NCsoft has recently announced the “official” release date for the next chapter in their Title, Aion: Assault on Balaurea. This content expansion will be released digitally to existing/paying customers in the North America market and Europe on September 7th.  There will also be retail boxes for sale so look for them and grab yourself one of the exclusive in-game pets.  The European release date is set for September 10th, shortly after the North American market.

In Aion: Assault on Balaurea your characters will have the ability to work together and launch large-scale counter assaults against the invading Balaur in defense of their homeland. As expected there will of course be updated instances as well as the ever popular new zones/content. No true expansion would be complete without the inevitable GRIND so to this end the level cap will also be increased. Toss in a mix of new weapons, armor and gear with some new skills and a pinch of new/improved flight mechanics and you have the Aion recipe for expansion content.

Related posts:

1. Aion Max level reached in 17 days!!
2. Aion: Open beta client available
3. Aion – State of the Game

DC Universe Online seems to be having no expense spared in its production.  Proof of this can be seen in the recent announcement by SOE regarding their voice actor selection for this upcoming MMO. This MMO is to be released at the beginning of November of this year and the hype around it has been building and building lately so hopefully they don’t follow the same pattern as many of the over-hyped MMO titles have in recent years. As for who this voice actor cast consists of I’ll give you just one hint in regards to the actor that is headlining this cast.. “Use the Force Luke”.  The full SOE release can be found below:

Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE) announced today that two of animation’s most well-known talents lead a triple-A cast of voice actors in providing their skills for the upcoming online action game, DC Universe™ Online. Mark Hamill (Batman: Arkham Asylum, Batman: The Animated Series) will once again voice The Joker, while Kevin Conroy (Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League Unlimited, Batman: Arkham Asylum) brings to life everyone’s favorite dark knight, Batman.

“We’re excited that not only will Mark and Kevin bring their talent back to the DC Universe as part of DC Universe Online, but we’ve hit the jackpot with a full cast that are veterans of all the movies, TV shows, and games that our fans are crazy about,” said Sony Online Entertainment Vice President of Development John Blakely. “Several of these actors are recognized as the definitive voices for these characters, and will help us in creating an authentic and exciting experience for fans when they get in the game.”

Besides becoming an international pop-culture icon as the protagonist in George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy, Mark Hamill’s career has encompassed virtually all aspect of modern media available to an actor – stage, screen, television, movies and video games. He has performed in hundreds of TV cartoons: Batman: The Animated Series, The Simpsons, Ren & Stimpy, Samurai Jack, Spider-Man, Powerpuff Girls, The Hulk, Fantastic Four, Little Mermaid, Phantom 2040, Johnny Bravo, Fairly Odd Parents, The Flintstones, Jonny Quest and Scooby Doo. He’s also provided his voice for several animated feature films: Joseph, Prince of Dreams, Balto II, Wizards, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and Batman Beyond: The Return of the Joker, for which he received two “Annie” award nominations.

Kevin Conroy is best known to audiences for his role as Batman in Batman: The Animated Series. Conroy continued to voice Batman in the subsequent series The New Batman Adventures, Batman Beyond, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited. His tenure in the role also includes the films Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, and Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman. He also voiced Batman for the character’s guest appearances in Superman: The Animated Series, Static Shock, and The Zeta Project. Conroy has also voiced Batman in the DC Universe animated original movies Batman: Gotham Knight, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, and Superman/Batman: Apocalypse. In a full tally of his performances, Conroy has portrayed the superhero longer than any other actor in either live-action or animation.

The rest of the cast will provide voices for the following iconic characters:

Adam Baldwin (Superman) –Baldwin has amassed an impressive and expansive range of film roles, from large studio projects to gritty independent films. Baldwin has worked with many of Hollywood’s most successful actors and directors, including Stanley Kubrick, Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner, and Richard Donner. In the sci-fi world, audiences know Baldwin for his starring role on Firefly, recurring roles on The X-Files, Angel, and The Visitor, and guest-starring roles on Stargate SG-1 and the new The Outer Limits. He followed up his Firefly character once again in Joss Whedon’s motion picture, Serenity.

Gina Torres (Wonder Woman)—Currently starring in the new ABC Family series Huge, Torres’ most notable television credits are her performances as assassin Anna Espinosa on Alias and Zoe Washburn, the shotgun-toting mercenary on Joss Whedon’s Firefly (and the feature film Serenity), in addition to her roles in Xena: Warrior Princess and Cleopatra 2525, which earned her an ALMA award. Her film credits include The Matrix Revolutions, The Matrix Reloaded, I Think I Love My Wife, and Hair Show. She has also voiced the characters of Vixen in the Justice League animated series and Superwoman in the DC Universe animated feature Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths.

James Marsters (Lex Luthor) – James Marsters may best be known for the role of Spike, the cult favorite punk-goth vampire that he played for six seasons on the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and then on the final season of the spin-off show Angel. He is a headlining fan favorite at conventions worldwide honoring the show and sci-fi genre. Marsters currently recurs on the series Smallville, playing the role of Brainiac, an android who causes a rift between Clark Kent and Lex Luthor. He can also be seen in his recurring role on the hit BBC America show Torchwood, playing the ruthless and sexually deviant Captain John. On the big screen, Marsters most recently completed the much-anticipated live action adaptation of the hit Japanese video game Dragon Ball, in which he portrays Lord Picolo, the evil warlord set on destroying the earth.

Michelle Forbes (Circe) – One of the industry’s most prolific actors, Forbes brings an intense quality to every role she tackles. She has appeared in such independent films as Kalifornia and Swimming with Sharks. Last year she made her debut in the groundbreaking HBO series True Blood starring as Maryann, a wealthy local who has mysterious intentions. She has also appeared as Kate Weston in the critically acclaimed HBO series In Treatment. In 2005, Forbes received rave reviews when she starred as Admiral Helena Cain in the intelligent and politically charged series Battlestar Galactica.

In DC Universe Online, players will be thrust headlong into an action-packed online world based on the heroes, villains and landmarks of the DC Universe. In the game, players step into the role of the next legendary superhero or villain and are given the choice to save or conquer the universe online. Along the way, players will be fighting alongside or against iconic DC characters as well as other players for the fate of the DC Universe.

Related posts:

1. DC Universe Online Pricing revealed
2. SOE releases Official Trailer for DC Universe Online from E3!
3. DC Universe Confirmed for November 2010

Executive Producer Shannon Posniewski from Cryptic Studios gave us the latest State of the Game for Champions Online today. As would be expected, the update was full of information on upcoming changes, fixes, enhancements and expansions even for this MMO. Enhancements to the Super Group interface and additional functionality for Super Groups is something many have been waiting for. And of course the announcement of the next installment in adventure packs was most welcome, The Demonflame is expected to be released in late September and will bring another instanced area to adventure in and new baddies to pummel. Cryptic continues to hold to their commitment of updating and adding content to their Champions Online MMO, brownie points for them to be certain. Below is the official post made by “Poz”

“Hello Champions!

School’s out and summer is upon us (in the northern hemisphere)! I’m just recently back from a vacation to the Adirondacks, where I was eaten by black flies, the temperature was high, and the internet non-existent. But while I’ve been basking in DEET, the team has been hard at work.

Summer Update

It’s been HOT here at Cryptic HQ, so we’ve been hiding in the air conditioning and working on the Summer Update. We hope to have our first candidate up on PTS on Friday or early next week! We’re aiming for going live on August 17, but that depends on how it looks on PTS and what you think.

