City of Villians

We had a chance to talk with Cryptic Studios about their upcoming City of Villains expansion. The release is "about a year" without so details are currently scarce; still, many of the promised features unhurt exciting for fans of the game.

The greatest in quantity obvious new feature will be the introduction of PVP (Player v Player) play. PVP will be entirely consensual, in the way that heroes who don't want to fight villains can ignore that aspect entirely. Somewhat surprisingly, villains who don't want to fight heroes will also have that option available: Cryptic is working upon a single-player story-focused "career" style for villains which will permit players work their way up from inconsiderable thief to criminal mastermind.

On display at the booth was an arena battle between four heroes and four "villains" in an instanced city girth The villains at the exhibit were just evil-looking "heroes" - it's generally undecided if villains will share the same archetypes and origins as heroes or if they'll be entirely novel character types. One thing for certain is that the eventual villainous style of dress options will be just as robust as those for heroes.

Cryptic is unsure exactly what sort of PVP options will be available for players, on the other hand in addition to instanced arena fights, they trust to have PVP combat in the main city cinctures raids of opposing supergroups' headquarters, and APBs sent without to heroes in a baldric where a crime is in progres The goal is to hold fast PVP fun and lighthearted; with the game's tone based upon colorful comics lore, they don't want harsh "player killing" to become a question at issue

Supergroup are something Cryptic has big, if close plans for. In addition to group-own quality in the form of headquarters, supergroup will be able to store "items of power" in a "trophy room" of sorts in the HQ These items of power may give bonuses to all members of the clump – and are likely to be hotly targeted by the agency of opposing organizations. Supergroups are publicly limited to 75 members. notwithstanding that current supergroup plans means that number is unlikely to increase any time before long Cryptic is planning to permit supergroups form alliances with each other to help accommodate larger guilds.

In the short boundary the focus is firmly upon City of Heroes. The game has received more than 105000 users in the sum of two units weeks since it launched, and major at liberty content updates are planned each 2-3 months to keep players happy. The first major update, to be paid in June 2004, will for the greatest part focus on high-level content, on the contrary future updates will add the two low- and high-level content. popular players can look forward to sum of two units new city zones: the Rikti Crash Site and Peregrine Island, residence of Portal Corp. The "Sewer Trial Room" promises a high-level challenge in the form of a gargantuan beast. fresh types of indoor missions (such as stealth missions), instanced outdoor missions, and missions with of recent origin temporary powers will join those popularly available. Heroes will be able to "tweak" the gaze of their costume; though capes may not be available in this update, they will be available before the launch of City of Villains. Finally, three of recent origin villain groups will enter Paragon City: the high-tech Malta collection the wicked Carnival of Shadows, and the super-powered Praetorians. With in the way that much new content on the way, fans waiting for City of Villains should be kept plenitude busy.

Copyright ?© 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserv Originally appearing in 1UP