City of Heroes devs announced that there will be server downtime tomorrow, Wednesday, July 8. Check out the details by clicking below.

On Wednesday, July 9th starting at 6 AM Pacific (9 AM Eastern) the North American City of Heroes / City of Villains servers will come down for maintenance. The downtime is expected to last 2 hours.

The purpose of this downtime will be to upgrade the servers to version 17.20080625.1T that is currently in testing on the US Training Room.

Here's what the new patch brings to the table:

Release Notes Build 17.20080625.1T

Date: July 1, 2008

COMBINED NOTES

AI

" Lady Jane should act more intelligently in combat situations now.
" 48 Month Veteran Reward pets should no longer charge into combat. Really.

Animation

" New animation for Super Strength / Punch while flying.

Badges

" Defeating Romulus Nictus should correctly award the Roman badge
" Rularuu weapons now unlocked via Shadow Shard TF badges

Chat

" Fixed condition for chat ban that would cause players to be banned for excessively long times.
" Fixed coalition chat name display to display SG name and player name correctly.
" Fixed a condition where a player could receive messages from a globally ignored player.

Powers

" Energy Blast / Power Burst - Changes to root time for Energy Blast - Power Burst. This does not affect the activation time. It's just something that was broken when 1st and 2nd tier blaster powers had their Activation times shortened.
" Energy Melee / Energy Transfer - Activation time changed from 1.0 seconds to 2.67 seconds. New Animation and Graphical Effects also made.
" Dark Armor / Dark Embrace - Corrected the activation text to explain it also adds toxic resistance.
" Total Focus: All player versions of Total Focus Disorient Magnitude reduced to 3.
" All versions of Martial Arts Eagles Claw chance to Disorient a target increased from 75% per attack to 100% per attack.
" All versions of Martial Arts Storm Kick now have a 5% greater chance to cause a Critical Hit in all cases.
" FX for Controller and Mastermind Glue Arrow should persist after the initial target's demise now (the Defender version already had this property.)
" Dual Blades / Vengeful Strike: Synched this power's floating numbers to better fit with when the character hits the target.
" Trick Arrow powers should no longer cause weapon redraw issues with Archery (Blaster or Defender) or Mastermind Ninja bow powers.

Tailor / Custom Weapons

" The Rulaaru claws should now be unlockable
" Bowstring on Talsorian bow should now stay attached to the bow

User Interface

Buff Icon Bugs

" Fixed Buff Icon display issue where Icons would disappear from Allies before the Buff Timer was over.
" Fixed Buff Icon display issue where Buff Icons would disappear when a teammate (in the same non-instanced zone) logs out of the game.
" Fixed Buff Icon display issue where team mates Zoning into a mission at different times caused Buffs Icons to disappear.

CITY of HEROES

Powers

Defenders

" Defender / Vigilance will no longer increase the Defender's endurance costs when grouped with teammates with greater than normal Health values.

Scrappers

" Scrapper / Martial Arts / Dragon's Tail - Damage and Endurance cost were slightly too low. These have been adjusted.
" Scrapper / Dual Blades / Vengeful Strike: Added PvP Knockdown suppression to this power

Tankers

" Fixed an issue with Tanker Dark Melee and Dual Blades powersets which allowed "Chance to" enhancements to affect areas of effect, rather than just the target of the attack.
" Tanker / Dual Blades / Vengeful Strike: Added PvP Knockdown suppression to this power.

Tasks

" Safeguard Missions: Burning Daemon should now always spawn at the appropriate level for the mission he is in.
" Gordon Stacy now assigns the second mission in his story arc again.

CITY of VILLAINS

Powers

Arachnos Soldiers

" Bane Spider Cone attacks did not have a max number of targets defined. This has been corrected.
" Shortened the time between the activation and effect for Crab Spider Training - Serum

Arachnos Widows

" Arachnos Widow / Teamwork - Placate should no longer cause redraw with Widow Claw powers.

Brutes

" Brute / Dark Armor / Dark Regeneration: This power should now accept taunt enhancements and enhancement sets.
" Added Taunt Enhancement ability to Brute Dark Melee Touch of Fear and Dark Armor Dark Regeneration.

Dominators

" Dominator / Energy Assault / Power Burst now has red graphical effects

Masterminds

" Mastermind / Mercenaries / Serum - Fixed a typo in this power.

Stalkers

" Stalker / Electrical Melee / Thunder Strike - This power should now accept PBAoE damage sets.
" Changed "%" to "percent" in the Stalker/Assassination inherent ability. Sometimes information would be displayed incorrectly to players because of the % sign.

Tailor / Custom Weapons

" The Mace used by Mace Patron Powers is now customizable.

Veteran Rewards

" Fixed typo in villain veteran title from "Vengful" to "Vengeful"

Sounds like big changes. Make plans to accommodate the downtime!