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Launch

Starting Archtypes

Initial Zones

Task Forces

Trials

Missions

Badges

Costumes

The first big nerf in production was to the Haste power. Before this point, Haste was speeding up the recharge of haste itself so one recharge enhancer would make haste an always-on power! This was adjusted at first so haste could not be made an always-on power at all. The outcry on the board was indeed mighty and the devs relented, making it possible to have "perma-haste" if you devoted all six slots to recharge enhancers.

Issue 1: Through the Looking Glass

• Heroes can now advance to level 50! Police bots all jumped to 50, too, as did Hammidon. Several story arcs were added for the 40-50 crowd but there were no new task forces.
• The Rikti Crash Site was added off Crey's Folly.
• A ferry to Peregrine Island and the Portal Corperation opened up.
• The Malta, the Carnival of Shadows, and the Preatorians were added.
• The Sewer Trial was put in deep below Paragon City. Target levels were (and still are) 38-42 though higher level heroes can get in.
• Many of the new missions for the over-40 crowd were outdoor missions but all the low level missions remained indoors.
• Low levels weren't forgotten, though. Some 5th Column and Circle of Thorns missions got prisons that trapped heroes trying to "medi-port" back to the hospital. Several high-tech maps got lab equipment that, when destroyed, randomly gave a buff or debuff to your hero.
• Icon's opened its doors and the heroes flooded in! It was now possible to earn three additional costumes. The first day on the Test Server was so packed that heroes were standing on light fixtures to get to the vendor! Still no capes.
• Gravity Control had a power shift. Wormhole was moved from the 9th power to the 8th. Fold Space, a power similar to Recall Friend that teleported everyone on the team to the controller's position was removed. A new pet power, Singularity, was put in as the 9th power. (There were no respecs then, either.)
• The flag on top of city hall got a light.
• Device Blaster's Smoke Grenade power had a bug causing it to be ten times as strong as intended. This was fixed in issue 1. (This might have been before I1 - not real sure on the exact date.)
• I think the dreaded "Purple Patch" was around this time. Any enemy four levels above you was made VERY hard to hit and had no trouble hitting you at all whatever your defenses. Player reaction wasn't pretty and the devs soon toned it down quite a bit.
• Glowing mission objectives started to make noise either in I1 or I2, not sure which.

Issue 2: A Shadow of the Past

• Power Re-specifications (respecs) are put in. Three versions of the Tera Volta trial are added to support them. They were originally VERY difficult but the reward was so great heroes kept trying. Failed teams were regularly flopping out the reactor's door!
• Badges are added. Well over 100 just for starters!
• The Hollows and the Troll Tunnels are added for 5-15th level heroes to take the weight off King's Row. This was the first zone where all the contacts worked together to describe one long story. It ended in a new trail - the Cavern of Transcendence. The Igneous were added to help populate the zone and the Outcast got some more powers.
• The Shadow Shard zones (Firebase Zulu, The Cascade Archipelago, The Chantry, and The Storm Palace) are put in for high level heroes. There are new villains for the new zones, too: Rularuu, Lanaruu (aka Storm Elementals), and the mysterious Reflections. Instead of providing a connected story like the Hollows, the Shadow Shard contacts provided only one or two missions, which repeat endlessly. Four new Task Forces were also added, too. When the issue first came out, Rularuu rampaged over the entire city from temporary portals. Even with the level bumped down, those guys were tough!
• The Paragon Dance Party appeared. Originally, the Steel Canyon entrance was close to the low-level monorail station and the dance club was heavily used as a shortcut between zones. They soon moved the Steel Canyon entrance to a building behind Icon's.
• My favorite of all trials - The Eden Trial is added for levels 39-41.
• Capes & Auras are added! And there was much rejoicing! Icon's jam packed yet again! The flag over city hall no longer looked like a flag designed to be put on the moon.
• A new bar was added to the interface so we could see our enhancements without having to go to the management screen. We also got the ability to simply drag & drop enhancements/inspirations to other heroes instead of having to use the trade window all the time.
• Teleport confirmation (which people had been asking for since beta) was put in as well as resurrection confirmation.
• I'm guessing the teleport travel power was altered at this point. At release, your downward motion was conserved when teleporting. So, if you were slow to teleport and started to drop, you would still be moving downward when you arrived, making it harder to pick out your next teleport target location. So you ended up falling even faster when you got to your next destination and the whole thing snowballed. Cryptic changed the power so you hover when you arrive no matter what your velocity when you teleported.
• Some of the missions, particularly the ones that introduce you to a new villain faction, got a real sprucing up. Also, some missions had patrols added to them. Save-the-glowy and destroy-the-glowy missions were added, too.
• Many lower level missions were converted to outdoor missions.
• Unique monsters started roaming hazard zones. (They were supposed to before this point, too, but I don't think any were other than Adamaster and the Kraken.)
• The exemplar (reverse-sidekick) system was added.
• I think Scrappers got their Critical Hits ability at this point.
• AV's got total mez protection. They could not be held, stunned, or any other such thing at all ever. Controllers were pretty annoyed at being demoted into second-rate defenders when up against AV's and the AV's perfect protection was given little windows of opportunity a few weeks later. (These are the purple triangles you see popping up around AV's.)
• Mission xp boosted.
• Scrappers' Katana animations were changed. Before this, the animations were the same as the broadsword animations. The names of the powers were changed, too, so no more "hack" and "slash" for the Katana folks.

For Halloween 2004 we had a special event! For about a week, heroes could 'knock on doors' all around the city. Doing so would sometimes give you a nice inspiration or perhaps a temporary power called 'rock' that let you throw one and only one rock at something. Most of the time, though, enemies would pop out. Witches, werewolves, vampires, and pumpkin head enemies called Fir Blog would appear. Badges were awarded for killing the giant pumpkin head and for killing several of the other enemy types.

Issue 3: A Council of War

• The Fifth Column vanished and was replaced by the Council. For the first week or two after the issue came out, rampaging packs of the Council would appear chasing down and destroying 5th Column enemies - plus any other villains or heroes in their path.
• While heroes were given the ability to advance to level 50 two issues ago, there were no new powers for them to take. That changed with the introduction of the Ancillary Pool powers. (These were originally called Epic Pool Powers. They weren't particularly stronger than any other powers, though, and players expecting 'epic' to mean 'overpowered' were not happy. So the name was changed.) Blasters got Flame, Cold, Force, and Munitions mastery. Controllers got Stone, Fire, Ice, Primal, and Psionic mastery. Defenders got Dark, Electric, Power, and Psychic. Scrappers got Darkness, Body, and Weapon. Tanks got Arctic, Energy, Pyre, and Earth. These powers mostly served to round-out heroes. Melee fighters getting ranged attacks, controllers getting tank armor, and things like that.
• The Epic Archtypes were added - Peacebringers and Warshades. You have to have at least one level 50 character to unlock them.
• Strigia Island was put in as 20-30th level content. Like the Hollows and Shadow Shard, the contacts there were a closed set with the first contact sending you to other contacts in Strigia. The story told isn't as tight as the Hollows' story but you do end up meeting Ernesto Hess. Hess will only give you his MegaMech task force if you have been introduced to him. Moonfire also gives out a task force.
• The difficulty 'slider' was put in. (It's not really a slider, you talk to certain contacts and they give you the option of setting your difficulty level.) Initial settings are:

  Hard Boiled	Normal difficulty
  Tenacious	extra enemies
  Rugged	enemies are +1 level
  Unyielding	+1 enemies and extra enemies
  Invincible	+2 enemies

  "Hard Boiled" was changed to "Heroic" about a month later.
• A new guy, Calvin Scott, appeared in Independence Port right near Sister Psyche. He offered a task force that revealed some of Sister Psyche's history - including the fact that the person standing in IP isn't really her! Sister Psyche is actually hospitalized in a coma. The person standing there was Aura who was channeling Sister Psyche's spirit.
• Lusca the giant octopus started appearing in IP (many dockworkers were seen on strike protesting the dangerous new conditions). The Clockwork Paladin started appearing in King's Row. The ghost ship started roaming Independence Port and Talos Island.
• Global Chat added. Global channels could be created to talk to people on different servers, global friends were put in, and global tells. Your name was set to the same name you used on the CoH boards. If you didn't have one there it was set to whatever character you first logged in as. Numbers were added to take care of duplicate names.
• The Taunting powers were changed. Before, tanks and some scrappers had a taunt power that would taunt one and only one enemy. The tanks' version auto-hit. To really do any crowd control, however, they needed to get the Provoke power from the Presence power pool. Tanks noted that it was pretty silly to make them take a power pool to be able to do their crowd control. The devs agreed and changed the powers around. Tanks' Taunt power was made AoE and was still auto-hit. Scrapper's Taunt was changed to Confront, a single target taunt and I think it's auto-hit. Also, every single tank attack power was given a minor AoE taunting effect (commonly called punchvoke now).
• Fear changed so enemies would (sometimes) stand still and cower instead of running.
• Voltaic Sentinel now follows the hero that summoned it.
• Tanks' Ice defense powers could now be stacked. Stone and Dark armors followed on Jan 18th. Before, several of their armors were mutually exclusive. Also, some of the mez protection powers that used to completely immobilize the hero now let them move (though slowly).
• Scrapper Martial Arts animations changed so they move faster. While leaning back and slapping your enemy's face with your boot over and over looked plenty cool, it gave other enemies a lot of time to take shots at you.
• Mez inspires used to just be of one type (discipline, strength of will, iron will) that would protect you from mez effects but would only help against immobilize if you already had the effect on you. Now two new classes started appearing - break frees and..ummm... the other kind. BF's protected against hold and immobilize. The other kind protected against sleep and stun. The old disciplines could still be bought from contacts but didn't drop any more.
• Arena construction sites were added. About a month later, the construction site in Talos was smoothed over showing the foundation of the Arena. However, the workers were not removed - they were still trapped under all that cement! Rumor had it that the Talos construction workers tried to unionize and Cryptic decided to retaliate.
• It's now possible to hit running bad guys from behind with melee attacks. Before this, you had to run out in front of them and swing as they ran by you!

Winter Event 2004-2005! Winter Lords started appearing. They were rare at first but quickly became numerous through January. Unfortunately, these Winter Lords provided a massive source of xp to lower level heroes. A new character could get up to level 30 over the weekend! Stories of heroes that were level 35 and didn't know where Boomtown was or what enhancements were used for abounded. Defeating the WL got you a badge and a 'present' inspire. Defeating its minions would earn you a snowball temporary power that let you throw snowballs for 30 days. 100 minions got another badge.

Winter Lords were removed on Feb 1 but several ponds and lakes froze over!

We had some boss patches around here, too. The devs decided the high level bosses were just too much of a pushover so they changed level 25+ bosses to make them all +1 level. (So, if you ran into a level 41 boss, the boss would really act like a level 42 boss!) The xp for them was also raised. Unfortunately, many heroes who could just barely solo a boss before now found it impossible. These heroes {ahem} explained their difficulty most forcefully on the boards. The devs responded. Not only did they take the patch back with the Feb 1 update, they changed missions so a solo character set on Heroic would never run into a real boss. (Enemies that were supposed to be bosses were degraded to Lieutenants.)

Issue 4: Colosseum

• The Arenas (inside) are put in to Galaxy, Talos, and PI. At last, Player vs. Player comes to City of Heroes!
• Several new costume options were added, largely from NCSoft's Korean team. Body and Face sliders were added, too. Once again, Icon's was packed! (Only this time some bugs were causing them to rip off heroes. A very nasty bug that took over two months to clear up completely!)
• Warshades and Peacebringers got special story arcs added just for them.
• Gravity Control's Wormhole power changed to an AoE power and the stun was enhanced; though the power now took longer to recharge. MANY other powers were adjusted, most of them upward. Superjump and Superspeed now caused a -50% to hit debuff just like Flying.
• Perception came into play. You can now loose targetting on enemies that go invisible. Certain powers now add to perception to help counter this.
• Some powers now protect against endurance drain and/or fear and/or confusion. The main use for these is in the arena but they do come in handy against a few PvE villains.
• Knockback now really knocks heroes back instead of just knocking them down! (And, if you happen to die while getting knocked around, you could end up flat on your back!)
• Calvin Scott vanishes, along with his task force. Sister Psyche herself now stands where Aura used to channel her spirit. Aura now stands in for the former Independence Port trainer, Malaise. (A note on my main's outfit.... Windy found that green outfit in the trash bin of a hospital. She cleaned it up and made it look good! Then that mean old Sister Psyche comes and takes it from her! Terrible. Just terrible. City of Villains is coming, Sister!)
• Third power tray added!
• Mez inspires consolidated. Disciplines could no longer be bought. Break Free's now covered all mez types and whatever-they-were's all changed into BF's.
• "Kill Skuls" badge added. (This was based off a board topic talking about how bad some pickup team leaders were. Some were just standing around in Perez Park inviting people then waiting for them to complete the mission for them. One poster told the story of a guy who wouldn't say anything except "go hunt." Another gave a story about a guy who would just say "kill skuls" when he invited a new member and was otherwise silent. "Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls" became a craze all over the boards. Movies were made. Poems were written. Now, the mantra is immortalized in a badge.)
• University construction sites added.
• Bastion's name changed to Citadel.
• May 11: the Suppression system was added. The -50% debuff to accuracy for flying was causing some screaming on the boards. So, instead of slapping all travel powers with a massive accuracy penalty to balance them (and put an end to 'jousting' tactic used by superspeeders), Cryptic lowered the speed of all three travel powers for 4 seconds after any attack or debuff. (Teleporters didn't get a suppression system.)
• June 21: Hammidon enhancements' effectiveness got reduced. Many used to provide a +50% boost to two aspects of a power (a Single-origin enhancer just provides a 33% boost to one aspect). Hammidon's loot was changed to act more like two SO's.
• July 13: Task Forces now auto-exemplar higher level players. Before this, players that had gotten beyond a Task Force's max level they had to get a player that was in range to exemplar them. If either the high level player or the hosting player logged out or crashed, even for just a few seconds, the high level player was immediately booted out of the task force. This caused some major hate on the boards.