Here’s what’s coming in the Summer Update:

• Supergroup Improvements
  • We’ve added a number of new features to Supergroups. At the same time, we did a user interface overhaul and made it easier and more straightforward to use.
  • Supergroups can now advertise for recruits by making their supergroup visible in the new supergroup search window. You can specify how casual your group is, what kinds of things you like to do, point to your website and so on. We now keep a historical log of key events in the supergroup such as when people join, change ranks and level up.
  • We’ve added an Event system, which lets you create and schedule events for members to attend. You can sign up for the event, decline it and leave notes about it.

Here’s a couple screenshots to show you where we’re going:

• Pet Powers
  • We’re giving pet powers a huge and complete overhaul in this update. We are greatly changing the way they operate.
  • Previously, players controlled pets through special multi-mode powers and clever pet AI. Now players will be more explicit with their pets. An expanded user interface will let you control how they operate (e.g. going into special modes) more directly.
  • We have made pets stronger overall. They have more powers and they do more damage. However, they now need energy to do their work. They don’t have their own energy builders like players; you will need to make sure that you keep your pets juiced up.
  • We’re very excited about these changes and think they make pets a whole lot more fun to play, but we want to know what you think. When these changes get to PTS, try them out and let us know. Balseraph will also write up a big post about all the changes when we get it out there.

• Ren Center Update
  • We gave Ren Center a facelift, made it a better space for social activities, and made a place for the tailors to live. We moved the Powerhouse to the side, built a big stage and tailors have moved into a covered area on the other side.

• Emotes
  • We’ve added over 20 new emotes and improved the UI so you can see and use them all easily. There are many more dances, rock/paper/scissors, coin flip and a bunch more.

• CStore 2.0
  • We’ve rewritten the interface to the store. Previously, you would need to go to the web to get reasonably good pictures and information about the items. We’ve integrated these pictures into the new store. In addition, we’ve categorized the items better and made navigation more clear.

• Civilian Mission Fixes
  • In a previous update, we made a bug fix which greatly reduced the number of civilian missions given to players. Many people didn’t like this change because they like these instanced missions. In this update, you can now also go out and actively get these missions by rescuing civilians. If you find a civilian being threatened and defeat the critters around him, the citizen will give you a mission (assuming he has a valid one for you).

• Tights and High Heels
  • Men and women will be able to choose from many more Tights options in the costume creator. In addition, we made a few different high-heeled shoes and boots for women.

• Difficulty Slider
  • Our new difficulty slider will “go to 11″ (one higher than we have now).

Other Major Changes

• Costume Unlocking
  • When you find an item which unlocks a costume part, it is supposed to unlock for all your characters. We found many that didn’t and fixed them.
• Sidekicking in an instance no longer has a distance requirement. As long as your Mentor is on the map, you stay sidekicked.
• Our crack video team went through a bunch of the zone cutscenes and made them look more cinematic and awesome!
• VIPER’s pulson gun will do less damage now.

These are just the big ticket items. The patch notes will have the full list of changes and bug fixes. You’ll be able to see all of this (and maybe a couple more goodies if we get them done and tested in time) very soon on PTS. Let us know what you think!

The Demonflame

Near the end of September, we are planning on launching the next adventure pack, The Demonflame. Here’s the basic back plot, which some of you may remember from the Champions pen and paper game.

Nearly 20 years ago, Luther Black used the full power of the DEMON organization that he’d built to cause the Demonflame Incident. Through vile magic and human sacrifice he created a flaming tower that rose into the sky, and at its peak he tried a horrific ritual to let him pry open the doors between worlds and take on unnatural powers. He was stopped by the combined forces of brave superheroes and, to everyone’s surprise, VIPER. No one knows why VIPER lent their aid, but VIPER and DEMON have been fighting each other ever since. Luther Black’s plan was foiled, and the tower disappeared.

Now, with his plans deeply shaken and the day of reckoning coming fast, Luther Black has taken a desperate gamble to re-create the Demonflame incident. If he succeeds, he may be able to open a portal to the Qliphothic realm, and attain his apotheosis of evil.

Work with the mystic hero Witchcraft of the Champions and Violette Boudreau of UNTIL’s Project Hermes to discover what DEMON and Luther Black are planning in the chaotic realm known as the Qliphothic. Be prepared to face otherworldly horrors in order to stop Luther Black before he gains the power he seeks!

The adventure pack has a new environment (Qliphoth) and a new critter group (the Qliphothic Horrors). It also has a bunch of other cool stuff in it. We’ve been playtesting it in-house and it’s looking really great.

And Also …

There is also some feedback that we’re looking into. We’re not promising anything (yet), but I wanted you to know we’re looking at what you have to say.

• Holds in game don’t seem to work correctly. Pressing Z does not seem to help break a hold more quickly. We’re investigating this right now.
• Many think that too many critters in game can dispel travel powers. We’re looking at ways to make them less irritating while still not letting players kite or ignore them with impunity.
• There have been reports than critters with Defiance are too tough compared to other critters of the same level without Defiance. They are supposed to be more difficult, but we will investigate and see if they are turned up too high.

Keep cool, Heroes!
-poz”



Related posts:

1. State of the Game for Champions Online – June 17
2. Champions Online: State of the Game Feb 9, 2010
3. State of the Game: Feb 19, 2010

Related posts:

1. Star Trek Online Video – Klingons!
2. Star Trek Online Release Notes – Jan 20, 2010
3. Star Trek Online Patch Notes Feb 23, 2010

Multi-player combat in Star Wars: The Old Republic

The rumored gameplay trailer that was shown behind closed doors at E3 2010 has finally been released for public consumption by LucasArts.  Check out the video and you’ll see a clear picture of game play in this Star Wars based MMO, keep in mind that it is still beta and isn’t due for release until Q2 2011 so there should be improvements graphically, not that it needs them from this video though.

One thing that is odd abotu this MMO title is that there are really only 4 classes in the traditional sense per “side” the Republic and the Sith each have 4 core classes, each being counterparts of the other side’s 4 classes basically. You have your traditional holy 4 of traditional MMO titles out there; The Tank, the Healer, the controller or secondary tank for dealing with the extra bad guys and the DPS class.  It stands to reason that future content expansion would have additional classes or the game itself may get a bit dull overall based on the limited selection of character class options.

Related posts:

1. Star Wars: The Old Republic Trailer
2. Player Ships in The Old Republic
3. The Old Republic Combat Video

Console gamers that were hoping for a port over of Bioware’s in development and highly anticipated MMO, Star War: The Old republic, are in for a sad bit of news.  In a recent interview with Bioware’s Daniel Erickson, he stated quite clearly that it may not even be possible to port this MMO title over to a console platform.  To make matters more disheartening they also confirmed that they hadn’t even discussed the possibility of doing this. To add a bit more dirt to the grave Erickson expanded on this by stating that the PC is the natural environment for a game with a keyboard and mouse control system.

Power up those old PCs and shelf that console folks if you plan on playing this one. Or if you don’t have a PC with the juice to run this one never fear, you have until Q2 of 2011 to get a PC that is up to specs.

Related posts:

1. Star Wars – The Old Republic Pushed to Spring 2011
2. Star Wars: The Old Republic Trailer
3. What is Star Wars?

KEY BINDING TO MAKE CHAT CHANNEL CHANGING EASIER

If you are like me you probably have multiple chat channels setup in addition to the standard ones that you find in Champions Online (Zone, Local, Team, etc.).  Setting up custom channels can be their own minor problem but once they are setup the problem quickly becomes changing back and forth between the various chat channels to type.

To alleviate this stress I give you Chat Channel Key Binding!

