On October 31, 2005, the game's first sequel, "City of Villains" ("CoV"), was launched, allowing players to play as supervillains. The stand-alone expansion pack did not require "City of Heroes" to run, but if the user had both games, content was added to the "City of Heroes" side of game play. On July 16, 2008, NCsoft merged the two games' content together. Thus, a player who only owned "City of Heroes" could now play "City of Villains", and vice versa. Prior to this, a purchase was required to access either game's content, but they were linked by one account and subscription fee.