Fancy seeing if the life of a hero or villain is for you? Well head over to Boomtown, where no less than 2000 free trial codes for City of Heroes and Villains are up for grabs right now.

These exclusive trial keys will allow you full access to City of Heroes and City of Villains for 14 days, completely free of charge. Get one now - they won’t last long!

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Issue #8: To Protect and Serve is now available on the European City of Heroes and Villains Live servers. The latest free content update introduces the Veteran Rewards program, adds Police Band and Safeguard missions for heroes, sees the rebuilding of Paragon City continue with an updated version of the Faultline zone and much more.

For more information about Issue #8, see our Feature Updates. Full release notes are available in our Game Patches section.

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The ever-growing About.com, which aims to act as a guide to, well, pretty much everything, has chosen City of Villains for the top spot in their new Top 7 Science Fiction MMORPGs article, with the puny defenders of Paragon City coming in at number three.

Lord Recluse was said to be pleased by the news, and has commended the Arachnos Propaganda Department on a job well done. The new head of the department wisely chose not to disclose that he and his minions actually had nothing to do with it.

You can read the full article over at About.com.

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ITV Meridian, our local ITV channel here in not-so-sunny-just-at-the-moment Brighton and all along the south coast, is celebrating the recent release of the Good vs. Evil Combined Edition of City of Heroes and City of Villains with a competition that asks its viewers to choose the super power they most desire - and why they want it.

The competition - which offers £500 plus a copy of the Good vs. Evil Edition to the winner as well as several other prizes for second place and runners-up - will be featured on the Meridian Tonight news at 6pm, but you can beat the rush and ensure you stand a chance of winning a prize by heading over to the ITV Meridian website and clicking on the link to the competition in the top-right - just look for the puny face of the accursed Statesman.

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We’re pleased to announce that the winner of the Creative Genius competition for October is Sar, for the continuing adventures of Eat Electric Death in Fury 101: The Brute Chronicles.

(Please note that the site contains occasional strong language, and as such is not recommended for younger viewers.)

Congratulations to Sar, who is now the proud owner of a ‘Creative Genius’ title on the official message boards and 60 days of free game time!

The Creative Genius competition is a monthly contest held on the Creative board. For more details, see the The Creative Board and Creative Genius thread on the official message boards. The Nominations for November’s Creative Genius will be opened on the Creative board in the first week of December, so there’s plenty of time to post your submissions!

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You may recall a couple of weeks ago our Marketing team was snatched by some unknown and thoroughly evil force. This left us in a difficult situation, we had an advert booked to appear in the January edition of games™ and no-one to make it happen. At least, that was until you lot donned your creative hats and stepped up to the challenge of our ‘Create an Ad’ competition…

After poring over the entries and applying some rigorous creative analysis, the chin-stroking was over and a clear winner emerged from the towering stack before us. Congratulations go to Mother’s Love, whose winning concept was clearly a labour of love, the results of which can be seen here (click to enlarge). A version of this highly crafted piece of work will be appearing in the January edition of games™, don’t miss it!

... “but what about the Honourable Mentions” we hear you cry, well it’s funny you should mention that…

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Both Edge Online and Computer and Videogames are celebrating the recent release of the Good vs. Evil Edition of City of Heroes and City of Villains with competitions that give you the chance to experience life as a hero and a villain for free!

Edge Online has 10 ‘goodie bags’ containing a shiny copy of the Good vs. Evil Edition box, a T-shirt and a limited edition statuette of either Lord Recluse or Statesman! Click here for full details on how to enter.

CVG has 10 equally shiny copies of the Good vs. Evil Edition box up for grabs. You can get the full details by clicking here.

Good luck!

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We’re pleased to announce that the Veteran Rewards program, which will be introduced alongside Issue #8: To Protect and Serve, has entered testing on the Training Room. Depending on how long you have been subscribed to City of Heroes and Villains, you’ll gain exciting new options such as wings, trenchcoats and samurai armor, and access to old favourites like free character respecs and Prestige Sprint powers!

For full details, see the announcement on the official message boards.

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On Halloween, City of Villains celebrated the first anniversary of its release. In recognition of the chaos and destruction they have wrought in the name of Arachnos, Lord Recluse has decreed that all villains who log into the game from today until the end of November will be awarded the Elusive badge for continuing to avoid capture by the so-called ‘heroes’ of Paragon City.

Remember that this badge is awarded on a per-character basis - if you have more than one villainous alter-ego, you’ll need to log in with each of them before the end of November to receive their badges. 

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The celebrations of Halloween and the first anniversary of City of Villains in Pocket D in Tuesday night were a great success, as heroes and villains put aside their differences for an evening of spooky fun with Bridger, Amboss, assorted gate-crashers, and our two very special guests - the do-gooding Ravenstorm and the mighty Lord Recluse himself!

Read on for some snaps from the evening…

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