Super-powered MMO City Of Heroes closed down in November 2012, but in recent years it has been revived by industrious fans via privately-hosted servers. While those servers allowed caped crusaders to continue roleplaying, the caveat was that they could be shut down at any moment by the most dastardly supervillains of all: lawyers.
That should be less of an issue in future. One of those community-hosted servers, Homecoming, has been granted an official license to operate by City Of Heroes' IP owners NCSoft.
]]>It seems that City Of Heroes still lives, albeit unofficially, but some have taken umbrage at the dead-and-returned superhero MMORPG adopting a secret identity to hide from NCsoft's lawyers. As reported by Massively Overpowered, outspoken fans of the game have been quietly invited to a secret, free fan-run version of the game for years now. The server is run by a shadowy circle of coders called SCORE - the Secret Cabal Of Reverse Engineers - and has been a well-kept secret. Until now, that is, as one player turned rogue and blew the lid off the story on YouTube.
]]>I shall always have the softest of soft spots (ew) for City Of Heroes. Not just because it was the first MMO I ever properly enjoyed and wanted to play all the time, but because it kinda sorta gave birth to RPS.
]]>There's a real urban fantasy gap in the gaming industry, and it's never made much sense. We see a thousand Tolkienesque fantasy games a minute (rough napkin calculation) and the future's typically so bright, even the lens flares need shades. Yet when it comes to that line where the mundane meets the magical, mostly what we've had for the last few years is false hope. Hope that World of Darkness would bring the complexity of Eve to the mean streets of Chicago or wherever. Hope that the right person with a big chequebook would get hooked on something like The Dresden Files or Hellblazer. Hope that games like The Secret World would lead the way.
So much wasted opportunity, just sitting there and waiting to be seized.
]]>Four years after NCsoft shut down City of Heroes, fans are still announcing new unofficial takes on its superhero MMORPG antics. NCsoft seem to have no plans for a new game of their own but they haven't entirely forgotten it, as they've announced that iconic hero Statesman is coming to their crossover MOBA Master X Master [official site]. It's not quite the CoH news one might hope for but hey, perhaps a nod is better than oblivion. If you rock yourself to sleep hugging your Statesman body pillow and dreaming of his Fist of Justice, hold on, he's coming.
]]>It is an entirely true and 110% accurate fact that everyone who ever played now-dead superheroic MMO City of Heroes is now developing three spiritual sequels of their own. Ship Of Heroes is the latest attempt to resurrect the much-loved NCSoft title, character creator and all, with the twist that it's all set on a giant spaceship.
]]>Even by Blizzard's standards, The Mean Streets of Gadgetzan is taking the piss. In case you missed it, which I know you didn't, but work with me here, it's the newest Hearthstone expansion. The trailer is wonderful. The setting is a corrupt crime-town full of gangsters, hoodlums and mugs, all fighting for cash and control in a tongue-in-cheek mix of Lord of the Rings and Bugsy Malone. I'd love to play a full adventure/RPG/heck even shooter set in that world, not just play with a new set of cards using it as a theme. In just a minute of charismatic art and a fun song, Blizzard fleshed out Gadgetzan with more love and more detail than some games manage in their entire runs.
But, uh, here's the thing. This is what Gadgetzan actually looks like.
]]>One of the main reasons I got into RPGs back in the day was that if you bought one, you were getting a lot of game for your money. That was important when there was only one birthday and one Christmas a year, and not much chance that some relative might pop their clogs in sync with Ultima VI coming out. Years later I no longer need the Grim Reaper's help to fill my collection, and other genres have done their best to replace scouring maps for objectives with, y'know, game, but there's still few that can match it in terms of raw Stuff. It takes a lot of content to fill an RPG.
This week then, I'm turning the spotlight on a few small bits and pieces from various games that I think back on fondly. Not entire games. Just a few ideas and moments from them that stuck with me, whether I liked the actual game they were in at all. Add yours in the comments, yadda yadda, you know the drill. Also, I thought I'd try and pick a few things that aren't brought up that often, hence the lack of, say, Heather Poe from Vampire: Bloodlines or any of The Witcher III's awesome stuff. Got that? Cool.
Note: you can browse through the list using the arrows alongside the image at the top of the page, or using the left and right arrows on your very own keyboard.