Below you will find an example list of these binds:

/bind F7 “channel_setcurrent “custom-chat-channel-name-1″ ”
/bind F8 “channel_setcurrent “custom-chat-channel-name-2″ ”
/bind F9 “channel_setcurrent “Zone” ”
/bind F10 “channel_setcurrent “Team” ”
/bind F11 “channel_setcurrent “Local” ”
/bind F12 “channel_setcurrent “Super Group” ”

Simply input these one at a time through your regular chat window and then from that point on it is just a matter of hitting one button to change chat channels.

To make it easier to setup these same bindings to new alts on your account, simply type in /bind_save once you’ve set them up for one character, then when you change to another alt just type /bind_load to load all of your keyboard shortcuts including these to the new character. WARNING: If you have different binds for different characters do not use /bind_load. It may overwrite your unique binds on the character.

There you have it.  Time saved, stress relieved.. life is good.

Special Thanks to @peace for pointing this out to me in the first place!  You rock peace.

Related posts:

1. Chat Channels in Warhammer Online
2. LOTRO WarcryDev Chat: Wednesday June 3
3. Upgrades in Champions Online

Wonder Woman has been getting quite a bit of buzz over her recent costume change created by none other than Comic Book legend Jim Lee. Apparently in the 600th issue of the DC comics Wonder Woman comic book series the hot Amazon Princess began to sport her new outfit. Now this may seem a bit unrelated to gaming news I know, but for those of you that had a less than pure thought or two over the years of your adolescence thinking of our gorgeous Wonder Woman this is a big deal.  The new costume is a tad more conservative than her previous famous outfit, well more than a tad I suppose.  Actually to be more accurate, it basically has poor Wonder Woman joining the ranks of the Spandex crew of heroes.  Again, I know you are wondering how does this relate to online gaming. Well you see now, Mr. Jim Lee also happens to be the art director for the MMO DC Universe Online being produced by Sony Online Entertainment.  Eeek.

Now that I’ve scared you with thoughts of a DC universe with a fully clothed Wonder Woman I’ll give you the good news… According to what a Sony Online PR rep told Big Download when asked if the new uniform would be in DC Universe Online the rep replied simply: “At this point, no.”  The rep did confirm that the character will appear in the game as an NPC along with other popular DC Comics heroes but she will be wearing her classic outfit! Woohoo!  Long legs and cleavage win!

Oh yes, click here if you want to see the new costume concept.

Related posts:

1. SOE releases Official Trailer for DC Universe Online from E3!
2. DC Universe Confirmed for November 2010
3. Aion gets a comic from DC!

Spaceships and starfighters have always been iconic to the Star Wars universe so it is no surprise that Bioware decided to show off some of the player spaceships that will be available in their upcoming MMO title, The Old Republic. It is promising to see that they made sure that spaceships were part of the game at launch time as opposed to the error which SOE made previously with their Star Wars title, Star Wars Galaxies. They chose to release space travel as a later expansion which seriously diminished the whole Star Wars feel of their game at release.

The ships shown in this video are very good looking graphically and capture the Old republic Era technology look and feel quite well in my opinion. Give the video a view for yourself and see what you think of the Old republic player spaceships highlighted there.

Related posts:

1. New Gameplay Footage for The Old Republic
2. Star Wars: The Old Republic Trailer
3. The Old Republic Combat Video

SOE has announced the pricing structure for their upcoming MMO based on the popular DC Comics franchise. There had been rumors of free to play system similar to games such as DDO or Free Realms but that was apparently just that, a rumor. While the pricing itself is similar to many of the more mainstream MMO’s out there there was hope that the recent changes in revenue models would have sen a shift in pricing by this soon to be new entry into the MMO market space.

Sony Online Entertainment’s Scott Gulbransen has confirmed DC Universe Online will have a monthly subscription fee of $14.99, or basically $ 180 a year… ouch.  This is only for the US market, our European friends will likely see a pricing update soon.

The more I see pricing structures like this the more I’d like to toss a bat-a-rang at someones head and knock some sense into their heads.  You’ve seen how it worked for your own title Free Realms there SOE, why not do something similar here?

Related posts:

1. Pricing Structure Announced!
2. DC Universe Online voice cast revealed
3. SOE releases Official Trailer for DC Universe Online from E3!

Right on the heels of their Serpent’s Lantern expansion going live, Poz from over at Cryptic released the latest State of the Game today. He of course touches on The Serpent Lantern’s launch and the cool features added with this new content. There is also a nice sampling of things to come in the next planned release in August which includes changes to the big super group UI functionality, funky new dance move emotes, improvements to the in game C-Store and a pass at making pets more fun and less clunky to manage.

Read below for the full State of the Game as given by Poz.

“Greetings Champions!

Over the last month, we’ve been hard at work finishing up our first Adventure Pack: The Serpent Lantern. I’m happy to say that The Serpent Lantern is now LIVE and ready for you to play! Once again, your testing and feedback has been very important in making this update great.

The Serpent Lantern

This is our first Adventure Pack, and we learned a lot when building it. We had to devise a way to make the content scale with both team size and character level, for example. We also had to find a good way to let people leave off in the middle of the adventure and pick it up again. We look forward to everyone’s feedback now that it’s live. Tell us what you like and what you don’t like so we can improve these very cool updates.

The Serpent Lantern has a whole lot more than just the adventure, though. Some highlights:

• We added the Difficulty Slider, which will let you choose to make instanced missions more difficult. Doing so will increase your rewards and some maps will also drop better items. We expect that we’ll make some changes to the slider; players on the test server are already clamoring for an even harder mode!
• The events of the Serpent Lantern also showcase the newly revamped VIPER villain group. They have new weapons, spiffier uniforms, and are generally a nastier and more formidable force to be dealt with. Everyone seems to think these guys a whole lot more fun to take on now.
• We’ve normalized the energy builder powers so they all have approximately the same efficiency. In general, this increases the damage they do across the board by 17 percent.
• We’ve heard many complaints that teaming seems less efficient than going solo. We crunched a bunch of numbers and significantly increased the teaming bonuses for defeating critters and the bonus for completing crossover missions.
• Veteran Rewards are granted to players based on how long they’ve subscribed to Champions Online. Every hundred days of subscription, a new set of bonuses are granted to you. You earn costume parts, retcon tokens, XP buffs, and cool devices. Details here: http://www.champions-online.com/veteran_rewards.
• A zillion bugs were squashed.

Full details for the changes in Serpent Lantern can be found here.

Summer Update

Our next update is targeted for early August. We have several Supergroup and quality of life features on the way.

We’re adding place to put Supergroup news, the roster, link to a website and so on. We’re also adding an event calendar which will let you create events, sign up for them and leave comments. We’re also adding a way for Supergroups to describe themselves for recruitment. Players will be able to search them like they can search for individual characters today. I’m pretty excited by what we’ve got planned for Supergroups. We’ll get you updates as we get closer to going live.

A good number of new emotes are on the way. More dances! We’re also redoing the user interface for emotes a bit so it’s less cumbersome. The place to bust those moves is at the renovated Ren Center. We’re rebuilding the amphitheatre around the Powerhouse entrance to provide a big stage for contests and other events. We also built a better place for the tailors to hang out.

On the powers side, we are updating the pet powers. We’re still working out the details, but we’re focused on making them overall more fun to play. They are currently a bit clunky, requiring you to dismiss all of them to respawn and so on. We hope to clean that up and make it a lot smoother.

We’re also planning on updating the in-game store so it’s a lot more usable. For example, the pictures that you can only get from the web now will be built into the game so you don’t need to swap between them to figure out what you’re buying.

