City of Heroes/City of Villains, the super hero MMO developed by Paragon and published by NCsoft, has received another free content update, named Issue 15: Anniversary, which brings in new features, missions and customization tools for the niche MMO that has been going for five years now.

Brian Clayton, who is the general manager and executive producer of City of Heroes, stated that “City of Heroes continues to reinvent itself with each Issue launch providing players with new content, developmental tools and exciting game play experiences they can’t get anywhere else. Issue 15 is no different – it brings players the revival of one of the most popular villain groups in the game, streamlined Mission Architect search and navigation, as well as enhanced character customization featuring even more costumes, faces and costume change animations which will all surprise and delight the community.”

The revival that the general manager was talking about is that of The 5th Column, the best-known and popular group of super villains in the MMO. There are ten all new missions introduced in Issue 15, which culminate on the group’s coming back to plague Paragon City once again. As part of a Hero Task Force or Villain Strike Force, players will be able to investigate the origin of the group and its motivations.

Other improvements include new faces for all characters, new costume options and emotes activated when costume changes take place in the MMO. The Mission Architect, which allows players to put together story arcs that can then be shared, is also getting some improvements, with better testing tools and more features.

City of Heroes is beefing up as Atari is preparing to release Champions Online, another superhero MMO created by Cryptic, the studio that initially put the basses for City of Heroes and also worked on a Marvel-based MMO that was canceled.