That was the appropriate setting of a recent NCsoft event showcasing Cryptic Studios' City of Villains, the upcoming sister game to last year's well-received City of Heroes. That game, an MMO casting the player as a superhero out to cleanse Paragon City of evil, is probably best known for its incredibly deep and open-ended character creation system, which offers a startling breadth of body styles, costumes, colors, powers, gameplay styles, and so on. With this level of customizability, it's no surprise that one of the most frequent questions Cryptic has received since that game's launch is "Can I be a villain?" The option to pursue supervillainy was something the studio wanted to include from the beginning, but they also wanted to ensure they had enough content and features for a satisfying experience, and so it was planned for its own game.

That game, City of Villains, is almost here, and it's looking really good. As expected, character creation is as impressive as it was in the first game, with a staggering array of options. Thankfully, Cryptic has also streamlined the menu system a bit, adding drop-down menus for the various options instead of just left and right scroll buttons. There are tons of visual options available, spanning the sleek and sinister evil look to the brutal and spiky evil look. Sample characters on display included such varying forms as hulking cyborgs and skeletal pirates. Yeah, you can be a skeletal pirate, complete with old timey pirate coat, hook hand, and three-pointed hat. City of Heroes players who spend more time in the character creation utility than in the actual game should find plenty more to occupy their time with this game.

There is a new set of archetypes for your villain as well: Brute, Stalker, Mastermind, Dominator, and Corruptor. To a certain extent they correspond with the group dynamic roles fulfilled by the various hero archetypes, but in various different ways. For example, the Mastermind can summon in a variety of different henchmen depending on the specific origin and powers of the character. These range from robots to special ops teams (who are dropped in from helecopters) to zombies to even ninja. Being able to call in zombies and ninja at a moment's notice in the thick of battle has to be a plus in anybody's book.

Upon creating and naming your villain, you are thrust into a jailbreak situation. Your character is in the slammer, but is being busted out by the forces of Lord Recluse, Paragon City's resident criminal overlord. It seems that Recluse has had enough of months of Paragon's heroes being threatened only by NPCs, so he is inciting the city's less reputable population to rise up against the goody two-shoes might of the heroes. Cryptic claims that many of the details and motivations of Recluse's designs will be discovered by players in various stories told throughout the new zones that will be added in City of Villains.

The actual mission structure of the game will be essentially the same as City of Heroes' instance-based system. You'll accept either a solo or a group mission, then go off to complete it in your own private version of that mission. The actual content of those missions, however, is suitably different. For example, instead of preventing a heinous crime from occurring, you'll be the one going out and spearheading a casino heist. You know, villainous stuff like that.

Much more significant, however, is the addition of Player vs. Player gameplay to what has until now been a Player vs. Environment game. It would be unconscionable to add villains into a hero-based world and not have constant epic clashes between the two forces. In addition to all the villain-specific zones that will be added to the game--and Cryptic claims that the amount of new CoV-specific content is much greater than the amount of content at the CoH launch--there will be several new PvP zones. These zones will be accessible to players of either game, regardless of whether they have purchased City of Villains. Though I didn't get the chance to try out any PvP firsthand, it seems to be vaguely similar to the Battlegrounds recently added to Blizzard's World of Warcraft. That is, PvP will take place in specific dedicated zones, and in many cases it is objective based. One scenario might have both sides vying for ownership of a particular item, one has both sides trying to gain control of a computer terminal which allows the launching of a missile, and some are of course all-out never ending brawls between good and evil.

Continue to the next page to learn about bases.

The addition most appealing to me, however, is base creation. No self-respecting criminal syndicate would be caught dead without a formidable base of operations, so supergroups (aka guilds) will now be able to design and build bases accessible through portals in the main game world. This too will be something available to both heroic supergroups and villainous supergroups, though as the content itself is contained in City of Villains, heroes who want bases will have to pick up a copy of the game. A base can be created when a group has obtained enough Prestige points, which will be accrued simply by defeating enemies, completing quests, and doing all the normal things you do in the game. The points earned by every member of the group are added to that group's cumulative total. However, individuals gain a very small number of points for the most part, so Prestige is best acquired in a large group that is fairly active. Prestige works just like currency; larger bases with more impressive facilities and decorations cost more points than smaller, less lavish constructions.

The actual construction mechanics are fairly intuitive. You are presented with an overhead view of your base, and you can add various types of rooms by selecting them then pointing and clicking in an area with enough space. To rooms can be added all sorts of furniture, lighting, wall decorations, and plenty of gadgets I didn't have time to fully explore. As with character creation, there is a huge array of different visual styles that can be employed in construction, and they can be mixed and matched. So while you may have a shiny black futuristic floor texture, your lower wall area could be clean white, your middle wall area could be brushed metal, and your ceiling area could be aging brick. I'm not sure why you'd want to do this, but the possibilities are there. After creating a base, which will probably be pretty small at first, your supergroup can continue to revise and expand it as more Prestige points are accrued. At launch, you'll only have one-story bases, but that may change in the future.

So what do these bases actually do? For one thing, they're cool places for you and your friends to hang out. In gameplay terms, however, they are defensive structures designed to protect your group's "items of power." Items of power are rare objects, such as books or crystals, which confer constant bonuses to your entire group as long as they are safe in your base. They are initially obtained through missions in the game, though they are apparently extremely difficult to acquire and will require plenty of teamwork and planning. The great part is that rival groups can attempt to raid your base and steal your item of power, and if the raid is successful that groups gets to keep the item in its own base and benefit from its buffs. Groups housing such an item will be required to have their base open for raiding for a certain period of time per certain period of time--it doesn't seem like it's quite been decided how frequently your base will be open, but the developers say it will be a reasonable limit. Your group picks a time when the base will be on the defensive, and during that time another group will sign up to raid it. During that timeslot, your item(s) of power will either stay under your control or pass to another group. It seems like a great gameplay idea, and the required raids are a great way to give any chance the opportunity to acquire an item. Plus, since you can choose when to be raided, you'll always be able to ensure that you've got enough players available to defend.

City of Villains is shaping up to be a great addition to City of Heroes, and promises to offer enough completely new content to draw in former CoH players as well as those new to the universe. NCsoft and Cryptic recently announced that subscriptions to both games will be included in one $14.99 monthly fee, so there's no reason for current heroes not to pick up the CoV box and try out the ways of villainy.

City of Villains will be released October 31.