And as always, we’re fixing bugs and tweaking. It’s shaping up to be a fun update.

Community

I’d like to give a great big welcome to our new players. We’ve had quite a few new heroes join up over the past month, which is awesome. For all you new players, don’t forget to invite your friends and family to Millennium City! The Champions Online Referral Program gives you cool stuff if they sign up.

Our new website is now live, and it looks great. I know I find it a lot easier to get around. I hope you do too.

Our next “Play with the Devs” event is June 17, 2010. Some of us will be playing The Serpent Lantern. Others will be hanging out as always to chat, PvP or do pick-up missions.

I hope to see you there!
-poz”

Link to the official Champions Online forum post

Related posts:

1. Champions Online – State of the Game July 20, 2010
2. Champions Online State of the Game Sept 15, 2009
3. Champions Online: State of the Game Feb 9, 2010

Official Cryptic Patch Notes: June 15th, 2010

The Serpent Lantern:

The Serpent Lantern is the first of our new Adventure Packs, providing epic new story arcs for heroes to tackle!  VIPER may just rule the world one day – if the Council of Thirty and the Supreme Serpent ever stop fighting for control and work together. Both would reshape the world in their image. Both would create soul-killing totalitarian regimes. Luckily for the rest of the world, VIPER is still torn by internal conflict.
However, there is one magical artifact out of legend that could force unity on the warring factions: the Serpent Lantern.
The quest for the Serpent Lantern will take you from the skyscrapers of Millennium City to a hidden jungle VIPER base. It’s up to you to stop the Supreme Serpent from finding the lost Serpent Lantern and uniting VIPER into one deadly purpose.
Here’s what players can expect from The Serpent Lantern:

• Scaling Levels and Teamplay: The Serpent Lantern can played by any level from 11-40 and any team size from 1-5, with challenges scaling to match. Team up with your friends and take on greater challenges!
• New VIPER adversaries: Meet and battle new VIPER agents, including Draconis, Viperia and the mysterious Serpent Mages.
• Dens of snakes: Explore VIPER’s network of Project Scavenger bases, the Serpentine Caves and the ancient Temple of Nama.
• Snakecharming never paid so good: Earn UNTIL Merits from Project Snakecharmer to buy special costume pieces, action figures, devices and more.

To start the quest chain, talk to the Rashida Kwame inside the UNTIL Headquarters in MIL!  Players looking for the UNTIL Headquarters can talk with the UNTIL agent located by the Jet in MIL.

Difficulty Slider:

Want more of a challenge? The Difficulty Slider allows players to adjust the difficulty of nearly any instanced map to “Hard” or “Very Hard” settings, making the enemies much tougher. In return the players get increased experience, resources, and drop quality. Players can adjust their difficulty by right-clicking in the character HUD and selecting a different setting.
Position 1: Hard – When set to Hard, all enemies in the instance map gain the “Dangerous!” buff, which increases their hit points and damage, as well as the experience and resources granted for their defeat.
Position 2: Very Hard – When set to Very Hard, all enemies in the instance map gain the “Lethal!” buff, which increases their hit points, damage, resistance to damage, dodge chance, avoidance, and critical strike chance and severity. If you manage to survive, there is a bonus to the experience and resources granted for their defeat.
Bonus Loot: – In addition, certain boss fights now drop improved gear when defeated on Hard or Very Hard difficulty. At this time, the Bonus Loot functionality is limited to the three bosses in The Serpent Lantern – Draconis, Viperia, and the Spirit Serpent. Once we decide that the scaling and values are where we want them, we expect to expand this feature to most (if not all) bosses that live on instanced maps.

Improved items grant extra bonus values to one or two stats, at a value equal to 1/3^rd (for Hard) or 2/3rds (for Very Hard) of an equal level, equal color Secondary item. While the specific number of points of stats might not be extremely high, any stat or pair of stats can be added, including stats that normally can’t be found on a certain slot, or paired together.

Perk Store Removal:

We’ve made getting your Perk rewards easier – the Perk Store is no more!  When you earn a Perk reward, it will automatically go into your inventory (or overflow bag if you inventory is full).  Enjoy your Perk rewards!

Note: The first time that players log in they will be regranted all previously earned Perk rewards.  This was done to prevent an item that was earned by the player, but not yet retrieved from the Perk store from being lost.

Powers: Number Normalization Pass for Energy Builders:

In Champions, there was a significant difference in efficiency and effectiveness between energy builders, with some generating substantially more energy than others. We have rebalanced these core, early game powers.

• Increased damage for energy builders – All energy builders now deal approximately 17% more damage. As a consequence of this, the energy costs of many powers have changed a very small amount. Powers with costs in the 10 – 30 range will probably look exactly the same. Most powers with very high costs (90 or more) have had their costs increased by ~2% (so a power that used to cost 100 energy now costs 102). Some very inexpensive powers have actually had their costs decreased.
• Energy gain from fighting attacks now scales with power rank – The energy generated by fighting attacks now improves as you rank up the power. Rank 1 generates energy approximately equivalent to its current rate (base 20% of your total pool, increased by your stats). Rank 2 increases this amount by 10%.  Rank 3 increases the amount by 20%.
• Energy gained and damage dealt by fighting (energy building) attacks has been substantially normalized. As of this patch, they should all generate exactly the same amount of energy over time, and deal the same damage over time, with the following exceptions:
  • Melee energy builders, when used in melee range, still receive the standard melee strength bonus, and receive a flat bonus of 15% to energy generation.
  • Not all “opening” attacks deal the same amount, of damage, or generate the same amount of energy. However, the numbers are balanced so that there is no particular advantage to having one over another.
  • Some energy builders are still built as “maintained” attacks. Every effort has been made to make these attacks be exactly equivalent to “click” based attacks. We are exploring converting all of these attacks to a more standard click activation.
  • Procs and secondary effects. Some energy building attacks have secondary effects (such as Throw Fire sometimes igniting the target), and some do not (Strafe has no secondary effect.) The powers without secondary effects WILL be compensated, most likely with the introduction of new secondary effects. This feature is still being explored, and will likely come in a future (but soon) patch or revision. In general, we want the secondary effects to be minor but desirable.
  • The value of the custom advantages between different energy builders is uneven. This will be addressed in a future (but soon) patch or revision.
• Energy gain from blocking has been substantially reworked.
  • The general experience should be that blocking generates less energy per second than using your energy building attacks. The energy gain is increased both by the amount of damage that penetrates your defenses and by your Ego stat, with an absolute cap of 30% of your maximum energy pool.
  • Characters in defensive (Protector) role increase energy from blocking. When in that role, players will now gain two energy values when they are hit; the first number is the “normal” energy gain from blocking; the second is the bonus value you get from being in Protector Role, which is a flat value that is increased by your Constitution score.
• Advantages which add a proc to the “spam” attacks (Such as the custom for Electric Bolts) have had their activation chance approximately doubled; the exact chance varies from power to power, bit is normalized to about 20% per second.
• Added a small knockback effect to Sonic Blaster. Energy builders without small procs (Kinetic Dart, Strafe, etc.) will be getting them soon.

