Look, up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's the newest expansion heading your way for the popular City of Heroes MMORPG! City of Heroes has proven a popular game thanks to sticking to the MMO formula, but by offering something much more than just the standard fantasy realm staples and giving players the ability to hit the streets and the skies as their own favorite superhero. With Issue 9 – "Breakthrough" coming, both Heroes and Villains have something to look forward to experiencing.

From everyone from Mr. Fantastic to Iron Man to Forge to Syndrome to Dr. Doom and others, inventions have always been a big thing to them. I mean, it's great to be naturally born with abilities, but to enhance those abilities or make yourself better by crafting something with your own smarts – now that is something. However, for those heroes and villains who have wanted to craft their own goods of creation or evil, they've been left out in the cold by the City of Heroes and Villains issues. With Issue 9 – "Breakthrough" is about to change that and give a few other offerings in the process.

First up, of course, is the Invention system. The invention system kicks in at Level 10, and you'll be able to create such things as mechanical wings and jet boots to shoot you around the city in style. The mechanical wings were especially nice, as they had a fluidity to their animation that was strikingly nice as the player avatar zipped around, flapping and landing with ease. The other thing is that the player won't be forced to use the invention system in the game. You'll get some cool gear and such, but it isn't like if you placed the same character side by side to each other, only one had used the invention system and the other hadn't, there wouldn't be any noticeable difference – the system really is for those who are into that stuff.

In order to use the invention system you'll need both salvage and influence. Salvage you get from beating down enemies and it comes in one of three variations: Common, Uncommon, and Rare. Obviously, Common will drop the most and be your default salvage, with Uncommon showing up a little less frequently under all that, and Rare being the ultimate salvage since it will be the hardest of all to find. However, NCSoft has gone out of their way to make sure you can find this salvage from everyone, so all the players won't have to be spamming the same enemy, trying to get that good salvage only that particular enemy will drop. NCSoft really wanted to go out of their way to insure that there was the same load drop for all tables out there.

Once you've found all the salvage you need to create your inventions, you'll head to the nearest college where your teachers teach you in the way of creating. You'll have 27 basic enhancements to build around with the salvage and influence you'll need. The really nice thing is that though some game creation systems take time to actually create the good, there is none of that here. If you have the salvage and influence needed to make the invention, as soon as you invent it you'll instantly get it without having to wait hours for it to finally be built. Also, there is no randomness to it, so if you spent a long time finding the perfect salvage you need, there is absolutely no chance of losing your progress and having to go find it again because you failed to invent your invention. If you attempt to invent something, you will invent it, no doubt about it.

Most of the time your inventions will only affect one ability at a time, but as you look around you will be able to find recipes that will allow you to build super inventions that will affect multiple abilities and traits at once. Obviously, these will be the big inventions people will be working for, and the great thing is that these never expire, so you'll always have this attribute boost to your character. You will also be allowed to trade your inventions across servers, and you can put buy in orders by setting the object type or pay price. So, you can go on Friday and say I want "X invention for X price" and if it comes around it will auto buy it for you so you don't have to physically be around to buy it up.

Besides inventions, there are new missions for the heroes and villains out there: for the heroes there are the Statesman's Taskforce, which are for eight players and only the max level heroes out there will stand a chance at surviving and helping the Statesman out. If you are a villain, you'll find yourself uniting with the other villains to take out the ultimate villain so you'll still be able to have a piece of the evil pie in your life.

City of Heroes and City of Villains fans should find a lot to enjoy and look forward to when Issue 9 – "Breakthrough" comes out, because not only is it giving you a whole new invention creation system, but you'll have new ultimate missions no matter if you are fighting for the side of good or evil.