The self-destruct power features a warning siren and a huge knockback explosion that pretty much vaporizes any enemies standing near you. Of course, it leaves you dead and untargetable, so you can't be brought back to life unless a teammate has an area of effect rez. There are videos of Self-Destruct in action here and here.

Hero-Con 08 will be held in the Bay Area (Santa Clara, specifically) on Oct. 18. Attendees will get to see panel discussions, workshops and Q&A sessions with the game developers, participate in live mission events, win prizes in contests and get a bunch of swag. Plus, their characters will get an in-game power, a toggled Harlequin costume. Not enough? Anyone who registers and attends will gain access to City of Heroes' closed betas, including the beta for the upcoming Issue 13.

Speaking of Issue 13, it's finally been announced. Subtitled "Architect," it will include the usual costume additions, new story arcs and missions, and improved zones. There will also be two new power sets, Shields and Pain Domination (which is villains-only). Then there's the new Merit Rewards, which haven't been fully explained yet, and the all-new "Day Job" system. This allows your character to gain abilities and badge credit depending on where you're standing when you log off. Log off in a hospital, gain healing related powers. Log out in the university, gain research rewards. And we haven't even mentioned the biggest aspect of Issue 13 yet - player designed missions. The developers are promising a rich, full-featured designer that will include actual map design, enemy spawn design, plus narration and dialogue creation. It will supposedly not be exploitable, and will have a rating system so the most well-done missions can rise to the top. Image by: NCSoft.

Last week, NCSoft released "Issue 12," the latest batch of free content for City of Heroes/City of Villains. In addition to epic villain archetypes, a bunch of game tweaks and improvements that players have been asking for were rolled out. Both heroes and villains also gained access to two new areas of play: the Midnight Club is the hideout for a secretive group of heroes and features an interesting puzzle game that gives characters access to an in-game badge; Midnight Clubbers can time travel to a realm in ancient Rome called Cimerora, which results in some pretty awesome robot vs. centurion battle scenes.

The Champions Q&A revealed some of the difficulties designers are having adapting the pen and paper Champions RPG to an online game. Certain power types will be tied to certain archetypes. If you have a defensive archetype, you can still choose offensive powers, but they'll be more expensive than your defensive powers. It appears that powers will be customizable via advantages and limitations, but not right away at level one. And also, no fatties.

Randy Mosiondz: Scaling will allow you to make "chunky" characters, but nothing on a massive (Blob-level) scale.

Champions Online Q&A Decoded. [Rock, Paper Shotgun]

Here are all the works of science fiction (so far) which have featured a drug named Rapture:

Odyssey 5

In the episode "Rapture," a scuzzy teenager named Justin Deckard manages to get a formula for a super-drug from the alien Sentients, who live on the Internet (sort of.) The drug links everyone who uses it telepathically, into a sort of gestalt, and gives you psionic powers that let you give other people nosebleeds and eyebleeds. Justin wants to use it to turn all his "friends" into a "hard drive" to give his own brain extra processing power. But it ends up making weird veins splotch out on his face, and then he has a druggy freakout and drives off a cliff. See clip above for how awesome a Rapture rave can be.

Spider-Man 2099:

Miguel O'Hara wants to quit his job at Alchemax, the evil company in the year 2099. But his boss (and secretly his dad) Tyler Stone doesn't want him to quit — so at Miguel's farewell dinner, Tyler spikes his drink with Rapture, a drug that bonds with your DNA to make you addicted for life. I forget exactly what the high from Rapture looks like, but it didn't seem that fun when I read this comic a decade ago — just sort of trippy. In any case, Alchemax is the only supplier of Rapture, so Miguel has to stay working for them or suffer horrible, unending withdrawal pains. Miguel instead decides to restore his DNA from a stored version, but his DNA gets mixed with spider DNA — turning him into Spider-Man.

Sagramanda by Alan Dean Foster:

In the not-too-distant future, Sagramanda is an Indian city of 100 million people — and it's plagued by a serial killer named Jena Chalmette, who is high on the drug Rapture-4. Writes Foster: "It sharply enhanced her emotions and heightened her perceptions. She believed it also altered the reality around her." It's also referred to as "Full-on Shakti," and Foster mentions that it causes visions.

City of Heroes

This happy MMORPG was terrorized by a new designer drug named Rapture that made its users "moody" and even more violent than usual. The drug also gives users greater strength and endurance and changes their body chemistry for some unknown, yet sinister, purpose. MAGI Investigators finally tracked down a drug lab in Skyway City, where it turned out "renegade Trolls" had been manufacturing the drug. The drug is a derivative of another substance known as Rapture X. Dood!

Violent New Breed (1996)

This is sort of a horror/fantasy movie, except that it's set in a dystopian future, and the demons in the film are dabbling in pharmacology. Says IMBD:

Demons have invaded the streets with a drug called Rapture (the ultimate high) that has half the human population hooked. I found this social commentary very refreshing and honest, as opposed to other films about addiction where we are asked over and over again to feel sorry for the addict. The drug is used to cloud their minds so the demons can use them as slaves and can use the women as vessels to impregnate and carry more demons, only these are half-breeds - demon and human mixed. Thus creating a "new breed" to control the planet.

"Into The Black" by Ally Blue

A gritty slash fic story set in a dystopian space colony. A gangster's mistress has been cheated of ten grams of the awesome drug Rapture, and there will be hell to pay. So what does the drug do? Not sure. Here's the description: "Rapture was horribly addictive and expensive, but was nevertheless wildly popular on the space stations orbiting the Outer Planets, where the air reeked of tight-packed humanity and despair and everyone wanted an escape, however temporary."

The real-life drug

And finally, there's a dietary supplement known as Piperazine — but the street name is Rapture. It causes psychotic episodes in some people who are unlucky enough to try it. It's a stimulant, but even when it works properly it's not that great, according to one guy who tried it:

I chose Rapture, which promised me "an intense mind and body sensory experience". Starting with one pill (just in case my head imploded, or a giant ringworm shot out of my stomach), I began a merry game of Circle Of Death. After about an hour I was still yawning and didn't feel much like going out. So I had another pill. One whole hour later there was still no effect, so I took the last of my recommended dose... At first I thought the pills were utter crap, as I yawned my way into the Outback (I'd had a long drive that day), but after a backdraft and some cheap chocolate mudshakes I realized that I was actually getting drunk backwards. I know that makes no sense.

Basically, instead of the whole world spinning and everything becoming a blur, with me feeling like the only one standing straight, the world sat perfectly still and clear - a little too clear - and I felt myself moving.

Greatest drug in the universe.... or kind of a crappy high? That seems to be the one thing all of these versions have in common. Oh, and there's also this wacky satirical piece about British priests selling a drug called Rapture to convert new believers to their dwindling flocks.

Branching level paths, new powers and unique costume options for villains are just a few of the additions in store for CoH fans. Episode 12 will also feature a set of missions that will send heroes and villains through time to ancient Rome to aid the Midnight Squad. New super powers will be unlocked for the game's pre-existing archetypes, and a host of tweaks and improvements to gameplay will make it even easier to save (or destroy, as you prefer) Paragon City.

If anyone wants to go heroing with an io9er, stop by Infinity server and say hi to Cyber Sabre. Electric blasters rule. Image by: NCSoft.

Issue 12: Midnight Hour. [NCSoft]