Upcoming updates in Marvel Heroes & Marvel Avengers Alliance!

So quite a lot of announcements happened over the last weekend at the New York Comic Con (NYCC) 2013 for both Marvel Heroes & Marvel Avengers Alliance! Time to Hero Up! Also Doomsaw spilled the beans recently here as well. Read on to find out...

MARVEL AVENGERS ALLIANCE

*Thor movie & comics fans! The next Spec Ops 14 is gonna ring in the release of Thor: The Dark World! With Heimdall as the Ops Hero to recruit in the end, Loki as the lockbox hero & Kurse as the group boss, it's gonna be loads of fun for all us MAA addicts while we help defeat Malekith & his evil elvish forces!

*Following Loki, Sabretooth will be the next lockbox hero.
*Domino will be the next PVP hero up for grabs in Season 12. S12 will also feature a change to how the armory works.

*While we do know that Cyclops' Uncanny costume will be the reward for the Chapter 2 Mastery in storymode Season 2, Daredevil's original costume will be the reward for Chapter 3 Mastery. Also Kingpin & Sin- daughter of Red Skull, will be making their villainous debuts in Chapter 3.
*Even though he was first announced at last year's SDCC, Doctor Voodoo will be coming soon in the game.

*Android fans- MAA will be launching via Google Play on November 21!

*iOS fans- Deadpool will be the next PVP hero. Also, Punisher & Beast will soon be available for recruitment.
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MARVEL HEROES

Check out the NYCC trailer of new content:


-Work continues on the Mac version and you could probably expect it by Christmas.
-Trading is being worked on & will need at least a month of hardcore testing & iteration to make sure it's unbreakable.

New Heroes:
-Squirrel Girl is currently in the test center & will be the next new hero in 1.4. Sneak peek names of some of her powers: Squirrelpocalypse, Hulkbuster Squirrels.
-She'll be followed by Gambit (in 1.5- Nov) & Nightcrawler (1.6- Dec)
-Gambit is in full design process right now. He has a fun ability called "52-card pickup" that basically kills everything on screen. He also has some very well-animated combat animations & combat systems. Other power names- Cheat Death, Rain of Pain.  He has a Vagabond skill tree with some unique powers, including a power called "Sticky Fingers" that gives him a unique bonus to find orbs, credits & special items.

-Silver Surfer & Galactus will make an appearance in Marvel Heroes during 2014.
-Playable villians are not that far away.

Hero improvements:
-More improvements for many heroes including Colossus, Captain America, Daredevil, Hawkeye & Punisher by next month.
-Options are being added to help significantly reduce the cooldown on ultimate powers via the item & power system. [Update: With the Spiderman rework & 1.4's Squirrel Girl, Signature Powers will be introduced which will unlock at L30 having a cooldown of 3 minutes or less. At L52 the Ultimate power will unlock which will be even more powerful for tougher end-game content. More deats here. ]

Costumes:
-For Squirrel Girl, Gazillion has created it's own costume & pitched it to Marvel. They plan to do this a lot more in the future as Marvel really likes that process.
-For Halloween, the Brood Wolverine costume has been added to the store & will be available until November 1. Watch out for Punisher's Frankencastle costume in the game next!
-Costume alts for Spiderman (ENHANCED Superior Spiderman), Scarlet Witch (Ultimate) & Thor (Beta Ray Bill).

Items:

-New item slots (coming in 1.4):
*Stark-Tech items (unlocks at L45)- Devices created by Stark Industries to help any hero in different ways. Difficult to obtain, but can be crafted as well as found. Can be upgraded through your crafter.

*Legendary items (L55)- Provided to the most accomplished heroes from Odin's Vault (through Odin Marks). Strong items that get much stronger as they gain experience. As a player gains experience (even at L60), the item will level up & unlocks new powers. Can rank up 5 times & unlock new abilities. eg. The Ultimate Nullifier has a chance to wipe an enemy from existence (you still get the loot). As it ranks up, it improves your mental strength (spirit), damage and at rank 5 you will have a chance to devastate a boss on hit! Check out the list of Legendary items revealed here.

