City of Heroes getting second expansion

By Robert Purchese Published 12 May, 2009

Going Rogue lets Heroes turn Villain.

NCsoft has unveiled the first major expansion for City of Heroes since City of Villains launched in 2005. It's called Going Rogue and is "coming soon".

The key feature is the ability for Heroes to turn Villain and vice versa, through specially marked quests, behaviours and decisions. That means Hero archetypes can now explore the Rogue Isles, while Villains can venture to Paragon City.

Central to all this is the new area of Praetoria, a utopian mirror-image of the world ruled over by Tyrant, the evil incarnation of Paragon's hero, Statesman. Here players will explore the grey area between good and evil.

Personifying the expansion are new characters Maelstrom and Desdemona, the former a pistol-wielding hero turned bad, the latter a villain turned good. They are the centrepiece of the very first Going Rogue trailer.

Paragon Studios will develop. More information will follow.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (10) Latest comment 3 years ago

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  • Gearskin #1 3 years ago

    Nice!

  • dsmx #2 3 years ago

    good idea, why's it taken so long to actually do it?

  • Gearskin #3 3 years ago

    I look forward to taking "Hooded Slam" into Paragon City. To pwn it into submission.

  • Whizzo #4 3 years ago

    Masterminds roaming the streets of Paragon is going to look rather strange.

  • darkmorgado #5 3 years ago

    I reckon it will have a horrible interface, dated graphics and little to no lore, and will only cater to people living it HARDSTYLE.

    2/10

    ;-)

    On a serious note, I bought both COH and COV a while back but never got into them. Something about it just screamed "meh" to me - and I couldn't work out why on my PC that happily plays Crysis at 'reasonable' levels had severe problems handling COH. I also found that, considering the starting area was totally empty (which I guess is to be expected from a fairly 'mature' MMO in an arguably-niche market), I suffered horrendous lag. Hm, might be temped to dip back in if they do a free trial, but with Champions on the horizon and a lot of time being dominated by EVE and a growing back-catalogue of unplayed games on my shelf, it will have to be pretty special to convince me.
    What happened to that Warhammer 40k mmo I heard about? Still chugging along? I know theyve got Joe Madureira on board and so it will no doubt come out within the next hundred years as opposed to 2 or 3, but there has been seriously NO info of that game since it was announced.

  • Mr_Dodger #6 3 years ago

    There was a time just after Villains launched where there were problems with lag, but they sorted those. I haven't played for a year but last time I was on it was as good as any other online experience.

  • rodpad #7 3 years ago

    I'd love this to happen to WoW somehow. Couldn't give a monkeys about the lore problem to do it.

  • Seoh #8 3 years ago

    Too late, i know its an attempt to lure people away from champions online but Cov/h is pretty much over for most people.

  • Gearskin #9 3 years ago

    Champions still has plenty to prove. COH is still going strong.

  • spudsbuckley #10 3 years ago

    CoH/CoV is a terrible MMO. All the quest are identical and you don't feel any kind of progression at all as you rise up through the levels.