Lighthouse_NA

On Wednesday, July 9th starting at 6 AM Pacific (9 AM Eastern) the North American City of Heroes / City of Villains servers will come down for maintenance. The downtime is expected to last 2 hours.

The purpose of this downtime will be to upgrade the servers to version 17.20080625.1T that is currently in testing on the US Training Room. Read the Training Room Patch Notes here, or view the live patch notes on the Patch Notes Web Page once the patch is underway.

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Is there anyway for targeted advertising (like by server) or is it just a cross server cross faction advert?


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Optional in-game Ads are only limited by your real geographic location (as in the game doesn't serve North American optional ads to those outside North America or European optional ads to those outside of Europe). There is no current functionality to serve optional ads to only one server (or a specific server) or to just those playing Hero side or Villain side.

We'd love to have some great options to put in front of the dev team (from Community) for use in optional in-game advertisements. If anyone else out there reading has some ideas or images they would like to share, we'd love to hear and see them!

For everyone with the day off or some extra time to enjoy this long holiday weekend, we want to wish you a very happy, safe and sane 4th of July!

As a point of interest you can see on the 4 year anniversary calendar that the 4th of July is also when the original Freedom Phalanx was formed back in 1932. Only 7 days later, the Freedom Phalanx confronted and overcame Nemesis in the massive street battle known as “Brass Monday.” If you are interested, you can read more about game lore on the City of Heroes website, on the player maintained ParagonWiki or in the novels The Web of Arachnos and The Freedom Phalanx.

If you do get some time to enter the virtual world of Paragon City or the Rogue Isles this weekend, we hope you find your own great adventure there, in whatever form it takes!

Click here to discuss this announcement

Please use this thread to discuss the below announcement.

From the PlayNC website:

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We now accept PayPal as a payment option for all digital code purchases made through the PlayNC store (not for subscriptions or NCcoin). At this time, PayPal is only available for US Dollar purchases, though on Wednesday support for Euros and British pounds will be added. The PayPal payment option will show up beneath the Credit Card payment option and will require you to log into your PayPal account to complete the transaction. If you have any questions about this new payment option, please visit the Support Center for help.

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From the PlayNC website:

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We now accept PayPal as a payment option for all digital code purchases made through the PlayNC store (not for subscriptions or NCcoin). At this time, PayPal is only available for US Dollar purchases, though on Wednesday support for Euros and British pounds will be added. The PayPal payment option will show up beneath the Credit Card payment option and will require you to log into your PayPal account to complete the transaction. If you have any questions about this new payment option, please visit the Support Center for help.

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Click here to discuss this announcement.

Check out the big news of the Toyota / GameTrailers.com / SpikeTV contest: Matrix Machinima Contest: Get In Touch With Your Dark Side!

On behalf of Toyota and GameTrailers.com we are proud to present the Matrix Machinima Contest: Get In Touch With Your Dark Side!

Make a Machinima video with City of Heroes / City of Villains and have the chance to win the grandprize of a 2009 Model year Toyota Matrix S filled with good stuff! Act now! Submissions can only be uploaded to GameTrailers.com from July 1st through August 10th. Winners will be announced on Spike's GTTV on September 12th.

Click here for the contest details and rules!

So get your minions, sidekicks and henchmen ready, load up on hard drive space and make a Machinima masterpiece!!!

To discuss this announcement, please join us on this thread in the Multimedia forum.

On behalf of Toyota and GameTrailers.com we are proud to present the Matrix Machinima Contest: Get In Touch With Your Dark Side!

Make a Machinima video with City of Heroes / City of Villains and have the chance to win the grandprize of a 2009 Model year Toyota Matrix S filled with good stuff! Act now! Submissions can only be uploaded to GameTrailers.com from July 1st through August 10th. Winners will be announced on Spike's GTTV on September 12th.

Click here for the contest details and rules!

So get your minions, sidekicks and henchmen ready, load up on hard drive space and make a Machinima masterpiece!!!

Flashback to 2005 and the relive the release of Issue 3: A Council of War with the July 2008 Anniversary Calendar Desktop Wallpaper.


PS. No, this is not the "coming announcement" for this week - Tune in on Tuesday!

As of apx. 1:05 PM Pacific, Global Chat and Friends List are back up and available.

The global chat channel server is down as of the morning of Friday, June 27th. This means when playing, you won't be able to chat on global chat channels or view your friends list.

We are working to resolve the issue with Global Chat and the related services, but at this time do not have an estimate as to when it will be restored.

We will update this post and the discussion thread in the Technical Issues forum with developments as they become available. Our apologies for any inconvenience and advance thanks for your understanding.

Click here to discuss this announcement in the Tech Forum

Hi everyone,

For anyone who is a regular reader of the Dev Digest or Community Digest you may have noticed that the time stamps recently changed from US/Eastern to UTC. We wanted to let you know that we've changed the digests back to be US/Eastern time.

Unfortunately, the digests do not pull from your local browser time setting, but from the server. We don't anticipate changing that at this time. Anyway, now you know what time the digests display in, and knowing is half of the battle (although which particular battle, we'll let you decide).

Happy forum reading!

We wanted to let you know that the first of our optional in-game advertisements are now running on the live servers. We will be working with Double Fusion (our advertising partner) to slowly introduce ads into the game’s existing billboards over the Summer, while making sure that nothing is disruptive to the game experience.

You can check out our initial announcement about the optional in-game advertising here.

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City Vault?

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No, this teaser is not relating to any game feature addition. The discussion about it is posted purposefully in the Multi-Media section because video makers and other multi media enthusiasts will probably be very interested in the announcement that is coming early next week.

Stay tuned!

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I wanted to chime in here...

