City of Heroes News & Events & Guides

Background
For those people unfamiliar with the City of Heroes, Task Forces (called Strike Forces for villains) are special sequences of missions, sort of like mega-issues of a comic book, which require dedicated teams of up to eight heroes (or villains) to confront challenging tasks and experience pivotal moments within the lore of our fictional universe. Of course these also yield great XP and great rewards.
The Lord Recluse Strike Force, which made it into Issue 7, was our way of getting Hamidon-level Enhancements into the hands of the Villains for City of Heroes influence. We needed something that was difficult, and Hamidon-level difficult, but we didnt want to just regurgitate Hamidon¡­we wanted something cool. We wanted something where you fought the signature Heroes of the CoH Influence franchise.

We accomplished that goal, but in the end some of the Archetypes felt left out, since they didnt have the build to contribute to the huge Archvillain fights that the Lord Recluse Strike Force was built around (we took our learnings forward from this).

Fighting the signature characters was cool, but it was also something that was exclusively in the hands of the Villains. We really City of Heroes influence wanted something where the Heroes could have a chance at taking down the signature characters from the Rogue Isles. We wanted Heroes to see some of the cool things we did for the Villains since not every player is into playing "the dark side".

About the Mission
The mission starts out with Statesman telling you that Arachnos is up to something CoH Influence, something big. They are building something in Grandville of unknown power and use, but it is obvious that its more than a simple broadcast antenna that Lord Recluse claims it to be. Your orders are simple. Get to the factory near Grandville and shut it down.

Here we had a chance to have some "mayhem mission" type action, with your team of Heroes causing havoc in the WebFac, destroying City of Heroes influence vital pieces to the array in Grandville. This was something that players asked for when we introduced Safeguard missions. They wanted to go to the Rogue Isle and bust stuff up. Now they get to bust stuff up, but with a purpose.