Veteran Rewards
To thank our loyal fans we are introducing Veteran Rewards!  For every 100 days of active accounts we will grant a new Veteran Perk consisting of various rewards. Example rewards include: new Titles, new costume pieces, new costume slots, XP buffs, new “Heroic Resonance” devices, and VIP access to Club Caprice.  Thanks again - you are the people who make our game great!
Players will be able to earn the following:

• At 100 days:
  • Players will receive the Perk and title of Stalwart.
  • Players will receive one free Full Retcon token.
  • Unlock the Hammer Bracers Costume Piece.
  • All characters receive a 5% XP buff until Level 15.
  • All characters receive the Heroic Resonance item. When activated the items instantly takes health and energy to 100%. The item has a cooldown of 120 minutes.
• 200 days
  • Players will receive the Perk and title of Redoubtable.
  • Players will receive one additional Character slot.
  • Unlock the Wizard / Druid Robes (chest, belt, hips layer and jacket) pieces.
  • All characters receive a 7.5% XP buff until Level 15
  • All characters receive the Heroic Resonance item. When activated it instantly takes health and energy to 100%. The item has a cooldown of 90 minutes
• 300 days
  • Players will receive the Perk and title of Dauntless.
  • Players will receive one additional Costume Slot for each character.
  • Unlock the Spartan Lion Armor (helmet, bracers, chest, and boots) pieces.
  • All characters receive a 10% XP buff until Level 15.
  • All characters receive the Heroic Resonance item. When activated it instantly takes health and energy to 100%. The item has a cooldown of 75 minutes.
• 400 Days
  • Players will receive the Perk and title of Valiant.
  • Players receive Membership to the Club Caprice VIP room and associated benefits.
  • Players will receive one free Full Retcon token.
  • Unlock the Epic Revelation Armor (bracer 1, bracer 2, leg armor 1, leg armor 2, neck and shoulder pads) pieces.
  • All characters receive a 12.5% XP buff until Level 15.
  • All characters receive the Heroic Resonance item. When activated it instantly takes health and energy to 100%. The item has a cooldown of 60 minutes.

VIPER Upgrade:

While always a deadly threat to normal law enforcement, VIPER has long been a relatively easy target for super humans, never quite able to match their power, training, or resourcefulness. Consequentially, VIPER has always been seen as something of a punching bag by the hero community.Times are about to change.In the late Nineties, VIPER “kidnapped” Doctor Park Lee-Wen from North Korea. After granting him a laboratory with state of the art tools and an unlimited budget, he applied his genius to the improvement of VIPER small arms to devastating effect. As a result of his work, all variants of VIPER’s energy weapons – Photonic, Plasma, and Pulson, now deal significantly more damage in standard fire modes. The improved weapons rapidly saw wide distribution, not only among Viper agents, but to the soldiers of ARGENT and other villainous groups, who purchased them at a steep premium, further funding VIPER’s improved efforts at research.Fortunately for the forces of justice, those few samples that have been taken from VIPER agents have yielded their secrets to UNTIL’s researchers, somewhat evening the odds. Unfortunately, considering how badly out manned and outgunned UNTIL already is compared to VIPER, this comes as cold comfort.(Many henchmen of many different enemy groups… most anyone who uses high tech pistols or rifles… will do more damage their maintained, normal, NON- SHTICK attack.)The following is a selection of some of the other technical improvements to VIPER’s weaponry, armor, and troops.

• Tartrapper(Combat Specialist) – Tar Gun – The improved Mark II version of this weapon attempts to coat targets in a boiling, tar – like substance that substantially reduces all forms of movement (even teleportation; the extra weight excitable molecules of the goop prevents you from popping out!) and reduces your ability to dodge and avoid attacks. Blocking is no protection against this goop!
• Brickbuster – BrickBurster Gun – A Redesigned, “Mark II” version of this gun has entered widespread use. This weapon is significantly deadlier than its predecessor, and can weaken or penetrate any known type of defense, and leave them weakened for a duration.
• Adder Technician – Sonic Bombs – These weapons been rebuilt from the ground up. The stationary ones now do much more damage (they were previously bugged and only did around THREE points. Also, they used to be invisible; now you can see them.) The mobile ones now inflict about 2/3rds as much damage as they used to, and stop moving once they begin their countdown.
• Golden Nest Leaders – Their golden power armor has received a significant upgrade; watch out for their new combined attacks. In addition, they now have an enhanced force shield that they can activate when they become wounded. This shield dramatically reduces incoming damage, but heavy enough damage can eventually penetrate and overwhelm it.
• Red Guard Knife Fighter – For many years, The Red Guard weren’t much more than highly trained, glorified street thugs and prison brawlers. While valued internally as “discipline officers” for their willingness to brutalize their fellow VIPER agents, they never represented a significant threat to the hero community. Two years, ago, however, a new doctrine was brought to their recruitment and training, and the first students of that doctrine are now entering the field, and proving themselves to be immensely deadlier than their predecessors. This new breed now bear diamond hard swords of an alloy that has so far defied analysis, but are capable of devastating critical strikes. In addition, their improved martial skills are supplemented by a net launcher and a laser blaster for use against enemies that attempt to just fly out of their range. The identity of the individual that initiated this new doctrine remains unknown, and its discovery is considered to be of the utmost priority.
• Scarlet Serpents – As the weaponry of the standard VIPER soldier improves, the elite of VIPER has been given access to improved armor and an expanded inventory of weapons, including fragmentation grenades and countergrav minimines, all well suited to waging battle on the modern super powered battlefield.
• Munitions Experts – These heavy hitters have had their armor and weaponry significantly improved. Their heavy gatling style guns can fire in either of two modes; an armor and shield penetrating burst, or a maintained stream that’s nearly impossible to dodge. In addition, their arsenal includes a powerful shotgun and an even more powerful rocket launcher.
• VIPER Squad Leaders – Motivated, dedicated, and utterly committed to the ideals of VIPER, the Squad Leaders have had their previous, largely ornamental armor replaced with the highest tech armor, force fields, and equipment in VIPER’s arsenal. Squad Leaders can now deploy multiple kinds of robotic drones with both offensive and support properties. In addition, they are able to inspire surges of manic zeal by triggering the latent Draysha implants in other VIPER agents.
• Air Cavalry – VIPER’s elite Air Cavalry is finally ready for broad deployment! Equipped with the newest generation of flying armor, these soldier are ready to take the fight to the heroes in the air enforce VIPER’s will wherever needed. Fortunately for the heroes, the standard Air Cavalry soldier is “only” armed with the improved standard VIPER weaponry, such as laser, plasma, and pulson weaponry. Unfortunately, they are led by Aces who are equipped with powerful, experimental Thermal Lance pistols and powered energy blades that make these aerial warriors a force to be reckoned with.
• Super VIPER Powered Armor – While their power armor has always been impressively advanced, it’s bleeding edge design has actually worked against its effectiveness in the field, as glitches and malfunctions have plagued these units since their debut. Missiles would fail to fire, or fire independent of the targeting laser, an inefficient force field that failed shortly after activation, and other problems retarded their effectiveness.These problems have been solved. Heroes, consider yourselves warned.
• Omicron Enforcer – Twenty years ago, Doctor Phillippe Moreau transformed a wounded VIPER soldier into Ripper, one of the deadliest super powered combatants on the modern battlefield. Unfortunately for VIPER, he’s also one of the most unstable and difficult to control. For twenty years, VIPER’s technical division has been attempting to control, improve and harness the Omicron technology that granted Ripper his strength, durability and power in order to create a new breed of technologically enhanced super soldiers. They’ve succeeded.
• Quetzalcoatl Gunship – The second generation of the Osprey Gunship, the Quetzalcoatl is faster, better armed, and generally more dangerous than its predecessor. The enhancements aren’t as significant as some of the other improvements to which VIPER now has access, but when taken in total, still increase the danger of this already powerful organization.

