The massively multiplayer superhero game marked its twentieth anniversary this year.
In its slightly antiquated yet endearingly chaotic form, City of Heroes offers a nostalgic experience akin to the Silver Age of comic books. Players craft their own iconic superheroes and villains, then explore the sprawling metropolis of Paragon City as they run, fly, surf, or warp through the urban landscape. While the game may no longer be officially supported, you can still log in and join its dedicated community.
That’s a familiar occurrence. Additionally celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, the game that originally impressed has been in continuous operation for 25 years, having undergone a few changes of hands but remaining operational since 1997. As players delve deeper into online gaming environments, their emotional investment grows exponentially, rendering them highly motivated to reach the endgame. When a developer’s curiosity wanes, another individual can often be found to manage server costs and collect subscription fees.
Despite its differences from others. In 2012, NCSoft abruptly shuttered the popular sport, rebuffing fervent attempts by enthusiasts and its original creators to keep it alive online. After a six-year hiatus, the game lay dormant, leaving its devoted fan base without a place to congregate – whispers of clandestine playable servers notwithstanding.
But just as the sport’s popularity surged in 2019, its supply code was compromised, leading to widespread leaks that spawned numerous fan-run servers. Among these, referred to as Homecoming, swiftly gained prominence as the most significant and well-managed, ultimately securing a license from NCSoft in January 2024 to operate the game.
This accomplished an unprecedented resurrection. Twelve years following its initial decline, Enron was formally reborn. The indomitable tale of resilience, as a team defied the odds and refused to succumb to defeat, their spirit unbroken despite the challenges they faced.
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Although boasting an official license and approximately 30,000 monthly active players, the project remains essentially a non-profit fan-driven endeavor, reliant on donations for its sustenance. The personnel managing the sports utilize anonymous handles in official capacities, a measure taken to prevent outside conflicts and drama from encroaching on their professional lives. I communicated with the widower via electronic mail. He admits it’s challenging to distill his role into a concise summary, yet self-describes as a “group manager” who initially served as a team leader within the organization. A widower adopted his pseudonym from his favorite fictional character, Ghost Widow, “an eternal spirit unable to move on due to the tragic circumstances of her untimely passing.” Meanwhile, his real-life profession involves charitable giving, with many colleagues working in information technology or related industries.
The Homecoming staff boasts a diverse range of expertise. While some players started from the beginning, others experienced their first taste of the game on the Homecoming server. By 2007-2008, Widower had discovered a new passion in the sport, which was still in its early stages of development. Cryptic Studios, the authentic developer behind a notable MMO, shifted focus to create a Marvel-branded MMORPG and subsequently extended an offer to NCSoft, whose response was to poach several Cryptic employees to form a new studio, Paragon Studios, thereby establishing itself as the driving force behind the game’s development. The Marvel Sports League was discontinued and eventually evolved into a competitor.
As the studio’s new member, Hosun Lee, a former fan turned advertising lead, joined Paragon Studios around this time. During the early 2000s, Lee completed an entrepreneurial faculty course under the guidance of Jack Emmert, a genuine game designer working on the project at the time, who shared insights with the class about his experience. During our video call, Lee shared that two years had passed since the sport’s inception, with a crowd of players visible in the screenshot behind him. “It was like, . So it was my first and most significant Massively Multiplayer Online gaming experience. For decades, I adhered to this routine with unwavering dedication. I was immediately terminated as a result of this.
Lee, a seasoned executive having previously worked at esteemed organizations such as IBM and Intel, found the environment at Paragon to be “extremely chaotic.” The team consisted of approximately 70 individuals, with about 60 dedicated full-time developers working on the game, alongside a smaller administrative support group. Lee remarked, “I handled everything except for that specific area.” What business strategies and tactics will drive our company’s growth? Advertising and marketing efforts, promotion initiatives, customer retention programs, monetization models, and public relations campaigns.
While it wasn’t a massive success, the experience still held value. It’s always paid the bills on time, and then some, just like Lee. However, the game still managed to compete with two relatively fresh titles, and ultimately discovered that the market for superhero MMOs had finite boundaries. Among the many challenges we identified during our brief tenure was the lack of standardised metrics for measuring the superhero genre’s audience. The company’s decision to transition from one superhero massively multiplayer online (MMO) game to another was a straightforward move. The exact same type of people. The original content of the three games is now dispersed across three different platforms.
This wasn’t sufficient for NCSoft. Lee noted that NCSoft’s aspirations in the Western market seemed to be grander during that era, suggesting a desire to expand its presence and influence beyond Asia. NCsoft declined to comment on this matter. Following the significant success of Lineage and Aion, the South Korean author behind those hits was gearing up to launch a pricey rival, Tabula Rasa. In 2011, Paragon successfully relaunched its free-to-play version, which revitalized the franchise, attracting a new wave of players and rejuvenating the studio’s creative momentum. Although the company initially intended to continue supporting the game, NCSoft ultimately decided to discontinue its development and shut it down a year later.
