PC Gamer Reviews City of Heroes Freedom

They misspelled the name of the game (there's no ":" in City of Heroes Freedom) but make up for it by giving it an 86/100.

Read the review at PC Gamer.
Unofficial discussion thread at the official forums.

Black Friday Sale Extended & My Black Friday Purchases

The Black Friday Sale has been extended to December 1st (December 5th for the VIP Starter Pack special)! Same deal as before, but Numina's Convalescence will go up sometime after the sale (at sale price) when the bug it has is fixed. Until then, get those LoTG +Global Recharge Paragon Store Origins (PSOs)!

And speaking of LoTG globals, I bought ten of them. My reasoning is that not only are they highly useful, they also offer something IO LoTG globals don't: the Defense value scales with your level. Sure, you can get minimum level IO LoTG +Recharges for exemplaring and leveling, but the Defense enhancement will always stay small. With the PSO version of LoTG +Recharge, the value scales to improve as you go up in level. That's a big advantage on one of the most handy enhancements in the game, and that's worth paying for in my opinion.

I'll be recycling them down to leveling alts when a currently-equipped character hits 50 (I don't do much exemplaring). Ten means I can have two leveling alts each outfitted with the maximum of five LoTG +Recharges. At 50 they'll be replaced by IO LoTG +Recharges and handed down.

Quite a few people are buying them. They're worth every one of the 113 points you'll spend.

Discuss the Black Friday Sale extension at the official forums.

The City of Heroes Freedom Black Friday Sale is On Now!

BLACK FRIDAY SALE! (and a pilgrim hat)

The City of Heroes Freedom Black Friday Sale will be taking place from November 25-28, with discounts ranging from 50% to 80% off!

The biggest thing to catch my eye from the announcement:

Numina's Convalescence (Lvl 30-50)
Regular Price: 1170 Points
Sale Price: 400 Points
Basilisk's Gaze (10-30)
Regular Price: 1070 Points
Sale Price: 400 Points
Kinetic Combat (20-35)
Regular Price: 775 Points
Sale Price: 400 Points
Luck of the Gambler (25-50)
Regular Price: 1125 Points
Sale Price: 400 Points

Numina's Convalescence? Luck of the Gambler? Kinetic Combat? These are some of the biggest names in Inventions being made available! That's fantastic! But wow, look at those prices! Regular price of 1170 Points for a set of Numina's? That's approximately $14.63! For one set! The sale price of 400 points is $5.00. That's what the every day price of these should be (and even then, is a bit high. Store IOs should cost 25-50 cents each).

Also, the cheaper sets like Kinetic Combat have exactly the same sale price as the more expensive ones. That...makes no sense.

Still, one might consider picking up the Global Uniques from Numina's and LoTG individually. I know I'm considering it.

But don't take my word for it! Click on the announcement link below, scroll past the silly hat at the top and check out the SIO hotness yourself!

Read the announcement at the official forums.
Discuss the Black Friday Sale at the official forums.

Salute to Statesman Loyalty Program

The 2012 Salute to Statesman Loyalty Program (aka, The 2012 Please Don't Let Your Sub Lapse When Star Wars: The Old Republic Launches Program) is coming soon!

Stay subscribed (even if you're playing SWTOR instead of CoHF) between December 1st 2011 and March 31st 2012 to get goodies such as Lord Recluse and Statesman-inspired helmets, badge, aura, pet, costume change emote and chest emblem. No Lightsaber, though.

Read the announcement at the official forums.
Discuss the 2012 Loyalty Program at the official forums.

Pummit PowerPoint Recap Hits Ustream Wednesday

The 2011 City of Heroes Freedom Pummit is over, but you can relive the details on Ustream tomorrow, Wednesday, November 23 at 10:30 AM PST with a PowerPoint recap showing all the info from the Pummit.

Read the announcement at the official forums.
Discuss the Ustream Pummit recap at the official forums.

Staff Fighting Confirmed

We all knew it already, but Staff Fighting has been confirmed at the Pummit. This video, called a fake by some, has always been legitimate.

Free To Play Friday: Issue #2: The Unjusticing

Ms. Sports peeping while waiting in the queue.

So it turns out rolling on Justice was a mistake. I want to level up going through four Death From Below trials, and out of the three queue attempts on Justice, none resulted in getting into a DFB trial. I spent my second slot on Virtue server, rerolled Ms. Sports and the first queue I went into got me into a trial.

I guess if you want easy, reliable teaming around the clock, Freedom and Virtue are still the only real game in town.

Click past the break to read about the rest of my week!

Pummit Is Go!

The 2011 City of Heroes Freedom Player Summit (Pummit) starts tomorrow, November 19! Ticket sales are closed but $50 at the door gets you in. During this Pummit such game-altering additions to the game as a solo Incarnate path are expected to be announced.

Can't attend? You're in luck! Paragon Studios' Ustream will be broadcasting several of the panels.

It all starts tomorrow at 8:30 AM PT (9:30 AM PT for the Ustream)!

Read the announcement at the official forums.
Discuss the 2011 Pummit at the official forums.

Captain Nighttime Rises!

Captain Nighttime 21 SJ/NIN Vigilante Stalker

UI Bug Got You Down? Zwillinger To The Resc-- er, Workaround!

You're minding your own business innocently playing City of Heroes Freedom when it happens; you zone and your windows go all screwy! The UI bug claims another! But fear not, for Zwillinger brings you the following workaround:

Configure your UI.
Type /wdwsave
When it resets type /wdwload
You may have to do this repeatedly, so you may wish to create a macro, as follows:
/macro wdwload
for example
/macro ANNOYINGBUG wdwload

 I don't bother with the macro, I just type the command as needed (I type umpteen words per minute!), but use the macro, use a key bind or be a boss and just type it out like I do. You are now partially saved from the UI bug. Thanks Zwilly!

