Pre-Free: City Of Heroes Freedom Trialling

City of Heroes will be NCsoft's first major foray into the strange, wild land that is free to play MMOs. There is, though, the little matter of what the superhero game's current subscriber base will make of this. Well, they can find out right now, more or less. The free to play reboot, City of Heroes Freedom, won't launch fully until later this year, but any and all current active subscribers can jump right in as of yesterday. There are prizes and live events and shopping and all that funfair-sounding stuff to be seen and had. Useful bulletpoints await below. Oh, and apparently if you reactivate your old account now-ish, you'll also get to try out the headstart.

Stuff!

- All new Paragon Market
- New co-op zone, First Ward.
- Costume Contests, judged by the development team, with a variety of prizes.
- Participate in the all new Death From Below and Underground Incarnate Trials with members of the Community team.
- Fend off massive Live Invasions by the forces of Praetoria and Hamidon across multiple servers.
- Exclusive sales bundles and promotions available only during the VIP Headstart.

If you're a CoH subscriber, that's all yours until the full launch later this year. At which point it's free for everyone.

More details here.