I love these events, but it would be SOOOO much better if it was an actual ... surprise!! no announcement on the boards posting future dates, or a reminder it's this weekend. I mean really, even if we had rikti spies get us the info, you'd think they'd be smart enough to change their plans...

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Hi Backhand,

Well, as for the Rikti invasions, we kinda spoiled that when we put out the 4 Year Anniversary Calendar. We know that some like to be surprised by fun stuff, but others also like to be able to plan for certain events. Hopefully we can work in some surprises for you over the coming year as well

One update to the warning potential Rikti Hunters should take note of:

* When Zones within the cities are under attack, a world-wide alert will be issued by Vanguard. This alert will show up in your Chat window on the Event channel, warning you in which zone attack is imminent. If you haven't already, be sure to add the Event channel to one of your chat tabs.

Good hunting!

This is just a general head's up that, when you first sign up for the game, or re-activate a previous account, the Test Server Authentication won't know that you are a valid account for up to 48 hours after you sign up. Until that happens, you won't be able to log into the Training Room test environment. The system may propagate your information considerably faster - however we don't guarantee that.

Our apologies for any inconvenience caused by this system and thank you in advance for your understanding.

The looming threat of the Rikti Invasion Force still hangs like a dark pall over Earth. Despite the best efforts of humanity, aggressive Rikti incursions still plague the planet. Advance warning systems indicate the Rikti are massing for attacks on the following dates throughout the year:

• June 13th through June 19th
• August 1st through August 7th
• Sept 26th through Oct 2nd
• November 14th through November 20th

Prepare for a desperate battle to save Earth from the Rikti Invasion Force! Aggressive Rikti forces will attack Paragon City and Rogue Isle with increased frequency at any time during the above dates! Some important items to remember about Rikti Invasions:

[*] When Zones within the cities are under attack, a world-wide alert will be issued by Vanguard. This alert will show up in your Chat window on the Event channel, warning you in which zone attack is imminent. If you haven't already, be sure to add the Event channel to one of your chat tabs.
[*] While the invasion is occurring, players do not receive debt while outdoors in an invaded zone.
[*] Those in that zone that do not wish to be at risk of Rikti attack are asked to take shelter immediately. They can do so by leaving the zone, or moving inside buildings or under cover (overpasses, parking garages, etc.).
[*] The combative inhabitants in a zone will move off the streets and to safer locations when a Rikti Invasion takes place.
[*] Rikti bombs appear to be unstable and not 100% reliable. Some do not explode on impact and only embed themselves in the ground. These bombs have been noted to detonate after a time, so take caution when you see these. They can be disarmed or delayed by inflicting damage upon them.[/list]Click here to discuss this announcement.

Please use this thread to discuss the below announcement.

The looming threat of the Rikti Invasion Force still hangs like a dark pall over Earth. Despite the best efforts of humanity, aggressive Rikti incursions still plague the planet. Advance warning systems indicate the Rikti are massing for attacks on the following dates throughout the year:

• Sept 26th through Oct 2nd
• November 14th through November 20th

Prepare for a desperate battle to save Earth from the Rikti Invasion Force! Aggressive Rikti forces will attack Paragon City and Rogue Isle with increased frequency at any time during the above dates! Some important items to remember about Rikti Invasions:<ul type="square">[*] When Zones within the cities are under attack, a world-wide alert will be issued by Vanguard. This alert will show up in your Chat window on the Event channel, warning you in which zone attack is imminent. If you haven't already, be sure to add the Event channel to one of your chat tabs.
[*] While the invasion is occurring, players do not receive debt while outdoors in an invaded zone.
[*] Those in that zone that do not wish to be at risk of Rikti attack are asked to take shelter immediately. They can do so by leaving the zone, or moving inside buildings or under cover (overpasses, parking garages, etc.).
[*] The combative inhabitants in a zone will move off the streets and to safer locations when a Rikti Invasion takes place.
[*] Rikti bombs appear to be unstable and not 100% reliable. Some do not explode on impact and only embed themselves in the ground. These bombs have been noted to detonate after a time, so take caution when you see these. They can be disarmed or delayed by inflicting damage upon them.[/list]

City of Heroes forum poster, FlyByKnight, rallies community support and participation via the Official City of Heroes Message Forums for his entry into the Molotov Alva Machinima Contest and wins 1st place!

You can view FlyByKnight’s machininma that is titled "This American Hero, Part 1" and features footage from City of Heroes on the Machinima.com website at: http://machinima.com/molotovalva/index. FlyByKnight takes home $2,000 for his winning entry!

Also, we invite you to join us on the Multi Media forums to discuss FlyByKnight’s victory here.

This maintenance completed successfully at apx. 5 AM Pacific.

We wanted to provide an update for users who are being affected by the "Sync Bug." For those unfamiliar with the "Sync Bug": it is where, after zoning, a user can still chat, but is not receiving updates from the game server.

We have a discussion thread about this topic on the Technical Issues forum located here.

In a future build (keep your eye on the Training Room forum for notes about it), we plan to include a command similar to "/stuck" that may help synch issues. Additionally, we are reviewing all Tech Support tickets to assess and address this bug.

We encourage anyone who is encountering this bug to visit the Technical Forums and follow the instructions posted there to reach our customer support team. Many users have been able to address this issue by altering or otherwise troubleshooting their internet connection.

On Thursday, June 12 starting at 5 AM Pacific (8 AM Eastern) the NCsoft Petition and Support Ticketing System will be offline. We anticipate the outage to be brief, but are reserving at least an hour for the outage.

Our apologies for any inconvenience caused with this downtime.

To discuss this announcement, please join us on the Technical Issues forum.

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So any Idea as to when this patch will hit live? I am anxious to see if my synching problem will be resolved as it was on test.

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Still working on it and we'll post to the forums (and let people know via the updater and server status page) what's coming in terms of patch schedule.