*1 PVP ring slot (L20)
*Two additional artifact slots
*1 Pet slot 

-Besides adding Blessings to artifacts, Odin Marks will have other uses once Asgard launches.
-Uniques & Legendaries will not be tradeable, they are going to stay "self-found" items.
-Cosmic Medallions bosses coming soon!
-Loads of new crafter recipes in the future so ensure you get your crafters to L20 asap!
-More items to be added to gear vendors to reward players who level them. They will likely be things you can only buy from them, including stuff similar to the gambling mechanic from D2.
-No current plans to make relics unbindable, but several new relics will be added in the future so you can spread them out to various heroes. They may make an extremely costly unbinding method so players can unbind relics only if absolutely needed.

New zones:
-Asgard will be the next new hub & looks AMAZING! The Dark Elves will show up. And get ready to whoop Loki's ass! There will be a Global Unlocking event for the Asgard content, after which Legendaries will be available. It will come in 3 chapters set up like a story, getting progressively more intense. Raids will be in one of the later chapters as things get more deadly.

-Bronx Zoo will be a new zone amongst others.

Endgame: 

-Terminals:
*A new Kingpin terminal.
*Randomized terminals with terminal-wide affixes on difficulty and loot. egs. All enemies are fire enchanted, but give 20% more special items or All enemies are invisible, but all drop an extra purple item. You can reroll the affixes until you get a challenge you like.
*A completely redesigned Limbo terminal for 5 players that acts as a never-ending dungeon descending into the planes.

-A very unique competitive PVE mode is in development
-The first PVP Mode called "Against the Gods" will be going on the test center by around October 24. Get more deats on it here.

So what are you guys most looking forward to? For me it's Asgard in Marvel Heroes & then Loki as a playable hero in MAA (WITH his movie costume! YAY!)

And before I forget- you can head on over to my Marvel Heroes group Comic Book HEROES Are Hot & join in our MH discussions out there!

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Spiral is the new PVP hero in Marvel Avengers Alliance!

Good day SHIELD Agents! I'm sure all you MAA addicts are already at it in PVP Season 11! This time around we have a chance to win the six-armed siren, Spiral. I LOVE the character art for her & love how she looks in the game as well (although she does seem a bit small in size).

As always if you finish PVP in Adamantium league you win Spiral. Also they've tried to make things a bit different & interesting this time- You have a series of covert side tasks going on simultaneously, that includes collecting certain items via PVP to enable Drs. Pym & McCoy to create their very own Tesseract. Check out the entire task list here.

What I love this season is the little changes in the PVP interface- Gone are the long waiting times before the battle begins. They've gotten rid of the player profiles display screen where you had to click "Continue" to begin the battle. It now straightaway loads into the battle & this GREATLY saves on the loading time. The profiles don't appear at the end of the battle either, but there is a "Compare" button that you can click to check the side-by-side comparison of the bonuses, & a "Profile" button beneath the opponent's name that will take you to their profile. I like it this way because now I know if I lose a match, I WILL be checking the comparison. Before when a fight didn't seem to be going my way, I would make a mental note during the fight about checking the opponents bonuses & profile after, but then I would still just click away & forget about it in the end.

But as always with every PVP season, this one too comes with it's customary gripes. Last season it was the constant forced refresh after every PVP battle unless you refreshed your game before every fight (which wasn't guaranteed to always work either). This season it's seeing defense battles in your battle reports where you have fought...YOURSELF! Check my battle reports- I'm Agent MF Darkholme in the game & that's what I see in my reports!

And just like every other season, I have hopes of doing well this season. But this time it's because I managed to get my hands on the Custom Sword of the Barony AND the Scroll of the Angolob! FINALLY!!! So in the images I've posted below you can also check out my current hero & weapon lineup for attack & defense fights. This is of course, more than likely going to change multiple times. Which heroes & weapons are you guys currently using for your attack & defense? What do you like & loathe most about this season?
^First 2 weapons in my attack lineup are the Cruel Glaive (from Spec Ops 13) & the Brute (SO 11). The second defense weapon is the Hotshot. Nightcrawler is the Swashbuckling Infiltrator version.

Before I end this SHIELD transmission I'd like to inform all those players who haven't managed to get Magneto yet- Magnetic Lockboxes are now on sale for a limited time period! So buy them now while you still can! Also Deadpool, Cable, Rogue, Gambit & Spiderwoman are all on sale. I have all of them so I don't know their prices but I'm very interested in finding out!

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