Ever wanted to work in the game industry? Well now is your chance: Stratics is currently hiring Web Developers! Stratics is your gateway to opportunities within the Massively Multiplayer field. Many of our staff move on to well-paid positions within respected development houses. Now is your opportunity!

Applicants should have the following skills:

• Drupal CMS
• vBulletin (create and/or add plugins via the plugin system)
• php 5 with OOP
• Basic HTML
• Basic Ajax
• Ability to make, modify, and add java scripts

This is a paid position. Interested applicants should email: directors@stratics.com and include a copy of, or link to, your resume and any applicable references.

Stratics (www.stratics.com): Founded in Sacramento, California during the Autumn of 1997, Stratics became the world's first content-driven Massively Multiplayer network. Begun as a personal homepage dedicated to Electronic Art's "Ultima Online", Stratics has grown over time into a sprawling treasure trove of information and community services dedicated specifically to interactive persistent world environments. Stratics currently serves millions of unique monthly visitors and provides official site and forum hosting to multiple Massively Multiplayer development houses.

Begin your endeavor today!

Purchasing and playing NCSoft titles such as City of Heroes, Tabula Rasa, and Exteel just got easier. Teaming up with InComm, a technology firm that develops markets and distributes stored-value gift and prepaid products. Target, Best Buy and Rite-Aid will be the first stores to carry cards.

Purchasing a card doesn’t just give you game time either, but will give purchasers access to special in-game items!

The City of Heroes cards will provide purchasers with an exclusive in-game jet pack in addition to a convenient way to download and play the comic-book inspired online computer game without requiring a credit card. The City of Heroes Game Cards will retail for US$20 and come with 30 days of game play.

Tabula Rasa Game cards will retail for US$14.95 and will be available exclusively at Best Buy stores. Those who purchase the Tabula Rasa Game Card will get an exclusive in-game rocket. Like the City of Heroes card, the Tabula Rasa card provides a handy method for downloading the client and includes 30 days of game play.

Those who enjoy the fast-paced action of fighting robots on futuristic battlegrounds can purchase the new Exteel Game Cards at participating retailers. The cards will provide buyers with NCcoin^™, NCsoft’s new micro-transaction system that allows customers to use real-world money to purchase in-game items and upgrades. The Exteel card will include 1,000 NCcoin, plus 200 bonus NCcoin, to purchase more powerful weapons, skills and parts for your fighting Mechanaught. Exteel is a free-to-download and free-to-play game. The Exteel Game Card retails for US$10.

City of Heroes and Exteel Game Cards will be available at Target stores the weekend of July 26. City of Heroes, Exteel and Tabula Rasa cards will be available at Best Buy beginning August 3 and Rite Aid will begin offering City of Heroes cards on September 3. Other games and retailers are expected to be announced in the near future.

To activate their prepaid cards, NCsoft gamers simply purchase a Game Card, scratch off the serial number on the back of the card and activate their new game on http://www.PlayNC.com/us/gamecard/.

We will be bringing our forums down Friday, July 11th 2008 to import restored user data initially lost in May. The following was posted in our Forum Announcements:

"On Friday, July 11th our message forums will be taken offline for approximately 48 hours while we restore the data we were able to pull from the old database and merge it with the existing data. The restoration will begin at about noon EST on Friday.

Users whose accounts were recovered from the old database will have those accounts merged with the current existing account, if the username and the email address match. For those of you who created alternate usernames we will be able to merge your restored account with your new account after the restoration has been completed.

If you have any questions or need any assistance with your account please email forumhelp@stratics.com or use the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of the forums."

Stratics IRC - 

Please feel  free to join us on Stratics IRC during the downtime! You can connect to one of our Stratics IRC servers using your favorite IRC client. A list of popular IRC clients is available on our downloads page, and for those who wish to chat via their browser you can connect via our java IRC client. (Java required - download here)
Connect to irc.stratics.com (port 6668) or choose a server close to you from following list:
     stratics.frws.com USA - Colorado (ports 6667 6668 7000)
     irc.glowfish.de EU - Germany (ports 6667 6668)
     stratics.afraidyet.net USA - Texas (ports 6667 6668)
     irc.gamers-irc.org USA - Colorado (ports 6667 6668 7000)
 

While we apologize for the inconvenience, we are at the same time very happy this scheduled downtime is occurring as it means we are returning to normality!

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!!!

We are pleased to announce the latest edition of the City of Heroes Fanzine!

The Fanzine is a collection of player submitted art, comic and stories from City of Heroes fans. If you are interested in submitting material for consideration for the next Fanzine, please visit the Fans Submission Guidelines web page.

July 23-July 27th members of the City of Heroes team will be at Comic Con to share in the fun. Stop by the NCsoft booth # 5209 to meet up with Lighthouse, Ex Libris, and Blue Steel from the City of Heroes & City of Villains team.

Be sure to ask for your Pocket D VIP Pass to gain access to the Pocket D Jubilee event scheduled for Saturday July 26th. The VIP Pass will also unlock a special in game item that was selected for this show only.

On Tuesday June 24th, 8:00AM CT (6:00AM PT) all North American Servers will be brought down to update to Patch 17.200800612.1T.

The estimated downtime is 2 hours, we apologize for the inconvenience.

Build 17.20080612.0

Tuesday, June 17, 2008



COMBINED

Powers

• Circle of Thorns Behemoth Invincibility toned down slightly. It now provides roughly 8% defense per target.
  
  
• Corrected animation time issues with Drain Psyche and Energy Absorption.
  
  
• Fixed a minor delay for the hit effects/damage on Martial Arts - Crippling Axe Kick
  
  
• Willpower / Rise to the Challenge will now root the player while activating. This was done to ensure it follows the same rules as other toggle powers.
  
  
• The animation used by Spine Burst and Thorn Burst will no longer prevent the next attack animation from playing.
  
  
  
  

User Commands

• Added /sync command which attempts to get the client and server back in sync when the client allows movement but it isn't reflected on the server. (When out of sync, the player will be able to move around, but cannot see other players or NPCs, and other players cannot see them).
  

CITY of HEROES

Powers

Blasters

• Blasters / Defiance - Found a bug in the formula used for calculating Blaster Defiance buffs. The following powers have been altered as listed:
  
  
• Fistful of Arrows (slightly weaker)
  
  
• Rain of Arrows (slightly stronger)
  
  
• Zapp (slightly stronger
  
  
• Power Burst (stronger)
  
  
• Bitter Freeze Ray (slightly stronger)
  
  
• Shout (stronger)
  

CITY of VILLAINS

Powers

Corruptors

• Corruptor / Electric Blast / Voltaic Sentinel - Corruptor version of Voltaic Sentinel now benefits from Enhancements.
  

Dominators

• Dominator / Electric Assault / Thunder Strike: This power should no longer accept endurance modification sets.
  

Stalkers

• Fixed Stealth Suppression from Assassination Attacks
  

Tailor

• Weapon customization: Rularuu bow should now be obtainable by Villains
  

It's a new month and a good opportunity to change your desktop to the June City of Heroes 4 year anniversary Calendar!

Click here to view the 4 year anniversary calendar wallpaper page.

Choose the June calendar and save the image as your desktop and enjoy a retrospective view from City of Heroes!