The gates were opened and the hordes descended upon the Test Server last night. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve seen more than a single instance of Mercy Island, but the population forced two more instances to keep up with the load. Upon logging in, there was a swarm of freshly minted Spiders and Widows running amok, looking for teams, spamming broadcast, and generally having a good time. So, here’s how the three hours I spent on test unfolded.

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Monday was the 4th anniversary of City of Heroes. Interesting to see how things have come along during that time. Much has changed in the game and as Issue 12 looms ahead, things appear to be getting better. Positron made an announcement for the 4th Anniversary and mentioned something very interesting: Player Generated Content. Players would be able to generate missions, select the map, villain group, objective, etc then get it “published” for general play and rating. Saga of Ryzom did something similar by giving players the tools to create content. They were then reviewed and hosted for a small fee. A novel approach to the MMO genre, sadly Ryzom is on its last gasp and appears destined to be shutdown. Below is the link to Positron’s statement.

http://www.coh.com/news/archives/2008/04/a_message_from.html

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The Rikti have been foolish enough to attack the Rogue Isles repeatedly these days... a rather large mistake on their part. They can attack those goody-goody types over in Paragon City if they want to, but mess with us over in the Rogue Isles, and you're gonna be hurtin'.

A couple of my villainous people got some good shots of them as they attacked Cap Au Diable and Sharkhead Isle, look inside for the visuals:

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Hi, I'm back. I was a little down the last few days, so you haven't heard from me much, but I'm ready to villain it up again.

Contacts are annoying, whether you're a villain or some worthless do-gooder. You end up having to trust them, but can you really? They can be as fallible as anyone, or just plain foolish. Themari, for instance.

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Well, there were no Halloween festivities that I could tell last time. I guess for us villain types, every day is Halloween, but still, I couldn't help feeling a little let down. All the other MMOs were celebrating, but this one passed us by. It was my favorite holiday as a kid, and since I don't really do the whole party thing, I don't really have a way of celebrating it as an adult. Still, all is not lost. I'd been thinking of adding an alt in addition to the two Brute characters I currently have for CoV (besides my SS/Fire main, I also have a Stone/Stone one). Something with a different playstyle, but still capable of plenty of mayhem.

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Hello from the Rogue Islands, villains and do-gooders alike (and all of the grey areas in between, naturally). This is my first blog, so bear with me if I make any newbish blogger mistakes.

Today is the formal release date for the City of Villains, but if you're like me (and many others), you probably played in the later stages of beta at least, and in the preorder head-start. And if you haven't, no problem. I just wanted to mention where I was coming from. Because of that, and because I am also a returning customer from CoH, some of the newness did manage to wear off by the time this official release day has rolled around.
That being said, I'm still having fun, seeing some new things, and having a blast with my main CoV character, a large brute of a fellow who goes by the handle of "The Ronin Oni."

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So CoV went out with a bang Wednesday night. The devs, in their role as signature heroes, attacked 3 servers of villains in up to 12 instances of Mercy Island in an all out brawl. I had to turn my graphics settings all the way to their lowest setting just to accommodate all the madness going on around the heroic invaders.

In addition to the Freedom Phalanx crew (Statesman, Back Alley Brawler, Sister Psyche, etc) GM controlled Agents and a massive entourage of Freedom Corps brought down the heat on the beta Villains. In the end shear numbers won the day, but it was fun while it lasted.

The pre-order head start opens up this weekend, and I for one am eagerly looking forward to getting back in to the Rogue Isles for another round of villainy.

Well, last time I talked about archtypes and mission tone, so this time I’ll talk about some of the other additions that in CoV. While do a fair amount of old style mission, against a fair amount of familiar enemies, there are a lot of missions with new twists and a LOT of new enemies just waiting to put your villain down for the count.

Lets start with the new foes. Ranging from para-military hero organizations to your own ‘allies’, there are a slew of new and different groups you go up against. Arachnos easily wins for the coolest looking IMHO.

And some familiar enemies got an infusion of new allies to help them out, like the CoT and Freakshow.

I’m constantly surprised and pleased by the variety of challenges my burgeoning villain comes up against.

And then there are the missions – from little tweaks like having you pull up to a tanker, then fight your way to the door to the inside and continue fighting through the cargo, to the completely new tasks such as kidnapping, bank robbing, and planting bombs. I think I’ve seen one street hunting mission out of my entire play time so far, a welcome change.