]]>As many hours as I've spent playing them over the years, MMORPGs always fill me with a touch of sadness for what they could have been. I'm thinking of the original optimistic dreams of people like Richard Garriott, talking of his world where players accidentally killing too many sheep would draw the wrath of a nearby, now hungry dragon, back in that innocent time before it was accepted that players would not only kill the sheep, but the dragon, and any other living creature within murder range. There's many reasons why the modern theme park style ended up being dominant, but as stories from games like Eve regularly demonstrate, we definitely lost a lot in that philosophical and pragmatic shift towards PvE content and fixed interactions.
At least we've still got world events. I love world events.
]]>In this era of a hundred comic book movies a year plus spin-off shows, it's getting harder and harder to remember that not so long ago trying to take a superhero off the printed page and onto some kind of screen was basically a recipe for failure, mockery, and a way of flying a promising creative career into a great big rock. Hell, even now most superheroes without the word 'Bat' in their name are still waiting for someone to even attempt a game, never mind make a good one. For every Batman on NES or Arkham Asylum, there's an Aquaman or Superman on Nintendo 64.
On PC, it's always been particularly weird. Especially when you look at which companies have tried and failed over the years to bring us the ultimate superhero RPG. Is there anything out there that comes close? Ignoring Freedom Force, since that's not an RPG? Well, some! Enough not to have to hold out for a hero, at least.
]]>Hello there. This week, I'm writing not just as an RPG columnist, but as president of the newly formed League Of Folks Who Don't Really Play MOBAs But Are Bizarrely Hooked On All The Trappings. As far as I can tell, our membership is roughly a billion people and counting. That's what happens when the likes of Blizzard and Riot spend literally tens of dollars creating gorgeous videos to promote their worlds, yes, but it goes somewhat deeper than that. Have you ever watched a new character reveal for a game you know you're never going to play? Then the sickness might have spread.
]]>There's something oddly comforting about radio. Comforting because it's so familiar, so natural. Odd because it's a comfort that most of us don't really use all that much these days, at least not in the ways that games just casually assume. It's a little like the whole audio diaries thing - it makes a vague sense that everyone in a city like Rapture might record their daily crimes and schemes onto audio tapes, even though in reality that whole idea became obsolete when Facebook/Twitter added status updates.
But I do love in-game radio. It's an amazing narrative tool, a great way of filling in the gaps the screen can't show, a constant companion in the loneliest of situations, and not a bad way of making music diegetic - a term that translates to 'let's see who now sneakily Googles diegetic'. Forget Spotify. Never mind video. In RPGs, nothing can kill the radio star, unless of course you walk up to them and shoot 'em in the face. Then, sometimes. Though usually nature still finds a way of keeping them on the air.
]]>Three years ago, I wrote an epitaph for NCSoft's axed superhero MMO City of Heroes, and for my beloved character within it.
"The City of Heroes has been closed down forever, and so The Entomologist is dead. Does he still exist on some dusty server, or have the bytes that made him been wiped forever? It doesn’t matter. There’ll be no Jean Gray resurrection for him."
I was wrong.
]]>Sometimes you can wait too long, think it's okay to put off saying that important thing to the game you love, and then they're gone. Then time goes on, and it becomes less and less relevant to say. Then you never say it.
City Of Heroes shut off its servers about two and a half years ago. Alec had the sense to eulogise it then. I never got around to it. And yet my memories of the game still buzz around in my head, the fondness for the MMO that really was responsible for forming RPS, years before there was an RPS, all with no outlet. The game can't really be included in Top X lists, since it's unplayable. It doesn't make good use of time or SEO to dedicate a feature to it on a major gaming website. So what to do? Waste some time, I say. Here are my memories of the long-lost City Of Heroes.
]]>Superheroes never die. They just switch MMOs. City of Heroes might have been reduced to a bittersweet memory, but you might find some of that old glory in Valiance Online's open pre-alpha test phase, which happily does not require you to sign NDAs in your blood. This upcoming MMORPG is set at the tail end of the 21st century, where spandex-clad superpeople roam free-range through the fictional city of San Cielo.
