City of Heroes

[Morreion]

City of Heroes official site

City of Heroes (Wikipedia)

"City of Heroes (CoH) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on the superhero comic book genre, developed by Cryptic Studios and published by NCsoft. The game was launched in North America on April 27, 2004 and in Europe (by NCsoft Europe) on February 4, 2005 with English, German and French language servers. Eighteen free major updates for City of Heroes have been released since its launch. The newest update, "Shades of Gray", was released on August 16/17, 2010.

In the game, players create super-powered player characters that can team up with others to complete missions and fight criminals belonging to various gangs and organizations in the fictional Paragon City.

On October 31, 2005, the game's first sequel, City of Villains (CoV), was launched, allowing players to play as supervillains."

City of Heroes Review (Gamespot)
It's a refreshingly focused online role-playing experience, and is an entertaining, polished game that, unlike so many others, manages to deliver on the underlying promise of an excellent concept.

A video retrospective of City of Heroes (Massively)

City of Heroes 5th anniversary: Retrospective (OMGrpg.com)

Full details on Mission Architect system for City of Heroes (Massively)

The invasion of City of Heroes begins once again (Massively)

[Morreion]

Why I Play[ed]: City of Heroes (Massively)

I've never tallied up the number of costume parts in CoH, but I think it's safe to say that we'll never run out of unique power set combos, concepts, and costumes for our characters. There's nothing I can't make. If I want to make a werewolf-cyborg-vampire-cheerleader who shoots hot-pink laser beams out of her eyes and can jump tall buildings in a single bound, I can do that. If I want to play a drowned pirate-zombie who floats around in a cloud of sparkling smoke and has a hula-hoop made out of wind and rain, I can do that. If I want to play a character who looks like a number two pencil, rides around on a hoverboard, and smacks people in the face with a baseball bat, I can do that. The clever winners of the recent costume contest prove how malleable the system can be: Theater Popcorn Man. Corn on the Macabre. Ghenghis Convict.

I can even roll a character who's not really a superhero.

Paragon Studios closing, City of Heroes to sunset before the end of the year [Updated] (Massively)

NCsoft is closing Paragon Studios due to a "realignment of company focus and publishing support," according to a blurb just posted on the City of Heroes website.

Community manager Andy Belford says that the superhero MMO will shut down before the end of the year, and recurring billing (as well as Paragon Market purchasing) will be discontinued immediately.

City of Heroes originally launched in 2004 as the world's first superhero MMORPG. Belford goes on to say that more information will be forthcoming over the next few weeks, including a firm cessation date as well as "what you can expect in game."

City of Heroes fans will hold a protest rally at Atlas Park [Updated with video] (Massively)

Odds are good that most City of Heroes fans can't picket NCsoft's corporate headquarters over the game's sudden closing announcement. But fans can picket in the game itself, and that's the plan behind the in-game rally on Saturday at 5 p.m. EDT. The event planners are asking players to congregate en masse on the stairs in Atlas Park on the Virtue server in the hopes of spawning an awe-inspiring number of zone instances.

The rally is followed by a costume contest at 6 p.m. EDT with a similar theme: Players will be making costumes based on Paragon Studios employees -- not the pseudonyms of the employees but the employees themselves. Players are encouraged to put a personal twist on the costumes, but the rules emphasize that mean-spirited costumes are disallowed. If you want to show your solidarity with the game and the studio, head over to the Virtue server this Saturday and get ready to strut your stuff in truly epic fashion.

City of Heroes fans buy Paragon Studios a meal and proclaim allegiance (Massively)

The zeal of the City of Heroes fanbase has not wavered, and fans continue striving to avert the game's shutdown. But it's not just the game that's suffered; the staff at Paragon Studios has been hit with a heavy load as well. TonyV, mastermind behind the movement to save CoH, knew of a restaurant that the studio employees frequented for meals and started a fundraiser to buy the staff a meal. It took three hours to raise $1000, enough for the entire team to have a nice dinner out courtesy of the fans.

