City of Heroes MMO Closes

There was some sad news in the world of Massive Multiplayer Online games. "City of Heroes," the popular superhero MORPG from NCsoft, is no more. At Midnight, Friday night on Nov. 30th, the servers powered down for the last time, disconnecting players from their CoH characters for good.


The decision to close the game was announced on August 31st, the official reasons being "realignment of company focus and publishing support." Following the announcement, players rallied to try to get the company to reverse it's decision, taking part in online demonstrations and even mailing the company capes and masks. But the company refused to change its mind, and on the last day, players gathered at a "final unity rally" at the town hall's city park across all the servers. Players talked about old times, in addition to taking on monsters, aliens, and other bad guys dropping in. One of Massively.com's writers, Beau Hindman, covered the event, until his screen read "Lost Connection" (link to the final hour and a half can be found Here), "It's unfortunate to see an MMO unlike any others shutting down."

"City of Heroes" was launched in 2004. The superhero game was hailed as a "gust of fresh air into an increasingly stale sword and sorcery MMO world," with an extremely flexible character creation system that allowed for a wide variety of appearances, notably the costumes. Despite terms of service forbidding characters that looked like or were named after heroes from the comics, Marvel Comics filed a lawsuit, saying the company was doing nothing to stop it. But the court dismissed some of Marvel's claims. The remainder were settled out of court.

NCsoft has several other games, including Aion and Guild Wars. Some Second Life residents commented to me they had enjoyed the game, and will miss it. Where the fomer CoH will go is anyone's guess. Perhaps many will make their way to superhero RPs in Second Life.

Sources: Massively, Wikipedia

Bixyl Shuftan

A Resident Looks Back at City of Heroes

For fans of the Superhero MMO "City of Heroes," there was some sad news recently. Paragon Studios, the makers of the game, announced their company, NCsoft, had decided to close them down. A short article in Massively stated the reasons were "realignment of company focus and publishing support."

To our Community, Thank you. Thank you for your years of support. You've been with us every step of the way, sharing in our challenges, encouraging us to make City of Heroes better, more than everyone else thought it could be. We couldn't have come this far without you. I implore you all, focus on the good things of CoH and Paragon Studios. Don't dwell on the "how" or the "why", but rather join us in celebrating the legacy of an amazing partnership between the players and the development team. 

Among the players of the game was Second Life resident Alexandra "Lexi" Tymets, also known as "DJ Sexy Lexi." She had a few things to say about her time at Paragon City. Of her characters, "I had a bunch actutally. Over the years I've played both sides, hero and villain. Have maxed out characters on both. ... CoH was really fun. You get to feel heroic as your little super hero,or super villian, (who) beats, blasts, or sends summoned creations after your enemies. It's really fun when you get a group, and you've got an Area of Effect Attack, like my Water Blast/Dark Miasma Corrupter did. She'd drop an AoE Debuff then slam the enemies with AoE attacks. There's nothing like watching a horde of enemies just fall over at once."

Of the gameplay, "Well you of course fought enemies, starting from street thugs, who will come at you with guns and baseball bats, and work your way up the villain chain. There were trainers you would see so you could level up your heroes powers. You chose two sets, which depended on your archtype. Like Corrupters, which was a Villain archtype, got to chose a ranged attack, and a ranged support set. ... As you got higher in levels, you'd face things that could throw nasty powers right back at you."

Describing the quests, "In the early days the quests were pretty repetitve, though they did give you some story to link them to help out. Go here... smack that around. Come talk to me again, typical MMO fare. As the game progressed they created new parts of the city with their own enveloping story. You could stay in one zone... and do the arcs from different contacts there, and it would all be all one continuing story as you worked your way to whatever was menacing that zone. That's really when City of Heroes got it's own flavor, and really started to shine.

"There was a zone called Croatoa. It dealt with Fae and supernatural things. Witches, Redcaps, Werewolves, Ghosts, and Plant monsters with Jack 'o lanterns for heads. It inspired me to make more than one character with roots in magic or connections to the Fae. There was even a Nessie-like monster in the lake called Sally."

"My Storm/Elec Defender ... I remade her as an Ice/Storm Corrupter. She's level 32, and still hasn't gotten her first debt badge. She still exists. When the Servers Close down on Nov 30th, I'll be on her, standing next to Miss Liberty. Probably bawling my little mousie eyes out."

As to why the game was closing, "Rumors run from. 'NCSoft is a bunch of asshats,' to 'They wanted to cut CoH and Paragon before it went into the red,' and 'They couldn't renew the CoH License.' "

"I've been with City of Heroes, on and off admittedly, since Issue 1. They're in Issue 23 right now, and were gearing to Issue 24. I played for 5 years. It was the best Super Hero MMO they ever released, and it pains me to see it go. I've cried twice now, all the friends I made, all the stories I told with my characters, and some that were just beginning to tell their stories. It was an amazing run, and I thank Paragon Studios for the years they put into it. The Love, the devotion, and the time. No other MMO I've ever played had that sense of family."

Lexi wasn't the only resident whom played the game. Ranchen Weidman explained she did too, "CoH was fun, still is. But I doubt I'll be playing any more of it (now) that it's closing."

Top image from cityofheroes.com 

Bixyl Shuftan