]]>Superheroes are killed off, resurrected, revamped, and rebooted all the time, but doing that to a superhero video game can take a lot more legal wrangling. When NCsoft shut down super-powered MMORPG City of Heroes and its developer, Paragon Studios, people tried to save it. Fans rallied and Paragon tried to buy itself out of NCsoft. The servers closed in November 2012. Then, last year, a studio founded by fans raised $678,189 on Kickstarter to make "spiritual successor" City of Titans. Like Growly Gus [or Wolverine, as Marvel call him in the US -ed.], they keep getting back up.
Now a group of fans say they might possibly get to resurrect City of Heroes too. Maybe. They're in talks with NCsoft to license the name and start running CoH servers again.
]]>It's only been a year since the sun set on Paragon City and City of Heroes was sealed off. If you look at that homepage and weep and wail and pound on your desk, snottily disclaiming: "It was too soon, damnit", then I have a thing you should look at. The previously titled Pheonix Project, a fan-made spiritual successor to the dead MMO
]]>I loved City Of Heroes. As someone who tends to find MMOs somewhere to run around in on my own, gobble up everything single player, and then quit out and never play again, City Of Heroes was different. It was a place to me. I don't think that's testament to the world-building therein - I'm not sure the towns themselves were anything particularly special. I don't think I can put it down to the superb powers, fun biffy combat, or amazing character creator either. For me it was about a certain time, with certain people. Which means I'm super-excited to see what can be done with The Phoenix Project - the fan attempt to create a spiritual successor to the now gone-forever MMO. Soon to be Kickstartered.
]]>City of Heroes is no more. Paragon perished, and with it, so did a home away from home for many colorful victims of radiation overdose. It was a sad day at RPS' nuclear-powered space base, and not just because it meant the Justice League became our closest orbital neighbors. You'll remember, though, that fans certainly didn't go down without a THOOMKAPOWBIFFZOTT-ing fight. But, until now, we didn't really know the other side of the story. Unsurprisingly, Paragon was waging a war of its own, and it was trying every last trick in the book to stay afloat. The part we never heard about, however, is how close the house that City of Heroes built came to pulling it off.
]]>One of the more miserable gaming events of last year was the closure of City of Heroes. The end of an entire world does tend to be a sad affair for those involved and even onlookers might find themselves touched by the extinction of all those lovely data-denizens. While the urban heroes may have fallen for good, Gamerzines have spotted The Phoenix Project, which aims to rise from the City's smouldering remains. Missing Worlds Media is a "community based game studio", made up of members of Titan Network's 'Save City of Heroes' forum, among others. Their intention is clear - they want to build a new comic book world packed with heroes and villains, and they want you to be a part of it.
]]>I left him in there to die. I wish I'd at least taken one last screenshot. I thought I didn't care, but now it hurts like hell. He's gone forever.
]]>The various strands of most fictional worlds fit together like melted Duplo and hunting knives, particularly when they have multiple authors and are inspired by the mad multiverses of super hero comicdom. City of Heroes is set to become a ghost town on November 30th and with closure fast approaching, Gamerzines notice that Paragon have taken to the forums to provide some closure of a different sort. You want lore? Here's your lore.
]]>Recently, I spoke with folks behind the Save City of Heroes movement, and they were absolutely delightful. Intelligent, calm, organized, passionate, motivated, etc. If any qualities could actually manage to wrest an MMO from Death's clammy grip, you'd figure those would do the trick. And, as it turns out, all the in-game and real-world events certainly got NCsoft's attention. But now, after an agonizing wait, the recently "restructured" MMO behemoth has finally fired back. Unfortunately, it turns out that no news was good news. Sorry, everyone: No more (City of) heroes.
]]>It's a strange thing, bearing witness to the end of a world. When the final voices of Star Wars: Galaxies voices cried out and were suddenly silenced, I was oddly moved by the documentation of the event, even though I'd never played the game and am the only person on the internet who doesn't have any particular feelings about Star Wars*. The end of City of Heroes may well create similar scenes, at once absurd and poignant, and Paragon have now shared a list of the LAST EVENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. One of them is a Double XP event, which seems kind of like finally getting a gym membership just as the countdown to Armageddon begins. Full list of events and timings below.