A Mild-Mannered Reporter: To save City of Heroes, we must be jerks (Massively)

One of the big watchwords of the entire movement to save CoH has been that we will act politely. When NCsoft's upper managerial types started getting flooded with email, they complained that it was disrupting normal business operation, thus the setup of another address to collect protests. And as a group, the players obliged.

The problem is that disrupting normal business operation is the entire point of this sort of protest. The goal is to unleash a tide of mail so persistent that the management has to start looking at it, a deluge of email that isn't stopping and isn't slowing, so they have to at the very least look at what's going on and understand why someone is flooding their servers.

Save CoH movement invites NCsoft execs to play, petition passes 20,000 signatures (Massively)

One player has put forth a unique idea: Instead of asking NCsoft executives to reverse their decision, he's asking them to come play the game. Other fans have taken to mirroring the letter and sending it to the address set up for CoH-related messages. The hope is that playing and experiencing the game will convince the people in charge how much the game means to the players who have spent years in Paragon City.

Ten things to do in City of Heroes before it's gone (Massively)

8. Rob a bank

Few MMOs allow you to truly play a villain; at best, you're playing some shade of grey with an ugly face, a bad guy who's just a little bit misunderstood. But City of Heroes provides a home in the Rogue Isles for your characters with darker impulses, those who enjoy a bit of light kidnapping, robbery, and world domination. So go redside, at least once! Don't forget to undertake a mayhem mission, in which you rob a bank, defeat an iconic hero, and are actually rewarded for destroying inanimate objects like cars, dumpsters, and telephone booths.

NCsoft crushes the hopes of City of Heroes fans (Massively)

City of Heroes fans have been rallying around the movement to save the game ever since its shutdown was announced. There have been in-game rallies and operations to let the corporate side of NCsoft know just how much the game has meant to the players. Despite all of these efforts, the worst has come to pass. NCsoft has officially responded to the Save CoH movement in the form of a short press release stating that the company has heard player demands but has no plans to reverse its decision regarding the game's shutdown.

The statement also claims that NCsoft has attempted to sell the game's code and intellectual property rights but was unable to find a suitable buyer. Despite the best efforts of a truly overwhelming number of fans, it appears that the game's sunset will not be averted. Fan reaction to this news has been understandably bitter regarding the lack of information and sudden shutdown. The game will be holding several events in the remaining weeks leading up to the shutdown on November 30th.

A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Remembering my time in City of Heroes (Massively)

That's the biggest thing that always sold me on the game: that there are so many different ways to do everything, that the difficulty is pegged just right to give players options. There's no solo build vs. a party build. Some options are better suited to one or the other, but you can do a heck of a lot with a bit of skill and through careful use of your powers.

No other game has ever asked me to be so liberal with my alts. CoH served as my character testbed for years, the place where I would try out a new concept for a few levels to see whether I liked how the character played in both roleplaying and in the actual game. The biggest restrictions it placed upon me were ones of age, not balance.

The Game Archaeologist: A City of Heroes memorial, part 1 (Massively)

Ted: Nuke Em High

Nuke Em High. Ex-Pro Skateboarder. Used to go by the name "Trasher" for his disgusting habit of taking any dare to eat trash or anything else off of the ground. Was found most days skating an abandoned relic of the cold war, a missile silo. One day at the silo, a friend found some gray goop and dared Trasher to have some. He did. It tasted like dirt, salt, and battery acid. It gave him such a surge of power. Fast forward 90 days and his body had utterly mutated as he grew to over seven feet tall. Now he calls Paragon home and still skates in his free time. He did gave up eating off the ground, however, unless it follows the five-second rule.

The Game Archaeologist: A City of Heroes memorial, part 2 (Massively)

CH: Milk Sheik

A mild-mannered biologist from the Arabian nation of Qatar becomes a crime-fighting martial artist able to heal any injury, so long as he gets a regular diet of vitamin A, D, and bovine growth hormone.