Other Patch Notes:

Art:

• Players can now access the new UNTIL Headquarters!!
  • Note: UNITY Headquarters is also located at the new complex.
• The Vibora Bay starting area has been updated with lots of new art!!!  Players now have access to the Bank, Auction House, Tailor, Nemesis and UNTIL kiosks.
• Updated the Nemesis kiosk in Millennium City to match the new kiosk in Vibora Bay

Critters:

• Critter Regeneration has changed.  Higher ranked critters now regenerate more hit points per tick. Further, the number of points regenerated per tick increases as the critter is damaged, up to a maximum of double the base rate. Critters weaker than a Master villain will regenerate more slowly than previously. Master Villains should regenerate at about the same rate, and more difficult enemies have increased regeneration. Player regeneration powers are completely unchanged.
• Critter Force Field has changed.  The number of points in a critter’s force field, and the number of points restored tick now scales with critter rank. Critters weaker than a Master villain will have weaker fields than previously. Master Villains should have about the same strength, and the fields of more difficult enemies have increased effectiveness. Player Force Fields are completely unchanged.
• The Force template has been changed.  Sig enemies that used Force powers have been reviewed and improved. They’ll now use their attacks in a more logical and effective fashion.
• Corrected a tiny calculation bug with how several reward mechanisms. Missions, Legendary class enemies and Cosmic class enemies now grant a very small amount of additional XP and resources.
• The critter version of the Eldritch Bolt power no longer generates a “Root incoming!” message. This was a consequence of the power being derived from an old incarnation of the player version that could proc a weak root, which could lock down a henchman or a villain, but not a Master Villain or Player.  The power now has a (slightly lower) chance of proccing an actual Root against players
• The critter versions of Ice Cage, SnowStorm, and Frost Breath now work correctly.  Previously, these powers were broken.
• Galeforce: Her WindWave power now works correctly.  It was previously broken.
• Updated the critters in UNTIL Headquarters to use different costumes.

CStore:

• Beast Head Pack: Added a small selection of hairs that work with Male and Female Vampire Long Jaw head.

General:

• Auction House:
  • Search results can now be sorted! There is a new drop-down menu on the side from which you can choose to sort by price, or sort by name.
  • The UI has been cleaned up. The scrollbar has been removed, the next and previous page buttons are much more responsive, and the page display on the bottom now displays actually useful information.
• Increased the teaming bonus for defeated critters by 16%.
• Crossover missions now give 60% of the full mission XP.
• Recruit Experience Bonus will now be given for all earned entity experience.  Previously, the Recruit Experience Bonus was only given for killed entities.  This was a bug and has been fixed.
• Corrected a race condition in Unity2 Missions that a few players were encountering.  This was causing zones to crash when the players tried logging into the game.
• The /MovementReset command has been changed to allow players to use it once every 5 minutes per map.  This is being changed to give the Programming team additional information for tracking down the issue with players’ character getting stuck in position.
• Trying to change instances when there are no instances to change to will no longer break chat.
• Moved the starting spawn point in Vibora Bay to a better location.
• Moved Police Chief Iron Tom Buford to a more central location in the new social area in Vibora Bay.
• All players with Lifetime accounts were incorrectly awarded the Chilly Title.  Players will now correctly receive the title when they accumulate 1 million cold damage.
• Players will now be resubscribed to the SuperGroup chat channel if they are kicked from the SuperGroup and reinvited back.
• Changed the channel_leave command to be able to leave from “built-in channels” (e.g. Zone channels, Guild channels, “Global”)
• Only players will paid subscriptions will be able to join or create a SuperGroup.
• French Localization only: Fixed a number of French translation errors involving slashes.
• Auto-attacks should no longer become stuck when the controls are configured in a specific manner.

Hero Games:

• Players will now receive a prompt to leave the PVP map once the game has ended.
• Stronghold PvP: Completed a balance pass on Raza and Ironclad. Removed any additional passives on them.  Also, increased Raza’s HP and reduced Ironclads HP, so their HP should be similar now.

Items:

• All Vibora Bay Costume Unlock drop rates have been adjusted!  The drop rate has been doubled.
• Created a store that will allow players to trade-in Vibora Bay BOP Costume drops for a BOE version of the item.  The store can found on the Costume Quartermaster in Renaissance Center in Millennium City.
• Steampunk Costume: All eight pieces of the Steampunk Costume have been added to the game!  These costume pieces can be purchased for Snake Bucks from Bargaining Bill!  Snake Bucks can be earned off of all critters in Snake Gulch.
• Munitions: U12 Paralysis Grenade now inflicts a “shock” type of stun.
• Updated Howling Recurve Bow, Archery_Replace_Recurvebow_Sonic, so that its quality color should no longer vary when interacting with contact Mayte Sanchez.
• Mass Faerie Onyx Blueprint: The blueprint will now let players make the component Faerie Onyx.
• Yengtao Incense Blueprint: The blueprint will now let players make the component Yengtao Incense.
• Updated the description for item Military Optical Implant, L16_Arms_Crft_Utl_Pri, so that it now appropriately fits the item type.
• Changed the range on the Psionic Accelerator to 100 feet to make it better fit how ranged items normally work.
• Updated U0-9 Crybaby Grenade so that it will effectively placate the enemy.

Missions:

Canada:

• The Co-Worker: The hostages will no longer run away and get stuck on map geo.
• Undead on Arrival: Increased the number of hit points on Rictus to help prevent breaking the Open Mission.
• VIPER Cache: The mission text now says “Weapons Disabled” instead of “Clickies Used”.

Canada Crisis:

• Into the Storm: The mission now grants credit for a team defeat of Rakshasa.

Desert:

• Belle’s Saloon: Belle Steele entry text in the Crime Computer now has correct grammar.
• Hanks Forlorn Memoirs: Updated the mission waypoint.
• Long-Buried Boots: Decreased the interact time on the boots from 45 to 10 seconds.
• Sinisiter: Witchcraft and Talisman will now respawn when the mission is failed and reacquired.
• Stronghold Prison: The Cellblock keys now count correctly for the Open Mission tracker.
• Snake Gulch: Updated the display names of a of crates in the viper area
• Blank and Steins Monster: changed the name of the mission drop item to match the mission
• Snake Gulch: changed the weaponsmith groups to only have 1 weaponsmith as the difficulty was a little too high

Desert Crisis:

• A Crafty Contrivance: Updated the mission text to better explain to players how to complete the mission.  Players need to train the skill and take the skillset mission from the Trainer.
• Gigaton: Adjusted his leashing volume to make sure he doesn’t enter impassable terrain and get stuck.

Lemuria:

• Caliginous Depths: The spawn point at Sealab now has a visual indication that it is a spawn point.
• Ship of Fouls: Made several changes to the mission:
  • Increased hitpoints on the boss
  • Reduced the size of the ships patrol and waypoint to make it easier to find
  • Updated the landmark.

Millennium City:

• All Citizen Granted Missions: Updated Citizen AI to wait until a player is not in combat or talking to a contact in order to grant a mission.  Also, fixed an inventory bug that prevented Citizens from removing tokens that marked mission eligibility.  Please note that some players may have accumulated a number of tokens, so it may take a few days to see a drop off of mission offers to normal levels.
• All Patrol Missions: Updated the encounters to not include tough critters during solo play.
• Biotechnical Difficulties: The boxes will now only drop on item per box.
• Defender Fanboy now has the correct text to match his voice over.
• How ARGENT Gets Ahead: Changed crate interact to say “Search Crate for Petrified Head”.
• Maniacs Bank Job: The Maniacs version of this mission will now correctly spawn critters.
• Museum Mayhem: The mission will now properly grant credit for exploring the rooms.