]]>The official meticulously articulated RPS stance on City of Heroes' upcoming closure is this face :( Legions of superpowered super-fans, of course, share that sentiment – whether we're talking eight-year crime-biffing veterans or recent arrivals from the stagnant shores of normalcy. Out of the blue, NCsoft announced that it was pulling the plug, and many folks started feeling understandably Hulk smashy. But while videogame fandoms have become somewhat notorious for taking what they want by embittered force, the Save City of Heroes movement has managed to stow pitchforks and mob mentalities in favor of fundraisers and 5,000-person in-game rallies. Will that be enough, though? I spoke to campaign coordinator Tony Vazquez about the rather astonishing effort and touched bases with Paragon Studios and NCsoft to see if it's made an impact.
]]>Snnnniiiiiiffffff. There's a huge amount of affection for City Of Heroes at Castle Shotgun. Long before RPS was a twinkling of an idea in our collective eye, the original four of us would play CoH together. Kieron, Jim, Alec and I were the core of a team that was joined by many others, spending more time in a game together than before or since. It's the source of the John Is A Bad Healer meme, it's where Jim sealed his position as a tank, where Kieron proved he could only play sissy characters that died all the time, and the source of so many anecdotes. And while none of us has played the game for years - in fact, I find it pretty unrecognisable now - it still remains an enormous shame to see its servers will be switched off. And an even greater shame that NCsoft have decided to completely close down the development studio behind it - Paragon Studios.
]]>As RPS' only painfully single person at the moment, I'm happy to inform you that Valentine's Day is cancelled. A pox on all happy couples, literally and figuratively. Return to your empty, silent houses with the biggest bag of sweets you can, turn off the lights, and spend the evening sobbing until the sweet, sweet chocolate oozes out of your eyes and anus.
...or alternatively, jump into one of the many Valentine's Day events taking place this week in assorted games. Almost anything with a cash shop will be running a sale, but many are running special events. (Though not all. DC Universe Online for instance scrapped the Valentine's content it tried last year in favour of waiting until the team has the time to do something good instead.) Jump in with a loved one, or just celebrate Aching Solitude Awareness Day by ganking any of those pesky doting sweethearts who get too close. Like I care. Sob.
]]>The MMOnitor is a new series in which we ask the developers of various MMOs to explain what is going on with their game, and what that means within the wider context of the MMO. We're kicking off with an interview with City of Heroes' Brian Clayton, Studio Director and Executive Producer. City of Heroes went free recently in the Freedom update.
]]>You know, the only MMO I've ever missed playing, apart from Eve Online, is City Of Heroes. I am vaguely tempted to see if I can somehow resurrect my age old tanker character in the new, free world that NCSoft are touting. I bet it's changed a bit since I was last in there over three years ago. The latest update "Freedom" has a bunch of stuff new content (see below for the full feature list) but also opens up the game pretty substantially, allowing people access to most of what made the game great (character creation) and the capacity to play through to level 50. Paragon's Brian Clayton says of the update: “We aren’t just flipping a switch and going ‘Free-to-Play.’ We’re embarking on the biggest content and feature update to City of Heroes in its seven-year history.” I hope he's right, because I have a genuine soft-spot for the ageing villain-biffer.
Details and video below.
]]>City of Heroes will be NCsoft's first major foray into the strange, wild land that is free to play MMOs. There is, though, the little matter of what the superhero game's current subscriber base will make of this. Well, they can find out right now, more or less. The free to play reboot, City of Heroes Freedom, won't launch fully until later this year, but any and all current active subscribers can jump right in as of yesterday. There are prizes and live events and shopping and all that funfair-sounding stuff to be seen and had. Useful bulletpoints await below. Oh, and apparently if you reactivate your old account now-ish, you'll also get to try out the headstart.
]]>Well, looks like later in the year City of Heroes is going to be free-to-play-until-you-are-overcome-by-hat-greed, according to Paragon Studios and NCSoft. They’re calling it City of Heroes Freedom and it’s set to contain all the content garnered from the 20 expansions to the game thus far. The free account will let you biff and kerpow until level 50 and give you access to all Hero and Villain zones but as ever those willing to subscribe will get “exclusive VIP benefits, content and services.”
]]>While RPS is displeased that Britain's future king elected to go against tradition and marry a woman instead of a horse, we're not entirely without heart. As such, we're going to make the big day thematically appropriate for City Of Heroes players by giving away City of Heroes Wedding Packs. That's right: NCSoft have give us the premium wedding DLC, worth £5.99, and we can give it away to thirty lucky, lucky readers. Lucky European readers, anyway, as it's limited to Europe. More details below.