Issue 5: Forest of Dread

• Tram line opens to Croatoa, a new zone for 25-35th level characters.
• New villain groups the Fir Bolg, the Tuatha de Dannan, Ghosts (same as the spirits we've seen for awhile now), Red Caps, and the Cabal. All of them give new badges.
• Three new monsters:
  Jack in Irons
  Pumpkin King
  Sally, the Loch Croatoa monster
• Additional badges added for damage taken, deaths, healing, being mezzed, being a mentor, and earned influence. Also a new 200-badge badge was added. A new accolade was added for getting all Croatoa related badges. The Shadow Shard TF's and Moonfire also got badges (but only if you do them after I5). At release, the third Shadow Shard's badge was broken and would not be rewarded.
• Supa Trolls have started to ravage Sky City and fires have broken out in Steel Canyon!
• New powersets! Archery for defenders and blasters, Trick Arrows for defenders and controllers, Sonic Attack for defenders and blasters, Sonic Resonance for defenders and controllers, and Electric Mastery for high level blasters. There's an Archery temp power, too!
• New types of missions have appeared. You now may be asked to escort hostages out of a mission. Waves of villains may attack while you do so or after you grab glowies. You might even get an NPC ally in a mission (the tutorial mission was changed into one of these).
• The Shadow Shard got some Teleporters to help folks get to the deeper parts quickly. Also, NPC's were added to allow folks to sell any enhancements they find without going clear back to General Hammond. Little green lines were added to the maps to let you track where geysers shoot you.
• The Rikti Crash Site also got a teleporter that goes back to P.I. near portal corp. It also got a person that buys enhancements.
• Dying gives half debt inside missions. Also, you get no debt until level 10 now.
• You can buy inspires at the Paragon Dance Party
• AoE powers can no longer hit an infinite number of enemies. Before this patch, characters with strong defense could herd several dozen enemies into a very small space (like a dumpster) and use melee AoE's to hit ALL of them at once. Now attacks affect a max of 16, 10, or 5 enemies depending on the power.
• Suppression changed to only kick in with click powers. Toggle powers do not trigger suppression.
• Cone enhancers replaced by range enhancers.
• Defiance - blasters now do more damage as their HP get lower. They can actually hit their damage cap by being below 5% health! Blasters also got some more hit points.
• Containment - controllers now do double (base?) damage to anything held, immobilized, stunned, or slept. This only applies to damage controllers do themselves, not via their pets or other summoned entities (like lightning storms).
• AoE holds, disorients, and sleeps (plus a few others but not including a fire controller's Volcanic Gasses power) have shorter duration as about double the recharge time. Ice blaster and electric blaster hold powers were also given shorter duration.
• Controller Pets, Dark Servant, and Voltaic Sentinel can no longer be stacked up. Summoning more pets just makes the old pets vanish.
• Pets can now follow up elevators and down elevators. So do enemies.
• Controller pets never expire. They can be dismissed with a / command.
• Scrappers do more damage with all their powers
• Regen's Instant Healing now a click instead of a toggle.
• Fire tanks' Burn power now does less damage
• Hibernate (ice tanks plus some ancillary pool versions) now recovers endurance as well as health, doesn't turn off some toggle powers, and activates instantly. However, it only lasts about thirty seconds instead of lasting indefinitely.
• Phase also only lasts 30 seconds.
• Global Defense Nerf - just about all powers adding to defense and/or damage resist got nerfed. Even the temp powers weren't safe!
• Several villains' accuracy got reduced to help compensate for the defense nerf
• Earth Thorn Casters no longer spam Quicksand powers
• Anisotropic filtering added as well as the ability to pump the world detail up to 400%
• Pets and other NPC's can no longer trap players inside rooms in missions.
• September 20: Defenders get a new inherent power, Vigilance, which lowers the endurance cost of their powers as their teammates lose health. Now all AT's have an inherent power!
• September 27: A new Damage Resist inspire was created. Also, the graphics for some Sonic powers were changed because the flashing was giving some people serious headaches.
• September 27: You can only have two story arcs going at once. A long standing bug was causing any those slots to get filled when a contact simply told you about the first mission in the arc. This was fixed so you have to actually take the mission to have the arc started.

Issue 6: Along Came a Spider (City of Villains)

To be precise, issue 6 actually came out a few days before City of Villains opened up. I'm reflecting that a little in my notes for Issue 6 but, for the most part, I'm just going to count CoV as a huge update to CoH. I'm pretty sure most folks will own both before too long anyway.

• Three new zones open up for PvP! Bloody Bay has straight up hero vs villain PvP action. Siren's Call is similar but the hero/villain NPCs take part in the battles as well as players. It also includes hunting random player targets. Warburg is pure PvP where the only people you can't attack are the ones actually on your team. (Note these came out a few days before CoV released, making for quite a run on the Bloody Bay 'meteor' mission which results in a temporary Shivan summon temp power!)
• Enhancement Diversification (aka ED aka Enhancement Nerfification) - no more putting six Single Origin enhancers of one type into a power and getting a +200% boost to that aspect of the power. The first two SO's work fine, the third works almost as well as the first two, but any additional enhancements of the same type give very very little in return. Also, the enhancement screen was updated to actually display how much an enhancement is giving you.
• Supergroups got a ton of development. When in Supergroup mode, you now earn prestige and can find salvage on some enemies. Supergroup badges were also put in.
• Supergroup bases! Blue columns appeared around town allowing access to bases. Supergroups can buy them using prestige then stock them up with items using even more prestige and/or salvage. These are more than just places to chit chat with the rest of the SG, they have some nice utilities such as teleporters to zones, places to buy inspires, and the option to rez in your base instead of in a hospital. No base raiding yet.
• The Death of Herding: In addtion to ED, a couple of other changes were put in to the game. First off, no more than 17 enemies can agro on any single player at a time. Second, if you are more than two levels under the average level of the team, you get no xp.
• Graphics - Refresh rates, full screen anti-aliasing, blooming, depth of field, the graphics all got a major overhaul. The World Detail slider max was put back down to 200% again (though you can still go above that with /vis_scale if you really want).
• Gladiator battles added to the Arenas. Instead of fighting each other directly, each player gets a number of NPC Gladiators to fight for them. What gladiators you can pick out is determined by what gladiator badges you've found. All players get 2000 points worth of gladiators regardless of level.
• Many powers had their endurance cost reduced. (Very much needed given ED's effect on Stamina.)
• Some electric powers now have a chance to return endurance to the player as well as their normal endurance drain effect.
• Mez protection powers start off weaker than they used to be however, as you gain levels, they become stronger. Also, Super-Reflex auto powers now give some resistance effects and improve as you gain levels.
• Several stealth and defense powers now defend against all types of attacks.
• The debt cap was cut in half.
• More stores sell the rarer enhancement types.
• October 28, 2005 (just before midnight, central time): City of Villains opens up!

Starting CoV Archtypes

Initial Zones

• Mercy Island
• Port Oakes
• Cap au Diablo
• Sharkhead
• Nerva Archipeligo
• St. Martial

• Virgil Tarikoss (15th - 20th)
• Silver Mantis (20th - 25th) (gained through supergroup base!)
• The Temple of the Waters (25th - 30th)
• Sparcetriel (24th - 33rd) (1st Respec Trial)
• Ice Mistral (35th-40th)
• Trasprecial (34th-40th) (2nd Respec Trial)

• Nov 8: Certain mission objectives were exploding for damage. Most notably, the hero statues that villains need to destroy to earn their capes would explode with enough force to kill wounded villians! Bug fixed.
• Endurance Drain and Endurance Recovery enhancers combined to simply be Endurance Modification enhancers.
• Nov 16: Croatoa open to all heroes, not just those level 25 or higher.
• Powers that increase max HP are now helped by heal enhancements.
• Mynx, Luminary, Aurora Borealis, Infernal, Silver Mantis, and Barracuda get promoted from Elite Boss to Hero/AV status.
• Police Bots and Arbiter Drones give a perception bonus to ally players near them. (Handy in PvP)
• Dec 1: Icons close to each other on the minimap will move around to help you select the one you want.
• I think this is the patch that opened up the Cathedral of Pain Trial. This allows Supergroups with the right items in the base to access a special trial to gain items of power. Gaining an item of power allows the base to be raided (at scheduled times) by other supergroups. Base raiding begins!
• Dec 7: The winter event begins, starting with Jet Packs and a special mission to save/steal presents for Paragon City. A couple of weeks later, presents begin to appear in all zones (well, except maybe the Paragon Dance Party). When these presents are opened the player can get a 'present' inspire (just like back in the 2005 winter event), a temporary snowball power, or even a temp power to summon a winter snowman beast. If the game is in a mean mood then the presents burst into several winter snowman beasts. The even lasted until early January and awarded several special badges.
• Dec 15: Ability to move rooms in bases added.
• Police/Arbiter bots now see stealthed enemies. This helped a big PvP problem with people sneaking into enemy hospitals.
• Repulsion Bomb changed to enemy-target instead of friendly target. It also now has less chance to stun and a longer recharge rate.
• Dec 17: The previous patch turned off the ferry system making it very difficult to get from zone to zone without a supergroup base! Fixed two days later.
• Jan 17, 2006: New lowbie attack powers! Each origin type gets a different temp power that can be used for attacks. The power vanishes at level 10.
• Crippling Axe Kick can now immobilize PvP enemies 50% of the time.
• Feb 2: Since I6 came out, the Ghost Ship has been stuck in the south-east corner of Talos island. It has weighed anchor and resumed its wanderings. Devoured Earth emminators (the little mushrooms, crystals, and whatnot) also were not appearing between I6 and this patch.
• AVs/Heroes now give twice as much xp, an SO that's three levels higher than the target, a max size inspire, and salvage! Also, if your team is small, the AV/Hero will be reduced to Elite Boss status. (I think - this was mentioned on the boards but doesn't appear in the patch notes.)
• A bug making it impossible for most tank attacks (and other targetted AoE attacks) to hit a moving target was fixed.
• DJ Zero shuts down the old Paragon Dance Party. It is replaced by the Pocket D - a much larger place with more NPCs. Most interestingly, heroes and villains can team up in this zone and some mission entrances exist.
• Feb 21: Police bots added to hospital interiors. No more ganking in the hospital.
• April 11: Kora fruit reduced from big inspires to medium inspires (probably in preparation of inspire storage devices in bases).
• New global help channel added. Unfortunately, the global channels started having real problems around this time. The whole global chat server would vanish quite often and global friend lists would be lost. Sometimes even entire channels would vanish.
• Chat spam limit put in place - no more than one message per second. Had some troubles at first with emotes causing this to kick in.
• Mission bonus xp cap put in. Even if you "help" complete a mission well above your level, you only get credit for finishing a mission three levels above you.

Issue 7: A Hero's Destiny Manifest

Wow, long time no issue! (Though we also got a LOT more updates for issue 6 than any other. It's almost like there was an issue 6.5 in there with the winter event and DJ Zero's new dance party.)

