NCsoft is operating six games at once? Yes they are, and Halloween is coming to each one of them. The Mad King Thorn returns to Guild Wars, Scarecrow Jack visits Lineage II, the original Lineage has a costume party, the City of Heroes faces a Halloween Apocalypse, and Exteel's Mechnaughts get painted orange and purple.

Yes, the festivities abound, but by far my favorite is what's going on in NCsoft's latest release, Aion. Since the world is split into two halves, there are two different celebrations! The Asmodians, otherwise known as the best faction, celebrate by going on a Wild Hunt, cooking special dishes and having a good time. The lowly Elyos, on the other hand, get plagued by zombies. They totally deserve it too.

Check out the full list of NCsoft's Halloween celebrations below!

Aion – Harvest Revel

During the Fall harvest, the people of Atreia have always celebrated the bounty of the land. Years ago, the joy of the annual revels was troubled by an eclipse-a peculiar and magical eclipse that brought darkness to Asmodae and Elysea. Ever since, for days during Harvest Revel, the sky goes dark and the people of Atreia join in the hunt.

Asmodians celebrate the bounty through the Wild Hunt, racing after the Wild Kurthanir hunt leader and cooking special dishes made from the meat. On the other side of Atreia, the Elyos encounter undead creatures pulled back into a semblance of life by the power of the eclipse. Elyos must join roving Dark Night bands to hunt and destroy the undead before they invade Elyos villages.

Each day during Harvest Revel players will be rewarded for their investment with new lore and tasty treats including a Halloween Hat and candy that will transform players into in game creatures!

· Starts: Sunday, October 25, 2009

· Ends: Saturday, October 31, 2009

Visit www.aiononline.com for more Aion-specific information.

Guild Wars – The Return of Mad King Thorn

It's Halloween in Tyria, and that means one thing: the return of Mad King Thorn ! Similar to years past, the maniacal monarch has come to play, and he's got a bag full of tricks and treats to delight and dismay. But non-tricksters fear not, there are plenty of ways to celebrate Halloween – participate in several special events (a new series of quests and a costume PvP brawl) or explore the decorated cities/towns adorned with Halloween décor.

· Starts: Friday, October 23, 2009

· Ends: Monday, November 2, 2009

Visit www.guildwars.com for more Guild Wars information.

City of Heroes – Triumph over the New Deadly Halloween Apocalypse

Players brace themselves for a new apocalypse as City of Heroes' annual Halloween Event returns with legions of Zombies, Werewolves, Jack-o-Lanterns, and other foul denizens descend upon Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. This year they're bringing even more powerful allies! The new apocalypse is deadlier than ever as mysterious monstrosities join forces with the Eidolons, Shivans, and others. Paragon City and the Rogue Isles are in terrible peril, and only the greatest Heroes and Villains can turn back the tide. The greater the challenge, the greater the reward!

· Starts: Tuesday, October 20, 2009

· Ends: Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Visit www.cityofheroes.com for more City of Heroes information.

Lineage II – "Scarecrow Jack" and Halloween Adena Art Contest

Halloween is just around the corner and players can win in-game prizes by showing off their creative holiday spirit. Players are encouraged to create and share their Halloween and/or autumn themed adena art (visual art created by dropping adena on the ground in-game to create an image seen from above.) For those just looking to have fun this Halloween, players can don a "Scarecrow Jack" illusion featuring two animated emotes. Along with the illusion, players will receive 5 revita pops to refill their vitality bars while in game.

· Starts: Wednesday, October 28, 2009

· Ends: Thursday, November 19, 2009

· Deadline for art submissions is Saturday, October 31, 2009 at 11:59pm CDT

Visit www.lineage2.com for more Lineage II information.

Lineage – " Cavern of Chaos" Costume Party

The Lineage team is hosting the in-game party of all parties this Halloween – costumes not required, but highly encouraged! In addition to free polymorph "costumes," most monsters will drop pumpkin seed, which is redeemable for prizes like a Pinewand to spawn monsters of choice, accessories, and Stat t-shirts from NPCs. No tricks about it, as an added bonus, players will be treated to increased item drops from Bosses. See you at the "Cavern of Chaos!"

· Starts: Wednesday, October 28, 2009

· Ends: Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Visit www.lineage.com for more Lineage information.

