City of Heroes: Birthday and Info

In advance of the third birthday of City of Heroes, NCsoft has released a press release reminding everyone of the celebration and bringing us some interesting statistics about the game.

This weekend gaming fans are celebrating the third birthday of City of Heroes, the massively multiplayer game that continues to be one of the most successful comic book-based PC games on the market.

City of Heroes, developed by Cryptic Studios and published by NCsoft, was released on April 28, 2004, and since then, the game has expanded substantially by building a loyal and growing player base while adding huge chunks of free content to subscribers. In the coming weeks, NCsoft will release another major, free expansion to City of Heroes, marking the ninth such expansion along with the release of the companion game, City of Villains. City of Heroes has set new standards for MMOGs with a break from the traditional medieval fantasy setting and providing character customization that is unmatched in the gaming industry.

During the first three years of the game, more than 24 million characters have been created in City of Heroes and City of Villains with more than 102,000 of those characters reaching level 50, the game's top tier. The game is also renowned for its ease of cooperative role-playing, resulting in the creation of more than 654,000 super groups, and the building of more than 66,000 super group bases.

Additionally, NCsoft has determined that of the 24 million characters created:

27 percent of the hero characters created were blasters, making it the most popular hero archetype.

26 percent of the villain characters created were Masterminds, making it the most popular villain.

32 percent of the characters with travel powers chose flight, followed by super jump at 28 percent, super speed at 25 percent and teleport at 14 percent.

Fueling the game's economy is the more than 3 trillion influence (the game's currency) in circulation, which will play an important part of the new crafting system and auction houses being added with the upcoming release of "Issue 9: Breakthrough," the game's next content expansion.

NCsoft has recently released a new retail game pack, the "Good Versus Evil Edition" which includes both City of Hereos and City of Villains and is now available at retailers across North America.

For more on City of Heroes click here.