![shipofheroes](https://massivelyop.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/shipofheroes-696x229.jpg)
Ship of Heroes may be the youngest City of Heroes spiritual successor, but it’s also the most likely to hit beta first: Its beta is still slated to launch by the end of 2019. But between now and then, developer Heroic Games has quite a bit planned, including the smaller beta for the character creator.
In response to a player thread on Friday inquiring about the state of testing – particularly given the popularity of the actual resurrection of City of Heroes right about now – Heroic’s Casey McGeever lays out the gameplan.
“We’re working on several major things in parallel,” he explains. “First, we’re making a major upgrade to our character models, particularly with more realism in the faces, prior to the next big thing which is a Character Creator Beta. You’re wondering the exact date? Yes, me too. :) We’d love to make that happen for the 4th of July weekend, but we’re not sure if we can.”
“Also, we have made a set of adjustments to our superspeed animations and FX. So we want to wrap that up next week, and then make a video about it. Finally, we’re actually recording segments for a video about the level-up process, choosing power new powers, applying augment slots, and then installing augments. We have that working and I saw some short (and cool) combat scenes recorded in support of that. Our animation team is working on a new melee powerset as well, so that is on the schedule somewhere, to be revealed.”