Exteel – Halloween Event
Smashing pumpkins and bag snatching is easy! Try picking on a Mechanaught your own size, even if it is painted Orange and Purple! Exteel players are encouraged to celebrate this Halloween colorfully with free Orange and Purple paint. But that's not all! Players will receive +50% bonus credits during the week-long Exteel Halloween celebration!

· Starts: Wednesday, October 28, 2009

· Ends: Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Visit www.exteel.com for more Exteel information.

The City of Heroes Mission Architect allows players to quickly create their own missions for the superhero MMO, so why not actual writers? First up is Bill Willingham, New York Times bestselling author and creator of the comic book Fables, who wants players to aid civilian Irena Faust in her quest for super powers. PVP creator Scott Kurtz has players facing off against the rogues gallery of internet meme-obsessed hero LOLBAT. Last but not least, Red VS. Blue creators Rooster Teeth has players teaming up with Captain Dynamic against the vile Great Face.

The four more-or-less professionally written missions will go live in the game on Tuesday, October 13th, with plans for more stories by more writers as time goes by. Check out the official descriptions below for more details.

Guest Author: Bill Willingham, New York Times bestselling writer, and the creator of the multiple award winning comic book series Fables

Title: "Quest for Magic"

Description: Irena Faust is tired of being a civilian in a super world, so she's embarked upon a quest for super powers. She thinks magic is the way to go and she has an idea of where to start. Can you help her?

Guest Author: Rooster Teeth, best known for the popular comedy series, Red vs. Blue

Title: "Mission: Awesome"

Description: Help Captain Dynamic defeat the Great Face's evil plans...

and

Title: "The Great Face-Off"

Description: The Great Face wants to wreak havoc on Paragon City. He needs your help to free him from Paragon Prison and then carry out his master plan...

Guest Author: Scott Kurtz, a full-time comic-strip artist for "PvP"

Title: "OMG, it's the LOLBAT!"

Description: OMG! Your new contact on the street is none other than the Internet meme-obsessed hero, the LOLBAT, and he brings grave if not confusing news. The Algonquin Hate Table, a rogues gallery of the LOLBAT's greatest foes, are looking to expand their heinous if not artfully influenced crime syndicate into Paragon City. If you know what's good for you and the citizens you protect, you won't let that happen. Luckily, the LOLBAT knows how these guys work and he's ready to help you defeat these pompous profligates.

Be sure to pack your spandex if you plan on attending Hero-Con this year, and make sure you can write legibly in order to ensure your spot in the City of Heroes Going Rogue closed beta. Paragon Studios will need you present at registration to fill out a Going Rogue non-disclosure agreement in order for you to help test out the expansion that allows heroes to become villains and vice-versa. You'll need a steady hand, however, as Paragon has to be able to match your information to your account info before they activate your access.

Hero-Con takes place October 24th and 25th at the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose, California. Along with the beta access there'll be panels, LARPing, community events, and in-game items to prove that you were there. You can visit the official event page for more information on how to attend this super heroic event.

Go Rogue At Hero-Con [City of Heroes via Inc Gamers]

Between the Mission Architect and the recent addition of power customization, City of Heroes is a much more interesting place to be than it was at the beginning of the year, and Paragon Studios wants lapsed players to come back and see what they've been missing next weekend. From October 8th through the 11th, all accounts in good standing will be reactivated so players can simply download the client and go to town...or city. On top of that, everyone who plays during those days will earn experience points twice as fast. Just be prepared for that sudden stop when the event comes to a close.

Power Spectrum isn't all about changing the color of your character's powers. The new update also brings a new scalable difficulty system for missions, a new and improved side-kick system, and more powersets available to more archetypes! Okay, it's pretty much all about changing the color of your powers. NCsoft is thrilled to finally be implementing the feature. Just ask senior lead designer Matt "Positron" Miller.

"We are thrilled to be able to deliver yet another major player-requested feature with Power Spectrum," said Matt Miller, Senior Lead Designer for the City of Heroes franchise. "We aim to build the most customizable gameplay experience in any MMO for our players. Adding Powers Customization to our genre-defining character creator, as well as user-generated content through Mission Architect, shows we are willing and able to give our players what they want."

But what if they want love? Can you give them that, Matt "Positron" Miller? The next update should be the side-switching Going Rogue, but after that we expect love.