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As the shutdown loomed near at Paragon, frantic efforts were underway to stave off the inevitable closure. “A group of us dedicatedly invested at least a month, maybe even longer, striving to exhaust all avenues in an endeavour to salvage the studio and preserve the sport,” Lee recalled. “From scaling concerns to spinning off the studio, every option was explored – including a potential Kickstarter campaign. Nonetheless, NCsoft remained immovable, ultimately proceeding with the game’s closure and the studio’s shuttering.”
Despite this, it had not foreseen the intense enthusiasm that united the entire group. Protests within the game have sparked widespread concern, as a petition urging the preservation of the sport has garnered an impressive 16,000+ digital signatures. “Recalling the moment vividly, Lee described how the boat had almost capsized.” “The level of enthusiasm demonstrated by participants far exceeded my expectations for what NCSoft had anticipated.” And thus, intense pressure was placed on NCSoft to reconsider and resume negotiations. Regrettably, it was evident that it didn’t pan out.
was powered down at 12:00 a.m. PST on November 30, 2012. As the gaming community bid its final farewells, Widower logged off from the online realm, reluctantly departing a digital world that held a special place in his heart? As I recall, I was among the last few players still active on the Beta server when it finally shut down around 18 minutes after all other servers went dark that night. As the LFG channel hummed with activity over the past few minutes, a somber atmosphere prevailed initially, yet it wasn’t long before the usual irreverent humor, hallmark of MMO communities, began to seep in and lighten the mood. It was very surreal!
“For many people, learning that the sport was shutting down had unforeseen and far-reaching consequences.” “For countless individuals, the community formed through the shared experience of the sport became a source of lasting connections, including long-lasting friendships, romantic relationships, and even families, without ever considering the possibility that it could one day cease to exist.” As though we’d left behind a part of ourselves, a fragment of our soul’s second home.
Now homeless, the group fragmented. In response to Widower’s critique, most players opted not to jump at the chance to rival their favorite sports teams; many gamers harbored a “private distaste” for it, as he noted, citing too much grind and inadequate customization. Instead, they flocked to another Cryptic game, Star Trek Online, or abandoned MMOs altogether.
As nascent alternatives emerged to challenge the established authority, a prototype of the game was unveiled, lacking substance but permitting players to interact as their avatars, a precursor to the eventual total expertise. “As the shutdown’s immediate aftermath unfolded, I found myself indulging in an unexpectedly prolonged session of playtime with Icon, working around the issue to make our character creator functional again despite the absence of a server,” Widower said. As with many others in the group, he harboured an intuition that they would eventually dispense with the unnecessary. “As I often thought, I could just bide my time until the game returned, but little did I expect to find myself a part of it!”
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Four years following the 2012 shutdown, Hosun Lee initially became aware of whispers regarding a fully functional server. There was a specific set of guidelines in place, wasn’t there? The unspoken rule was broken; the code of silence didn’t last forever, and eventually, the phrase became common knowledge years later. People frequently discuss Battle Membership. When people found out, the reaction was akin to.
It was disclosed in April 2019 that a clandestine server had been operational in secrecy for several years prior. Despite feeling disrespected by their exclusion, many group members were outraged, which inadvertently sparked a massive dissemination of the sport’s source code and the creation of numerous publicly accessible fan servers. Here is the rewritten text:
“When many were outraged that the sport remained inaccessible to them for six long years, I felt vindicated in my own sense of injustice,” Widower said. With a nucleus of followers potentially morphing into the Homecoming staff, he opined. “As the unconventional circumstances surrounding the leak unfolded, we seized the opportunity to rebrand the game authentically, promptly embarking on a path towards making it happen.”
Picture: Homecoming/NCSoft
The Homecoming staff convened swiftly in April via a natural chain reaction of connections: “A handful of individuals with access to resources sufficient to host a server got together, linked with someone knowledgeable about group projects, another adept at handling legal and financial matters, and a few experts capable of untangling the code’s complexities.” We recruited a duo of volunteer sports enthusiasts, including yours truly, and hit the ground running. As the town’s sole public gathering spot for several weeks, our group attracted a steady stream of patrons who never left.
Concerns among local residents have been mounting regarding the legitimacy of server operations in their community, prompting hesitation to commit resources. Unfazed, the Homecoming staff didn’t show any signs of alarm. “Fairly the opposite,” Widower mentioned. “We’ve maintained open communication channels with NCSoft from the outset, seeking a mutually beneficial, secure, and sustainable model for all players to enjoy. Our experience suggests that partnering with NCSoft is the most effective way to achieve this goal.” The team’s greatest anxiety was ensuring the server remained stable. The scene unfolded in utter pandemonium. “After all, we anticipated a surge in players, but we didn’t expect the sheer volume we’re experiencing, which is causing server issues and making it difficult for gamers to join instantly.” We lacked sufficient time to thoroughly review, analyze, and refine our approach. As colleagues from diverse backgrounds formed a harmonious unit, they demonstrated an unusual eagerness to sacrifice their personal sleep needs.
