City of Villains E3 2004 Preshow Impressions

NCsoft and Cryptic Studios' recently released City of Heroes has met with warm regard from discerning gamers, who appreciate not only the game's unique premise--it's a massively multiplayer game in which you can play as a superhero of your own design--but especially its sleek execution. However, while City of Heroes is by most all accounts a great game, it's also lacking some of the features that give other online RPGs their longevity. Most notably, there's no player-versus-player element of any kind, so players are relegated to defeating gangs of enemy thugs over and over. The upcoming expansion pack, aptly named City of Villains, is going to change this.

As you'd imagine, in City of Villains, you'll be able to create a villainous character as opposed to one of the do-gooders from City of Heroes. The expansion promises tons of new character creation options, which is an exciting prospect, since City of Heroes' open-ended character creation is a lot of fun. It's unclear as yet whether villainous characters will be completely different from their heroic counterparts, or whether they too will fall under the same five archetypes (blaster, tanker, scrapper, defender, and controller) and have the same choices of primary and secondary abilities. We'd presume, though, that Cryptic's developers would take this opportunity to add even more options that fundamentally affect gameplay.

While the superheroes of City of Heroes routinely rescue the oppressed citizens of Paragon City from ruthless criminals, presumably in City of Villains, the objective will be quite the opposite. Villains will also apparently be able to construct hidden fortresses and secret bases, within which to scheme against the good-aligned elements of the city. But probably the most enticing aspect of City of Villains is that it will introduce a consensual player-versus-player element to the game. City of Heroes already features fast-paced, large-scale battles, and City of Villains ought to take these up a notch by pitting players against the ultimate adversaries.

City of Villains is scheduled to ship in 2005, so hopefully Cryptic Studios has some elaborate plans for this expansion pack. We hope to bring you more details on precisely what to expect from City of Villains from E3.