The new screenshots come with the news that every player will be getting one free Tailoring session per costume slot when the Power Spectrum update is released, in order to ensure that every costumed identity they possess gets a chance to have their eye beams, death rays, and concussion waves pimped out as completely as possible. According to Paragon's Matt "Positron" Miller, "This is our special thanks to our players for never giving up on suggesting the feature to us, no matter how "impossible" we might have said it was to do in the past."

Be sure to check out our Comic-Con preview of the new features, in which we discuss with Miller how to create a pink avenger of love using the character creation tools.

According to Positron, power customization is something they've wanted to include in the game from the very beginning, only to have the feature constantly pushed onto the back-burner. Why hasn't it been a focus? "Well it's a whole lot of work," he explained, which would certainly deter me from doing it. The game's powers were basically set in stone, and changing that meant changing a great deal of how powers function in the game.

The issue finally got the attention it deserved last year, when NCsoft took over development from Champions Online developer Cryptic Studios, bringing over most of the team that originally created the City of series. Miller explains that once that change went through they gathered together a crack team to work on power customization, locked them in a room for a year, and here we are.

The update brings more than one welcome change to the game's extensive character creator. Along with power customization, players can now hop back and forth between the different character creation steps, meaning no more spending hours creating a costume only to find out your name has already been taken...though in City of Heroes it's generally best to assume it has been taken anyway.
Miller walked me through a bit of color customization. Much like the costume color palette, players are able to select primary and secondary colors for each power, tailoring each skill in the power set they've chosen to their personal taste. For simplicity's sake they can link colors across all powers, so your Pink Lemonade Avenger will fire off uniformly pink and yellow bursts of energy in order to take down bad guys.

Each power has to palettes to play with - a light and a dark - with the dark-based powers eventually showing up on a different background to better display how they will look within the game's environments, as they certainly don't display well against the character creator's current dark-blue background.

It looks like they've got a rather nice implementation going here. Rays, lasers, and explosions all carry custom colors, while powers that summon creatures are also affected by the color change. Physical skills, like the kick-heavy martial arts power set, now feature a choice of animations, allowing players to swap out their kicks for punches.

I'm definitely looking forward to the update going live now, my mind swimming with ideas on how to best take advantage of this new feature. How about a superhero team based on the colors of the rainbow, or a hero whose powers change color with his costume? Sure, I'm just going to forget that idea and create an all pink guy with a heart on his chest who fights with the power of love while Huey Lewis and the News music plays in the background, but still.

There aren't many booth babes at Comic-Con, mainly because the fans tend to include pretty girls in skimpy outfits, and there's nothing worse than a professional model feeling she's being shown up by a preteen wearing a hideously-colored wig. It almost seems silly that NCsoft forked out the dough, but they did manage to do a pretty fine job. Mind you the Suicide Girls are here as well, but when your entire booth is nothing but booth babes, you revert to simply babes, and therefore don't really count.

Incidentally, the blonde super heroine is a San Diego cheerleader and aspiring actress, has had a guest spot in Entourage and soon to appear in Showtime's Dexter, proving once again that blondes have more entertainment value. The tall, dark-haired woman is a model, who has appeared in various model-related places.

It really wasn't much of a secret, now was it? My biggest gripe about City of Heroes has long been the fact that I can spend 300 hours putting together a unique costume, but at the end of the day I'm just another guy shooting green stuff out of his hands. Well soon I'll be able to shoot red stuff or pink stuff....oooo, a pink superhero in hot pants who defeats evil with the power of love!

Okay, getting a bit ahead of myself.

Just about every power with a visible effect will be tweakable come Issue 16's release, with more physical powers like Martial Arts and Super Strength scoring different animation sets to help set Karate Man apart from Karatte Man.

Other changes coming in the next update include the unlocking of various power sets previous unavailable to certain archetypes, and the ability to tweak the difficulty to your liking, telling the game you want to be treated as say, an 8-person team.

Those aren't nearly as interesting as the Pink Avenger. Love beams away!

Issue 16 Details [City of Heroes]

Myers has been studying human interaction in City of Heroes since it first launched all the way back in 2004, and with his character "Twixt" decided as part of his studies to push people's buttons. See how they responded.

Sticking strictly within the game's rules, Myers nevertheless quickly set about making himself unpopular by...doing what the game advertising itself as allowing people to do: create a superhero and battle other superheroes.

See, many players in CoH simply liked hanging out, and teaming up with each other to take down AI opponents. But Myers sought out player vs player action, and began hunting down "villains". He'd fight them, he'd beat them. And because he was good at what he did, he soon built up an impressive list of enemies.

