Video of the CoH panel at the San Diego Comic-Con. Alas, doesn’t include the Q&A at the end.
Discussed a lot of the Freedom features, but also some of the other keen stuff going on:
- The new “Street Justice” (brawling) and Beam Rifles power sets. These will be premium sets, it sounds like, even for VIPs. Street Justice is combination-based (like Dual Swords?).
- Updates to the downloader (start playing within 5 minutes), as well as to the introduction / character builder and to the Tutorial. It all sounds really nice, and a great way to make the game more attractive for the new players they’re expecting.
- Atlas Park has gotten a total makeover with their new rendering technology, and the missions/contacts have been redone.
- Mercy Island isn’t quite as made-over, but the missions/contacts have been revamped, and you actually start down in the main burg to the south, rather than up at Ft Darwin.
- The low-level “Death from Below” sewer raid “event,” similar to the Incarnate Trial tech only for Levels 1-5.
- Added training missions in levels 5-19 (to make up for the very short tutorial).
- Issue 21 – the new zone “First Ward” in Praetoria, Lvl 20-25, complete with the new villain groups and the zone-wide Giant Monster (Seed of Hamidon) event, and the new underground Incarnate Trial (Avatar of Hamidon).
- Quality of Life improvements — dynamic icons over potential contacts’ heads; find contact button (with info!) for a nearby contact (and you can even teleport directly to him/her); and now travel powers will now become available at Level 4* and there will be “high end” travel powers, too.
- Signature Stories – key storylines, new story arcs monthly, hero and villainside (free for VIPs).
It all looks pretty cool!
The Prezi presentation can be seen more fully here.
* Young whippernappers got no idea of what life was like with travel powers only showing up at 14 … jogging through all the zones … including the dangerous ones like the Hollows … damned kids these days …