City of Heroes (CoH) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game originally created by Cryptic Studios prior to the IP’s acquisition by NCSoft. Previously developed by the now-defunct Paragon Studios, it is currently developed by several private servers, one of them being Homecoming Servers who have a limited license from NCSoft. The game was launched in North America on April 28, 2004, and in Europe by NCsoft Europe on February 4, 2005, with English, German and French servers. In the game, players created super-powered player characters that could team up with others to complete missions and fight criminals belonging to various gangs and organizations in the fictional Paragon City.
Twenty-three free major updates for City of Heroes were released before its shutdown. The final live update, "Where Shadows Lie", was released on May 31, 2012. On August 31, 2012, NCsoft terminated its Paragon Studios development team, ending all production on City of Heroes with the last day of services on November 30, 2012.
In April 2019, source code capable of running a City of Heroes server was distributed widely. This made it possible to create City of Heroes servers outside the direct purview of NCSoft and revived interest in the game, which by then had been out of development for more than six years.
On January 4, 2024, NCSoft granted Homecoming Servers, LLC, who operated the rogue server Homecoming: City of Heroes an official license to host the game.
Production history In 2000, writer Rick Dakan and Michael Lewis created Cryptic Studios. The company's first project was City of Heroes, the idea for the game which Dakan claims to have come up with. Dakan was named Lead Design on the game, doing mostly writing for characters and story. Even after resigning from Cryptic, Dakan remained involved with the game through the publishing of the City of Heroes comic book.
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.
On November 6, 2007, NCsoft announced their purchase of the City of Heroes/City of Villains intellectual property and transitioned the staff from Cryptic Studios to a new location in Mountain View, California, to continue development of the game. The new studio on April 14, 2009, became Paragon Studios, which shared credit with Cryptic Studios for the development work. This then led to City of Heroes becoming available for download on Steam, along with other NCsoft titles, on April 22, 2009.
On October 30, 2008, NCsoft announced a partnership with Transgaming Technologies in order to bring both City of Heroes and City of Villains and all 13 expansions to Mac OS X.
The City of Heroes: Going Rogue expansion's release was announced on May 11, 2009. This part of the game centered on the alternate reality of Praetoria and featured a new alignment system allowing players characters to shift allegiances between Heroes and Villains, giving characters access to both Paragon City of City of Heroes and the Rogue Isles of City of Villains. Paragon Studios described this as "[exploring] the shades of gray that lay between Heroes and Villains". Going Rogue was released on August 17, 2010, with pre-purchasers able to play on August 16.
On June 20, 2011, Paragon Studios announced that they were going to switch to a hybrid subscription model called City of Heroes: Freedom, adding in a free-to-play game model. Special models for former subscribers would be termed Premium Players, and current subscribers would become VIP players, who would gain access to all the content in the various upcoming game updates.
On August 31, 2012, Paragon Studios announced that it was being closed, and City of Heroes would cease all billing immediately and begin the process of shutting down the service. The stated explanation for this move was a "realignment of company focus and publishing support". November 30, 2012, was listed as the official shutdown date of the game and the servers were turned off at midnight PST. Many players arrived en masse to express their continued protest, support, and fond farewells, including messages of gratitude from the developers and moderators thanking their fans for their support and passion for the game. A variety of efforts got underway, led by players of the game, to keep the game operating past the announced date of closure.
Missing Worlds Media's president Nate Downes announced in September 2014 that he introduced an interest party who wanted to make a deal in reviving the game's intellectual property with NCSoft staff, which might enable the final version of the game to be released. No additional info was released as the involved parties were under an NDA. The effort did not succeed, and the announcement has since been removed. This may have been due to the IP being used in Master X Master.
On April 15, 2019, news broke that a private server based on City of Heroes at the time of its shutdown had been running in secret for years. Three days later, source code relating to the server had been widely distributed, and a publicly accessible server based on the code was quickly spun up. While perceived threats, legal or otherwise, saw this server shut down by April 22, multiple public servers by various teams have since been set up based on the leaked code.
On January 4, 2024, the Homecoming fan server announced that it had worked out a deal with NCSoft and was now running an officially licensed instance of City of Heroes and its expansions, free to play and funded by donations.