This is where things got nasty; while initially he was gently warned against rampant player-killing, warnings soon blossomed into threats, with Myers sent messages like "I hope your mother gets cancer." Charming. The abuse eventually became so intense - he was accused of being a paedophile and of being a racist - that people were directly threatening Myers and his family, leading him to report them to publishers NCSoft.

Myers went on to publish his account in his study "Play and Punishment: The Sad and Curious Case of Twixt", which was released last year.

His findings? That it wasn't the game rules that mattered in CoH, it was the hardcore community who sought to preserve their niche little "culture". "If you aren't a member of the tribe, you get whacked with a stick," he said. "I look at social groups with dismay."

'City of Heroes' character 'Twixt' becomes game's most hated outcast courtesy of Loyola professor [NOLA, via Slashdot]

Aside from a new 5th Column Task Force / Strike Force series of missions, the bulk of the Issue 15 update for NCsoft's superhero MMO is dedicated to making characters look their best and making it easier to use the mission architect player-created content tool introduced in Issue 14: Architect.

On the cosmetic side of things, players now have more than 20 new faces to choose from in character creation along with two new costume sets - vines and ulterior - making an already ridiculously versatile system even more so. They've also added new costume change emotes, allowing players to back flip, salute, or maniacally laugh their way out of their clothes.

NCsoft also updates their mission architect system, adding new testing tools to help iron out the kinks and enhanced search capability to help players separate the wheat from the chaff.

Considering the major changes that came about with the last update, Issue 15 seems rather tame, but with the massive Going Rogue update next in line for release, we can forgive the odd lighter than normal offering.

Posi came in and, in the words of one commenter, threw a chair and left, with this:

So there has been some speculation on the boards about the content of Issue 16, and its relationship to the Going Rogue expansion. Due to some poor link naming in the initial Going Rogue email, many of you are under the mistaken impression that Issue 16 will be Going Rogue.

I am here to set the record straight. Issue 16 is NOT Going Rogue.

But I can give you guys a hint at what Issue 16 WILL be all about:

And then he dropped that image above, plus another. The file names "purple_fire_control.jpg" and "blue_fire_dominator.jpg" were a big tipoff to power customization. Longtime commenters reacted thusly. Then Back Alley Brawler, a dev, showed up and pretended to pay off a $5 bet for the addition of power customization.

Admittedly, this will mean lots more to the CoH community among us; I've been hideously slack in my crimefighting (still paying the $20 though, which if it doesn't make me a preferred customer, what does?). More on this as it develops, which it will.

Issue 16 [City of Heroes Forums, thanks Michael G. and Ryan R.]

Praetoria takes the well-worn comic book road of flipping an established universe on its head, presenting "a utopian mirror to our own world", in which the same characters exist, just in...different ways.

Aside from a new playing area, this expansion will introduce not only a new alignment system - "that explores the shades of gray that lie between Heroes and Villains" - but taking advantage of the whole parallel universe thing, will also allow for the first time hero characters to become villains in the new world, and vice versa.

The news comes way of a press release that seems to have been sent out prematurely by marketing firm StreetWise, as other information on the game (including its website) are yet to go live or be made. Below is the expansion's trailer.

In a post on the game's official forums, Matt "Positron" Miller addressed the issue of "meow farms", which are missions where enemies are gathered into groups near items like exploding barrels, where they can easily be dispatched en masse, giving the players rapid experience growth for very little risk. Miller brings the hammer down, threatening to ban players who exploit the system; remove access to characters power leveled through such means; and restrict access to the mission architect for those who continuously use it for evil.

While players are reacting positively to the news, the developers are being chided for how long it took them to address this issue, which has been a concern since the Mission Architect system launched with the Issue 14 update. Reader PratzStrike, who alerted us to the issue, wonders why other power leveling methods in the game have yet to be addressed.

You can read all about the situation in the epic thread on the City of Heroes forums, conveniently located at the end of the post. You can click it after you ponder the following question: Is power leveling evil, or should players be rewarded for finding ways around the normal progression?

Abusing Mission Architect [City of Heroes Forums]

This applies to both retail and trial versions of the game, and has already taken place, so if you've ever had a lapsed account your deceased hero should now be back amongst the living.

These revived characters will be available for free until the stroke of midnight on Sunday, EST. After that, you either pay up, or they return to...wherever it is superheroes go until somebody brings them back to life again.