Millennium City Tutorial:

• Added another reset condition on Sapphire’s FSM to help prevent her disappearing on the map.
• Added VO to the commanding officers outside of Champs HQ during the celebration

Monster Island:

• Andrith Ruins: Changed Vikorin the Blind’s reward table drop so that he now drops an upgrade and also has a chance of dropping a rare item.
• Deathray Demolition: The mission will no longer spawn encounter template coreys.
  • Note: This fix significantly reduces the difficulty of the encounter because there can only be 4 villains in the group.
• Great Barrier Grief: Reworked the mission to prevent the mission from being exploited.
• Sentries of Another Dimension: changed the critters from Captured Scientists back to Riftkeepers.
• The Rat King: The mission contact will now re-grant the mission if a player drops it.
• Viper Nest: Removed the duplicate destructible property from the cage door library piece.  Players are now able to destroy the door.

UNITY:

• Updated the missions to prevent sharing of the submissions.  Sharing of these was causing a GameServer crash when the child mission became disassociated from the parent.
• Bleak Reckoning: Changed the way hostages work in this mission. The hostages will now stand up, thank the hero, and despawn.
• Lizard Mind Magnification: All four network systems can now be deactivated.
• Elders Among Excrement: The mission now grants properly.
• Manimal Farm: The mission now grants properly.
• Of Serums and Secrets: The Courier drop location will now drop for all team members.
• Unity’s Most Wanted: Made the mission for Therakiel’s Temple repeatable.

Vibora Bay

• Bat to the Future: The console will now grant Bat to the Future if the player has already completed Fox in the When House and is not currently on Bat to the Future.
• Caliburn Baby Burn: The mission drop will now grant the Flame Gem to all team members.
• Salem’s House: The mission will now give appropriate credit for defeating Mina Salem.
• Sovereign Sunset: The artifacts will now glow correctly.
• Therakiel’s Temple: Players must have a mission to enter Therakiel’s Temple (i.e. either Apocalypse Aversion or the Vibora Bay UNITY’s Most Wanted mission).
• Therakiel’s Temple: Move the spawn point before Vladic’s chamber to before the Immortals’ room.  This makes it harder to accidentally trigger this spawn point, and gives players a closer respawn if they have trouble with the Immortals.
• Therakiel’s Temple: Therakiel will now properly drop his sword to the ground when defeated.

Perks:

• New Signature Villain Perk Icons: Updated all 72 Signature Villains Perks icons!  Every single Signature Perk has a unique icon that accurately represents the villain associated with it.
• A  Job Well Done!!!: Changed the Perk mission to be a talk to Defender to learn about Perks instead of handoff to perk costume quartermaster due to the Perk Store removal.
• Bloodhound: The Perk will now complete when Bludhound is defeated.
• Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Perk now grants the proper title.
• Good Fella: The Perk will now have the proper icon associated with it.
• Perked Your Curiosity:  Added this new Perk to grant when the Perk for a Job Well Done!!! mission is completed.  Also, created a new title for this Perk.
• Perked Your Curiosity:  Completing this Perk will now grant the UNTIL cape to players.
• Reign of Frogs: The Perk will now properly grant when the Open Mission is completed.
• Second Stringers: Skortch will now give credit for the Perk.
• Ship of Fouls: The Perk will now give appropriate credit for completing the Open Mission.
• Undead on Arrival: The Perk will now give appropriate credit for completing the Open Mission.
• Vanquished Dr. Timothy Blank: Updated the icon to a version that correctly depicts Dr. Timothy Blank.
• Voodoo Child: The Perk now grants the proper title.

Powers:

• Charged powers that cancel will no longer have an energy cost (e.g. If a player is attacking a critter that moves out of range, energy will no longer be consumed).
• All lunges: Corrected a synching issue that would let the client attempt to activate a lunge while the server still had it on recharge.
• All ranged attacks that have a 50′ maximum range have had their discount increased.
• The cost has been reduced for some powers that had proc effects of 100% chance at full charge.

Knocking Update:

• Fixed the following powers to use the standardized knock diminishing returns system, which also fixes the problem where they did not properly work with Aggressor
• Might – Mighty Leap – Bull Rush custom advantage
• Fire – Pyre – Backdraft custom advantage
• Telekinesis – Telekinetic Eruption
• Telekinesis – Telekinetic Wave
• Celestial – Expulse
• Munitions – Frag Grenade
• Gadgeteering – Particle Mine (Advantaged) (still won’t trigger Aggressor, since it’s an indirect effect.)
• Munitions – Rocket – Concussive Rocket advantage
• Archery – Torrent of Arrows – Relentless Recurve advantage.
• Ice – Ice Burst
• Darkness – Ebon Rift – Vengeful Shadows (still won’t trigger Aggressor, since it’s an indirect effect.)
• An icon displaying the diminishing return will now appear for all knockbacks.

Celestial:

• Conduit: Miniaturization Drive will now correctly proc with this power.
• Imbue: The amount of time players have to make their next attack, and take advantage of the Imbue, has been changed to 18 seconds, up from 10.
• Iniquity: The power effects now scales much more cleanly.
• Iniquity: Justice Advantage:  The advantage effects now scale much more cleanly.
• Imbue: This power is an “on next hit” power and shares a cooldown with Sonic Device.
• Seraphim: Updated the description to clarify that it actually boosts all paranormal damage, not just Dimensional damage.  This is just a text change; the actual power is completely unchanged.
• Vengeance: Updated the description to match the changes that were made in the Super Power Pack.

Darkness

• Drain Life: Updated all 3 ranks of Drain Life to use the corrected healing value. These powers were previously using incorrect values to calculate their healing amounts.
  • Note: Rank 1 was previously healing as if it was Rank 2. These changes have decreased the amount healed.
• Drain Life: Vampiric Sympathy:  In addition to the advantages current function, players are no longer immune to the bonus healing from Vampiric Sympathy while under the effect of Dark Transfusion.

Fire

• Fireball: Unstable Accelerant no longer scales with super stats.

Force:

• Force: Force Block: The energy returned by Force Block scales off of 200% of your Ego.
• Force Detonation, Force Cascade, Force Blast, and Force Bolts: The Diminishing Returns for knockback on these powers have been improved.  They now use the same system as Munitions:  Shotgun, where several subsequent hits result in immunity from further knocks.

Gadgeteering:

• Clarified the description of Miniaturization Drive, Toxic Nanites and Sonic Device that they only work with single target attacks, and do not function with AoEs or some indirect attack powers, such as Orbital Canon.
• Implosion Engine: This power now counts as part of the Munitions framework for purposes of interaction with Lock N Load.
• Implosion Engine: Inverse Polarization Field advantage now functions properly.
• Miniaturization Drive: The (de)buff component of this power can no longer crit or be enhanced by Stat Focuses.
• Sonic Blaster: Added a small knockback effect to this power.
• Sonic Device: This power is an “on next hit” power and shares a cooldown with Imbue.
• Toxic Nanites and Miniaturization drive no longer share On Next Hit cooldowns with Sonic Device and Imbue. These powers will be reviewed, and likely heavily changed down the road.

Ice:

• Ice Burst: Freeze, Dirtbag!: The advantage now has diminishing returns applied to the hold.

Martial Arts:

• Inexorable Tides: Updated the description to reflect current functionality.
• Dual Blades:  Dragon’s Wrath: The Tiger’s Courage advantage now increases the base damage of the power (in the same way that ranking a power up does), instead of acting as an external buff. The net effect is that this advantage should generate significantly greater benefit. The maximum benefit, however, is capped at +30%
• Dual Blades: Dragon’s Wrath: Updated the description of the dual blade attack to read slashing instead of piercing to better reflect its effects.
• Reaper’s Caress: Challenging Strike: Corrected a text bug.

