http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/game_updates/issue_17/issue_17_overview.html

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."

With the release of April's Issue 17: Dark Mirror, the newest free update of City of Heroes®, the game you love now has the visual depth, contrast, and richness it deserves! Dark Mirror includes a superior graphics rendering process, dubbed "Ultra Mode," that gives City of Heroes a heightened level of detail in lighting, reflections, shadows, and water effects. Paragon City™ and the Rogue Isles™ have never looked better.

In addition to Ultra Mode, as part of Issue 17, you will confront a new and nefarious foe who will be able to match your character blow for blow.

Other Issue 17: Dark Mirror features include:

• Epic archetypes are now unlocked at level 20.
• Animated character tails.
• New missions, new badges, and new player emotes.
• Quality of life enhancements to the UI and game systems.
• Improvements and additions to Mission Architect.
• Features
• Ultra Mode

Ultra Mode includes a superior graphics rendering process for players who have higher-end graphic cards. Each feature can be enabled or disabled in the graphics menu options and will be scalable. Ultra Mode works on both Macs and PCs. In specific, it offers dynamic shadows, screen-space ambient occlusion, and dynamic environment reflections (including planar reflections and environment mapping of reflective surfaces).

Epic Archetypes Unlocked at Level 20

Previously, you had to have at least one character at level 50 to make an epic archetype character. No more! Now you can create an epic archetype character as long as you have any one character at level 20 or higher.

Animated Tails

No more tails lying about like dead weight! You will now be able to select tail body parts that will react to your movement and have a swaying or swishing idle animation mode. You will need to go to a tailor to upgrade to the animated version.

Content

• New Story Arcs: Issue 17: Dark Mirror features two new Hero and two new Villain story arcs for levels 20-30. Each of these story arcs has four missions, and the story arcs highlight the Dark Mirror's sinister new enemy. Acquire first Hero story arc in Talos Island, and the first Villain arc in Sharkhead Isle.
• Silver Mantis Strike Force Update: The Silver Mantis Strike Force will now be available to all Villains, not just supergroups. You now can access the Silver Mantis Strike Force via Silver Mantis, located in Sharkhead Isle. You can also run this Task Force from your supergroup computer.
• Positron Task Force Update: This Task Force has been split into two halves and dramatically upgraded and updated to ramp up the fun. The final battle of the Task Force takes place in the Faultline Dam and incorporates the new Dark Mirror enemy.
• New Badges: Along with adding badges for 500 Badges Earned, 750 Badges Earned, and 1,000 Badges Earned, we are adding new exploration badges to city zones, almost doubling the number of exploration badges. You can learn new Accolades for finding all of the exploration badges in each city zone.
• New Player Emotes: We'll let you know more about the new emotes soon.

Quality of Life Improvements

• Craftable Temporary Powers: You will now have a much cleaner and more consistent way of finding and crafting temporary powers.
• Increased Mission Count: You can now have seven active missions (previously three).
• Show Last Objective: This UI improvement lets you find your last objective on a mission map, making it easier to find something you've missed.
• Auction House: The UI gives you new options for sorting search results, your Auction House inventory is now separated by clearly marked tabs based on the item's status, the Auction House text entry box now autocompletes, and a single click on a recipe displays all salvage needed for that recipe.
• In-Game E-mail: You can now use in-game e-mails to send Influence/Infamy to your own characters or to other players' characters via in-game e-mails. (You still cannot send Influence, Infamy, or items from a Hero to a Villain or vice versa.)

Mission Architect Improvements

• Experience: You can now handpick the powers for custom enemies and still receive experience for them (within game balance limits).
• New Maps: We have added approximately 20 new unique maps.
• Giant Monsters: You can now add giant monsters to some outdoor maps.
• Exit Mission on Complete: You can now specify that players have to leave the mission manually on completion.
• Escort Missions: "Lead to place" technology allows you more control over escort objectives.

Once both this and the new expansion are out i can see myself resubbing to the game, again.

Ultra Mode is the real feature. The other stuff is pretty minor, and most of it wouldn't even have been announcement worthy back in the day. But upgrading the entire look of the game is a noteworthy addition.