Gameplay
City of Heroes required the creation of a character in order to enter the virtual world and progress through the game. After creating a character and selecting a name (the game would check if the name was already taken on the server), players could either begin play in an isolated tutorial zone, or skip the tutorial and begin in an open low-level zone. A character's level increased by earning experience points from defeating foes, completing Missions, and exploring Zones, then returning to one of various named NPCs known as Trainers. Benefits for rising in level included more Health, more Powers to choose for the character, more slots to allocate Enhancements to Powers, and larger inventories for Inspirations (quick use items) and Salvage (crafting materials). If a player lost all of their Health they were temporarily considered defeated, at which point they could be revived through use of an item, by an ally's powers, or by instant teleportation to Hospitals on the map. After reaching character level 10, a player defeat would accrue Experience Debt which temporarily made gaining additional experience more difficult.
The setting of the game, Paragon City for Heroes and The Rogue Isles for Villains, was divided into different Zones accessed through in-game transportation systems. Especially dangerous zones called "Hazard" or "Trial" zones, which teemed with larger groups of enemies, were marked in red on the in-game map and were much more dangerous than normal zones. The Villains' setting, the Rogue Isles, consisted of islands connected by a network of ferries and helicopters while the Heroes' setting, Paragon City consisted of regions separated by giant energy "War Walls" (which were justified in the back story) and were connected by direct access points and a Metropolitan Transport system styled on a light rail. A few zones were accessible to both heroes and villains; some were cooperative zones, while others were player versus player (PvP) zones. Praetoria, for characters created in the Going Rogue update, lacked War Walls, allowing more or less free movement between areas.
Players initially moved around the zones by jogging or using a minor speed-increasing power such as "Sprint". As heroes grew in level and accumulated more powers, they could choose among four higher speed traveling powers: Teleportation, Super Speed, Super Jumping, and Flight.
As characters leveled-up, players could choose new powers from the character's primary and secondary power sets, as set during creation, or from shared power pools. The power pools contained the four travel powers and other generic, usually utilitarian, powers that fell under categories such as Fitness, Concealment, and Leadership. In addition, as characters leveled up, they gained access to new costume features, including the ability to change between up to five costumes and unlockable costume parts such as capes and auras (unlocked after missions).
Quests in the game were known as missions, and were obtained through various channels, generally from various NPCs the player met in the game. Although missions could be completed alone, the player had the option to form Teams with other player characters to play off of each other's characters' strengths and abilities. The level of the characters used, size of the team, and a separate difficulty scale chosen by the player called Notoriety, all affected the difficulty of the mission. Missions could take the form of an instanced area where the player(s) must defeat a boss, save NPC characters held hostage (sometimes taking the form of escort missions), or search the instance for a certain object or number of objects (such as clues or defusing bombs), while other Missions required that players defeat a certain number and type of mobs, possibly in a defined area of the game. Some missions are part of story arcs that involve the player in a larger narrative that tells some of the back story of the setting. Task Forces (City of Heroes), Strike Forces (City of Villains), and Trials (both) were particular missions that could be completed multiple times, but only as part of a team, and had to be completed in entirety to earn particular rewards for completion, such as the ability to respec a character's chosen Powers and Enhancements.
Cooperative play also took the form of larger player-created clans called Supergroups, reminiscent of comic book groups such as the Justice League, the Avengers, or the Brotherhood of Mutants. Players part of Supergroups could team up together or convene in Bases (introduced with City of Villains). Bases were used for social meeting or housing special items used in crafting Inventions, serving as a collective item vault, or to recover after losing all Health in the overworld. Supergroups in turn could form Coalitions with each other for increased collaborations. Coalitions were generally formed for the raids featured in the game.
Another form of cooperative play was the Sidekick feature, which allowed for characters of disparate experience levels to participate in the game together. A Sidekick's experience level would be temporarily risen to be close to their partner's level, and their Health and strength would be scaled to their artificial level, while any experience or Influence they gained was scaled to their original level. A reverse feature known as Exemplar was added later, which artificially lowered the level of a higher level character (also removing access to powers unavailable at their new level), but they earn experience at their original level, which is useful in removing Debt, or gains Influence rather than Experience. For the release of City of Villains, these features are Lackey and Malefactor. Issue 16 overhauled the system such that it was automatically scaled to the "Anchor", which was either the player on the team whose mission the team was set to perform or the team's leader.