]]>Gosh, the venerable superhero MMO has hit its twentieth major update! The expansion is called Incarnates, and NCsoft explains it like this: "Players will be introduced to the game’s new Incarnate Trials, group encounters featuring a series of innovative game mechanics that will test even the most powerful characters. Taking place in the seemingly utopian empire of Praetoria, Heroes and Villains will find themselves challenged with a cosmic threat that could destroy two worlds." All of which means new powers and new challenges for groups of 8-24 players.
We've got more details on that below, along with a illustrative trailer which show some of the trials in action, as well as some of the characters involved. (If I had a super power it would be this one, so that I could get all these games played.)
]]>While there may be a couple of big-name rivals on the block for City Of Heroes, it's not lying in a puddle, defeated by its foes. It's continuing to battle on, expanding itself like some sort of... some sort of SUPER HERO! I'm not very good with simile today. The next additions to the streets of Paragon City come with ears. Which is to say, there's an Animal Pack, which will add a bunch of new costume bits and bobs for characters, along with other fauna features mentioned below.
]]>Hail, hero. Would you like to win a copy of the super-chap MMO that half the internet has called Going Rouge? Plus enough add-on microstransactiony costume parts and whatnot to fill up a Fortress of Solitude? Well, you can. And, I'm very pleased to say, even if you're not a UK resident. This is global baby, global.
Going Rogue is the second mega-expansion for City of Heroes, following City of Villains. This one deals with the moral stickiness between good and evil, enabling you to go off super-piste to pursue something that's more your own agenda, rather than that of organised do-goodery or crime. Sounds good. Sounds... roguish. You should try and win a copy. If only you could find a website that had such a competition! Oh.
]]>As previous reported, the City of Heroes is having an expansion about GOING ROGUE involving alternate dimensions and similar. NCSoft offered us this designer diary to publish from John “Protean” Hegner at Paragon Studios. Now, normally it's the sort of thing we stray upon from, but I actually quite liked the expose of the thinking behind creating the MMO world. I suspect anyone interested in seeing a designer's thought process will get something from it. And people who like City of Heroes? Well, you're reading already, aren't you? Yes, you are.
]]>I was thinking about blogging about this weekend in City of Heroes being one of those double-XP-and-reactivate-all-old-accounts weekends that MMOs like to throw... but the news breaking on another interesting initiative pushed possible into definite. You're aware that the Cities games have a level designer function, allowing players to design their own arcs? Well, since this is flexible and accessible enough, Paragon have started a Guest Writer program where they bring published authors to do a mission. The first four - from Bill Willingham (FABLES), Rooster Teeth (RED vs. BLUE) and Scott Kurtz (PvP) - debut on Tuesday, and you'll find the details below...
]]>From the very first moment I heard about superheroic MMORPG Champions Online, I had one question - could I recreate my beloved City of Heroes character The Entomologist in it? With the open beta now live (rather unhelpfully, only so long as you're a Fileplanet subscriber or have preordered), I finally got to find out. Live, little man, live!
]]>Presumably as part of a major fight back against its own upcoming spiritual sequel Champions Online, NCSoft's venerable superfolk MMO City of Heroes/Villains (I've said it before and I'll say it again - still the most fun I've ever had in an MMO, even if it's a rare day that I venture back into it now) has announced a big-ass new expansion, Going Rogue. One that purports to fills in that morally grey gap between hero and villain. I always thought that was 'politician' or 'gym teacher', but seems as though it's a little more complicated than that.
]]>This has been a long time coming, but the City Of Heroes (& Villains!) mission architect is now in open beta, for testing before it launches into the full game along with Issue 14. (Test server details here.) It's looking brilliant, with players about to control everything from "environments, mission objectives, and enemies, to written fiction and character dialogue". And these aren't just single instanced missions, we'll be able to deliver mission arcs with multiple stages. NCSoft report that players can create wide ranging adventures, so they "story can have up to five chapters or missions and each mission can hold up to a maximum of 25 achievable goals." Apparently the player scenarios will be launched from an in-game browser, and ranked by a player rating system. The best missions will enter a Hall of Fame decided upon by the devs. Apparently players will receive "in-game benefits" for making content that is rated highly by the community.