City of Heroes Reactivates Accounts for Anniversary [Shacknews]

Issue 15 is all about returning enemies and looking good enough to take them on. Both heroes and villains score a high-level mission arch featuring powerful foes returning from the past, with cosmetic additions that will ensure that players tackle their trouble with a fresh face. More than 20 new faces are being added to the character creator in fact, along with some new costumes and costume change emotes, granting characters the ability to change their outfit stylishly without having to get naked.

So new clothes, old foes, and several enhancements to the Architect system introduced in Issue 14, all for the low low price of completely free. When? No clue, but at least they've announced the Anniversary update in time for the anniversary.

Issue 15 Overview [City of Heroes - Thanks Kyle!]

The festivities start on Wednesday, April 28th, continuing through to Sunday, May 3rd. Kicking things off will be an in-game event running from 11am Eastern to midnight on Wednesday. The devs are being quiet about what is actually going to happen, promising only that "all CHAOS is going to break loose". Also on Wednesday, players are urged to being in game around 8pm Eastern for the global anniversary address from the game's lead designer, Matt "Postiron" Miller.

Other special occurrences celebrating five years include special secret guest appearances on the game's test server, and a Fifth Anniversary Badge available to all players who log in between April 28th and May 31st, though only one will be available per character.

There will also be two contests running during the celebration; one for a logo t-shirt design and one for a City of Heroes video tribute. Details on both contests will be released on anniversary day.

During the entire celebration, old players are welcomed to return to the game for free in order to give their old characters a workout and perhaps consider freeing up some of the more impressive names they've been holding in limbo for several years. Not me, however. Sorry folks, but I'm holding on to Stonemason, Hightower, and Miss Stake as long as humanly possible.

City of Heroes® 5 Year Anniversary Celebration! [Official Website via MMORPG.com]

All current NCsoft titles should be available via the Steam service today, from the recently released City of Heroes Architect Edition to the Guild Wars series. This also covers upcoming NCsoft games, including the eagerly anticipated Aion: The Tower of Eternity, which the company can't seem to stop teasing us all with lately.

In honor of the new arrangement, Steam will be offering various special deals on NCsoft titles over the next few weeks. Unfortunately no specific information was available in the announcement other than to check www.steamgames.com on a regular basis...so do that.

In a letter to the community posted on the official City of Heroes website, Matt "Positron" Miller revealed that within the first 24 hours of the new updates' existence, players in both hero and villain factions had created more than 3800 story arcs, each consisting of five missions a piece - more content than the development team had created during the game's entire existence.

Players have been busy trying out missions and critiquing them in the forums as well. Out of the more that 20,000 arcs now available in game, 2,860 of them have been rated 5-stars by players, with only 582 rated at 1-star. Popular themes include the 5th Column, featured in 794 arcs; the super-heroic Statesman, starring in 134; and time travel, which is the subject of 112 arcs.

The dev team is complete overwhelmed by the response to the new feature.

All in all, the actual launch of Issue 14 has exceeded any expectation we have set for it. We aimed very high with this Issue, but even the most Pollyanna dev on the team never expected the feature to take off this fast, with this amount of awesome buzz behind it. Players and the press have been calling this revolutionary, and I think we at Paragon Studios are just bringing our heads up to see exactly how revolutionary it actually is.

Perhaps I'll hop into the game this weekend to see what sort of madness the players have managed to come up with.

Paragon Studios gets its name from Paragon City, the central location in NCsoft's massively multiplayer online superhero game. NCsoft NorCal was formed in Mountain View, California in 2007, when NCsoft took over development chores on the City of Heroes series from original game developer Cryptic Studios.

"The renaming of our studio to Paragon Studios represents our devotion to the present and future of the City of Heroes series," said Brian Clayton, general manager of Paragon Studios and executive producer for the City of Heroes franchise. "As pioneers in the comic book-inspired MMO genre, together with our esteemed veteran development team, it is our mission to continually strive for innovation, solidify the strength of our brand, and continue providing high quality experiences for City of Heroes and any future projects that come from Paragon Studios."

Singling out the City of Heroes development team and granting them their own unique identity is a major mark of confidence in the team's abilities from NCsoft proper. Recognition well-deserved, considering the team is responsible for one of the few subscription-based MMOs from NCsoft that hasn't tanked in the past few years. Congratulations, Paragon Studios!