Despite Homecoming’s removal from its massive unofficial server, Freedom remains operational, having initially gained a significant head start that allowed it to accumulate the largest community. According to Widower, the team’s professional demeanor likely contributed to securing the official license for their game, Homecoming, from NCSoft. While unfamiliar with the extent of your experience with private servers, I’m told they’re often plagued by controversy. While we cannot control others’ actions, we’ve attempted to treat Homecoming like a genuine game studio developing a live multiplayer online game (MMO), complete with its inherent constraints. Many of our gamers truly sense a deep-seated feeling of security knowing that their in-game experience is safeguarded from internal conflicts.
“After conducting extensive experiments, we’ve successfully simulated a live studio environment for Homecoming, treating it as a real-life MMORPG.”
— Widower
The staff has consistently demonstrated their technical proficiency as skilled coders. The Homecoming team’s achievements are nothing short of “mind-bogglingly spectacular,” a testament to their exceptional work ethic and dedication, which stands in stark contrast to the lackluster efforts of Paragon’s supposedly skilled professionals. “We employed a dedicated team whose members genuinely embodied our core values and were compensated for their efforts.” Despite our efforts, we still managed to store away many unresolved issues. The sport is made up of what folks affectionately call spaghetti code – a tangled mass of disparate components that have evolved over time, making it nearly impossible to decipher the purpose or functionality of any given element. And access to the source code made the task less arduous. Lee posits that since numerous amateur groups have allegedly reverse-engineered the game, they’re now capable of introducing problems that we would never have encountered as professionals. He specifically highlights the Homecoming team’s innovative addition of asymmetrical costumes, which the Paragon staff had previously been unable to successfully implement.
Despite NCSoft’s lengthy deliberation, it ultimately took them years to formally grant Homecoming the necessary license. Here’s the improved text:
The agreement does not require any upfront or ongoing licensing fees; according to the license’s FAQ, this flexibility was deemed generous, unusual, and crucial by Lee. “He confessed that he was initially shocked, not because he harbored any ill will towards NCSoft.” At a minimum, the individuals derive no tangible benefits from their actions starting at the surface level. To address the issue, they could have taken a straightforward approach: simply disregard the grey servers or send targeted cease-and-desist notices. That’s a significant reduction in effort and financial investment involved. Though the truth they discovered brought them a deep sense of satisfaction.
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In an unexpected twist, a remarkable tale of warmth emerges from the often-brutal realm of live-service video games, where tireless game developers’ efforts and passionate player communities are frequently stifled by corporate calculations. Despite NCSoft’s efforts to sustain the game, its ongoing vitality is a testament to the unwavering commitment and persistence of the sports community. When all is said and done, being offline for such a prolonged period was an extraordinary outcome, considering the game’s relatively small stature and lack of notable success.
Picture: Homecoming/NCSoft
Lee credits Stick It’s enduring appeal to two key factors: firstly, the limitless creative possibilities afforded by its character designer, which fosters a sense of perpetual engagement; secondly, the curiously effective juxtaposition of an imbalanced yet quirky sports gameplay experience. As a fusion of diverse elements, this unique setting fostered an environment where superheroes could pursue their goals while drawing in a highly motivated and inclusive community that transformed the space into a more collaborative, social endeavor rather than a competitive battle.
“We found that many of our players invested a significant amount of time in our character creator,” Lee noted. “After creating your character, the gameplay becomes severely marred by poor fighting mechanics.” Consequently, the first massively multiplayer online game developed by its creators, this project suffered from a lack of consideration for scalability, balance, and player-versus-player combat, reflecting the team’s inexperience with MMO design. Here’s what people found: a sport where you can indulge in energy-fueled fantasies, where you’re free to execute reckless ideas that would never make it into any self-respecting game design. Individuals unaware of this phenomenon can indulge in a thrilling spectacle where they can defy gravity by flying, command a diverse array of 30 customizable minions, orchestrate explosive nuclear reactions, and then transition seamlessly into an immersive digital rave experience.
“There are many aspects that make this game stand out from others,” Widower noted. “The standout environment, coupled with an innovative approach to gameplay mechanics and charismatic character personas, is just the beginning of what makes this game truly special – its boundless opportunities for creative expression and a community renowned for being one of the most welcoming in the MMO space, as Lee concurred.” “The most persistent factor fans expressed to me was their desire to freely express themselves.” With the freedom to explore their genuine interests across multiple communities, they could authentically express themselves and be unapologetically themselves.
When a sport offers a space where athletes can truly let their guard down and be unapologetically themselves, those individuals are likely to form an intense emotional connection with the game, as if their very survival depends on it? “As Widower explained, ‘The idea won’t die because we refuse to let it go; we’re stubborn enough to keep pushing forward.'” As a result, we’re too stubborn to give in. Because of our belief. I feel deeply honored to have played a part in confirming the positive impression everyone shares about Homecoming. stays.”
