Opening address and Going Rogue preview.

Upcoming guest authors for AE: Mercedes Lackey and Troy Hickman.

Preview of Going Rogue: phenomenal! New graphics settings "Ultra Mode" puts things like shadows and more realistic looking city settings.
Preview of dual pistols was amazing. Think John Woo action flick with lots of movement and tricks. Dual pistols avail for blaster primary, corruptor primary, and Def secondary.
Going Rogue will be a transitional storyline that your character goes through.
New zones in Praetoria look amazing. New start area and new tutorial too!

Totally awesome!

-Hot Mamma

Copied from the official forums:

So, when our group ran over to the CoH booth later in the evening, we had a chance to say hi (and in my case thank) Posi, who was looking very tired but still very personable.

Then Hero-1 Joe Morrissey chatted with us. Future reference for everyone, if you ever get a chance to talk with Joe at future cons, do so. Joe was wired, asked us about our characters and sg, then nearly burst telling us some of the background of Praetoria that's coming out in i16.

I don't want to steal too much of their thunder, so I'll just say this. Joe said they started writing the history of Praetoria from 1896, which is when Marcus Cole was born. And then from there, decided, "If Tyrant existed, would A have happened in history? Yes, or no? Okay, so that changes this, now what would have happened.

All the way up to modern day. And a lot of that is where some of the new factions (he wouldn't say, and only gave hints) arose, as well as how some of the redeeming/corrupting missions will play out. Some things will be vary, "Do you want me to kill this despot running this area? Because he's a total jerk, but he's also the only thing keeping the civilians alive. Do you want freedom, or do you want to live?" type of decisions.

Also, powers list for Earth Assault.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?feature=3399&page=1&game=3&bhcp=1

Earth Assault, like other Assault sets, combines a good mix of Ranged and Melee powers. It has a healthy dose of soft control, good damage, and with Mud Pots - one of the best Damage Auras available.

Earth Assault:

1 Stone Spears
2 Stone Mallet
4 Tremor
10 Hurl Boulder
16 Power Boost
20 Heavy mallet
28 Seismic Smash
35 Mud Pots
38 Fissure

Additionally, we also conducted a mini-proliferation pass on the Ancillary and Patron Power Pools, adding 5th powers to most Pools and adding Blaze Mastery for Scrappers. This has been something which people have been asking for since Fire primaries and secondary's were given to them.

Current Mood: ecstatic

I dunno if anyone else has seen this, but someone got a Dev Digest up and running.

Post here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=185634

Digest here: http://cohdigest.appspot.com/

Source
( I16: Super-Sidekicking Explained )

NA Servers
( NA )

Euro Servers
( Euro )

Small tidbit from Positron
I can't believe we forgot the patch note about Pets zoning with their owners in I16.

EDIT:
part 2
To those that think I am pulling your leg. I am not, and Pohsyb is "da man" for making this dream of mine come true.

Tweeted Positron:

I16 Closed Beta... today!

Issue 16 closed beta today. I believe that anyone can access the character creator/power customization without actually logging into game

Training room is down to get fix for only closed beta testers being able to log in to character creator working.

There was just a email fired off about the Double XP weekend, and there was a nugget about a new, limited-time offer.

( Details below )

Here's a copy of the Email sent out. NewzYouWant has sent out emails for PlayNC before.


EDIT - 6:30CDT: There has been a news post in the News section of the COH website. http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/news_archive/loyal_through_thick_and_thin.html

( Extra info )

https://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=0&Number=13795611&page=0&vc=1

The migration is happening and it is happening fast!

As a matter of fact, next week is when we will be transferring over to the new vBulletin boards!

Between 7AM and 9AM Pacific Time, on July 28th, the current UBB Message Boards will be taken offline in order to transfer the data over to the vBulletin Message Boards. This means that the UBB Message Boards will NOT be accessible during that time. The work that needs to be done on the new boards is expected to take approximately 72 hours.