• Ageia physics card support begins, though it's still listed as 'beta'. Along with this came another upgrade to the physics engine. Objects thrown by gravity's Propel power now stay on the ground. Shells from an assault rifle come out of the gun and bounce/roll on the ground. Quite a few enemies now explode, leaving pieces scattered all over!
• New PvP zone - Recluse's Victory. PvP with some capture-the-flag thrown in. If the villains start winning, this alternate version of Atlas Park starts turning into Lord Recluse's vision of Paragon City!
• New PvE zone for villains - Grandville! Which is needed to handle....
• Villain level cap pushed up to 50! Along with that came lots of new missions and story arcs, as well as some very special contacts: Ghost Widow, Black Scorpion, Captian Mako, Scirocco, and even Lord Recluse himself! (And, of course, a couple of secret contacts as well.)
• Lord Recluse has a new Strike Force, The Future of Freedom. This is an incredibly difficult Strike Force where you fight multiple Freedom Force heroes AT THE SAME TIME! Your reward for this incredible difficulty? The villain equivalent of the Hamidon Enhancer!
• A little addition to this difficulty, regen rates for Heroes, Arch-villains, and giant monsters were greatly increased. Too greatly, as you'll soon see.
• Lord Recluse's minions act as patron contacts. You must choose one and only one patron. When you complete a story arc for that patron you will be awarded with a special power pool for that patron. Each character class gets different powers (making it a pain for me to document - maybe I'll do that later) so your Dominator isn't going to get stuck with another hold power and your Mastermind won't get yet another pet.
• MAYHEM MISSIONS! These missions are for villains only and, I must say, they are great fun! These are special timed missions where the timer does not start until somebody actually enters the mission. You and your team have 15 minutes to get in and rob a bank. Once you grab the loot, a hero will come to the rescue and the hero must also be defeated to get mission credit. Destroying objects (which looks great with the new physics!) sometimes gives you bonus time. There are also sidequests which, when completed, give a pretty big hunk of bonus time. New badges for exploring and destroying were added as well as two new accolades specifically for mayhem missions. The reward for finishing a mayhem mission the first time (while in the level range) is a temp power. This has allowed low level villains access to a travel power or even two!
• Other new powersets were added. Brutes got electric melee and electric shields, Stalkers got dark melee and dark armor, and Masterminds got thugs.
• Debt in PvP is fiddled with. Basically, the part of the damage done to you by NPCs generates debt while the part done by enemies does not. So, if an NPC (or the ground) takes you down to 70% hit points then an opportunistic enemy player finishes you off, you only get 30% debt.
• When respawning in PvP you now respawn with very few hit points to keep you from running right back into battle.
• Defense computations changed to help defense-based characters out against higher level foes. Previously, resistance-based characters did better against higher level foes.
• Anti-one-shot code added. If you are at 100% hit points and get hit by a devistating attack that should take you down to 0, you will be left with one hit point. Good luck.
• The origin-specific powers that used to be lost at level 10 are now kept. Characters that lost the power (or never had it) were granted the power.
• Temp powers now show how long they have before they expire
• Buff and debuff power icons on your character now flash before they expire
• Melee powers can no longer have range debuffed. EXCEPT in a hurricane
• Pets (and sorta-pets) now inherit buffs from the caster. For instance, if you have a damage inspire going and call a lightning storm, the lightning storm will do more damage (until the inspire runs out). Mastermind pets do not get this bonus.
• Stealthed characters will un-stealth for 10 seconds if they grab a mission objective. No more stealthing through entire missions with 0 chance of failure!
• Quite a few changes to the Arrow powersets
• Resistance inspires now protect 100% against enemy attempts to teleport you. Some defense powers will help, too.
• Dimension Shift and Black Hole graphic effects fixed up a bit to help people identify what was and wasn't affected.
• In PvP, powers that turn off toggles all had their % chance reduced. Brawl only has a 5% chance now.
• Tankers, Scrappers, and Brutes can now put accuracy enhancers in their taunt power. These powers are auto-hit in PvE so the enhancers are pointless there but in PvP, where taunts can miss, they can come in handy. Also, some defense powers now reduce the chance of being hit by these taunts. Tanks' gauntlet power now works in PvP, too.
• Some base weapons can now attack phase-shifted targets
• Base defenses no longer give debt
• Vaults have come to the bases! You can now store inspires, enhancers, and salvage in special storage items.
• Empowerment Stations added to bases. These can change salvage into special buffs. The buffs aren't, IMHO, all that great and they don't last all that long but, if you have no other use for salvage, it beats throwing it out.
• Supergroup logos added to bases. If you change your logo/colors for your supergroup, some of the banners will remain the same, which lets you have multiple logos in a base.
• Many more tailor options added, including new ears and the ability for people with both CoV and CoH to use villain costume options on heroes.
• Your team only needs to do 10% of the damage to a monster to get badge credit now
• Explore badges now give a little xp
• More graphics options for shaders and texture quality
• Graphics upgrade in City of Heroes
• "Miss" text is more descriptive now which helps you determine if you are missing or they are dodging you
• Multiple buffs of the same type now have their icons stacked. Very handy for powers like Fulcrum Shift and Heat Loss that can generate a dozen icons in the right situations.
• Do Not Allow Invites option added. No more blind invites if you don't want them!
• More emotes!
• If somebody sends a tell when you are afk they should get a message back saying so. (Finally!!)
• Hamidon got himself a laser that he can use even when mezzed!
• Task Force Commander accolade badge added for heroes
• Mastermind pets set to defend and follow now act as bodyguards. When in this mode, some of the damage done to the Mastermind will be taken by the pets instead. The more pets the MM has, the more the damage is spread around.
• No more commanding pets while in a 'can only affect self' state (like being phased).
• MM pets now move faster
• Domination recharge rate reduced from 300 to 200 seconds and charges up much faster now in PvP
• Brutes with Invulnerability now have darker graphic effects. It's tuff to be evil when it looks like you are dancing in rainbow colors. ;)
• No more teleporting vines around in the villain Respec trial
• June 20: Confusion effects are stripped when you zone. This prevents some griefing by players that would get themselves confused then go into PvE zones and attack low level players.
• June 27: Fixed long standing bug that would sometimes force players to defeat Circle of Thorns portals in order to complete defeat-all missions
• Hero/AV/Monster regen rates greatly reduced again (by about 80%). Even with the reduction they are still higher than they were prior to issue 7, which tells you just how insane they were at I7's launch.
• Police/Arbiter drones can now destroy phase shifted targets
• "Media Junkie" badge changed to "Couch Potato", reducing much confusion with the "Media Junky" badge
• New option to auto-decline trade and supergroup invites
• Even more costume options and fixes!
• Malta and Carnival newspaper missions activated
• Longbow Spec-Ops with EMP grenades no longer drain as much endurance
• July 5: Hyperthreading CPU bug fixed (which sure helped me a ton)
• July 12: AVs/Heroes in Task/Strikeforce missions should no longer change level based on difficulty level
• The villain elevator in Pocket D often left villains stuck in limbo - so much so that /stuck only rarely worked! Bug fixed.
• Kheldians hired by the PPD have been toned down a little
• Aug 1: Tank's War Mace powerset has Clobber and Jawbreaker swapped
• Dominate can now be fired off when held, stunned, or slept and protects against status effects
• Aug 16: Empowerment station buffs duration increased to a full hour. (Before this they only lasted around 10 or 15 minutes)
• Teleporting turned off inside Pocket-D. (Presumably to keep people from getting teleported in to the special Tiki room)
• Turret "pets" can no longer be dismissed in Recluse's Victory
• Prestige rewards increased roughly 25%
• New on-the-cheap rooms added to bases. These are smallish rooms with limitted abilities (for instance, the new teleport bay can only have a single teleporter and that teleporter can only have a single destination) but they are very cheap. There's also a cheap, new generator that gives you both power and control. These items should alow small, new supergroups to get some functionality out of their base very quickly.
• Unsecure base plots can only have one item of power.
• Banished Pantheon Spirits you find behind portals now count toward the Banisher badge. Also, all boss Overseers now count toward the Visionary badge.
• Teleport beacons are added to City of Heroes! Almost all zones get them (Atlas, Galaxy, Perez, Hollows, Steel Canyon, Sky City, Talos, Independence Port, Boomtown, Faultline, Dark Astoria, Terra Volta, Croatoa, Strigia, Founder's Falls, Brickstown, Peregrine Island, Crey's Folley, Eden, and the Rikti Crash site got beacons. The Shadow Shard zones, the Sewer zones, and the Hive did not get beacons. The PvP zones still have no beacons.
• Pirate badge requirements were lowered quite a bit. It opens a special contact but the requirements were pretty high so I don't think many people were getting her missions. (Now, about that Marconee Boss badge....)
• Arachnos Flier, the 'monster' of Grandville, supposedly fixed but it doesn't seem to have worked.
• Several Arachnos mission maps where the player would resurrect right at the spot they fell were fixed. ('Several' were not all, as I found out myself in November. The rest got fixed in January.)
• Freedom Phalanx in the Recluse Strike Force no longer drop SO's. This was done so players don't miss out on the Synthetic Hamidon Enhancers that drop for winning the SF.
• September 20: Drop Mission feature added. You can now talk to the contact who gave you a mission and have it dropped. When you drop the mission you get the FULL reward (including any temp powers). It can only be done once per week and only on 'run-of-the-mill' missions. Badge missions, timed missions, TF/SF missions, and certain other special missions can not be dropped. Only you get the reward for the mission if you drop it, the rest of the team gets nothing. (I dropped that dang sewer hunt mission as soon as I could get logged in!)
• A nasty bug causing the teleport travel power's target circles to mess up when the power had a range enhancer was fixed.
• Another nasty bug causing certain pets (like Storm's Tornado power) to be invisible was also fixed. As was a bug that would make some enemies and even other players invisible to you.
• Lieutenants return to solo missions! (Thank goodness. 3 minions every time was horrible dull.)
• PvP debt tweaked. Now you get no debt when killed by another player. If you are damaged by another player then killed by an NPC you will get debt but only in proportion to the damage the NPC did. (This killed the griefer tactic of nearly killing another player then teleporting the player into a nest of angry NPCs so they would get full debt.)
• October 4th (or so), Good vs Evil edition is released, opening up the Tiki Room in Pocket-D.
• Early October: new flight poses (example one and example two) were added to the Test server as part of Issue 8 testing. However, they had some bugs and some people really hated that your pose was picked at random so it was dropped until a method to pick our poses could be put in.
• October 9: The Cathedral of Pain trial was turned on - for about a day. A few folks actually got items of power, though base raiding had not been turned on yet.
• October 18: The Halloween event starts and runs through November 1st. This was much more like the first Halloween event, trick or treating for goodies and baddies. This time the giant pumpkin was joined by Jack of Irons from Croatoa for more badges as well as some shadowy mist critters called Unseelie. Special salvage appeared that, when traded to two new contacts (Granny Beldam and Annah), would grant the player an additional costume slot. (My scrapper got her nice Halloween costume last year, designed to look much like the T-or-T witches. She was NOT happy to see them come back using HER costume!)

Issue 8: To Protect and Serve

• Veteran Rewards added
  • 3 Month: Trenchcoats
  • 6 Month: Greek letter chest emblems (upper and lowercase)
  • 9 Month: Belly Shirts and Kilts
  • 12 Month: All pre-order sprint powers, choice of an Undead Slaying Axe or a Sands of Mu power added to all your characters (existing and future), and some items to display in your base
  • 15 Month: Angel and Demon wings
  • 18 Month: Samurai Armor
  • 21 Month: Shoulder Capes (even for level 1 characters)
  • 24 Month: Base Teleport, special veteran titles, and comic posters for your base
  • 27 Month: Anime'ish Tech Armor
  • 30 Month: Signature group chest emblems (like Freedom Phalanx, CoT, and Council though not the 5th Column) and some more base items
  • 33 Month: Choice of a Nemesis Staff or Black Wand power.
  • 36 Month (3 years): Arachnos Flier and Longbow Chaser base items and a choice of a lovable little (non-combattant) pet.
  At release time, even folks who joined the first day could only get up to the 30 month reward.
• Safeguard Missions for Heroes. These are like Mayhem missions in reverse. Very soon after you enter, a super villain will rob the bank. You must stop him/her/it from taking the loot. If you do so, the mission ends officially but the timer keeps ticking. You can still go on to prevent vandals from destroying property and take part in several side missions (preventing firebombings and prison breaks and so on).
• Police Scanner Missions - same as Newspaper missions for Villains. Detectives added to all CoH city zones to act as brokers.
• Faultline is completely redone. It's no longer a trial zone without a trial. Now it has contacts, a storyline, and lots of great new missions!
• The Rikti Monkey Fight Club moves to Pocket-D (the old one is still back in CoV, now under new management). Pocket-D also got some new arena kiosks.
• Jump Kick now does knock up instead of knock back
• Build up and Aim powers now look different for each powerset
• CoV Patron Power "Soul Storm" can be escaped with a Break Free inspires
• If you have a story arc going, the contact with the arc will display an icon. Hovering over the icon will tell you if it is a full story arc or just a "mini-arc."
• Several new emotes were added and you also have the ability to pick which dance emote you want instead of just getting a random one.
• A nasty bug made a lot of map objects invisible (which you can see in that last emotes pic, errr, or not see... or... ummm... can see that you can't see? ;) including the Shadow Shard Molepoints (again) and several neat things in special mission maps.
• Heroes can now share missions like villains (so, if two people on a team have the same mission, you can do it once and have it count for both players).
• Cryptic gets the trains running on time! A terribly annoying bug was making people wait pretty long for many CoH monorails.
• Dominators now build up their domination bar faster according to how many people are on the team (about 16% faster per person on the team). Domination's effect was increased as well.
• Vindicators in the Recluse SF reduced to level 51. (The Freedom Phalanx are still level 53, though.)
• December 7: Fire Imps are now one level below the owner's level.
• Stalker/Scrapper Imapale power range reduced to 40 feet
• More wing animations - they now animate while jumping and falling
• Controllers' high level Ancilliary powers were cut down to size. Combined with the Containment inherent power, high level controllers were out-blasting blasters.
• Brute fury builds faster against high ranking enemies
• Last half of December (with an encore the 2nd week in January) Winter event. A huge mountain opened up outside PocketD. Landing on the slopes would let you ski (well, OK, glide) down. Gravity geysers would shoot you back to the top. Heroes and villains could team together and get missions from Father Time in a frozen Croatoa. These missions gave out fun temp powers (how many goooooold rings?) and some new costume options. The presents from the 2005 winter event returned, too. Yes, even the Winter Lords returned!
• Jan 25, 2007: Major rent overhaul. Instead of being based on how much prestige (spent or not) your supergroup has, rent is now determined by the size of your base plot. The smallest size is rent free!
• Quite a few changes made to what powers will force you to stand still while activating
• Golden Rings and Renewal of Light temp powers in the Winter Event were listed as lasting for seven days of play. That's long enough for a lot of people to get up to level 50! Powers were changed to last for seven real time days. The patch came out more than seven days after the encore ended so everyone lost the powers.
• The number of free tailor sessions you have is now displayed when you log in.
• Personal Info Menu now displays the total number of badges the character has.
• Mobile phones can no longer reach contacts from a PvP zone.
• Snowstorm had a bug causing every affected enemy to appear as an anchor, making for a massive white out for melee players. Fixed.
• The last fix to Brute fury was overdone for secondary and patron powers. Fixed.
• The Domination buff that was supposed to go in with Issue 8 was really put in.
• Patron pets die with their creator
• In the Recluse SF, Numina will no longer ruin the tragic death scene of Ms. Liberty by resurrecting her.
• Several invisible map items restored
• Construction in Steel Canyon and Port Oakes
• Feb 13, 2007: Pocket D Jubilee Valentines Day event. The previous year's event of Snaptooth causing DJ Zero grief was recycled but new rewards were added. The old toga was back as well as the laurels you previously could only get by inviting a buddy to the game. The Heart of Darkness/Light badges from the previous year were also on the list of rewards you could pick from as well as a new "Partygoer" badge. You could also pick a new hearts costume option.
• Burn now lasts 25 seconds for Tanks, Brutes, and Blasters. This helped the Brutes and Blasters but nerfed the Tanks.
• Animate Stone pet now does knockdown instead of knockback.
• More tweaking done to make powers consistent with respect to making you stand still while they activate.
• Salvage window altered a bit in preperation for invention salvage.
• Some skies in Paragon City had gotten a little off whack. Fixed.
• Feb 27: A nasty bug that caused a huge drop in FPS after leaving a mission was fixed.
• Even more missing textures fixed, including the Frostfire mission.
• Another very nasty issue causing the client to crash or massively slow down a few minutes after characters with certain capes got certain kinds of buffs.
• Still more tweaking done to make powers consistent with respect to making you stand still while they activate.
• Animations fixed up. For instance, the Aid powers will no longer keep playing if you start running.
• Added a secondary graphic effect to the anchor of a Darkest Night so players won't accidentally kill the anchor. Well, not as much as before anyway.
• The Valentines Day event ended - sorta. DJ Zero still offers Snaptooth missions and completing those missions still gives the reward options. However, to get DJ Zero as a contact you must complete missions from a couple of other contacts in Pocket D. Those two contacts are gone.
• Somewhere around this time, many Freakshow Tanks started appearing with without arms! I think this got fixed with Issue 9.
• March 6: A bug that caused players to be kicked from Strike/Taskforces when they got disconnected was fixed.

Issue 9: Breakthrough!

Inventions are added. This huge feature was long in the making (and unmaking, and remaking). Scroll up and you’ll find that the Universities started construction back in Issue 4, just a few days short of two years earlier! I’ll try my best to describe the whole thing without making this document too huge.

First and foremost, you should know that all this is totally optional. The training/dual origin/single origin enhancers all work just like before and the enemies have not gotten any stronger. Just sell off all those strange drops at any store or give them to folks in your supergroup. You can read up on all this stuff at your own pace or ignore it forever. If you’re into character building and squeezing the most you can out of every slot, though, this new feature adds massive depth to your game play.

Two new kinds of drops were added: invention salvage and recipes. Invention salvage drops are by level range and divided between magic and tech using enemies. Most recipe drops come from defeating enemies, though a few come from finishing missions, task/strikeforces, and trials. Note neither salvage nor recipes ever come from specific actions or enemies! You can get your Black Blood of the Earth salvage (no, it’s not oil) from any mid-level magic using enemy. You can get your Freebird +Stealth recipe from any task force, be it Positron’s or the Storm Palace. You use your recipes and the salvage they list (plus a good dose of influence/infamy) at an invention workbench to make stuff. So what kind of stuff can you make?

The easiest thing would be costume options. Cherubic, fairy, tech, insect, burned, bat, and draconic wings were available at launch, as were rocket, piston, and winged boots. (Note: Positron stated in a forum post about a week after I9 went live that these recipes were not dropping nearly as often as they should.)

You can also make temp powers. St. Louis Slammer, Gabriel’s Hammer, Revolver, and Ethereal Shift were available at launch.

