Dedicated badge hunters who don’t mind a little help tracking down the trickier examples might want to check out the new Badge Guide over at City of Heroes Realm.

The guide breaks the various badges available in City of Heroes down into categories, then gives details of where and how to collect them. Sadly there are no maps to help you find the many exploration badges that are dotted around Paragon City, but exact location coordinates are given for each (type /loc in game to see your current location coordinates).

Those heroes who’ve decided that they don’t need no steenkin’ badges won’t need to click here for the full guide.

We are pleased to announce that the unusual lag that has been affecting the City of Heroes European servers has been resolved, and normal service has been resumed. We will continue to monitor the situation closely to ensure that there are no further problems.

We would like to thank all our players for their patience and understanding while we worked to identify the cause of the lag and resolve the issue.

We are dedicated to providing the best and most reliable service for City of Heroes in Europe, and in recognition of the inconvenience the lag caused, we will be offering all of our players compensation in the form of additional play time added to your accounts. We will bring you further details of this next week. In the meantime, please enjoy a weekend of saving Paragon City from the forces of evil!

Those of you looking forward to pitting your skills against other heroes in Issue #4: Colosseum can find out more about the Arena in our newly expanded Feature Updates section.  We’ve just added a new page with more information about the Arena itself and how your powers will function in Player vs Player combat. Start honing your skills now…

If you’re chomping at the bit to suit up and sock it to your heroic chums in Issue #4’s debt-free arenas, then Jack ‘Statesman’ Emmert has some things to tell you, via Computer Games Magazine:

Computer Games - What will the PVP arenas in the cities be like? Will they have interactive enviroments and places were players not in PVP combat be able to watch the action?

Jack Emmert - The PvP Arenas are modern day style coliseums similar to those that sports teams play in. PvP matches take place in holographic representations of several different environments. Some are interiors, such as warehouses or labs. Others are exterior sections of zones that people know well, such as Perez Park or Boomtown.

Players can view current bouts by entering as a floating camera. In order to prevent a player from spying for his friends in a match, these cameras are destroyable. In other words, characters in the match can target and eliminate the cameras if they wish.

You can read the entire interview online here, and read even more about Issue #4 in our Feature Updates section, and stay tuned for more updates as the arenas continue to be constructed!

NCsoft Europe and Cryptic Studios are proud to announce the first ever European convention appearance for City of Heroes! Here are the essential dates and details for your diary:

• What: Comic Expo, presented by Area 51 & Comics International - official site
• When: Saturday May 14th - Sunday May 15th
• Where: The British Empire & Commonwealth Exhibition Hall and the Ramada Plaza Hotel, Bristol
• What’ll it cost: Just £5 for either Saturday or Sunday, or £10 for the whole weekend - under 12s free when accompanied by an adult

Currently confirmed guests for the convention include J. Michael Straczynski, creator of TV’s Babylon 5, Crusade and Jeremiah; Michael Avon Oeming, artist on Powers; Gary Frank, artist on Midnight Nation; Dave Gibbons, creator of The Originals, plus many, many other guests you’ll find listed on the Comic Expo site.

As well as the guests, a top-notch array of publishers are going to be present, from British perennials 2000AD to collectible card maestros Upper Deck Entertainment, and manga maniacs Tokyopop. Throw in a whole load of retailers and you’ve got a full weekend of entertainment!

Know your DHTML from your HTML? Your CSS from your W3C? Your Javascript from your plain ol’ Java? Then perhaps you’d be interested in working at NCsoft Europe as part of our web team. Read on if you are....

Jack ‘Statesman’ Emmert, Cryptic Studios Creative Director and Lead Designer of City of Heroes and City of Villains, recently found time in his busy schedule to have a chat with German gaming site Spieleflut. Fortunately for we bilingually-challenged types, the lovely chaps there have posted an English version, including questions like:

What is, in your opinion, so fascinating on City of Heroes?
You can be a hero! Imagine any costume, any power - it’s up to your imagination! From childhood, nearly everyone has dreamed what it would be like to be a hero. City of Heroes brings those dreams alive.

You can read the whole interview by clicking here.

The latest episode of Ask Statesman! has been posted on the Official European Message Boards. This time around, Jack ‘Statesman’ Emmert, Cryptic Studios Creative Director and Lead Designer of both City of Heroes and City of Villains, answers your questions about the Arena, player housing and, of course, City of Villains. Click here to read the whole thing, and catch up on the first two episodes if you missed them.

The IGDA (that’s the International Game Developers Association, acronym fans) has announced the nominations for the 5th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards, and City of Heroes developer Cryptic Studios is in the running for the New Studio prize.

The winners will be announced on 9 March, 2005 at a ceremony during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. In the meantime, you can see the nominations in all categories at the official site.

If you missed the third City of Heroes House of Commons chat on the Stratics IRC network, a transcript is now available at the City of Heroes Stratics site.

The topic for the chat was Issue #4: Colosseum, and Jack ‘Statesman’ Emmert, Cryptic Studios Creative Director and Lead Designer of City of Heroes and City of Villains was on hand to answer questions and give a few hints about future plans for the Arena…

The rather generous chaps over at Monkehs.com have been using TeamSpeak 2 to help coordinate their City of Heroes groups, and have had such success that they’re now making a special offer to other City of Heroes supergroups who are interested in using voice communications.

No less than five new issues have been added to Paragon City Comics, the fansite dedicated to comics created by players using City of Heroes screenshots.

During yesterday evening (approx 6pm to 11pm GMT) we experienced some technical issues with our billing system, accessible via the PlayNC website. This was due to external issues with our billing company.

In this period you may not have been able to register a new City of Heroes game account. We’ve now resolved the issues we were experiencing, and you should be able to register and create game accounts once more.

If you experience any issues, please contact Customer Support via the official support page - click on ‘Ask a Question’ to send your details.

NCsoft Europe apologises for any inconvenience caused.

Over at comic book bible Wizard they’re gearing up for their 12th Annual Wizard Fan Awards, and City of Heroes has been nominated in the Favourite Video Game category. Voting has started, so head on over and support your favourite comic books, artists, writers and, of course, your favourite game…

City of Heroes champions Boomtown are flying to the rescue once again with a chance for anyone playing the game to boost their game time, to the tune of 60 days. They have Game Time Cards to give away to three lucky players who can submit a great screenshot.

To be in with a chance of winning, get yourself over to Boomtown’s competition page for all the details.