid for both COV and COH ?

was going to reactivate account but just couldnt bring myself to do it. Game was great to start with but just became one long grind... feckin addictive though....

Reku

Well i11 is just the ability to redo your old missions and get badges for doing it with handicaps, so not much to entice you back really. Dual blade powerset and the ability to pick weapon graphics but that's about it for those bored of the grind.

Hobbes

farohar wrote: »

Well i11 is just the ability to redo your old missions and get badges for doing it with handicaps,

Actually is the ability to redo all arc missions previously regardless if you got them or not. This means access to previous missed badges and powers, as well opening up special powers easier.

I think the main unexpected use of Ourobous though (thats the time travel zone) is that you can use that zone to bounce back to any zone and location based on contact.

For example I am in Faultline, I hit ouros, take a flashback with Tina in Peregrine Island and it dumps me right out at portal corp. Then quit the flashback and continue on.

One thing that did get me as well is I actually played Faultline using Ouros and although I've had the game since faultline was updated I never once knew about the secret underground digging by Arachnos or the backend of faultline which is outside the war wall.

Dual blade powerset and the ability to pick weapon graphics but that's about it for those bored of the grind.

There are some new missions as well. I wouldn't class Ouros as a new Zone though.

They also added "super rares" that only level 50's can use. Mainly for Ouros and PvP.

Grind is subjective. I have someone in my SG whining because he took a week to go up one level, but most of his whining if he had spent just doing the missions he would of went up much faster. End levels are much faster at levelling though. Did 41-48 in one weekend. The Ritiki War Zone helps a lot as well.

Reku

I say "grind" because I joined the game over 2 years ago and played i7-i9 solid, then starting playing WoW late i9 & i10 (before deciding that it was a far worse grind), Eve i10 & i11.
Have been playing a bit since i11 but for the moment Eve feels less of a grind as there's less of a em/sarcasm: "oh wow, like I haven't done this mission a hundred times before..." feel to it as yet.
Currently stuck in the lv 3 = easy, lv 4 not a hope in hell rut in Eve so might spend more time playing CoV again since at least in Eve skills continue to improve when you're not logged in.

i10 & i11 did lure back some of the old players but unfortunately a lot of the people I used to regularly team with weren't among them, might motivate me more, getting to hang with them again and catch up. Even my globals who still play don't seem to be on as much as they used to be.

As for "This means access to previous missed badges and powers, as well opening up special powers easier.", that's what the badgehunter channels were for.