Invention enhancements are the most common recipes to drop. They can also be bought (for a rather high price) from any workbench. Unlike the origin-based enhancers we are used to, these enhancements can not be combined to make +’s and never expire. The higher level “IO” enhancers are actually stronger than single-origin enhancers! (Though Issue 6’s “enhancement diversification” rule still applies, of course.)

Enhancement sets are where the serious complexity really comes into play. Most of these enhancements improve one, two, or even three aspects of the power they are put into. Some also add special bonuses like an increase in accuracy for all your attacks or a stealth bonus. As you slot more enhancements from the set you get additional bonuses as well. There are several sets, each of which works in a certain class of powers. For instance, the Freebird and Soaring sets both work in flight powers while Triage and Doctored Wounds sets work in heal powers.

• Consignment Houses added. Salvage and recipes drop and a pretty good rate but there's an awful lot of it to drop! Getting the recipes and salvage you actually need in a finite time would take incredible luck. And so the hero's Wentworth's and the villain's Black Market were opened for trading. (Though it had a more... familiar look to it before it opened up!) Of course, with lots of semi-retired level 50s sitting on huge mountains of influence, initial consignment house prices were totally insane. Even common salvage like Luck Charms could easily go for 1,000,000 inf!
• All this new complexity demanded some special testing. Instead of the normal method of releasing to the test server and letting everyone hit the new stuff, Cryptic closed off the test server and invited just a few players (maybe 20?) to test the system out and comment on it. As the weeks went by, more players were added until eventually everyone was allowed in. I was one of the lucky few in the first wave, which let me take part in the mighty quest to get Djeanne some wings! (pictured in my I9 header)
• To help learn all this stuff, the Universities finally opened for classes. They are full of worktables and the Steel Canyon and Cap au Diablo campuses have a tutorial mission to describe how salvage and recipes work.
• Personal vaults were added around the consignment houses and in Pocket-D. Bases could also get a vault added to their workrooms. Bases could also have a workbench built in.
• Over 60 new badges were added. These were mostly badges for crafting items and for buying/selling items in the consignment houses. A new accolade was added, too, which allows the player to use a portable workbench.
• Statesman's Task Force was put in to challenge high level characters. Like the Lord Recluse Strike Force, this TF pits the players against several signature arch-villains at the same time. Not for the gimp of heart!
• Hamidon did a bit of evolving and his powers have changed a bit. The Hive now only allows 50 people into the zone before a new instance will be created. Also, instead of showing up a few hours after the server is started, Hamidon now appears after a certain number of Giant Monsters are taken down in the zone.
• Villains can now get in on the Hamidon action. A new zone called the Abyss was added where villains could "fight the goo fight", so to speak.
• To help fight Hamidon, a new inspire started dropping from giant D.E. monsters - Essence of the Earth. Villains didn't have an easy way to fight any D.E. monsters so another new zone was added, Monster Island. It's actually just a copy of the north half of the Peregrine Islands.
• The higher level monorail got expanded. Sky City and Founder's Falls are now serviced!
• Some powers which would debuff regeneration can now be resisted.
• On the other hand, many heroes/arch-villains/monsters got their debuff resistance reduced.
• Infernal's alter got nerfed - the thing was getting way too many hitpoints, especially for smaller teams.
• If you take/rescue a hostage, stealth is turned off for you and all your teammates. This makes more sense (hostages are never very stealthy) but it was really made necessary by some of the new set bonuses which add Stealth to your character. If one of those is slotted into a passive power, your stealth will always be on. Without this new change, hostage missions would be impossible to complete!
• Enhancement drops were changed so you shouldn't get "useless" enhancement drops nearly as often. Above level 40, only Single-Origin enhancers should drop. No more getting your inventory stuffed with a bunch of level 50 training enhancers! This does mean you'll get less influence from selling those enhancers off, but that is offset by being able to sell recipes and salvage.
• Special rewards (like enhancers for completing a story arc) will be disabled if you don't have room in your inventory to take them. If you clear a slot in that inventory, the rewards message will refresh and will let you pick your reward. This should cut down on people mistakingly losing their reward because their pockets were full.
• Still even more tweaking done to make powers consistent with respect to making you stand still while they activate.
• Statesman's TF, Recluse's SF, and respec trials will only give their recipe rewards once every 24 hours. Other trials, task forces, and strike forces will only give their recipe rewards once every 4 hours. This is to help cut back on farming.
• If you are teamed with somebody much higher level than you (so you don't get any xp), you will not get any drops.
• Field trainers (stores) added to King's Row!
• A new hero was added to Peregrine Island - Castle!
• Fly poses are back! But with a difference. Instead of the game just picking a fly pose for you, the pose is a type of emote. To use it, you first start flying then hit your autorun button so you keep flying forward. Then pick one of the FlyPose emotes (;flypose1 through ;flypose4) and you'll use the new pose. If you want to use them often, you'll want to bind the pose to make it easier to select.
• Several more new emotes were added, including drums, howl, camera, FlippingCoin, fishing, and crouch.
• Lots of emotes that didn't run right with Kheldian Dwarf form were turned off.
• Emotes should work better while flying.
• The trade interface lets you trade larger amounts of influence/infamy.
• The nasty base-boot-bug that would sometimes kick players out of their own base soon after entering the base seems to have been fixed.
• Enemies now have a second tab on their info telling you what salvage they can drop and what recipes you have that the salvage works for.
• A new info popup started appearing to give players needed information, like the Known Issues list.
• Very few new costume options were added. The Valentine's Hearts costume got a with skin option. (back)
• The origen drop tables were changed around. For instance, the Council stopped dropping mutation origen enhancers (which were more of a 5th Column thing) and started dropping tech enhancers.
• Cryptic began sporting a new logo
• May 4 - fix put in to try to help players that were getting disconnected from the game when they tried to access the consignment house trade window.
• May 9 - the passive Swift and Hurdle powers can no longer get Travel enhancement sets.
• TF/SF reward lockout time was reduced from 4 hours to 3 hours.
• If you don't qualify for a special TF/SF recipe reward, you can now choose an SO as a reward.
• Essence of Earth enhancers weren't capping out right, so a player with a tray full of them could completely avoid Hamidon's special damage. Cap put in.
• Level 10 characters can hold twice as many recipes now (8).
• Several tweaks to enhancement sets.
• Salvage information window now tells you what recipes you have that use this salvage.
• Bosses and higher enemies now drop large enhancers again. (Minions/lts/pets never drop large enhancers.)
• Howl emote was silenced. Why, I have no idea. Other emotes that make noise still work fine. ;shrug
• The invention salvage and recipe found messages that have always appeared in yellow (just like all the other reward messages) started appearing in white, yellow, and even "orange" - reflecting the rarity of the salvage/recipe found. (The "orange" is sure a brownish orange.)
• May 24 - the Eden and Sewer trials now give a choice of a rare recipe or a multi-function enhancement upon completion.
• "Kill volumes" added to Universities to keep critters from getting inside.
• Something was wrong with the drum emote sounds' performance so the sounds were turned off until a fix could be put in.
• The 'black fuzzy' problem seen in Arachnos maps was fixed. This bug made lots of black dots on enemy and player textures that looked a bit like static or even turned the textures completely off.
• Some stores would buy entire stacks of recipes for the price of one! Fixed.
• June 6 - big hunks of Invention fixes. Mez bonuses weren't stacking right, some recipes were dropping at the wrong rate, and several powers were taking the wrong types of recipes.
• Commas added to numbers in the consigment houses (so you see 1,000 not 1000)
• The three-hour reward limit was set to really be 3 hours. It was actually taking 4 hours to reset before.
• Single-Origin enhancers were sometimes being rewarded at a random level or not rewarded at all when exemplared.
• The drums got their sound back again. Howl got it's sound back but you can't keep doing them over and over, you have to do something between howls.
• Fixed a crash that was caused by adding/removing a lot of stuff from base storage. Also fixed a 'ghost item' bug that made it seem like storage had more items than it really did.
• When you start escorting an NPC out of a mission you automatically get a stealth debuff to help the NPC see you. Some henchmen were interpreting this as an attack and attacking the NPC. They've had the difference explained to them (slowly and twice).
• Defeating an enemy player in Recluse's Victory will only give rewards once every 10 minutes.
• Another filter added to worktables to hide recipes that the player does not own.
• When completing the Statesman TF, players can now choose a Synthetic Hamidon Enhancement
• The max level for the Numina TF is now 40.
• The Talos base entry teleporter is no longer crammed into the bus stop. The old location was causing players to sometimes pop into Talos UNDER the bus stop.
• June 12 - even more Invention tweaking, but not as drastic as the week before.
• Fixed a crash that would sometimes happen when a player zoned
• Fixed a really annoying bug that was causing mission objectives (glowies) to be located under staircases, making it impossible to complete the mission.
• The Gauntlet auto-taunt power of tanks was not working right for tank secondary powersets.

Issue 10: INVASION!

Invasion: Rikti! Shuttles: bombing! Reinforcements: Heavy Assault Suits, Priests! Outfits: spiffy! All you bases: ownership: us!

• The old Rikti Crash Site is replaced by the Rikti War Zone. The hospital and the gate to Crey's Folley were closed, a Vanguard base was put in, pylons were added, and portals were set up to go from several zones in Paragon AND the Rogue islands. All missions here can be done by both hero and villain, or teams of both!
• The Vangaurd, previously only known for their "They are among us!" billboards, show up in force. Heroes and villains of level 35+ are allowed to join and earn "merits" for defeating Rikti and completing Vanguard missions. Merits let you buy some special temp powers (like this little pet), expand your salvage bag, or buy parts of the Vanguards' nifty uniform.
• The Vanguard offer several new story arcs for levels 35+, hero and villain, culminating in the final Lady Grey Task/Strikeforce. Borea has repeatable missions for those that REALLY like fighting Rikti.
• The Rikti really do invade all city zones from time to time. The sky goes dark then several Rikti ships fly in dropping their bombs around town. After several minutes of softening us up, the Rikti teleport down around players and the battle begins! When the issue first came out, invasions were happening every half hour or so. Then Cryptic scaled it back to just having the invasions hit on certain days. Eventually we got to the point where invasions only happen when a team doing the Lady Grey TF get to a certain point in the story. While an invasion is happening in a zone, players will not get debt for deaths.
• Several badges were added and even an accolade to go with the Rikti invasions. The new Rikti War Zone also contains many new badges (plus the Ace badge previously available in the Rikti Crash Site).
• A new raid is added. The new Rikti War Zone contains several "Pylons" - very deadly turrets on tall towers scattered around the zone. If all of these pylons can be destroyed at once, the shield surrounding the crashed Rikti ship goes down and the Rikti appear, standing on top of the ship. Big Rikti. Level 53 with lots of bosses and elite Rikti Magus. If the battle progresses far enough along, a huge Rikti called U'kon Gr'ai appears. All Rikti defeated in this battle reward a Vanguard merit to every single team member, often resulting in over 100 merits for each!
• Kheldians teamed with controllers now get some mez protection.
• Ice controllers' Jack Frost pet has come to realize that his ice sword works pretty well, so he's started using it more instead of trying to hang back and use weaker ranged attacks.
• Some Super Strength powers now cause a minor camera shake.
• The Blackwand temp power and vet reward got snazzy new graphics, As did the Sonic powerset!
• New Stealth and Ex-Proto costume sets added, as were pencil skirts, the fabo and formal hair styles, and even a little tin crown. Whiskers were also added as a face detail, as were fluffy little bunny tails.
• Fusion Generator badge changed from time spent in PvP zones to getting 750 PvP kills.
• Commas added to numbers in several displays (so that sweet recipe is going for "1,100,000" instead of "1100000").
• The trade window can now move around 9,999,999 influence at once.
• Impervious Skin: Status Resistance now only gives a 7.5% status resist instead of 30%, however it is no longer unique so you can slot it as often as you like. Also, the psionic resist given by Impervium Armor: Psionic Resistance no longer causes your character to glow with an aura.
• The Katie Hannon Task Force now requires that you defeat Mary all 10 times to progress. Previously, players were intentionally failing this mission so they could quickly complete the Task Force and get a rare recipe.
• Major Richard Flagg, who handles high level respec missions for heroes, was moved from the Rikti Crash Site to a place near Portal Corps. Also, the portal between P.I. and the Rikti Crash Site was removed. Can't have those villains sneaking through!
• Positron takes off his helmet!
• August 2 - the heavies used in Recluse's Victory took a big nerf. Several players were using them for very long periods of time to farm the zone.
• Check Name button added to the character select screen. You can use this to check if a name is already in use.
• Winged Boots' color trail modified to reflect the player's colors better.
• Some Vanguard costume pieces that didn't make it into Issue 10 go-live were put in.
• Tweaks to several of the new Vanguard missions
• Rikti pylons were given numbers on the mini-map to aid raiders.
• Fewer spawns on the Rikti mothership, the mass of Rikti was causing too much of a performance hit
• August 14 - stealth powers fixed in PvP zones
• The Power of Hamidon temp power, gained in the Lady Grey TF, can now be deleted. A few players were getting stuck with the power on and it has a pretty massive aura.
• Players can only place one bomb per assault on the mothership
• Normal mobs clear the streets now when a Rikti invasion starts. No more hiding behind Supa-trolls!
• August 23 - Rikti invaision messages now appear on the system channel instead of the admin announcement channel (which appears in red text on all chat windows).
• Forget the deleting - the Power of Hamidon will now automatically be removed if you drop out of the TF
• Devouring Earth lichen, found in the Eden trial, no longer give xp
• Infernal's altar's hit points have been reduced (again)
• End of August? - new naming policy put in. Names will no longer be reserved for characters under level 6 on accounts that have been inactive for over 90 days.
• Sept 11 - City of Heroes/Villains has been having real trouble with people spamming players with tells (and sometimes emails) advertising websites used to buy influence/infamy in game - in other words, RMT cheat sites. A new /ignore_spammer slash command was added to help combat this. It helped the problem a little but it certainly didn't put a stop to it.
• A certain Arachnos map wasn't correct - resulting in players opening the mission door and finding themselves deposited in... nowhere. Fixed.
• Oct 2 - some Halloween event parameters tweaked and some fixes to character transfer.
• Character transfer and renamed turned on. For $10 you can move your character from one server to another or rename your character.
• Nov 6, 2007 - NCSoft buys out Cryptic's interest in City of Heroes/Villains! All the developers (except Jack "Statesman" Emmert) for the game switch to a new studio in Mountain View, just a few miles from Cryptic's studio. NCSoft announces plans to double the staff working on the "City of..." franchise.
• With this move, any currently active player that has just City of Heroes or just City of Villains, is automatically upgraded to have both. Free of charge. There are also plans for a debt forgiveness day and a prestige bonus for supergroups. (Which happened soon after I11.)

