The residents of Paragon City will after tonight, be wondering, where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods? Where’s the street wise Hercules to fight the rising odds? Isn’t there a white knight upon a fiery steed? The answer of course will be that they have all been slain by the corporation, it’s always the corporation that gets you in the end.
City of Heroes, the first super hero MMO and arguably still the best, pulls its plug tonight, to much dismay from its remaining userbase and stirs the memories of those who particpated in the past.
Originally developed by Cryptic Studios for NCSoft, City of Heroes launched in the United States in 2004, to high praise, coming to a computer near you in Europe in 2005. City of Heroes wasn’t the most challenging of MMO’s, but it was fun, lots and lots of fun, but it has been around for quite a while now, many a company would be happy that their game was still allegedly viable eight years after launch, but not NCSoft who decided enough was enough.
The game wasn’t without controversy, there was a lawsuit dispute with Marvel, which was amicably settled.The game changed over the years, expansion packs such as City Of Villains and Going Rogue arrived, the game went to a free to play model. Only World Of Warcraft and Eve-Online seem to be able to combine longevity with subscription models when it comes to MMO’s, although their day will come too, unfortunately.
Like many others I’m currently wishing I’d spent more time in City of Heroes, but there’s a reason I haven’t and that’s ultimately why the end is nigh There’s only so much time you can spend in these places and friends of mine who did go back, say it was not the same, but it never really is once you’ve moved on.
All good things come to an end and even if you’ve defeated the likes of Mother Mayhem, Anti-Matter and Lord Recluse, the final arch villain of NCSoft is going to defeat all the heroes …. and the villains too!
However the revolution will be televised … well streamed anyway. Massively are streaming the final hour of City of Heroes.
For a decent farewell read the blog post by former developer Matt “Positron” Miller.