Ant-Man, Blade and a ton of other additions coming to Marvel Heroes 2015

During a panel at San Diego Comic-Con last night, Marvel Heroes 2015 developer Gazillion revealed some big new names coming to the free-to-play action RPG, alongside other major updates.

Leading the pack is Ant-Man, who is currently available for pre-order and will join the game as a playable character to go along with Marvel's new Ant-Man movie, hitting theaters next week. Ant-Man will be the 49th playable hero added to the game and will be joined shortly thereafter by War Machine, who Gazillion promises will play very differently from Iron Man despite the visual similarities.

Not content with just announcing two new characters, Gazillion CEO David Brevik decided to reveal five more. He said there is no set order, but heroes 51 through 54 will consist of Blade, Kitty Pryde, Iron Fist and Black Cat.

For the 55th character, Gazillion is letting fans decide by voting on the official Marvel Heroes website over the next two weeks. Fans will be able to choose between Green Goblin, Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan), Magik, Wasp, Nick Fury and Spider-Man (Miles Morales). The hero with the most votes at the end of two weeks will (eventually) be added into the game.

Gazillion then moved into discussing new team-ups, which are non-playable, AI-controlled heroes who will join you as you play. They're currently working on X-Force Archangel, Carnage, Agent Venom and Spider-Gwen, who will be voiced by Ashley Johnson of The Last of Us fame. If you'd prefer to play as Spider-Gwen, she will also be available as an enhanced costume for the current Spider-Man hero, offering a unique voiceover and animations but the same basic moves and mechanics.

Other new costumes being added to Marvel Heroes 2015 include a Symbiote-infected version of Rocket Racoon, Battle-Damaged Spider-Man, the New X-Men version of Jean Grey, the Marvel NOW iteration of Cable, the Fear Itself version of Juggernaut, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Jane Foster Thor and Doctor Doom wearing his God Emperor get-up from Marvel's recent Secret Wars comic event.

On top of all the new characters and costumes, Gazillion is also working on some new areas for players to fight through. The first of these is the X-Men's famous Danger Room. This addition will use a new system where players find Simulation Discs. Each disc will have random attributes used to create a scenario to fight through in the Danger Room, such as offering extra hard monsters but more loot.

Brevik said the Danger Room will add "endless amounts of gameplay" to Marvel Heroes 2015.

Gazillion also revealed plans to take an old area called Limbo, which was available at the launch of the original Marvel Heroes in 2013 but was removed because it was bad. The developers loved the environment enough to want to bring it back, so they've completely revamped it. Now titled Infernal Limbo, the zone will come loaded down with a fresh game mode that introduces mechanics never seen in the game before. It will be introduced in an upcoming recurring event titled "Mystic Mayhem."

If the new content isn't enough, Gazillion is also working on a number of upgrades to Marvel Heroes 2015, including leaderboards, a revamp of how story content works and a bump to the game's visual fidelity. The game's next story update will tackle Marvel's Secret Invasion storyline, which involves a shapeshifting alien race called Skrulls infiltrating human society by pretending to be various heroes and high-ranking government officials.

Alongside the major announcements, Gazillion spent time at the panel talking about how the developer is currently giving away $25,000 in real money in the game. Players can currently find five special "Vibranium ticket" drops (meant to mimic the Golden Tickets of Willy Wonka). The tickets can drop from anywhere in the game, regardless of level, and finding one will net you $5,000.

If you'd like to try your hand at winning $5,000 or just want to check out the gobs of new content coming to Marvel Heroes 2015, you can check out the game now for free Mac and Windows PCs.