Issue 11 - A Stich in Time

Ouroborus and the Flashback system are added to the game. Upon completion of story arc or awarding of a badge that involves time travel, your character is given the Entrusted with the Secret badge and the ability to summon an Ouroborus Portal to get to the Ouroborus zone. The zone is run by a mysterious group of "Menders" lead by Mender Silos (who has a rather... familiar look about him). The Menders have some superb "mini-task/strikeforce" operations to take you back in time to see some very interesting moments in the game's history (like Lord Recluse's takeover of the Rogue Islands from another... familiar looking character) but the long term draw comes from the Cyrstals of Ice and Fire which impliment the Flashback System.

Flashbacks are a way to go back with your character and see content you missed and are also a way to pick up badges. To use the Flashback system, you click one of these pillars, pick a story arc/badge mission, select some challenges, and head off to do the story arc. The game will auto-exemp you to the level of the arc. When you enter and when you complete missions, you'll get a fun little sepia (old movie) effect for a few seconds. Selectable challenges make the flashback more difficult by putting in a time limit, deaths limit, disabling inspires, and limits to your powers like only-AT powers or no enhancements. Completing entire story arcs with challenges gives you various badges.

• In addition to the sixty-some flashback badges for completing challenges and for the sheer number of flashbacks done, two badges were added for completing the Statesman Taskforce and Lord Recluse Strikeforce with no deaths and no temp powers (like, say, shivans or Warburg nukes).
• While the devs have long told us that power customization (like making your energy bolt green instead of blue or red) would be extremely difficult, they did find a way to put in weapon customazation! Characters using powers that involve weapons (Assault Rifle, Claws, Mace, Thugs,...) can pick out what the weapons will look like in the character costume screen. Most weapons are available to everyone but a few need to be opened by getting badges or, in the case of Vanguard weapons, bought with Vanguard merits.
• New powersets were added: Dual Blades and Willpower. Scrappers, tanks, brutes, and stalkers can all use versions of both of these sets. Instead of having a special bonus (like lowering enemy to-hit chances or draining endurance) to their attacks, Dual Blades has a special "combo" system. When a character hits with three certain attacks within a short timeframe, a special bonus will be gained. Depending on the combo, it could be a powerup for the character, a DoT for the enemy, or some other such bonus.
• Very rare (purple IO) invention sets were added to the game. These are only dropped by level 50+ enemies, can only be slotted by level 50 characters, are all uniques (so only one purple IO of any particular type can be slotted on a character), and provide massive bonuses. Naturally, they are selling for massive prices, too - often going for over 10 million inf. Sometimes WAY over. This can make for quite a jackpot when a low level character sidekicked to a high level character happens to get one.
• Several other IO sets were added to fill out the list. Taunt, knockback, defense debuff, to-hit debuff, to-hit buff, and endurance modification all got sets. (The endurance modification is directed toward powers that sap enemies like Short Circuit and Transfusion, not toward the ever-popular Stamina power. Though you can slot them in Stamina if you really want.)
• Costume recipes can no longer be built if you already have the costume option. (This prevents you from wasting a costume recipe on a character that already has the costume option.)
• Another kind of very rare recipe is the new Respec Recipe. Building this gives out a "freespec" much like the ones that are often handed out with new Issues.
• Supergroups can now hold up to 150 members, double the previous limit! The "prestige gift" came soon after I11 so naturally a lot of people padded their Supergroup to get more prestige.
• Supergroup names can start with "The" again.
• Added "Assemble the Team" for the 42 month vet award. This acts just like the old gravity controller's Fold Space power. (The power reward ended up coming out about a month after people started getting the 42 month badge.)
• Allied NPCs in missions got a bit more powerful with more HP and damage. Hopefully Fusionette won't die EVERY time now.
• Cast time altered for a number of powers to help balance them.
• Some powers' graphical effects were reduced to increase performance.
• Trade window now allows 999,999,999 inf to be traded!
• For Vista users, compatible cursors turned on by default. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to kick in for all users. But still, it's the first official change for Vista.
• Renderthread turned on by default for multi-CPU systems.
• Check Name feature now works correctly for names with an apostrophe (') in them.
• Holes in the Bloody Bay, Faultine, and Boomtown maps were patched.
• Several new hairstyles for men and women! Watcher glasses and tech sleek gloves were also added and some other costume types were tweaked. Women's "baroque" style got a bottom piece (seen in first pic).
• While you can flashback to story arcs and get temp powers all over again, a few temp powers are nerfed. The first time you get them they are full power (whether you just do the missions normally or go in via Ouroborus) but after that, these powers are just "Echos" and not as strong as before. Affected powers are: War Wolf Wistle, Nullifier Gun, Infected anti-Serum, Creeper Seeds, and the Vial of Bees.
• A crystal of ice and flame can also be added to Supergroup bases so you don't have to go to Ouroborus to get your flashback missions.
• You can now get 250 souvenirs instead of just 100.
• Recipes should match the enhancement created every time now.
• Blaster powers' activation times "standardized" more to balance the different powersets. Defenders, Dominators, and Corruptors got some benifits from this but, when the standardization would not help their powers, the Defender and Corrupter powers were left unchanged.
• Archery blaster's Snap Shot and Aimed shot do more damage but recharge time is also higher.
• War Mace for Tanks had some activation and root timings changed.
• Mastermind Jounins Blinding Powder's ToHit debuff increased but it is no longer irresistable. Similarly, Stalker's Ninjistu Blinding Powder is no longer irreistable and Ninjitsu's Smoke Flash's ToHit debuff is ten times what it was before (making it 7.5%).
• Stalker Hide power now costs 0 endurance to use! Brutes' Mind over Body now does use endurance.
• Stheno Eggs no longer give XP, plugging an exploit.
• December 11, 2007 - Accolades now work when exemped down to lower level. A pretty big deal for folks doing a lot of Flashbacks!
• Some of energy Dominators' powers had turned hero-blue with issue 11. Switched back to villain red. In fact, quite a few graphic effects were fixed/reverted.
• When channel commands are made, they will appear in the channel messages even if the operator doing them is hidden. This prevents a grief where a hidden operator would kick people off a channel without any way to trace who was doing it.
• Two entirely new costume sets (Enforcer and Jester) are added. These are more than complete outfits, with some parts having multiple options (e.g. two different kinds of boots for Enforcer, two different Jester hats). Two new patterns (Lock and Dagger) are added as well.
• If a player is dead at the start of a Flashback, that is counted as a death for the death-limit challenges.
• Blaster's Defiance ability completely redone. Before it would increase the blaster's damage as the blaster's health went down. Now they get a little bonus for a few seconds every time they hit something with a primary or secondary power. Furthermore, when held/stunned/slept, they can still use the first and second power of their primary powerset and the first power in the secondary powerset. (That's the first powers in the actual set, not the first powers the player takes.)
• Blasters' ranged attacks had their damage increased by 12.5%.
• Electric Blasters' Voltaic Sentinel pet now lasts 60 seconds and moves faster.
• Dec 13 - Fixed a bug that caused some of the old Tanks (those made before CoV came out) to lose their Taunt power. These tanks need to visit an NPC trainer to be have their power returned.
• Feb 12, 2008 - Issue 11.5 - A lot of bugs from I11 were being particularly stubborn. That, combined with end-of-year holidays, caused quite a backup of fixes and new features. When the patch finaly got stable, it was pretty huge. Huge enough for many folks to call it Issue 11.5!
• Real Numbers! The combat attributes window is added listing nearly all of your character's stats! (That screenshot only covers about a third of them!) You can pull up to ten stats out of the window into a monitoring window, too. That makes it easy to monitor stats that are important to you, like damage bonus for brutes and blasters. Furthermore, you can actually see what the dice are rolling and what enemies need to roll to hit you in the combat spam (roll low to hit more). You can even right click on buffs/debuffs near your health bar or in the team window and see just how much buffing/debuffing you are getting! I'm loving these real numbers. Get hit by some esoteric buff/debuff? Before, you would have no way of knowing if that thing just helped you or hurt you. Now you know it did a whole lot of both.
• Tooltips on each character statistic explain what they are.
• Masterminds can click on one of their pets and see that pet's attributes!
• XP Curve Adjustment - before now there were some major slow points when gaining levels. Level 39 was particularly eternal. (Remember the level cap used to be 40!) NCNC raised the xp and inf that enemies rewarded in these slow levels so advancement was smoother. Note that only increases were made, xp/inf was not reduced at any point. Prestige rewards remained the same.
• Debt was reduced by 20% at all levels. If you're still in perma-debt after these changes, you're doing something seriously wrong.
• You can now drop missions once every 3 days instead of 7.
• Task/Strike Force spawns will no longer shrink below the minimum size required by the T/SF. So, if you are on a Task Force that requires 6 people, the spawn size will be never be for less than 6 people even if there's only 3 people left on your team. This is to prevent people from "softspawning" in T/SFs.
• Rikti portals no longer give any xp. They used to give pretty massive xp (much more than a boss) to account for all the zero-xp Rikti that would pour out of them. However, this was causing some weird player bahavoir, as players would routinely try and get portals to appear instead of trying to prevent them. Worse yet, players figured out that portals shut down automatically after a couple of minutes and gave their full xp value if they had been damaged at all. So people would fly through missions, ding any portals that appeared, clean up on massive xp as the portals closed, reset, repeat, powerlevel. To make up for the portals giving no xp, Rikti Com Officers now appear as Lts and give Lt xp, even though they still have minion hitpoints.
• Fixed a bug that made it possible to get into the Rikti War Zone before reaching level 35 via a Flashback mission.
• Critters will no longer try to attack your Ouroborus portal.
• Group Flight tweaked a bit to help keep other players inside the flight bubble.
• Regeneration Scrapper's Moment of Glory power got massive changes. It's protection now only lasts for 15 seconds but the health crash and heal resistance were removed. Also, the power's recharge rate was reduced to four minutes.
• Blaster's and Dominator's Flare power range increased to 80 feet. Also, Choking Cloud's recharge time was changed from 90 seconds to 20 seconds.
• The Force Field Repulsion Bomb power now does a good bit more damage, but costs more endurance. Also, knockback has been changed to knockdown and the power can now take damage enhancers.
• Super Strength's Rage power changed so you can attack (at reduced damage) when the rage subsides. All temporary powers, however, will be disabled for 10 seconds.
• Nictus hunter Quantum guns no longer have irresistable damage.
• CompatibleCursor flag turned on by default for Vista users. Again. {shrug}
• Any character below level 10 can not send in-game emails. More anti-spammer action! This one seems to have worked well.
• You can now push a single button at the auction house and collect all your sales at once. Also, you can filter by rarity.
• Two big buttons added right under the login screen to take you to account management and to the official forums.
• Very Rare (purple) IO sets should now work even when exemped down.
• Many fixes were made to many IO Sets including their level, their salvage level, whether their special power affected the player or the enemy, and so on.
• Welcome to the Vanguard xp and influence rewards were removed from Flashback missions. People were outright lining up in Ouroborus to milk this story arc, which is mostly a bunch of "speak to" missions.
• Restored the endurance crash for Ice Blaster's Blizard power.
• The irresistable portion of blaster damage in PvP was reduced to 10%.
• Defender's Voltaic Sentinal will now last for 60 seconds.
• Ice Tankers' Frozen Aura now does damage.
• Dual Blade Tankers' taunt recharge time made 10 seconds, just like other tanks.
• Force Field Controllers' Repulsion Bomb no longer gains benifits from Containment.
• /inspexec_pet_name and /inspexec_pet_target commands added to help MasterMinds give their pets inspirations.
• Feb 14 - Wedding Pack introduced, which adds some costumes and emotes for $10.
• In-game event to see the Manticore/Sister Psyche Wedding. Naturally, being a superhero wedding, somebody has to crash and cause some mayhem.
• Feb 19 - Wedding veil from the wedding pack fixed up.
• Feb 26 - Some blasters were doing a good bit more damage in PvP than intended. Almost fixed.
• March 5 - Task Force/Strike Force/Trial rules were changed again. There is no longer a minimum size to spawns in these sorts of missions. However, the spawn sizes are now determined by the number of people on the team whether logged in or not! So please folks, if you need to leave one of these things early, be sure to QUIT the task force/strike force/trial and don't just log out!!
• The rest of the PvP blaster damage problems fixed.

Issue 12 - Midnight Hour

We were told soon after Issue 11 that Issue 12 would probably be pretty light in favor of putting more things into Issue 13. It didn't quite come out that way. This was a huge issue with lots of massive coolness for all!

