Well…not free, you do have to buy it for $50 or so, but if you already have a City of Heroes account, you pay NO monthly fee for City of Villians!
From Here.
This is a super-awesome deal! Now there is no reason not to buy CoV for those who didn’t think they wanted to pay two monthly fees.
Super Sweet.
I had a chance to get into the closed Beta 1 for the game but haven’t entirely given up on WoW yet…though talking to my friend at Blizzard there won’t be an expansion this year so I’m on the edge of canceling until they make some changes and might be looking for a new online fix soon. I’ve heard good things about CoH.
-XT
I’m glad you posted this announcement, Bouv, as I was going to say the same thing.
That seems like a pretty decent deal. I’ve been a consistent City of Heroes player, but started my toons on a server few other Dopers play on. It’s also been announced that those with a COH account and a COV account will have 12 slots per server for both heroes and villains. It’d be nice to come to a concensus on a server for Dopers to congrate on for COV. So, who’s going to play COV and where? 
Oh, and does anyone have a toon on Justice that would want to swap some influence with a toon on Victory?
I’m expecting the majority of my Villains to be on Champion, which is where I have the most room for new toons.
Or rather, the server that I’m currently on with the room for the most new toons. 
Wow! Is this the fastest sinking thread ever, or is everyone over playing COH?
Either that or the CoV beta and they can’t talk about it.
BTW: if you preordered CoV, expect your beta invite soon. 
The recent ahem ‘diversity’ announcement on CoH is embittering a lot of folks. Before this, I was all for ponying up the 50 to play both at one fee. Now I’m wondering if any of my buddies will be staying around after the ‘super-nerf’ wave comes through.
On the upside, I’m in beta for CoV, and I think I’m not breaking the NDA to say it’s pretty sweet, content-wise.
What’s the ‘diversity’ annoucement?
I was waiting for the CoV fee announcement before committing to it. I am very pleased. I was expecting an additional $5.
Regarding Enhancement Diversity:
Test then Evaluate. It may be ugly, but then again you may end up better off by using different enhancements. I am already seeing the possibility of being able to add slots in things like Tesla Cage that had been hogged by Stamina.
Warning: Contains many cries of “Doooommm!!!” and “The Devs Suck!” and “Statesman lies!”.
My toons will be hardly affected because none of them are using more than three of the same type in any given power as it is.
Or not, I just checked the official boards. Didn’t occur to me that they’d invite all those who had been playing for six months.
I don’t see the reasons for the cries of doom on enhancement diversity. Personally, I find the bulk of the posts to be quite immature (regardless of posters’ ages), and a whole bunch of “me too” whiners. I know people don’t like change, and nerfs have a very bad reputation in MMO games. Try to look at anything in a less-than-DDOOOOMMMMM!!! light on the CoH board, and your a fanboi.
This will make the game harder, but I don’t necessarily view that as a bad thing. It will change my playstyle. I don’t have too much of a problem with that. I already take advantage of some secondary effects in my offensive powers, and very few controller/defender powers do I 5 or 6 slot with one type of enhancement anyway.
Still, time for me to respec ERG-4; I’m tired of “losing” my unused respec slot everytime a new one is given.
Unfortunately, the game’s harder than I want it to be already, and the diversity system has killed any notion of me wanting to play CoV. I’m also planning to cull my alts on CoH, in preparation for a probable cancellation.
I think part of the reason for the pissing and moaning about the diversification, is because the players were already having fun and enjoying the game, when TPTB turned around and said “We’re going to do THIS because it will be fun and nobody’s having fun at the moment”. Also there’s rumors going around that the nerfing is happening because the game devs didn’t forsee the way people were using enhancements and powers, and it runs contrary to the “vision” they had for gameplay. So they’ve decided to take their ball and go home, and anyone who doesn’t like it can just suck it up.
I’m still on the fence about CoV. I got tired of the grinding in CoH, and after the I5 nerf it did screw a lot of my characters, who were still hella far away from a respec, so I dunno whether it’ll be worth getting CoV for the new content or not.
The diversification will be put on Test before it goes live, which means there’s a possibility that it won’t be as severe as currently indicated.
The biggest problem I have with ED is the fact that they just finished nerfing Defense in I5. Now this shows up and gives another nerf to Defense, and one to Damage Resistance. Yes, Damage is lowered also, but not as much. Defense and Resistance enhancements are Class B, which means they start getting worse after 2 even level SOs. If the first SO is green, then the second one is already getting worse.
Keeping that in mind, on JB, I have 4 powers in my primary that only take 1 kind of enhancement, either Defense or Resist. 2 others will only take 3 kinds, although slotting Recharge Reduction for TI or Unyielding is kind of silly. Emmert’s reply when it was pointed out that many powers only take 1 kind of enhancement? “At the moment, those particular builds have an advantage in that they can use those extra slots on something else.”
And Invulnerable tanks are not getting hurt as badly as Ice tanks or some of the scrapper sets. And this is why so many people that play tanks and scrappers are not happy with it.
When I was playing after about I4, my level 34 Gravity Controller (at the time the weakest set) could take out 3 reds, and 7 oranges. Just walk in and take em all out (slowly, of course.)
My level 4 beta Gravity Dominator was taking out 4 yellows at a time just last week.
WoW and every other game out there I know is much harder, so if easy is your game, I’m not sure that I would recommend quitting CoH/V.
Gravity/Kinetics rather.