City of Heroes Guest Author program missions soon

Paragon Studios announced the addition of Bill Willingham, along with Rooster Teeth and Scott Kurtz as inaugural participants in the recently announced Guest Author program, made possible through the Mission Architect tool set in City of Heroes. The Guest Author program lets writers and story designers work alongside a world-class development team to bring their ideas to life within City of Heroes.

The four inaugural guest author missions will premiere in-game on Tuesday, October 13, following the Reactivation and Double XP weekend that’s going on now. The missions can be found in game by opening the browser inside one of the Architect Entertainment Buildings. Brief descriptions of the Guest Author missions after the break:

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City of Heroes Double XP weekend Oct. 8 - 11

If by some chance you strayed from the loving embrace of City of Heroes to play some other game (Champions Online) or just grew tired of the game altogether, NCsoft wants you back. The team at Paragon Studios is celebrating the recent launch of Issue 16: Power Spectrum with a free Reactivation and Double XP weekend. Beginning Thursday, October 8, where all inactive accounts in good standing (I.E. you paid your bill) can log into City of Heroes and enjoy all the new Powers Customization and Mission Architect features free! More importantly, all Hero and Villain characters will receive double the experience points (XP), Influence, and Infamy for their accomplishments in game. You can also check out a massive amount of user created missions thanks to the Mission Architect, which has resulted in more than 50,000 story arcs to play.

The magic of Double XP ends on Oct. 11. Download the Mac or PC client at http://www.cityofheroes.com. City of Heroes: Architect Edition is also available in stores and online via Steam.

Scott Kurtz, Rooster Tooth dabble in City of Heroes

NCsoft and Paragon Studios today announced a new Guest Author program for the Mission Architect user-generated content system in City of Heroes. This program invites influential writers and aspiring game or story designers to collaborate with the team behind the City of Heroes MMORPG and publish custom missions directly into the City of Heroes game using the Mission Architect system. Participants in the Guest Author program will be announced on a regular basis. The first participants of this program will be Red vs. Blue series creators Rooster Teeth and PVP creator Scott Kurtz

Rooster Teeth plans to bring Captain Dynamic and his nemesis, The Great Face, from YouTube to City of Heroes, while Kurtz plans to bring character LolBat to life within Mission Architect.

Those attending the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in Seattle this week should make time for the City of Heroes panel discussion entitled “Mission Architect: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Story.” Both Scott Kurtz and Rooster Teeth’s Joel Heyman will be on hand with City of Heroes developers to talk about their experiences creating their own unique, personalized missions for the game. The panel will be Saturday, Sept. 5th, 2:30pm - 3:30pm Raven Theatre at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center.

NCsoft goes all out at PAX

NCsoft promises to “hold nothing back” at this year’s Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle - mostly because the company’s NCSoft West offices are nearby. The company will host three booths featuring playable content from the launch update of Aion; various activities surrounding the recent reveal of the Guild Wars 2 teaser trailer, including a Guild Wars 2 art book giveaway; and the playable City of Heroes Issue 16 Power Spectrum and Mission Architect build, featuring powers customization and Mission Architect enhancements on the show floor.

The Aion booth will feature 20 gaming stations with the new playable content from the update 1.5, playable for the first time in North America. The launch update introduces many enhancements including improvements to Aion’s character customization now featuring Western styles, as well as new zones, instances, skills, quests, game balancing and other improvements. Aion spokespeople, including Brian Knox and Lani “Liv” Blazier, will also be available for one-on-one interviews in the booth (#642).

Following the world premiere of the teaser trailer in Cologne, Guild Wars 2 will be at PAX in spirit: A drawing at the Guild Wars II booth will see lucky winners score a copy of The Art of Guild Wars 2 – a hardbound 128 page book of art by Guild War 2’s artists. Those artists will be on site signing the book throughout the show. In addition, NCsoft will hosting talks covering the upcoming novel The Fall of Ascalon and Q&A sessions with the Guild Wars Live Team in the booth (#842).

Finally, The City of Heroes booth (#542) will lets players check out the powers customization update featured in the game’s 16th free expansion, “Power Spectrum,” before its public release. City of Heroes’ developers will be available to give hands-on tips for using the game’s Mission Architect user-generated content system, answer questions and discuss the future of the super hero MMO genre. In addition to booth activities which include giveaways and a PAX exclusive Costume Power code, the City of Heroes team will host a panel discussion entitled “Mission Architect: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Story,” and will host a player Meet and Greet on Saturday evening.

City of Heroes Issue 16 details, Comic-Con plans

NCsoft’s Paragon Studios team have revealed the next major content update, Issue 16: Power Spectrum. Issue 16 will let players customize their powers, in addition to an update to the character creator, powerset proliferation options and more. Powers customization is the most requested feature that players have wanted and they are going to get it this fall, according to NCsoft. More details can be found at www.cityofheroes.com.

The City of Heroes team will be at Comic-Con this week, showing off the game, including the closed beta version of Issue 16. They are also are holding a panel discussion on Saturday, July 25 at 6:30pm in room 7AB. The panel synopsis, City of Heroes—Five Years and Going Strong: How to Keep Your MMO Alive and Kickin’, will feature Brian Clayton (GM/Executive Producer), Matt Miller (Lead Designer), Vince D’Amelio (Lead Engineer), and Joe Morrissey (Senior Designer).

City of Heroes Issue 15: Anniversary goes live

City of Heroes Issue 15: Anniversary has launched, bringing a whole new chapter and new content to the comic-book inspired MMO. Commemorating the game’s recent five-year anniversary celebration, Issue 15: Anniversary brings City of Heroes its 15th free content update, which introduces new content, missions, features and customization tools.

Issue 15: Anniversary marks the revival of The 5th Column, the most popular villain group in the game, through 10 new missions. Players can tackle these villains in a Hero Task Force or a Villain Strike Force, to uncover the mystery behind the resurgence of this long dormant foe. Along with the new missions, players can now customize their characters with more than 20 extra character faces, Vines and Ulterior themed costume sets and several new costume change emotes - visual animations that come to life when characters transition between costumes within the game.

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City of Heroes: Going Rogue Announced

NCsoft announced the development of City of Heroes Going Rogue, the first major expansion for the City of Heroes franchise since the launch of City of Villains in 2005. Going Rogue hopes to open up the worlds of Heroes and Villains to both sides for the first time using an alignment system. This will be possible by creating a new parallel universe known as Praetoria, which is governed by Tyrant, the evil incarnation of the game’s main protagonist, Statesman.

The new alignment system will encourage players to explore the shades of gray by allowing hero characters you become villains and vice versa. This means that the archetypes restricted to each region will be able to take on missions in the Rogue Isles and Paragon City. Clearly marked missions, in addition to behaviors and decisions made by the player, will move a hero’s or villain’s moral compass, which could eventually change the hero’s or villain’s alignment. Going Rogue will also introduce two primary new fictional characters representative of this alignment shift in the game’s lore: Maelstrom, a pistol-wielding hero gone rogue, and Desdemona, a demon-summoning villain who has been redeemed.

NCsoft will share more details on Going Rogue in the coming months. The biggest challenge I see is in balancing these missions to work with a whole new set of archetypes. How will the various Paragon City missions be affected by an archetype like the Mastermind? It will be interesting to see how it all works out. In the meantime, check out the FAQ ripped from the official City of Heroes page, after the break.

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