City of Heroes: Issue 9 Update

The economy aspect is made more workable due to the other major economic change. That is, the consignment market - a rough equivalent to an Auction House in certain other games. The villains, stylish as always, ignore "consignments" in favour of the considerably more glamorous "Black Market". Since the Invention system demands locating these oddball items, it's an essential addition. In its early stages, it also seems to be causing people lucky enough to get a rare drop to receive an influence windfall. It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out - I can't think of an MMO which has added such a large economic element this late in its development. Genre watchers will probably be playing close attention, and stroking their beards thoughtfully.

Meanwhile, we'll be punching the hell out of things in interesting ways. While I'd played the Mayhem missions before, Issue 8's Safeguard tasks were new to me. They're considerably more freeform than the traditional City of Heroes level. While Mayhem missions involve you entering a city-wide area and abstractly robbing a bank, there's distractions along the way, not least generally destroying things. Safeguard ones flip the equation, rushing you to part of the city that's under siege by invading forces. Rushing against a timer, there's a primary task for you to stop - preventing a bank robbery - but once you've done that, you've got fifteen minutes to try and put a stop to other devilry. Stop troops trashing the zone, discovering explosive plots and taking them out - and failing, watching buildings explode... it's a lot more hectic than the traditional mission. Both Mayhem and Safeguard missions come at the end of the game's random arcs, where instead of the planned story you do random raids (for villains) or tune into trouble on the police radio (for heroes).

All of which are tremendous additions to the game, but none were responsible for the squeaking of Britain's foremost point-and-click adventure critic. Neither was the addition of the high-level Task Force for heroes, if only because not possessing a level 45+ means it's not going to be the place for us. It wasn't the renewal of Faultline, which renovated one of the most unpopular zones into a non-Hazard zone with a load of new content (though, to be fair, we always quite liked its sheer desolation - the initial flight in there is one of my favourite memories of the first months in Paragon). It wasn't the veteran reward system, which allowed special gifts for players depending on how long they'd had an account, giving badges, powers, custom costumes and so on.

Actually, that's a lie. It's part of that. The system actually backdates, so as long as you had an account active for so long, you'd open up the options. Have six months on your account, get the Greek alphabet emblems. Nine months, get slutty belly-shirts for ladies and (er) slutty kilts for men. A year and it's a choice between a couple of permanent powers, as well as the sprintings which were previously only used on pre-order accounts. Three full years? Then you've got a choice between a variety of ultra-cute tiny clockworks, demons, recaps and stuff.

And, relevantly, if you've got 15 months on your account you can get...

"WINGZZ!" screeched John Walker.

"Also, trenchcoats," I explained, though I didn't add that you only needed three months of play to get that. Or that a lot of equipment can also be got through the Invention system, apparently.

"Man alive," he sighed, "I need to awaken my account."

Not a bad idea at all.