Looking at my blog stats, I see that I get a LOT of hits from people searching for information on City of Heroes upcoming issue 8. So, let’s appease the masses. Matt Miller, aka “Positron”, a designer for City of Heroes and City of Villains, was interviewed the other day by W00t! Radio. In the discussion they talked about a lot of the things that might or might not make it into issue 8. The results are unfortunate. There’s a rough play-by-play of the interview over here on the official CoH forums, and the interview itself is available for download over here. Here’s a few hightlights:

• Wings are coming as a costume option
• Jetbacks on their way as another costume option
• Invention/skill system was planned for i8, but has been pushed back. Again
• 5th Column not returning this year. Boo
• Power customization is too hard
• Not touching minion customization (also too hard)
• Nictus is a level 50 villain epic archetype. It’s basically a warshade. Incarnates not coming yet for heroes
• War walls are coming down

I look at this and come away a bit disappointed. I cancelled my CoH subscription back in February, and I haven’t seen anything in i7 or the upcoming i8 that is making me want to sign back up. Even the double xp weekend wasn’t enough to get me back into the game. At this point, they need to stop tweaking the CoH/CoV balance issues (because I care absolutely ZERO about PvP), and concentrate on making new cool things for CoH. That’s the only way I’m coming back. Until they remember what made them famous in the first place (CoH!), they’ve lost a lot of former users that they will have to work hard to get to sign back up for the game Cryptic left behind.

My two cents.