Might:

• Aggressor: Aggressor stacks now properly refresh other Aggressor stacks.
• Aggressor: Changed description. Added the line – “Indirect Knocks, such as from pets, bombs, or summoned effects, do not cause you to gain Aggression”. This is a text update and clarification only, not a change in the functionality of the power.
• Enrage: This power is limited to 8 stacks.  Players will no longer be able to push it past the limit by zoning.
• Defiance: This power is limited to 6 stacks.  Players will no longer be able to push it past the limit by zoning.
• Unstoppable: This power now resists the correct amount of damage.
• Players will no longer see “Invalid Target” when attacking large enemies when “Melee can ignore selected target” is set to On for certain Melee power.

Power Armor:

• Targeting Computer now generates proper tooltip information on mouseover and grants a buff icon. The actual functionality of the power is completely unchanged.
• Wrist Bolter – Armored Assault – Fixed an issue with this advantage. It should now work properly with all builds, in combination with all powers, including other “hand slot” power armor attacks (I.e. Concussor Beam)
• Wrist Bolter – Automated Assault – now locks out other hand slot attacks (Concussion Beam) appropriately.
• The issue with powers incorrectly remaining on cool down has been fixed. Wristbolter should no longer appear to break after using eye beam.

Sorcery:

• Eldritch Shield: Imbue With Power Advantage: This advantage now adds your Intellect to your Ego for purposes of calculating energy return when you have Aura of Arcane Clarity active.
• Primal Invocation: Invocation of Storm Calling: The FX has been updated to reduce player lag.

Supernatural:

• Aspects (both): Duration of the buff provided by these powers has been increased from 12 to 20 seconds.
• Regeneration: Updated the tooltip for Regeneration as players were finding it confusing.  Previously, the tooltip seemed to indicate that the power gave two kinds of healing, one of which became weaker as you ranked the power up. The “healing” that became weaker is actually the mechanic that causes Regeneration to slow down over time if players are not taking more than a certain amount of damage, and that effect explicitly does get smaller (i.e. your regeneration loses potency slower) as you rank it up.
• Infernal: Condemn: Updated the description to match the changes that were made in the Super Power Pack.
• Infernal: Defile, a new power, has been added to the game! Defile is a Tier 3 Infernal power, which deals ranged Toxic damage and places a Toxic resistance debuff on the target. A new custom advantage has been added for the power as well.
• Infernal: Vile Lariat: Fixed name in advantage window.

Telekinesis:

• Telekinetic Eruption – Changed to a normalized chance to Knock; 36% at tap, 100% at full charge

Tailor:

• New!  Added the ability to randomize costumes by style in the Tailor.
• New! Added a filter to the unlocked costume pieces tab which filters on either the costume piece name or the location of the costume piece.
• New!  Added a Wrapped Scarf Long.  This costume piece is available for male and female models.
• Completed an initial optimization pass on the Tailor.  Players who have a lot of unlocked costumes will notice a dramatic increase in performance.  This applies overall and should affect performance when setting costume pieces by the drop downs and through the unlocked costume parts tab.
• The unlock costume pieces tab in the Character Creator & Tailor now let you preview the costume piece on your costume before applying it.
• The popup prompt on the costume pieces that change the costume’s category is now displayed in the tooltip.
• Previewed unlocked costume pieces are not applied immediately, and require that you click the “Apply Costume Part” button or double-click the costume piece in the list.
• Unlocked munitions weapons will now appear in the tailor
• Weapons will no longer revert to their default colors if the colors are set to mirror the base costume colors.
• Players can once again use all head categories
• Using the costume randomizer after loading a saved costume should no longer crash the game client

UI:

• Mission Journal UI improvements:
  • Added the ability for players to hide missions from appearing on the HUD.
  • Added the ability for team leaders to share or set as primary any mission that a team member has, even if the team leader does not have that mission.   If the mission lender is out of range an error message will be sent.
  • The headshots on the will now update properly.
• Sidekicking improvements:
  • Players who have previously declined a sidekicking prompt will no longer have to leave the team to be able to receive the prompt again.
  • Once a player begins sidekicking, they will remain sidekicked even if the Team Champion changes. The prompt will not appear again until the player stops sidekicking.
  • The C symbol will now appear for all sidekicked players.  This includes the team leader.
• Several updates were made to the mail UI:
  • The UI no longer appears in a preset cell. It is now a large window and the columns follow a more traditional layout.
  • The column header format for mail has been changed to Sender/Subject/Date
  • The item attachments background has been fixed
  • The icons in the attachment screen scale appropriately now.
  • Hitting report spam now deletes the message as well.
  • The header layout has been changed.
  • Date will now only show Month Day (e.g. Apr 27) unless it was sent in the last 24 hours, in which case it will show the time sent
• Several changes were made to the Chat UI:
  • Updated the Chat Window Text Entry Area to remove and “see through” areas.
  • All of the Chat Windows now scale properly when changing the chat window font scale. Previously, only the bottom area would scale.
• Several changes were made to the Font:
  • Updated the main game font to use a higher resolution version.  Players will notice an improved appearance!
  • Corrected characters overlapping in all fonts used throughout the game.
  • Corrected minor clipping issues of characters in all fonts used throughout the game.
  • Corrected missing characters in the italicized version of the default game font.
  • Moved the default keybind text for the Power tray from the lower left corner to the top right corner.  Also, the font is now slightly smaller and much more readable.
• Loading Screen Changes:
  • Reduced the size of the loading screens description text slightly so that it does not go out of its bounding area.
  • Moved the position of the loading screen main title (map name) slightly down so that it is not right against the top edge of the screen.
• When dropping a mission, that has a cooldown timer, players will now receive a confirmation prompt displaying the amount of time before they can take the mission again.
• Chat: Using ctrl+shift+arrow to select words in text areas no longer skips the first word.
• The minimap will now display the text for large waypoints in a saner location when moused over.
• Crime computer contacts now display the mission level range.
• The UI will now properly display the map name and other information for teammates 3 through 5.
• Large Windows are no longer mutually exclusive.
• Made some minor appearance changes to the overhead floating text for Player Titles and Guild Names.
• Closing the mission tracker will now completely hide the list of missions if a primary mission was set.
• Until Tokens now appear in the character status UI on the Records tab.
• Updated the message players receive when they try to equip an item that is too low level.
• Fixed a bug where clicking on “Set Description” would immediately reopen the description window in the player status screen.
• When in mouselook mode, the mouse will now be clipped to the screen to avoid accidentally clicking outside the window and causing the game to lose focus.
• Updated mousewheel handling to support values of less than 120.  This will allow mousewheel’s to properly work in Windows 7.
• Added support for non-Xbox Joysticks. Joysticks may be setup to map to Xbox gamepad inputs for use with existing UI’s. The default joystick mappings have been setup for a gamepad like controller (e.g. Logitech Rumblepad 2).
• Added an option to enable/disable the Xbox Controller. It defaults to on.
• Added an option to enable/disable the use of non-Xbox Joysticks. It defaults to off
• Tray tooltips can now be disabled during combat. Players can toggle this option per character in the HUD tab of the options menu.
• The overlapping text bug on the action figure descriptions has been fixed and the font updated.

Related posts:

1. “The Serpent Lantern” Adventure Pack promises changes for Champions Online
2. Champions Online Patch Notes 12/01
3. Champions Online Patch Notes: Nov 24th, 2009