• Cimerora and The Midnighter Club were added to the game. Like Ouroborus, these aren't full sized zones but act as "hubs" for missions. Unlike Ouroborus, these are both true co-op areas so heroes and villains can team together in them. A new variation of the large tunnel maps were also added that give a more ancient look. The Midnight Club is connected to each university in the game and contains a single crystal. Once you get to level 35, that crystal will take you to Cimerora. Cimerora has a quick "tour" mission, a contact that will give infinite missions against Cimerorans, and a new Task/Strike Force. All can be done in hero/villain cooperative mode.
• The Cimeroran faction was also added, both friendly and enemy. They make heavy use of their shields which may be an indicator of powersets to come.
• The new Imperious Task Force is downright epic! It only takes around two or three hours but in that time you take part in some incredible battles! It (and some of the other new story arcs added with I12) continues the "Coming Storm" story started in Ouroborus and Issue 11.
• A few more patterns were and the English monocle were added for player costumes but the big addition was were the new Roman outfits, given out as a reward for completing the new TF.
• Some more unlockable weapons were added as well. Rularuu weapons were added for all customizable weapon classes except claws (though some had bugs making it difficult or impossible to unlock them). Broadsword got even more unlockable weapons linked to the Cimerora zone.
• Powerset Proliferation started in earnest! Blasters got Psychic Blast and Mental Manipulation. Brutes got Battle Axe, War Mace, and Super Reflexes. Controllers got Plant Control and Thermal Radiation, Corruptors got Electric Blast and Storm Summoning. Defenders got Cold Domination and Ice Blast, Dominators got Earth Control and Electricity Assault, Scrappers got Fiery Melee and Fiery Aura, Stalkers got Electric Melee and Electric Armor, Tanks got Dark Armor and Dark Melee, and Masterminds got Storm Summoning. (Being the only pet class in the game, there wasn't any hero primary set to copy over to them.) The new powersets didn't just pop in out of the blue, either. There's some in-game story items describing why this is happening now and what it may mean to the future.
• Soldiers of Arachnos, the villain epic archtype (VEAT), are added. There are two types: the Arachnos Widows and the Arachnos Soldiers. (Yes, "Arachnos Soldiers" are a type of "Soldier of Arachnos.") Widows start as Blood Widows then, at level 24, get a free respecification so they can become Night Widows or Fortunatas (though they can still retain any of the low level powers they want to keep). Soldiers start out as Wolf Spiders then, at level 24, pick between Bane Spiders and Crab Spiders. Widows and Soldiers can both switch between branches with a respec. VEATs all get a special outfit at level 1 and can get an additional outfit at level 10. Soldiers must make this a normal costume but Widows can leave the second costume as a special outfit as long as they never try to alter it. All further costumes are normal costumes, they can't be Arachnos uniforms. VEATs do not get an additional costume at level 40 (to make up for the extra one gained at level 10).
• The Hollows got a revamp. Not a big thing like the Faultline revamp but significant. Spawn sizes were reduced and spread out, repeatable missions were added, Foreshadow was put in as a trainer, mission doors were moved around, a mobile hospital was put in, and some new villain factions made their way into the zone.
• Additional character slots can now be purchased! Everyone can now get up to 36 character slots on each server. Everyone has also been given two free character slots to spend (though they need to be spent in an as-yet-undetermined time frame) and veterans are awarded one free slot for every year of subscription time. At launch, a single slot costs $6, two cost $10, and five cost $20.
• The real numbers initiative expands even more with real power numbers being made available as you are picking and enhancing powers. The enhancement screen even shows the effect of slotted enhancements!
• You can now drag and drop characters on the character selection screen so you can put them in any order you wish.
• Load screen tips were added to give you a little something to read while the mission loads up.
• In-game advertising was added... sorta. The technology to do it was included with Issue 12 (and even tested with some practice advertising) but no advertisements show up yet in the game itself. Those don't show up until June.
• Player ratings were added to the game. You can use this to rate players that you meet (1 to 5 stars) and that rating can be displayed above the player. The rating is attached to the global name of the rated character and is saved on your own hard drive. You can only see the player ratings you set yourself so you don't have to worry about some jerk rating everyone he can see with 1 star and having that bad rating follow you around. You can even add a specific note to the rating if you wish.
• You can now use your mousewheel to scroll windows in the game, though you do have to set it in the options window.
• The mission select window now shows the level of a mission. Old missions and missions from an older story-arc can easily be detected now without having to go to the mission door and poke your nose in.
• Clicking a character name in one of the chat windows will open up a menu that will let you do various things like make the character a friend, rate them, ignore them, invite them to a team, or kick them from your supergroup. Kick from the SG is the very next option after inviting to a team which gives rise to...
• The game will now ask for confirmation before kicking somebody from your supergroup or removing them as a global friend.
• A new option was added to disable the camera-shake that happens with certain earth-trembling powers.
• The contact list gained some tabs! Contacts that have something for you to do appear on the Active tab, old contacts appear on the inactive tab, and brokers appear on their own tab. (Brokers that have a mission for you also appear on the active tab.)
• Power trays got some major love. Not only can you show all 8 of your power trays, you can move them anywhere and change their shape!
• A /clear_tray command was added that takes every power off your tray. Very handy right after you do a respec. Macros are not removed.
• You can now send the 'real numbers' for any power, enhancement, recipe, or inspiration. Just drag it to the chat window and the power will be put there in []'s. Anyone that sees the chat can click on it and get the detailed information. Alternately, you can just type the name of the item you want to check inside of the brackets. (In testing, we were actualy able to see some of the developer powers, including [power suppression] and [the I Win button]!)
• You can now click a power icon under your health bar or beside the team window to get full details on that power, not just what buffs/debuffs were being applied at the time.
• If you want, you can now enable private message logs to be kept for specific global names. They are kept in the player notes window on a second tab.
• Costume creation got a new drop down list at the top that allows you to choose several pre-defined costumes. If you don't want to deal with custom costumes then you can snag a decent one, pick your colors, and get back to the super stuff. Others can use it to get a costume started. With as many options as this game has, it can take a long time to hunt down matching costume pieces. This option makes that easy.
• Also, a new option was added to allow you to choose if you pay for influence or a free costume token, assuming you have any (see the button in the lower right of the previous screenshot). Before this feature, you were forced to use any free tokens you had, even if your change was very cheap. Just click the button to pay with influence. Unfortunately, the feature was introduced with a nasty bug: if you didn't click the button at all the game (sometimes?) wouldn't use your free token as it was indicating and would instead use influence. Heavy changes to an outfit can cost a LOT of influence.
• Getting to be a lot of game settings and options now, aren't there? Sure gets tough trying to remember to set each of the options (like 'allow enemy tells') just the way you want. Not anymore! You can now save your options, your window settings, and your chat settings. (You've always been able to save your keybind settings.) Get one character just how you like him/her/whatever, save the settings, then just hit the load button for each of your alternates. Slash commands were also added to save and load settings.
• If you have saved settings, they will be loaded automagically when you make a new character. No more blowing 15 minutes setting your chat tabs up and scaling your windows just how you like. No more forgetting to turn on enemy chat, either.
• Speaking of scaling windows - several more windows can now be scaled individually. Also, the /window_names command was added to list off all valid window names.
• You can click on channel names now and get a menu for working with that channel. You can list who is on the channel, leave the channel, send a message on the channel, set the description/MotD, or set the color the channel will use. (That last, unfortunately, was buggy and would cause the channel to change colors every time you zoned.) Moderators for a channel can right click players talking on the channel and use the resulting menu to silence, unsilence, or kick them from the channel.
• To Hit chances introduced in Issue 11 have been given their own channel.
• Two new channels were added to alert players to zone events on the hero and villain sides. For instance, if Deathsurge pops up in Cap Au Diablo, villains will hear about it. If a fire starts in Steel Canyon, heroes will hear about it. Additionally, the Steel Canyon fires and Sky City troll rages will cause markers to appear on the map showing exactly where the events are happening.
• Pet combat messages now have new channels: Pet Combat, Pet Damge Received, Pet Healing Delivered, and Pet Hit Rolls. New Mastermind characters automatically get a new chat tab called "Pet Combat" with these channels in it.
• There are now options to disable combat numbers on buff icons and to disable buff information completely. These are primarily for people playing the game via dial-up modems or other slow connections to keep the traffic down.
• You can now use /get_global_name on anyone to find out their global name. You can also get a current character name from a global name by using /get_local_name. (It's been possible to get global names of characters since the global feature was introduced by using /ignore_global on a character.)
• Using /ignore on a character will now ignore all characters for that account instead of just the one particular character. In other words, /ignore now does a /gignore.
• The /hide command now has it's own hide window to make it easier to keep track of what hide options are on.
• You can now have 200 friends and ingore 200 players.
• You can now belong to 10 global channels.
• You can now combine inspirations! If you have 3 inspires of the same kind, you can combine them into another kind of inspire. Particularly handy for making an awaken inspire after a defeat. The price of awaken inspires was changed to reflect this (so you can't buy 3 damage inspires, combine them, and sell them at a store for a profit).
• When you gain a level, you immediately get the effects of a max size inspiration of each type. You'll immediately be given your max health and endurance as well. If you manage to gain a level while defeated, you'll even get rez'ed!
• Some new fields were added to the player detailed combat statistics window: Xp to next level, debt, last hit chance, total endurance consumption from toggle powers, influence, and healing bonus. Also, slash commands were added to let you add and remove stats from the monitoring window.
• DEATH TO SPAMMERS! Well, great deals of annoyance to spammers, anyway. Issue 12 put in several new limits on free trial accounts. Trail accounts may not hold more than 50,000 influence, may not join a supergroup, may only chat on the local, friend, and team channels, may not invite other characters to a team, may not use in-game email, and may not level up past level 14. They can not go into any PvP zone, either, but that's a rather mute point as all PvP zones require you to be at least level 15. Unfortunately, these restrictions were only put on certain trial accounts. After a few weeks, the spammers were back to selling their services for real money as strong as ever (my characters were getting an unwanted /tell every hour or two and a couple of emails a night on average).
• A new 'ignore as spam' button was added to the Email window. Clicking this button would delete the email plus use the /ignore_spammer command on the sender. Handy to have once the spammers came back.
• Geas of the Kind Ones and Force of Nature accolades got toned down a lot. They used to give you a +100 To Hit buff (enough to laugh off any defense in the game) while hitting you with a -200% defense debuff (again, enough to laugh off any defense in the game). These were reduced to a 25% ToHit buff and a -10% defense debuff. The massive recharge rate buff and endurance recovery buff were retained.
• Force of Nature now works correctly when exemplared down in levels.
• Rare but long standing bug that would force a player into 1st person viewing mode every time s/he zoned was fixed.
• Several animations and cast times twinked, particularly where they didn't match up. (Cast time would be how long the game takes to do the power, animation time is how long your visible action takes. So if, for instance, your blast power has a 4 second animation time but a 3 second animation, you would end up just standing there for a second after doing your blast, unable to do anything.)
• Knockback/up/down powers now suppress in PvP after being used. No more juggling blasters.
• Some ground powers could be avoided by continously jumping. Fixed.
• Tar Patch, Bonfire, Ice Patch, Ice Slick, Quicksand, Caltrops, and Volcanic Gasses will now affect players above the area of effect, not just those on the ground.
• Range boosts can no longer stack. (I'm guessing this only applies to the Boost Range power stacking with itself if you put in several recharge enhancers. It's the only thing I know that increases range.)
• Self-rez powers (like Soul Drain) that make you untouchable for a few seconds after activation will now put floating text above the user saying "Untouchable." Sonic Cage will cause "Untouchable" to float up over the target's head.
• Controllers have always had a 50% chance of any mez power getting 1 point of bonus magnitude (which often allows them to hold bosses with a single hold power). Enemies that get hit by this 'critical mez' will now have floating text saying "Overpower" above them.
• Phase-out powers now get floating text as well, stating the power name that caused it. So enemies hit by the Black Hole power will have "Black Hole" pop over their heads.
• Power Boost no longer boosts knockback strength, can no longer stack with itself, and has has it's overall strength reduced by 33%.
• Radiation Emission's Fallout power now can only target dead teammates.
• Storm's O2 Boost now gives a perception bonus to the target.
• Powers that don't cause agro will no longer supress stealth.
• Debt protection normalized to 90 seconds for all powers that revive dead players.
• Phase-out powers now follow suppression rules in PvP.
• Phase Shift pool power can only be used once every 60 seconds at most.
• Phase Flight now has phase suppression, as does the Ethereal Shift empowerment.
• Acrobatics from the Leaping power pool had knockback protection reduced from 100 points down to just 9 points. (So a few things can knock you back but not much.) Also, Acrobatics will now take knockback enhancements. Slotting knockback into the power will increase your protection from knockback a bit.
• Teleport targetting got a lot of love. Teleport 'red rings of death' are pretty hard to get now, though you can still get them if you have some obstruction between your head and the camera. (Even small obstructions like telephone wires.) It's now fun and easy to teleport all around in missions!
• Knockback magnitude of the veteran's Nemesis Staff reduced from 9 to 4.
• Players that have been confused can only hurt people on their team.
• Break Free and Emerge inspires now give better repel protection.
• When the Oil Slick power fades out, it should no longer scare pets away.
• The robo-surgery base item now attaches correctly so it can be used.
• ReadBook emote added.
• Left/Right arrow keys will no longer crash your client if you are looking at the auction window.
• Fiery Melee's Scorch power gets a new (shorter) animation.
• Knockback/knockup animations no longer play faster for shorter players or longer for tall players.
• Knockback/knockup animations for flying/hovering players were altered.
• Hamidon mitochondria should be visible from further away now.
• Kismet's Increase Accuracy invention's accuracy buff was scaling with level, corrected to give a flat bonus.
• Past level 25, players in supergroup mode get less influence until level 35 and higher when players no longer get any influence while in SG mode. This was changed so that the influence penalty bottoms out at level 29 when players are getting half the influence they would get out of supergroup mode.
• Teams with a large difference in levels were getting a broken experience point distribution. This was fixed so the low level players won't get any xp or influence. Hopefully this will let players in the mid-40's play without being bothered every half hour by powerlevellers to "please bridge."
• One of the most farmed missions hero side was a high level story arc that had a mission against The Family. The Family was meant to be fought in the 20's so, even scaled up to the 40's, these guys are pretty easy to fight. XP for them has been reduced. (Family enemies fought at the normal level are worth normal xp.)
• Slavege drops got revamped so drops made more sense. The Legacy Chain stopped dropping tech salvage, for instance, and started dropping magic.
• Fiery Aura's Fire Shield and Plasma Shield sound effects now fade after looping a few times.
• English monacle and several new chest details added. Arctic, perplex, thorn, and vandal full body patterns added.
• Archery Blaster's Explosive Arrow now does full damage in PvP.
• Auto-turrets have been changed to "gun drones." Instead of just sitting on the ground, gun drones fly and will follow you around! The Malta got their turrets upgraded, too.
• Ice Manipulation's Shiver power was giving way too much defiance to blasters. (It was giving its bonus for each target hit instead of just once!) Fixed.
