NCsoft Launches City of Villains

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Not sure which side of the law you want to be on? Now you can play either side.

Oct. 31, 2005—NCsoft® North America announces that City of Villains™, stand-alone sequel to the hit massively multiplayer online PC game City of Heroes®, has gone live in North America. Developed by Cryptic Studios™; and published by NCsoft, City of Villains introduces a host of new features including the ability to create massive evil lairs from the ground up, and player-versus-player (PvP) zones where villains can battle against hero players from the City of Heroes game.

City of Villains is available at retailers in North America at an anticipated price of US$49.99 for its standard edition and US$69.99 for the feature-packed collector’s DVD edition. Both editions include the first month of online game play, and after the first month, players will be charged a monthly subscription fee of US$14.99. Earlier this month NCsoft announced that existing City of Heroes’ customers can purchase City of Villains and subscribe to both games for the single subscription price of US$14.99. Source: VE3D

We Say: It’s been a great ride with this game until now, and it’s a good idea to make the subscription fee cover both City of Heroes (CoH) AND City of Villains (CoV). However, recent nerfs to certain aspects of CoH have led to a near-riot in the forums, as well as a host of players leaving the game … speculation has been that once the newness of CoV wears off, further defections may occur.