]]>Following on from our recent Hinterland diary, we now yield RPS' floor to another agreeably garrulous developer. This time it's NCSoft's Bruce Harlick, who's Senior Game Designer on City of Heroes/Villains. Below, he writes about the process of designing lore and missions for the splendid superheroic MMO, the drawing board stories behind the upcoming Issue 13 update and a ghost named Sybil. Off you go, Bruce.
]]>So, gaming on Apple machines. Clearly Paganism of the most heinous order, but as it's nearly Halloween let's deign to acknowledge it. Anyone do it? Happy stories/horror stories? Despite owning a (hilariously battered) Mac myself, it's not something I've ever especially considered. I was fairly surprised to walk into a computing store in Canada last year and see ranks and ranks of slightly old or slightly silly Mac games there, so I know there is stuff available, but personally I'd stuck to oldies - I've got Mac copies of the first two Fallouts - and, er, casualies. Woo Peggle, etc. That, I'd surmised, was pretty much the outer limit of it, at least unless I had one of those hilariously costly high-end Mac desktops that people with tiny beards and expensive spectacles buy. Two Macish stories which suggested the more mainstream Apple systems are rather game-blessed of late caught my passive eye today, though.
]]>I've been meaning to post that the twelfth expansion ("Issue") for City of Heroes was about to go live for a while now. In fact, so long, that it has gone live, and anyone can actually play it. It's called Midnight Hour and introduces a new organisation ("The Midnight Squad - aka The Midnighters, which the Authority may want a word about, so we'll move swiftly on before someone gets their brains punched right out). To celebrate, beneath the cut we have its promo videos, our first impressions from our City-of-heroes insider and a completely gratuitous Wilson Pickett song.
]]>(Sorry for the hideous pun - I'm still badly jetlagged).
News reaches us, via Eurogamer, that RPS' favourite MMO (Jim's Eve obsession being obscured by a shallow veil of democracy), City of Heroes, is due for an intruiging new update. Always a game that's struggled to offer long-term appeal for its less devout players, it's had a few goes at adding a bit more meat to its big bones - but somehow crafting, auctioneering, veterans' rewards and even PvP haven't quite mustered the variety it badly needs. Perhaps, though, its newly-announced upcoming feature will.
]]>A quick note on two two new word-pustules I've affixed to the internet's mottled hide. First, Eurogamer's new MMO channel is foolish enough to let me celebrate my beloved City of Heroes character, The Entomologist, for 2000 words. In theory I'm talking about how COH's character editor and class structure offers a degree of self-expression no other MMO can touch, but mostly I'm jaffing off about my 4ft tall, power-jumping energy blaster. I also rope in comments from Jim and Kieron about why their COH characters warm their heart-cockles, and say things like this:
]]>City of Heroes/Villains is moving house. The super superhero MMO IP has been fully bought up by NCsoft, who formerly shared ownership with the games' developer Cryptic. But unusually for a publisher buying a game from its developer, this doesn't seem like it's bad news at all.
According to Cryptic, NCsoft have offered everyone on the CoH/V team a job, and indeed a few of the top dogs have accepted. So lead designer Matt Miller, lead engineer Aaron Brady and lead artist Ken Morse have all made the transition.
]]>[I was rooting around my hard-drive, trying to find the Freedom Force post-mortem which I swear to God I wrote, and I hit on something else similarly spandex-clad. The interview was done with Jack Emmert towards the end of 2004, so bear that in mind for some of the comments made.]
City of Heroes was the surprise Massively-Multiplayer game hit of the year. Yes, World of Warcraft dominated... but the surprise wasn't that it was a success, but the sheer scale of it. For a game to come from a team no-one had heard of, about a topic that had oft seemed commercially unviable, and to quietly revolutionise the genre with a stripped-down action-RPG… well, that’s a twist ending. No-one saw this one coming, True Believer.
We take a few minutes to secure an audience with the public face of City of Heroes, at publisher NCSoft’s recent European launch. He’s the Statesman, the defender of truth, justice and reasonable ping. But no-one’s seen him in the same room at the time with mild-mannered Lead Designer Jack Emmert. Could these two figures be connected?
]]>Something else that happened when I was away which I think's worth mentioning: City of Heroes hit double-figures in its updates, with Issue 10 going live. This time the Rikti, the perennial Big Bads of the series are back. And this time, they're shinier. Shiny-shiney-shine.
]]>
