or those of you still devoting your life to NCsoft’s City of Heroes, you are probably more than aware that Issue 13: Power and Responsibility launched today. For the rest of us, Issue 13 includes several new features, many of which are intriguing enough to warrant picking up the game again. The additons are detailed below.

“Issue 13: Power and Responsibility unveils some pioneering features to the MMO genre. Multiple builds is a character customization option and delivers the ability to have two different build-outs for each character. This offers enormous flexibility for players who can now switch back and forth between their two character builds, depending upon the task ahead of them, by visiting contacts in game.

Pact leveling is a new innovation for MMOs. This system allows two friends to enter their characters into a pact before level five, and have their XP permanently in sync, regardless of how much each character is online. This way when they play together they will always be the same level. It’s similar in concept to City of Heroes’ already popular Sidekick feature which allows players on different levels to play together.

Also City of Heroes’ new Day Job feature offers a way for players to progress their characters in the game even when they are logged out. In addition to providing an XP rest bonus to all characters, specific Day Jobs are determined by where you log out of the game. There’s an associated Day Job at many key locations in Paragon City or the Rogue Isles. Once characters have accumulated the required amount of time for each Day Job, they are rewarded with the appropriate Day Job Badge, increasing their “earnings” for that job. Multiple Badges can be combined to unlock Accolades and the ability to accumulate additional new rewards.

Other features released in Issue 13 include the new Shields and Pain Domination Power Sets, new Cimerora mission content, the Merit Rewards System, Villains Patron Power Respec, Supergroup Base Repricing, and player versus player (PvP) powers rebalancing, paving the way for new PvP features to come.”

Issue 13 seems to be reigning in some hefty improvements. In the announcement NCsoft also revealed that they will be soon having an open beta for the upcoming Mac version of City of Heroes. If you are interested in being a part of the new beta, click here.