• Defenders that aren't level 1 or level 50 now do a bit more damage.
• Peacebringer's Quantum Flight power can now only phase you for 30 seconds (like other phase powers) but no longer has escalating endurance cost.
• Tank's Battle Axe powers "Gash" and "Beheader" animations have been swapped.
• Captain Mako's elude power no longer lasts as long and is not as effective.
• Dr. Vazhilok and Frostfire final missions now have cutscenes.
• Dr. Vazhilok now must be defeated in his story arc's final mission.
• The Sewer Trial was fixed up. Higher level party members are now exemped down to level 41. Also, the initial 'defeat Rikti' mission kill number was reduced. The contact for the mission (Maren MacGregor) was moved to Atlas Park near the sewers... sorta. She is also still in her old spot in Founder's Falls where she can complete the trial for anyone in the middle of the trial.
• Once a troll rave ends, the supa trolls should vanish instead of just milling around for hours.
• No more than one Deathsurge monster will appear in Cap au Diablo at once.
• Brute fury now works correctly against AVs, Giant Monsters, and in PvP.
• All dominator AoE hold powers can now hold up to 16 enemies instead of just 10.
• Fighting PvP targets will build up the domination bar now.
• Dominator's flare power in Fiery Assault has had it's range boosted from 60 to 80 feet.
• Mastermind pets can now be pushed around easier to keep the pets from blocking a player in a small room.
• Stalker placate powers no longer suppress hide. Stalkers using weapon powers should draw their weapon when using the power.
• (May 28th patch) Bug in calculating hit points for lieutenants fixed.
• Axe's Gash power renamed to beheader. Beheader power renamed to gash. This way they fit their new animations better.
• Even more animation time tweaking.
• Seeker drones and gun drones had their AI improved.
• The hover power has a new animation now for flying forward. Also, hover now resists powers that try to bring down fliers.
• When you earn a Vanguard Merit you will now see "Merit Award" instead of the salvage award messge.
• Taskforce challenge setting to debuff players was only being put on the team leader, fixed to affect all team members.
• Store icon on the character select screen changed from a dollar sign (in the American version, anyway) to a shopping bag.
• Blaster's World of Confusion power in Mental Manipulation endurance cost doubled.
• Confusion suppression added to several powers when used in PvP.
• Kheldian nova (squid) forms now resist fly debuff powers, as does Peacebringer's Combat Flight power. No more hopping squids! (Or at least not as many.)
• Combat Flight also defends against AoE attacks instead of just ranged and melee.
• Stalkers now do a bit more damage and have more hit points.
• Stalkers now have a chance of doing a critical in PvE even when not hidden. The base chance is 10% and this chance increases by 3% for each team member within 30 feet. Stalkers now only have a greater chance to critical held/slept targets in PvP.
• If a stalker misses with assassination strike, their hide power no longer suppresses (though other stealth powers they may have will still turn off for a bit).
• Hide suppression time reduced from 10 seconds to 8 seconds.
• If the target survives the assassination strike, the target will get a To Hit debuff and may be frozen in terror.
• Soldiers of Arachnos will now be able to enhance their patron pool powers correctly.
• Enemies defeated by the Crab Spider's Omega Maneuver will now grant rewards correctly.
• Animation times altered for Widow Swipe, Strike, and Slash powers. Widow Training's Strike power changed to a gut punch animation. That was pretty much the same animation as the Widow's Follow-Up attack, which caused some annoyance on the boards.
• The Super Reflex Evasion power was costing far too little endurance for brutes - corrected.
• Electric corruptor's Voltaic Sentinel now gets scourge effects.
• Ice dominator's Greater Ice Sword renamed to Ice Slash.
• Spider-leg backpacks can now take custome colors. However, they are only available to soldiers that have trained in the crab spider branch.
• I think it was with this patch that skirts got twisted so patterns were 90 degrees off. Also, as you can see in that picture, upper arms sometimes vanished. That required a visit to the tailor, though, the skirt patterns getting twisted happened immediately and couldn't be prevented. This led to some very... progressive outfits. :)
• (June 17, 2008) Martial Arts attack/animation times got cleaned up, most times were reduced. Same with scrapper Katana powers.
• Hover animation tweaked some more.
• The portable workbench accolade power now works correctly in PvE zones and does not work in PvP zones. The last patch switched those.
• Some NPC weapons were turned upside down (note Scirocco's sword). Fixed.
• The last mission in Darrin Wade's story arc (infiltrating the Midnight Squad's club) broke with the last patch, causing players who entered and many of the NPCs to fall way below the map. Fixed.
• ALL Trial accounts hit with the I12 limits. Also, characters now can not level past 13. There was a real mess with this one. Players who paid to upgrade their trial account were still treated as trial accounts until the two week trial was up. Prior to Issue 12, that was a good thing, as it gave the new player a free week or two of play. With the new restrictions, though, this was very bad. Furthermore, players on a trial account when the patch hit were not grandfathered. So, a character with a million inf on a trial account that had not expired would lose all but 50,000 inf. NCSoft fixed this in a few days and restored what it could. On the plus side, the RMT goldfarmers pretty much vanished again. My characters only got one or two email spams every few days and no tells at all after this was put in place for all free trials.
• Fixed a bug that would shrink tooltip help bubbles to super-tiny text after doing base edits.
• New exploration badges introduced in I12 no longer look like villain badges for heroes.
• Psi blasters' Psionic Dart icon now looks different than the Mental Blast power's icon.
• Buff icons were really crazy after issue 12. Some wouldn't appear at all, others would be repeated many times, blinking didn't work... blah. Some problems were fixed with this patch but not all.
• Technitian Naylor's Shadow Shard story arc now unlocks Rularuu weapons correctly.
• Bane Spiders that did a respec would sometimes get an invisible mace weapon. Fixed.
• Widow's Follow-Up power got a new animation (that doesn't look just like Strike's animation).
• Electric Melee's Chain Induction power got a revamp. It now jumps much faster and the spark gains the benifits of damage enhancers. Also, if the spark jumps to a confused enemy, the spark will no longer jump to a friendly player. However, the spark can now hit an enemy one time only.
• The Empty Clips power used by Mastermind thugs had damage reduced. Also, the power was fixed so the thugs didn't fire off the power before enemies were within the power's cone area.
• The new stalker demoralize effect was reduced. It only lasts 8 seconds instead of 12, the to-hit debuff was reduced to 7.5%, and the chance to terrorize the target was reduced to 25%.
• Stalker's Vengeful Slice can knock down opponents again.
• Stalker's Sting of the Wasp and Crippling Axe Kick can no longer do double-crits.
• (June 24th) CoT Behemoths' Invincibility power toned down. It now only gives about an 8% defense buff per target.
• Spine Burst and Thorn Burst powers will no longer prevent the next power used from animating.
• There's been an old bug (often called the Langoliers bug) where a player would zone in but, when s/he moved around the zone, would find that nobody was there. No NPCs, no fellow teammates, and doors would ignore clicks. For whatever reason, Issue 12 made this bug FAR more common. This patch tooks some steps to fix those problems and also introduced the new /sync (not /synch!) command for players to use if they still got hit by this bug.
• More tweaking to some blaster Defiance numbers.
• The corruptor version of Voltaic Sentinel now benifits from enhancements.
• Villains can now get the Rularuu bow.
• Skirt bug fixed. However, to fix it you must go to the tailor and do your skirt over. Free tailor tokens were handed out to compensate for this but characters with 'legacy' items (like some of the original face patterns) would not be able to fix the skirt without losing their legacy costume item(s).
• (June 26th) The first optional in-game advertisement appears, a sneaker... uhh... sports footware advertisement from Nike. I was a bit surprised Nike would be the first. We dwee... ummm ... digital entertainment enthusiasts are not known for our interest in sports related footware. The advertisement is actually pretty rare, being the only one in the game. Many folks didn't notice it at all.
• (July 9th) Veteran reward pets and Lady Jane no longer subscribe to the Leroy Jenkins School of Tactics and thus have stopped charging blindly into combats. Mostly.
• The Roman badge now awards correctly for Romulus defeats.
• The Shadow Shard TFs now award Rularuu weapons correctly. Also, Rularuu claws can now be unlocked.
• The game has a system that will ban you from public channels for a few minutes if you try to spam them. A bug in that code was causing some people to be banned for way too long. Bug fixed.
• Coalition chat wasn't always showing player names correctly - fixed.
• A bug that let accounts that have been globally ignored send you a tell anyway was fixed.
• Energy Melee's Energy Transfer power activation time changed from 1 second to 2.7 seconds. A new animation was put in for the power, too.
• The disorient mez aspect of Total Focus (all versions) was reduced to mag 3.
• Eagles Claw now always attempts to disorient the target instead of just doing it 75% of the time. Also, Storm Kick has a 5% larger chance to cause a critical hit.
• Glue Arrow now sticks around {ahem} after the initial target has been defeated.
• Super Strength's Punch power now has a new animation when done by a flying character.
• Talsorian bowstrings now stay tied to the bow.
• Buff icons got fixed up - Issue 12 really messed them up pretty bad.
• Defender's inherent Vigilance power is supposed to give an endurance discount when their team's health is low. However, it was also giving an endurance penalty when players had a health bonus! Penalty was removed.
• Dual Blade's Vengeful Strike power now has knockback suppression in PvP.
• Tanks' Dark Melee and Dual Blades powersets sometimes allowed "chance to" IO enhancements to affect entire areas of effect instead of just the target.
• Gordon Stacy now correctly assigns the second story in his Revenant Hero arc.
• Burning Daemon now spawns at the right level in Safeguard missions.
• Bane Spider cone attacks didn't have a max number of targets set.
• Crab Spiders' Serum power now takes effect faster.
• Dark Regen and Touch of Fear for brutes should now accept taunt enhancements.
• Dominators' Power Burst is now red again instead of hero-blue.
• Stalkers' Thunder Strike now takes PBAoE damage enhancers.
• Vetran title "Vengful" changed to "Vengeful". (Hehe, and you thought my typos in these notes were bad!)
• (July 22nd) Pets should now cycle through their ranged attack powers even when in melee range.
• Fixed a really nasty bug that would sometimes zero-out a supergroup's badge progression.
• The first group of Flashback badges are for levels 1-14, not 1-15 as it said in the text. Text updated to reflect the correct values. Similarly, the text for the highest levels was fixed to say 40-45 and 46-50 instead of 40-44 and 45-50.
• Rularuu Claws are available to female and huge players now.
• The custom Roman axe should now be granted for completing the Imperious Task Force.
• Trial accounts can no longer use Global Chat. At all.
• Trap of the Hunter was listed as granting range and/or damage. They don't. Text fixed.
• Common IOs should not state that they buff/debuff accuracy when they actually buff/debuff ToHit chances.
• When used near the limit of range, cone powers often would not do any damage. This was a really frustrating bug for melee players - it's really easy to get near the max range of a power when the max range is only 7ft.
• Animation time for Energy Punch, Stone Fist, Shadow Punch, and Charged Brawl made a bit faster, activation time made a bit slower. Brawl's timing was also changed a little.
• Earth Control's Animated Stone pet lost his Stone Hammer power but now has a Seismic Smash. It also understand how to cycle through powers better.
• Critters no longer attack the Portable Workbench (crafting accolade).
• The Lost and Found story arc for heroes now awards salvage even to players way above the mission levels. (The special salvage is required to complete the mission arc!)
• /Synch added to do the same thing as /Sync.
• Characters that are renamed will no longer make the character vanish until re-logging and the character will remain in the same slot.
• Corrected the Defiance buff granted to secondary power sets - they are back to their previous values now. (But not really. See the August 5th notes.)
• The Total Focus power of energy blasters was reduced from mag 4 to 3, causing a lot of screaming on the forums. (Mag 4 stuns will stun a boss in one shot, 3 won't.)
• Genin ninjas have dumped their bows and now use more Shuriken and Explosive Shuriken.
• Lich pets stay at range better now.
• Custom maces in patron Mace powersets now display correctly.
• (August 5th) It is no longer possible to store salvage or enhancements in the storage bins of an allied base. Sad, but it needed to be done.
• Fixed a nasty bug that made chat/tells vanish if you happened to get the message just as you were zoning.
• Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control: Chance for Building is now a unique enhancement (so you can only slot one per character).
• Change for recharge debuff from some IO sets will no longer affect the caster.
• Players can no longer target Omega Devices
• Plant Control's Entagle and Root powers will no longer reach up and grab fliers from high in the air. (It will still pull them down if they get close to the ground, though!)
• Energy Transfer's animation adjusted a bit.
• Fix to some Ouroborus badges. Also, the gold star marking a story arc as done should now work right.
• "Valorous" badge renamed to "Fearless".
• Black textures that show up on nVidia 8000+ cards fixed. Thank goodness, those things were just plain ugly.
• A couple of rare crashes fixed.
• Blaster secondary powers really do truely actually for-real give the correct defiance bonus now.
• Warshades' Eclipse no longer gives a bonus to the Warshade's resistance if the Warshade used a damage inspire before firing the power off.
• Tweak to brutes' Evasion power so defense doesn't change with attacker's level.
• Masterminds' Genin pets' shurikens now do more damage but recharge slower and take more endurance.
• Changes to Masterminds' Jounin pets' AI restored to what it was back in Issue 12's launch.
• Masterminds' Medics now lose their brawl attack when upgraded, which makes them a lot less likely to rush into the middle of combat. Also, their machineguns have been equiped with grenade launchers so they no longer have to throw them.
• Masterminds' Liches' Torrent power now only does knockdown (unless slotted with knockback enhancements).
• If you manage to get Barracude defeated in the "Assist Barracude" mission of the Temple of Waters strike force, the mission will fail.
• Dr. Vimes is now appearing again in the "Kidnap Dr. Franklin Vimes" mission.
• Darrin Wade now sells enhancements.
• (August 19) Global channels now say who initiated any operator actions. This should put an end to "stealth kicking" where a channel operator would kick somebody out of the channel without repurcusions - they could kick out almost everyone before anybody could figure out who was doing it!
• Rare bug that caused "wrong number of parameters" to spam the global chat fixed.
• A Hamidon Enhancement that has been enhanced (+ or ++) will now retain the bonus when traded.
• The "Stop sending all buffs" option (used mostly by folks on dial-up to reduce network traffic) would sometimes cause a crash saying Base.Power.Not.Found. Fixed.
• Claw attack animations were made more smooth. Most were made faster but Eviscerate was made a little slower. Also, most attacks now do a bit more damage with the exception of Focus, which does a bit less.
• Players can now push fire imps. No more getting trapped in closets by your own pets!
• Sonic's Screech power now takes range enhancements.
• Owing to many player complaints, graphical effects from temp powers granted by mayhem (and, I presume, safeguard) missions have been removed.
• Earth Control's animated stone pet's Seismic Smash power has a hold magnitude of just 3 now. Also, the hold only happens two thirds of the time.
• Some office maps would be impossible to beat on 'defeat all' missions. Ice Mistral's SF was particularly notorious for this bug. Fixed.
• A bug that made it impossible to use your keyboard if you accessed supergroup settings while defeated was fixed by making it impossible to access supergroup settings while defeated.
• 51-month veteran reward helmets were not always showing up in character creation. Problem fixed.
• Mastermind pets no longer drop their names when defeated and resummoned.
• (Sept 16) Bug that sometimes caused rent to go negative fixed. A good thing, because players couldn't pay off negative rent and the base would get shut off.
• Bug that caused channels to move from tab to tab fixed.
• The animated stone pet's taunt effect was only lasting for 1 second! Increased to 13.2 seconds.
• 51 month veteran helmets now include the Blood Widow helmet.
• (Sept 16) Super Booster Pack 1: Cyborgs added. This includes some extra costume options, emotes, and the mighty Self Destruct power for $9.99. (As you might guess, people were self destructing all over town when this was introduced!) Also added was the Temporary 30-Day Jetpack mini-booster power for $4.99, which gave all your characters flight power for 30 days.
• (Sept 23) The cyborg's Self Destruct power were causing some issues. If you managed to get defeated AND revive yourself while self destructing, lots of bugs would happen. Some folks had found ways to survive a self destruct. Being dressed in model-changing costumes (like Halloween costumes) when self destructing would cause problems. Self Destruct could give you debt if you had some other form of debt protection at the same time. All these bugs and more were fixed.
• Also, a bug that made the ocean vanish in the first mission of the Imperious Task Force was fixed.
• (October 18th) A big new addition to the yearly Halloween Event - Zombie Hordes! Much like Rikti invasions, zombies and other mosters will raid city zones. Badges were added for defeating them, too!