We will be giving you updates on this migration throughout the process so be sure to check out the CoH_OCR twitter page regularly!

As for your handles, we will be giving you more information on name conflicts and what to do to change yours after we have made sure that everything is functioning properly on the new vBulletin Message Boards. We appreciate that this is a serious concern, but rest assured we are aware of the situation and will endeavor to minimize any impact this will have.

Last but not least, if you haven't saved your Private Messages or thought about your forum handle yet, now is the time to do it!

"Frankly, I think if you take super jump or even super strength without invulnerability, you should kill yourself doing just about anything."

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=13735132

Current Mood: amused

Manticore (Sean Michael Fish (did you know he used to do voice acting?)) just opened a big can of whoop-ass on lore:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Number=13557669

( First set of lore-answers here! )

Ask your lore questions here:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Number=13557773
*** INCLUDING DISCREPANCIES between current lore, past lore, and new lore posted in Canon Fodder ***

Current Mood: excited

Gamasutra article

Brought to my attention from Slashdot, if it matters.

Will edit in a bit with the article text for those behind work filters and whatnot. The first paragraph does have Joe Morrissey (Hero 1) come up with various euphemisms for the male organ.

NC NorCal is now Paragon Studios.

Official announcement

Kotaku

Enhanced Online News

Upon looking at the new logo, does anyone else feel the peculiar urge to look for a footnote or something?

Massively.com interview with Joe Morrissey (aka Hero 1)

Contains some tidbits about the MA, like how arcs are chosen for Dev Choice, which I'm sure at least some may be interested in.

Will edit to reproduce the content later, for those blocked at work or whatnot.

EDIT:
x Jim Morrissey
o Joe Morrissey

EDIT:
( Full text, no pictures )

Since I haven't seen anyone post this stuff, here are a few tidbits in case you don't watch the Dev feed.

Posi talks about badges becoming a little more meaningful and more ( copied here )

And Posi talking about the reformed badge ( copied here )

Sunstorm talks about woes for large SG bases ( copied here )

Update to base bug ( copied here )

The Mac version of the City client has been officially released!

Download the client

Ex Libris's Post with details

Buy the pack celebrating the release for $19.99 at the PlayNC Store or at Gametreeonline.com.

You DO NOT have to buy the pack to get access. All you need is an active account. Use the updater link above!

Yes, PC users can buy the pack and apply it to their existing account. Get the goodies plus a month for cheap!

1. The new version of Mids Hero Planner is now available. The new version requires you uninstall your old version first. If you're not using already it can be downloaded at http://www.cohplanner.com/ Mids requires the optional windows component Microsoft .net Framework 2.0.

2. We were granted a freespec by the devs during the i13 patch. According to Positron's welcome letter from the weekend, we'll be granted another freespec sometime after the 21st of December. Developer granted free-respecs do not stack, and are triggered by typing /respec.

3. As a part of i13, the window that displays recipes has become very wide, annoyingly so to some people. This is the same frame also used by the merit vendor and crafting. Why it can't be resized by the user, I don't know, but it is possible to shrink it by scaling it. There is a command to scale a window, "windowscale." /windowscale recipe .8 will scale the recipe window to 80%. The possible range on that is 65% to 199%. You can put it back to default size with /windowscale recipe 1. See also:http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Window_Scale_Guide

In today's patch notes:

"Fixed issue when an attack power was in animation, you were unable to turn off a toggle. The fix now allows for all toggles to be turned off except costume changing powers."

THANK YOU.  This was seriously messing with me on my new alts in trying to toggle off sprint to conserve endurance while fighting.  Someone had said this had been changed to fix an exploit but maybe that was not the case after all.

You might have noticed what a pain in the ass it is to set missions on a team right now, what with everyone having to be in the same zone, and them being labelled and such. According to Posi, this is a bug and is being worked on now. So heave a sigh of relief and start wondering what the hell they were /trying/ to do that bugged into that.