Also while I'm being negative: animated tails? PvP is a mess, endgame barely exists, no new zones have been added since the dime-sized Cimerora, and bases still don't live up to the promises that were printed on the City of Villains box. And they're spending man hours on animated tails?

But that aside, it's nice to have an issue that's not just reversing the Architect decisions from the previous issue. Well, not JUST reversing the Architect decisions from the previous issue.

Originally posted by Amarsir

Ultra Mode is the real feature. The other stuff is pretty minor, and most of it wouldn't even have been announcement worthy back in the day. But upgrading the entire look of the game is a noteworthy addition.

Also while I'm being negative: animated tails? PvP is a mess, endgame barely exists, no new zones have been added since the dime-sized Cimerora, and bases still don't live up to the promises that were printed on the City of Villains box. And they're spending man hours on animated tails?

But that aside, it's nice to have an issue that's not just reversing the Architect decisions from the previous issue. Well, not JUST reversing the Architect decisions from the previous issue.

Animated tails lmao - well Warhammer added...arrows that make cool phew phew noises...like a star wars hand held beam weapon.  Yeah, welcome to the pathetic current state of mmorpgs.

Will an mmorpg ever be born that leads us out of the cave of mediocrity?

It's been what 13 years since the release of UO 11 years since the release of EQ 1...9 years since DAoC was born -

Other than the very vanilla mmorpg that WoW became after Burning Crusade - we've had failure after failure.  Where are the bright minds of the industry? Why is it that those with the money to create are not working with those who have the talents worthy of creation?

Originally posted by Amarsir

Ultra Mode is the real feature. The other stuff is pretty minor, and most of it wouldn't even have been announcement worthy back in the day. But upgrading the entire look of the game is a noteworthy addition.

Also while I'm being negative: animated tails? PvP is a mess, endgame barely exists, no new zones have been added since the dime-sized Cimerora, and bases still don't live up to the promises that were printed on the City of Villains box. And they're spending man hours on animated tails?

But that aside, it's nice to have an issue that's not just reversing the Architect decisions from the previous issue. Well, not JUST reversing the Architect decisions from the previous issue.

Ultramode definitely is the selling point here.  Animated tails?  I think there was a vocal group on the boards that wanted tails separated from the belt/details section and this was the end-result.  As for content, new zones and endgame content are coming in Going Rogue.

Frankly, i would have been happy if issue 17 was just cleaining up the wentworth's gui ( ' ;

Nice the influance added to emails wil come in handy for those of us with a single acount.Cant wait for ultra mode .

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Originally posted by Axeion
Nice the influance added to emails wil come in handy for those of us with a single acount.

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The thing that surprises me a little is that they're still being stubborn about heroes and villains having a separate auction system and not trading cash. It makes even less sense with both sides merging via Going Rogue anyway. It's the sort of thing that they will obviously relent on eventually, making a huge announcement about the great feature, while we go "yeah, thanks, you couldn't have just done that 3 years ago?"

Originally posted by Amarsir

Ultra Mode is the real feature. The other stuff is pretty minor, and most of it wouldn't even have been announcement worthy back in the day. But upgrading the entire look of the game is a noteworthy addition.

Also while I'm being negative: animated tails? PvP is a mess, endgame barely exists, no new zones have been added since the dime-sized Cimerora, and bases still don't live up to the promises that were printed on the City of Villains box. And they're spending man hours on animated tails?

But that aside, it's nice to have an issue that's not just reversing the Architect decisions from the previous issue. Well, not JUST reversing the Architect decisions from the previous issue.

New story arcs? Refurbished task forces? A shadowy "mirror enemy?" Numerous quality of life fixes? Animated tail separate from belts? I completely disagree, this new issue is absolutely full of win!

Oh, also I'm pretty fairly certain it's the art guys and the animators working on the animated tails. I bet PvP would suck even more if they got those guys to work on it instead of the game designers and game mechanics and powers guys. Seriously, do you also think that the community managers are doing the back end programming for Going Rogue? Will you start complaining when they post in the forums cause they aren't programming enough for your tastes?