Tuesday's patch should see the UI bug crushed once and for all.

Discuss the live issues at the official forums.

David Nakayama Concept Art Collection

Noble Savage concept art.

David "Noble Savage" Nakayama has begun an online collection of City of Heroes and City of Heroes Freedom concept art at his pixelsaurus deviantART page. David is an amazing artist so you should check his stuff out!

pixelsaurus at deviantART.
Discussion thread at the official forums.

Free to Play Friday: Issue #1: The Rolling

A new series of articles is coming to My City of Heroes Blog Freedom, focusing on the entirely free-to-play experience City of Heroes Freedom offers. During the week I'll get whatever play time I can get on a brand new free-to-play account and on Fridays relate any interesting experiences. I may skip a week if I don't have enough play time that week. This should prove very interesting, so let's get started with Issue #1: The Rolling wherein I take on the difficult decision of just what to roll as a free player, and try to assemble as good a look as I can with the available free costume options.

So what to roll? Join me after the break to find out!

Sinister Streak PWND by Longbow

Sinister Streak: 37 SR/KM Tanker (Villain)

So my first and so far only real disappointment with my super-speeder concept level 37 SR/KM Tanker named Sinister Streak came when I met a pair of +1 Longbow Bosses. A Psi/Empathy paired with a MA/SR. The pairing proved deadly as the Psi Boss kept me Terrorized (SR has some of the best mez protection in the game, but no Fear protection) while the MA Boss slowly worked past my 43% Melee Defense  to crush me with his very hard hitting attacks.

Being melee, I'm not in the habit of keeping more than one Break Free in my Inspiration tray at a time. This was one of those very rare situations where several were necessary.

The solution was to carry four Break Frees to give me time to kill the Psi Boss and make sure to use Elude to counter the To Hit buff the Psi Boss was providing the MA Boss (Yes, Elude can come in handy even on a softcapped character at times!) I had a couple of frustrating false starts that sent me right back to the hospital because in my increasing frustration I forgot to activate Elude. The pain...the pain!

Remembering to actually use Elude (I had dropped the Defense Inspirations out of my tray to make room for the extra Break Frees) the Break Frees kept the Terrorize off of me and the Psi Boss finally went down. The MA Boss got worked down soon after, but one of Kinetic Melee's shortcomings is that it only provides 7.5% To Hit in Power Psiphon (Build Up provides 20%) so when the MA Boss started to Elude as well, I had to wait it out as my hit chance dropped to 22%, preventing me from doing enough damage to him to kill him.

Finally, the MA Boss went down too when his Elude dropped, but the damage had been done. I'd been completely embarrassed by those Longbow Bosses. It was a Pyrrhic victory.

The Shame of Sinister Streak

I'm going to forget it and move on because Sinister Streak has been a blast so far and these were only three of the maybe six defeats total he's suffered up to level 37.

Intrepid Informer 15 & Fight Crime in Style Contest Winner

Jeff "Arbiter Hawk" Hamilton discusses the latest in the Incarnate abilities in Intrepid Informer: Issue #15. Meanwhile, the Fight Crime in Style Contest has been won by Taalan (if that is his real name). His prize is 60 months of VIP (lifetime VIP would've been more impressive) and getting his hair cut via Flowbee by Positron live at the 2011 City of Heroes Freedom Player Summit (Pummit).

Read Intrepid Informer: Issue #15 at the official forums.
Discuss II15 at the official fourms.

Contest winner announcement at MMORPG.com
Discuss the contest at the official forums.

Autumnal Path, Pilgrim Hat & Dog Video by ZombieTubular

Visit ZombieTubular's YouTube channel.

Mr. and Mrs. Paragon Universe 2011 Starts Tomorrow!

Are you beautiful? Or at least are one of your characters beautiful, where "beautiful" is understood to mean "has a great costume"? Then you're in luck as Mr. and Mrs. Paragon Universe 2011 starts tomorrow, November 5 and runs through December 3rd! 2011, obviously.

Read about the contest at the official fourms.

Be a Real World Hero!

Real World Hero is a City of Heroes Freedom player-organised charity drive. Why not go there and donate to make the real world a better place?

Visit the Real World Hero website.

Holy Shotgun, Generic 8923 8972 1289 7382!

I don't normally cover weekly Paragon Store updates, but this week we have an interesting specimen: The Undead Survival Kit.

What is The Undead Survival Kit? From the official site:

The Undead Survival Kit comes with three temp powers. 75 charges of the Holy Shotgun Shells, 30 charges of the St. Louis Slammer, the 5 charges of the Warwolf Whistle and it also comes with 5 charges of the Self-Revive Power and 5 Large +Acc/+Dam Dual Inspirations.

All for 400 Paragon Points (PP). Each item is also available separately for between 20 and 80 PP each.

The theme of this kit is very cute and fun. Who wouldn't want an Undead Survival Kit, after all? Especially in Paragon City?

Of course, that leaves the little issue of the price. 400 PP is a bit steep. Okay, it's a lot steep, considering you can assemble most if not all of the kit in-game and it's all just a collection of Temporary Powers. I just think they would make a lot more off this at a much lower price point. Speaking for myself, at 400 PP it's an easy pass. At 200 PP I'd have to think about it and at 100 PP it'd be all but irresistible.

I guess the watch word here is, wait until it's on sale to pick it up, but they certainly did knock the fun factor and theme out of the ballpark on this one. Except for the price, it's very well done.

P.S. My "Batman" in the title got genericed! Grrrr! Where's my Holy Shotgun Shells...

Read the announcement at the official forms.
Discuss the Undead Survival Kit at the official forums.