Even in a city where many citizens dress up in costumes to do battle with mystical threats on a daily basis, Halloween is a special time of year. While Paragon City’s Halloween holiday was dampened last year by renewed hostilities from the Rogue Isles, this year’s October events look to be even more promising than before, with record numbers of citizens all over the city ready to welcome trick-or-treaters of all ages.

However, a dark shadow has fallen over the festivities. Word has spread from the shadowed land of Croatoa that strange things are headed south to spoil the holiday with their own evil celebrations. With the location of the Malleus Mundi still a mystery following its disappearance last year, it’s feared that new creatures might appear on the city streets. There have already been rumors that the Unseelie court may be sending fiends to paragon City to join the vampires and werewolves that stalk the night on All Hallows Eve. Now there have even been sightings of the fearsome giant Jack-in-Irons striding south to join the Pumpkin King.

To combat this dark tide, Croatoa’s Ravenwing Cabal has offered to help by encouraging heroes not only to fight these dangers, but also to enjoy the holiday. Heroes are encouraged to look for Ravenwing Cabal member Annah in Croatoa to learn more once the Halloween festivities begin. There are rumors that a rogue member of the Cabal called “Granny Beldam” has plans to offer the same encouragements to villains from somewhere in the Nerva Archipelago. It remains to be seen how the villains of the Rogue Isles will react, despite Lord Recluse’s orders for mandatory Halloween cheer among the populace.

We’re pleased to announce that the in-game items from the new Good vs. Evil Combined Edition of City of Heroes and City of Villains are now available to existing City of Heroes and Villains players via the PlayNC.com website.

These in-game items include the Jump Jet Prestige Power, the ‘Pocket D’ VIP Card Teleport Power, and exclusive hero and villain costumes. The In-Game Items Pack is available for £5.99/€8.99.

Read on for full details and how to purchase the Good vs. Evil In-Game Items Pack…

Matt ‘Positron’ Miller, Lead designer of City of Heroes and City of Villains at Cryptic Studios, has been chatting to Boomtown about the upcoming Issue #8: To Protect and Serve. He talks about several of the new features that will be introduced, including Safeguard Missions, the heroic equivalent of the Mayhem Missions from City of Villains:

The main objective is to stop a bank robbery that is already in progress. Once you complete that, you can then go around an instanced area of Paragon City stopping crime, and earning bonus rewards.

You can read the full interview over at Boomtown.

In celebration of the new Good vs. Evil Combined Edition of City of Heroes and City of Villains, we are reactivating all inactive accounts for the weekend. If your City of Heroes or Villains account is currently inactive, you’ll be able to log into the game any time between now and 8:59pm BST on Sunday, 8 October for free!

Your hero and villain characters will be waiting just as you left them, ready for new adventures.

All inactive players should receive an email with details, but if any of your friends are former players, make sure you let them know that they can come back for the weekend for no charge.

Our Veteran Rewards page has been updated with full details of another year's worth of rewards, covering the 15, 18, 21 and 24 month 'milestones'! Click here to take a look.

You can find out more about the Veteran Rewards program that will be introduced with Issue #8: To Protect and Serve in our Veteran Rewards Feature Update, and get an overview of the other features of the next major update to City of Heroes and City of Villains in the Issue #8 Feature Update.

You can also download a higher resolution of the trailer above from the Movies page in our Media section.