City of Heroes Going Rogue Message Board

The original superhero-themed MMO, Paragon's City of Heroes, is now officially free-to-play. The studio announced they were making the switch to free-to-play back in June, and outlined to the best of their knowledge at the time how the new business model would work...

Gosh, the venerable superhero MMO has hit its twentieth major update! The expansion is called Incarnates, and NCsoft explains it like this: “Players will be introduced to the game’s new Incarnate Trials, group encounters featuring a series of innovative game mechanics that will test even the most powerful characters. Taking place in the seemingly utopian empire of Praetoria, Heroes and Villains will find themselves challenged with a cosmic threat that could destroy two worlds.â€� All of which means new powers and new challenges for groups of 8-24 players.

We’ve got more details on that below, along with a illustrative trailer which show some of the trials in action, as well as some of the characters involved. (If I had a super power it would be this one, so that I could get all these games played.) (more…)

When good and evil collide, grey happens.

I got to play the new Going Rogue expansion for City of Heroes at Comic-Con. I haven't played the six-year-old MMO in a while, so I was out of the loop -- since I'd last played it, Paragon Studios has updated the graphics, added a mission editor, and put out a host of other upgrades and features. But Going Rogue's big feature is something players have been asking about for a while: For the first time in the game, heroes and villains will be able to switch sides with an interesting set of morality quests.

Paragon Studios senior producer Jesse Caceres and the game's art lead, David Nakayama, told me that the alignment change is a natural evolution from all of the other customization choices they've given to players in the past. "One of our strengths is the character creation system," says Caceres, "and with the Mission Architect, players could custom create and craft their own stories, create their own villain groups. We want to give players more options, so with this expansion, we're giving them the freedom to change their alignments from Hero to Villain" (and vice versa).

Paragon tells us where we'll be serving up justice, and causing mayhem.

When good guys go bad...

Players will be summoning demons in just under two months.

Do you have any idea how tiring it is to be this evil all the time? It's like, we can only keep up this vault-plundering, mustache-twirling, damselnapping, puppy-kicking veneer before it gets a little long in the tooth, you know? We've long been thinking about seeing how the other half lives -- an opportunity that will soon be afforded to us by City of Heroes upcoming, massive content expansion, Going Rogue.

Check out the developer's diary posted above to see the implications of the game's new alignment-switching feature, and to catch a glimpse at the new environments of Praetoria. We think it looks like a fairly renovated version of Paragon City, only with much more moral ambiguity.

This video sets the stage for what players can expect to see in Going Rogue, giving fans an exclusive peek at what the developers are bringing to the game as well as the personal decisions that have i

Thematic orchestral score immerses heroes and villains in expanded massive multiplayer online role playing game.