Milk Sheik has a number of binds set up that are not visible in the screenshot. His spinning foot sweep attack can change his costume to all-brown, in a move dubbed "the chocolate swirl." In emergencies, his outfit turns green as Instant Healing activates and he "gets sour." And let's not even talk about what happens when he "goes strawberry." His default badge is from the Winter Event... "Frosty."

A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The rocky road ahead for city revivals (Massively)

I can't currently talk about The Phoenix Project or Heroes & Villains in great detail because neither game is actually a thing just yet. They're both products of the best parts of City of Heroes fandom, of players deciding that if the game was going to shut down, they were not going to go gently into that good night. No, they were going to just make a new game that keeps all of the feel and winds up better besides. Rather than decrying what happened, they're building something new.

This is a good thing, and the thought of having a new game in the same vein as the lost one makes me happy for understandable reasons. But at the moment, it's just that -- a thought.

Both projects have big goals, and I don't fault either of them for lack of ambition. Nonetheless, I wonder whether either will wind up coming to fruition. The fact of the matter is that making an MMO is really hard, even more so when you're working in a genre with several pitfalls, and ambition alone does not make a game.

Behind the Scenes of the Paragon Studios Shutdown (Gamasutra)

"Those guys ... really loved what the studio was doing and they really felt that the game still had legs," says Miller. "So they actively sought another publisher to purchase Paragon Studios from NCsoft. ... Suffice it to say that eventually the talks broke down. The buyer wasn't going to buy and NCsoft wasn't looking to sell. So, plan B, which I always thought was a great plan from the beginning was the management buyout."

A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Stop digging up the grave (Massively)

Should we forget CoH? Of course not. But we should accept that it is, in fact, gone. Jack Emmert's comments don't undo that, nor will future mentions of the game. It's gone and we miss it, but we have to learn to live without it.

City of Heroes was a magnificent game, worthy of recollection, worthy of tribute, and worthy of contemplation. It's a game I miss. But it is gone, and we collectively need to accept that the time to hope for a reprieve has passed. There's discussing a departing friend and then there's comparing everything to that departed friend in unflattering terms.

And we -- as a community united by a game that is gone -- are better than that.

City of Heroes fan videos pay tribute to the game's legacy (Massively)

The game may be cold and gone at this point, but City of Heroes still lives in the warm, beating hearts of its fans. Two players endeavored to create tributes to the game that would endure long past its expiration date, and Massively thinks they should be shared with the larger community.

The first video, City of Heroes Remains, sees Paragon City being pummeled into the ground by a fiery meteor shower, only to be rebuilt by its heroes after the event. It's a movie-quality production full of special effects and stunning views of the city, set to a couple of perfect songs.

The second video, Memories, is a longer, quieter look at the end. In it, a costumed crusader pays a final visit to City Hall where he hangs up his tights for good -- but refuses to let go of a backpack full of memories.

[Regolyth]

I don't get it. It would cost pittins to keep enough servers running, indefinitely, for the game to survive on. I'm guessing CoH is F2P? If so, I suppose keeping it running just to be a world might not be worth it. But maybe change it back to a P2P model, but cheaper. Set it up on a couple of servers, and hire one dude to run it for... well, however long it needs. He can be the guy that cleans up code if something goes arry, or resets the server if needed. Win for CoH, money for NCSoft.

The statement also claims that NCsoft has attempted to sell the game's code and intellectual property rights but was unable to find a suitable buyer. Despite the best efforts of a truly overwhelming number of fans, it appears that the game's sunset will not be averted. Fan reaction to this news has been understandably bitter regarding the lack of information and sudden shutdown. The game will be holding several events in the remaining weeks leading up to the shutdown on November 30th.

I find this strange as well. How can you not come to terms? NCSoft is going to shut the game down, so what good is it to them anymore? Sell it and make some money, and the fans get to continue playing.