Issue 13 - Power & Responsiblity

Issue 13 started as "Issue 13: Architect" but NCSoft decided to push the mission creation system off to issue 14 so they could include more of what players were asking for. Issue 13 still had some pretty huge changes all by itself.

When the game first came out, Task Force arcs and some of the larger story arcs would reward you with a Single Origin enhancer when you finished. When recipes and the invention system were put in with issue 9, the player was able to choose an SO or a random rare recipe. Well, some recipes were EXTREMELY valuable (ranged damage, melee damage, and healing recipes in particular) but a lot of recipes were aimed at rarer powers (immobilization, slow, confusion) and sold for a pitance. What's more, all Strike Forces were treated equally so a massive task like the ones found in the Shadow Shard gave the same random roll as a quick one like the Croatoa TF. Many players would, in fact, do "Quick Katies" night after night in hopes of a lucky roll.

Enter the Merit system. Now defeating a Task Force, story arc, or even a Giant Monster rewards you with merits. Longer and more difficult tasks reward more merits. Also, tasks you have completed recently (within a day or so) will reward fewer merits, encouraging you to do at least a few new things. Merits can be redeemed at merit vendors located all over town for inspirations, enhancements, and recipes. You can also buy a random recipe if you enjoyed the old system.

• Multiple Builds - two of them, actually. Your second build will be the same level and will have the same primary and secondary powersets as your character's primary build. Everything else, though, can change - including what power pools you pick. This allows players to make one build that concentrates on team-oriented powers and another build designed to solo. Or the player could make one build designed for PvE play and another designed for PvP. Arachnos Widows can make a Fortunata build and a Night Widow build. The second build does require its own enhancements. That's a blessing in that it helps you specialize each build more but it does cost a good bit more inf to really max both builds out.
• Day Jobs. When your character logs off in certain areas, they take on "day jobs." For instance, if a hero logs off in a shop, they take on the shopkeeper day job. If a villain logs off near a ferry, they take on the smuggler day job. While logged off, progress is made on a badge associated with that day job. Once you get the badge (which takes a total of 20 days), time spent working at a day job results in some minor benifits. For instance, a bonus inspiration may be awarded or extra prestige. Also, pairs of day jobs result in an accolade badge and further rewards. Also, for every 24 hours logged out, the character gets a bar of "patrol xp". This xp shows up as blue in the xp bar and, while it's there, the character gets a 50% bonus to all experience gains. Patrol xp also protects from debt. Up to 10 bars of patrol xp can be accumulated.
• Two new powersets were added. Shields were added for tanks, brutes, and scrappers. Also, a healing set was finally added for villains - Pain Domination. Villains had been screaming for an empath set for years but how does a villain become an empath? The answer was to make a whole new set for Masterminds and Corruptors based on pain.
• Along with the shields powerset came custom shields. The Talsorian shield can be bought with 100 Vanguard Merits. The Centurion badge unlocks Roman shields. Defeating Romulus once unlocks the Romulus shield and defeating Romulus Nictus five times unlocks the Romulus Nictus shield. The Rularuu shield is unlocked with the Visionary badge or by earning souvenirs from Shadow Shard story arcs and task forces.
• Leveling Pacts added. This is handy for close friends, particularly husband/wife pairs. Characters at 5th level or less can enter this pact and the game will lock them down so they will always be the same level (or at least very, very close). All xp and influence earned by one character is split between both so, if one is logged out, both will still gain xp at the same rate.
• Massive PvP changes! These only apply to Play vs. Player combat.
  • Damage for powers recomputed. The time it takes to fire off a power (animation time) is now the largest consideration. Recharge time and endurance still count but not as much as animation time.
  • Base damage for all archtypes was increased. Controller's Containment inherent power was reduced to compensate for their base damage increase.
  • Being hit by an attack or debuff will trigger movement power suppression, just like using an attack. Healing powers will also trigger suppression. The longer the base range of the attack is, the longer the suppression will last.
  • Teleport Foe, Wormhole, and other similar powers now grant 0.75 seconds of untouchable. This should help with the old "teleport them in and hit them with assassin strike" trick. Players that get teleported at least have a chance to chomp down on a defensive inspiration before getting nailed by a waiting stalker.
  • Defensive toggles now keep working when stunned or held.
  • Resistance and defense powers no longer stack as well in PvP and have lower caps.
  • Except for tanks and masterminds, all archtypes now get a little default resistance to all attacks in PvP.
  • Healing powers will heal less when used several times over a short period of time.
  • Melee class anti-mez powers (Wet Ice, Plasma Shield, Practiced Brawler) now grant resistance to debuffs, including debuffs to movement speed.
  • Defenders, controllers, corruptors, dominators, and masterminds do not benifit as much from buff powers. The powers have less effect and cap out at lower values. Melee ATs get more effect from buff powers.
  • Defeating enemies in PvP gives no xp but can award influence/infamy, inspirations, and salvage.
  • Status protection against mez effects is gone. Resistance (which shortens effect duration) still exists. However, the duration of mez effects was also greatly reduced. In general, controllers' and dominators' powers now last 4 seconds while other ATs only last 2 seconds. So it's now much easier to mez an enemy in PvP but much harder to keep them that way for very long.
  • Knockback is an exception to the new mez rules.
• Two new contacts were put in to Cimerora - Sister Airlia and Daedalus. Each has two story arcs, Airlia for villains and Daedalus for heroes. Both are for high levels.
• There's also a new Midnight Squad contact, Mercedes Sheldon, who has some missions for mid-level heroes and villains.
• When doing a respec, villains can now re-pick their patron power pool. This was long requested but not put in to the game until now, probably for continuety reasons. (Villains have to complete a fairly difficult story arc to get their patron powers.) With the dual build system, though, the playability demands won out.
• Supergroup bases also got a pretty big revamp...
  • Rent is no longer charged according to plot size. Instead, it is charged according to what is actually in the base. Folks who were crammed into the rent-free tiny plots now had to pay rent but for everyone with bigger plots, this almost certainly meant a massive reduction in rent costs.
  • Most rooms in bases (with the exception of purely decorative rooms) were made cheaper.
  • Items crafted for bases now use invention salvage instead of base salvage. They cost less prestige, too, though often cost inf.
  • For those that already had bases established, refunds were issued as soon as somebody walked into the base.
  • Base salvage is done. It wasn't flat out removed but it no longer drops and the only things you can build with base salvage are "brainstorms": a special kind of salvage that can, in turn, be crafted into invention salvage. One piece of base salvage would make one brainstorm and one base component would make three brainstorms. 20 brainstorms would make a random rare invention salvage.
  • Base salvage racks now hold invention salvage instead. The old racks held 999 (or more) base salvage items but the new racks can only hold 30 invention salvage items.
  • Base raiding was turned off so it could be redesigned.
  • Since there's no longer any raiding, there's no longer any need for special placement rules when placing base items. Clipping rules have been cut way back, allowing items to overlap if the base builder desires.
  • A new supergroup badge and teleport beacon were added for Pocket D. (Unfortunately, the art for the beacon was the same as the art for Grandville.)
  • Robo-surgery and spirit signal crafted base items can now be attached to rez units, as designed.
• Defensive toggle powers no longer are switched off when the player is slept, held, or stunned. Instead they are suppressed, meaning that most of the power's effects are taken away. The power is still active, though, so when the mez ends, the powers instantly switch back on instead of having to turn them back on one at a time. Status protection powers will still provide status protection when mezzed and fly powers will still grant flight, at least until something with a flight debuff comes along. (Offensive toggle powers like Radiation Infection and Orbiting Death will still turn off when mezzed.)
• Patron pools and ancillary (epic) power pools have been expanded a bit. They have each gained an additional power choice at level 44. Just as you can pick from two powers at level 41, so too can you pick from two powers at level 44.
• Masterminds' pet buff powers are no longer used on one pet at a time. Instead, casting the power will buff all the MM's pets within 30 feet of the target! Endurance cost was given a massive increase to compensate for this. This cuts out the tedious job of buffing all your pets when you first enter a mission. However, it isn't as easy to re-buff pets in the heat of battle now.
• The maximum status resistance cap was increased for all ATs. Even the rare ones like confuse and intangible.
• The floor for debuffing a ranged power has been increased to 25%. So a power with an 80 foot range will always be able to fire from 25 feet away.
• Power Thrust in the Energy Manipulation set had the wrong sound effect. Fixed.
• After using a phase power or Hibernate, you can not do so again for another 90 seconds.
• When temp powers are disabled, the Goldbricker Rocket Pack will disable correctly.
• Web Grenade powers now accept slow enhancements and IO sets.
• The Run Speed Increase empowerment now buffs run speed correctly.
• For the Invulnerability powerset, Unyielding no longer gives a defense debuff but Invinciblity no longer gives a defense buff per target. They also got some debuff resistance effects added to other powers.
• Fiery Aura's Temperature Protection power now has a 20% resistance to run speed debuffs (slow powers).
• War Mace's Crowd Control can how hit up to 10 targets instead of just 5. Shatter can now only hit 5 targets instead of 10. Clobber's recharge time was reduced to 16 seconds and the stun duration was reduced as well. Also, Clobber's damage and endurance cost was altered to fit the standard formula for powers.
• New costumes were added to fit the new Day Job feature.
• Players can now save and load costumes from the tailor screen. Handy when you want to re-make a character on another server. (And handy for the Mission Architect Custom Critter Creator, but I'm getting ahead of myself...)
• New aura combinations were added. For instance, some auras now can be chosen to appear around just hands and feet. Also, auras were given some optimization love.
• When City of Heroes first came out, each character got just one costume. You could set up supergroup colors for that costume so, when in supergroup mode, you had your supergroup colors showing - it made for a great team look. When issue 1 came out, though, and gave us up to four costumes per character, the supergroup color feature wasn't updated. Changing your costume to supergroup colors worked fine for one costume but mangled the colors in the other four. It couldn't handle wings at all, when those were introduced. Finally, after three and a half years, the supergroup costume interface was merged with the tailor screen. You can now pick your supergroup colors for each costume individually and it works just fine with wings!
• You can check how your costume will look in supergroup mode while in the tailor shop.
• Freedom Corps Sonic Grenandes are no longer irresistible.
• Shadow Shard reflections of CoT Cold Thorn mages were not using their offensive powers. Fixed.
• Banished Pantheon mask bosses now range from level 20 to 30.
• The Infected now go all the way up to level 10.
• The Lost and Found story arc for heroes now awards salvage even to players way above the mission levels. (Deja vu...)
• Mayhem and Safeguard missions can no longer be dropped.
• Reordering the characters for one server should no longer mangle the order on other servers.
• The game now has over 600 badges and the old interface for browsing through them is really getting hard to use. Badges have now been divided into more categories and a dropdown list lets you pick the category you want. Also, as shown, a new pseudo-category showing the badges you've gotten most recently has been provided. VERY handy for when you get a badge and have no idea what it's for or what category it's in!
• Special contacts that are unlocked by getting certain badges or gaining levels now give you a popup message when you unlock them and are put on your active contacts list. I'm guessing way too many casual players were missing all those cool hidden contacts over on the villain side.
• Here's an option you won't see every day - an option to turn off experience points if you don't want to earn xp. Sound crazy? Well, it may not be to some folks. Say you want the temp power and/or badge for the Atlas Park Mayhem mission. If you are about to level past it before you've gotten the mission, this will let you be sure to stay within range. Or maybe you want to hit level 50 at a specific time - now you can. Previously, people were getting themselves killed just so the debt would slow down the xp earned!
• Control-X and control-C now cut and copy text in the chat windows. Also, control-A will select all text. (Control-V for pasting text already works.)
• Text in the chat windows is now indented differently. This helps prevent people from writing chat text in such a way that it looks like somebody else has spoken.
• TF/SF challenge badges for the first level rank now corrected to say levels 1-14 instead of levels 1-15. (Deja vu all over again?)
• Lots of text updated in badge descriptions to better describe exactly what you need to earn the badge. Very handy when you want to know what other badges you need for an accolade.
• Progress bars added to more badges. Also, progress bars have been given toolhelp text so, when you hover over the bar, it will tell you exactly how far you have to go to get the badge. (Though sometimes you still need a bit of math. If you still have three and a half days to go on a day job, the progress bar will tell you that you still need another 300,000 seconds left.)
• When the top badge for healing (Empath) was put in the game, an extra 0 was accidentally stuck in on the end of the requirements. That made it all but impossible to get. Some people DID manage to get it before the mistake was found, though, so the devs didn't want to fix it because that would invalidate the work they did. After much campaining, begging, and threatening of small creatures (even from folks who had gotten the badge), NCNC relented and changed the badge so it required the player to heal only 100,000,000 points of damage. A great squeeeeee was heard that day.
• Progress bars fixed for Artisan, Craftsman, Master Craftsman, and Fabricator.
• A progress bar was added for the Isolator badge. Kinda. It will appear but only after you have defeated 15 Contaminated.
• Banisher and Outlaw badges had some bugs fixed.
• Having slow resistance on your character will not cause you to resist the Force Feedback IO's "chance for +recharge" buff.
• Universal Travel IOs no longer work in Sprint powers.
• Knockback sets improve knockup powers as well as knockdown.
• Several new IO sets were added: Eradication and Obliteration for PBAoE damage, Basilisk's Gaze and Lockdown for holds, Blessing of the Zephyr for universal travel, Call to Arms and Expedient Reinforcement for recharge intensive pets, Theft of Essence and Touch of the Nicutus for accurate healing, Shield Breaker and Analyze Weakness for accurate defense debuffs, and Cloud Senses and Siphon Insight for accurate to-hit debuffs.
• Reconnaissance Officers added near the entrances of hero hazard zones (near the Steel Canyon gate for Perez Park). They give you a description of the zone and some of it's history, much like security officers in city zones on the hero side.
• Vendors now offer Jet Packs for cheap in the Shadow Shard and Grandville. (The Day Job power for each of those zones also gives you a free Jet Pack power.)
• A couple of invention crafting tables were put near Lady Grey's alcove in the Rikti War Zone.
• A portal to player bases was added to Pocket-D.
• A tailor (Trina) was added to the Pocket-D VIP Lounge.
• The Mind Probe power of Mental Manipulation will no longer take range enhancements - it's a melee power.
• Normalized (mostly sped up) the projectile speed for Psionic/Psychic blast powers.
• Plant Control's Fly Trap pet resistances increased.
• Sped up Archery's Aimed Shot attack speed.
• Heat Loss in the Cold Domination set grants the correct endurance recovery per target again.
• Dark Mastery's Soul Drain power now gives a bigger buff from the first target but less from additional targets. Also, Oppressive Gloom's area of effect was increased.
• And many more!