The European Beta Test of City of Heroes has now closed and the work has begun to get the servers ready for the launch of the game later this week. The message boards have also been disabled, and will be restarted alongside the live servers.

We’d like to take this chance to thank everyone involved with the European Beta both here and over in the US, but most importantly, all of you who took part as beta testers. We hope you enjoyed your time in Paragon City - we know we did.

We laughed, we cried, we nodded sagely and more than once we simply stared in slack-jawed puzzlement. Then we finished reading through the entries to the ‘Name the Servers’ competition and got down to the tricky job of actually picking the winners. Now we’re proud to announce the names of the first two English-language City of Heroes servers in Europe and the clever chaps who picked them:

Those of you who make Eurogamer a regular stop on their cruises around the information super-thingy will probably have noticed that, being sensible chaps, they quite like City of Heroes. Regular contributor Kieron Gillen recently returned to Paragon City after a short break, and has decided to share his experiences in the first of a new City of Heroes Diary:

Now I’m back, Steel Canyon’s cityscape is both painfully familiar and shot through with moments of strangeness. Like most Massively Multiplayer Games, the game doesn’t present a static landscape, both in features and geography. However City of Heroes takes it further than most, with its updates - affectionately labelled to show its pulp-comic origins as “Issues” - expanding the content in genuinely meaningful ways.

To find out how Kieron’s fared against foes old and new, go check out the whole article...

Alan Paterson’s Tales from Paragon City is back for a third instalment on Boomtown. This time round, Alan has been getting up close and personal with some of the less pleasant inhabitants of the City of Heroes:

The Hollows are home to the Trolls, thugs and gang members that have become mutated thanks to a drug called Superadine. This gives them immense strength and can, in the case of Troll bosses Gardvords and Calibans give them healing abilities that make them very difficult to kill without several attacks in short period of time.

You can read the third chapter here, or catch up on the first and second parts.

Ever wondered what the most famous crimefigher in City of Heroes gets up to in between saving the world from alien invasions, defeating arch villains and saving kittens stuck in trees? Well, if the latest article over at JIVE Magazine is anything to go by, he spends a fair amount of time answering his mail.

Those busy bods over at Boomtown, where you might have been enjoying Alan Paterson’s Tales from Paragon City (catch up on Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 if you’re behind), have broken into our top secret vault and made off with some brand-new City of Heroes t-shirts, hats and bags to give away.

Being the generous folks we are, we allowed them to escape… this time.

More details on how you can win this fine apparel - plus a copy of the European Deluxe edition - are available on the Boomtown competition page.

By the way, in case you were wondering, this competition is open to everybody - so get your entries in!

If you can imagine an over-the-top TV show narrator doing that headline, it works a lot better, honest. Watch:

Can it be?? An actual City of Heroes Deluxe box? Fear not - we have the details, BELOW!

Geek-chic bible Wired has announced the nominations for its Rave Awards 2005, and Jack ‘Statesman’ Emmert, Cryptic Studios Creative Director and Lead Designer of both City of Heroes and the forthcoming City of Villains, is in the running for the Game Designer category.

The second part of Alan Paterson’s Tales from Paragon City has been posted over at Boomtown, continuing to detail his adventures in the European Beta:

I decided I wanted to be a healer, a necessity in some missions, so it was new Character time again. This is also one of my favourite parts of the game and I’ve previously spent nearly 30 minutes getting my character exactly how I want them too look, and getting a “Nice Costume” or “I like the name, very original” can be immensely satisfying.

You can read the whole article here, or catch up on the first chapter here.

RPG Vault, the hub of gaming and entertainment network IGN.com‘s MMORPG sites, has announced its 2004 Awards in two parts, and both City of Heroes and NCsoft have made the grade.

With the official release date for City of Heroes now out of the bag (it’s February 4th, but you already circled that date with a big red pen, right?), you might be thinking about pre-ordering.

If you’re looking for an appropriate online retailer then you’re in luck - we just updated our FAQ on “Where can I buy City of Heroes?” with extra UK and European retailers.

More retailers will be added as soon as we hear about them - and if you happen to spot any, please let us know in our comments!

With the European Beta well under way, we’re happy to announce more details of the City of Heroes European release. You can get all the answers in our FAQs section:

When will City of Heroes be released?

Is there a subscription fee for City of Heroes? How much is it?

What payment methods will be accepted for City of Heroes subscriptions in Europe?

Will there be time cards for City of Heroes? How much will they cost?

Don’t forget that many online retailers are already offering City of Heroes for pre-order, so you can reserve your copy today. We’d highly recommend it. Not that we’re biased or anything.

European gaming site Xequted bagged an interview with our very own Statesman last week, and managed to pin him down on a few things we know you’ll want to know:

Xequted: Can you tell us about any of the new stuff we’ll see in City of Villains?

Jack: Player bases – Super Groups can build their own HQ’s.

PvP – Heroes battle villains for the fate of world!

Base raids – Villains can invade hero bases (and vice versa). Epic battles ensue between the forces of good and evil.

Oh, but there’s more - even to that answer. Go read for some hot-off-the-presses info… and tell ‘em we sent ya.

Gaming site Boomtown has posted the first installment of its Tales from Paragon City, a diary of the City of Heroes European Beta. Author Alan Paterson is a newcomer to City of Heroes, and seems to be enjoying himself:

In fact, since I got the beta invite I haven’t even played Halo 2 on Xbox Live, or any other game for that matter, it’s that good. So far, I’ve made many friends, defeated many enemies, stayed up until 2:30am hoping to level up before I go to bed (with a 8am alarm) died and been revived 8 times on one mission thanks to my team mates, (Frostbite’s mission if you must know) and had a very good time to boot.

You can read the whole article by clicking here...

Players of the US version of City of Heroes got to celebrate the start of the new year in style yesterday, with the release of the long-awaited third update for the game. Issue #3: A Council of War was freed from the ‘Training Room’ test server and unleashed on the live servers last night.