City of Villains

We received a bunch of cool entries for our City of Heroes: Going Rogue contest. To enter, you had submit a character of your own creation (not a screenshot). What we found is we have some very talented people amongst our readership. We chose our Grand Prize winner, as well as some deserving runners-up.

Our winner gets:

• A Dell Alienware M11X laptop
• A Cyborg R.A.T. 7 gaming mouse
• A pair of Gunnar gamer glasses
• A plaque declaring the heroic (or villainous) deeds of your character.

Runners-up don't go away empty handed, either. We have decided to offer those lucky artists a three-month subscription to ZAM Premium.

Congratulations to everyone. Go below the fold to find out who the winner is and get a look at the winning submission.

The developers of City of Heroes have changed their name from NCsoft NorCal to Paragon Studios. The developer seems to have been named after Paragon City, the fictional setting of City of Heroes. Brian Clayton, Paragon Studios' General Manager said that "The renaming of our studio to Paragon Studios represents our devotion to the present and future of the City of Heroes series".

The studio now employs over 50 staff, up from just 20 when it was formed in 2007.

City of Heroes claims to be the first MMORPG to offer user-created content, but is this really the case? Golemizer, a free, browser-based MMORPG has offered user-created content since October of last year - months before City of Heroes' "Architect " update. City of Heroes may be the first major MMO to offer user-created content, but Golemizer seems to have got there first.

The lastest booster pack for City of Heroes, "Super Booster II: Magic", will launch on 14th April. The pack will be available for $9.99 through the PlayNC Store, as well as being provided free to anyone with the "Architect Edition" of City of Heroes. The booster includes new costume pieces, costume change emotes and the "Mystic Fortune" power, which grants characters a random buff - or debuff - for a period of 20 minutes.

More details on Super Booster II can be found on the official City of Heroes forums.

A post on the European City of Heroes forums seems to point to an 8th April release date for Issue 14: Architect:

Issue 14 is just around the corner, and with many powers changing in this Issue we will be granting (1) free respec per character on the day that Issue 14: Architect is launched.

This notification is to give you at least 7 days notice that a respec is coming!

As City of Heroes is normally patched on a Wednesday (and the mention of "7 days" is pretty specific), 8th April looks to be the most likely release date for the game's latest update.