pc The return of City of Heroes.. Sort of

[Puretone]

Hi Gang,

Titan Network has cracked the CoH files and CoH has returned! Well in the form of rogue servers. Anyone interested is welcome to create an account and download the launcher.

here's the link for a 'how to': Dredd's Guide to Loading City of Heroes

Anyone looking for a Supergroup is welcome to come to Excelsior shard and join The LEGION, A Supergroup that was around from day one to shutdown (rumored to have had Developer Matt 'Positron' Miller as a member on his personal account, at least until he took over as head developer).

Discord servers:

City of Heroes (covers all of the different groups running servers and general CoH stuff)

Join the City of Heroes Discord Server!

City of Heroes Homecoming (this is the group running the servers that we are playing on. The Excelsior server)

Join the CoH: Homecoming Discord Server!

....and Liberty Server CoH (a community of ex-Liberty players. Sections for each SG as well. Of course we have one. )

Join the Liberty Server CoH Discord Server!

 

[Cristiano]

I tried it out for a bit, but that game has not aged well. I'd also be leery of investing any time since these are not officially sanctioned servers, so they could disappear at any time. I get wanting to revisit it, but there is all kinds of drama and infighting and still the risk of NCSoft coming down hard on all of it.

 

[Puretone]

The code is in the wild. There's no putting the genie back into the bottle. And people paid for the various (CoH) titles. The only reason CoH (or any other dead 'live service' game) couldn't be played by those who purchased the game is because NCSoft shut down the servers. Servers are back up that make an unplayable game playable again. As far as I can tell, the people running the servers aren't profiting from this. They're just providing a service NCSoft no longer does.

 

[Cristiano]

The code is in the wild. There's no putting the genie back into the bottle. And people paid for the various (CoH) titles. The only reason CoH (or any other dead 'live service' game) couldn't be played by those who purchased the game is because NCSoft shut down the servers. Servers are back up that make an unplayable game playable again. As far as I can tell, the people running the servers aren't profiting from this. They're just providing a service NCSoft no longer does.

Even so, NCSoft does own the IP, and the game itself is being distributed even for those who did not own the original. They could sue the server hosts. I'm less worried about NCSoft per se than investing time on servers that could go at any time without warning. It's fun to dabble with it, but I wouldn't get too attached to playing it again.

 

[Puretone]

Regarding NCSoft, the Homecoming team posted this on their forums:

The Future - An Open Letter from the Homecoming Team

Hello Heroes & Villains! It’s been just over a month since our first shard Torchbearer went online, and we wanted to take this opportunity to discuss a couple of frequently-discussed topics and lay out our plans for the future. Firstly, I’d like to open by presenting our mission statement: Th...

forums.homecomingservers.com

"The reason for that is pretty simple: The only legal action NCSoft has taken in relation to City of Heroes’ return is a DMCA claim against the original upload of the i25 binaries (which, for the record, did not come from us). They haven’t touched any of the servers. The conclusion we’ve drawn from this is that at least for the moment, NCSoft do not mind the servers being up, but they do mind code (and other files) being shared. "

 

[Puretone]

I tried it out for a bit, but that game has not aged well.

I've been playing on the Homecoming shards over the weekend, and (at least with the Homecoming shards) I've found it to have all the old charm and community along with beefed up servers and none of the drama you mentioned. They're going to continue to develop and add QoL features and game features like new content.

They've added a system to double xp that inversely limits influence. They're also pretty set on keeping the family friendly standards.

Over all, they've done a good job. The game is as fun as it ever was and remains new player friendly while making it easy for vets to ramp up to where they were previously.

 

[Cristiano]

I suppose if you liked the game originally, then it will still hold appeal. I was never a huge fan of it, and I find the UI especially terrible. To each their own. The drama I was referring to is not in game, it's in Discord and forums surrounding the various groups trying to make all this happen. I hope it sticks around. MMOs shutting down is a bad thing, and I know a lot of people loved CoH.

 

[Cristiano]

City of Heroes: Community harassment ramps up as Homecoming counts 91,000 players | Massively Overpowered

 

[Puretone]

City of Heroes: Community harassment ramps up as Homecoming counts 91,000 players | Massively Overpowered

OMG! An online service and community has an ugly element! Let me get my pearls..

Okay, jokes aside, I think it paints an unfair picture of the CoH community.

You played Maple Story 2. You had to have seen the toxic spew in general chats there. From day one. I sure noticed it.

Over the weekend, with broadcast, Help and the other channels up. I just haven't seen -any- of that. No Trump rah rah rah shitposts. No MRA/Red pill twats. Just people reconnecting and being helpful. Old players being remembered and asked about, and new players being welcomed as we all try to remember how to play

When compared to other online communities, the CoH community is, by a far mile, less toxic than many others I've been in.

Another thought, I'm pretty sure other online service games suffer from breaching attempts. Wasn't there DDOS attack one Christmas for XBox live? The teams seem to be pretty transparent about what's going on. And unlike those paid services, you don't need a credit card to play. It's all free.

Those things happen, but it isn't indicative of the community as a whole.

 

[Cristiano]

One of City of Heroes’ rogue servers, Reborn/Pleiades, was just shut down by its operator | Massively Overpowered

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

I suppose if you liked the game originally, then it will still hold appeal. I was never a huge fan of it, and I find the UI especially terrible. To each their own. The drama I was referring to is not in game, it's in Discord and forums surrounding the various groups trying to make all this happen. I hope it sticks around. MMOs shutting down is a bad thing, and I know a lot of people loved CoH.

Yeah the UI was so-so, but what really made the game shine, imho were a number of large and small factors:

The character creator allowed a lot of freedom, and even gave you space to write in your backstory. People put a lot of effort into it. Most MMO's that'd be filled with "Come at me dork! I'll Flatten ya!" garbage... but the CoH community took pride in their characters and developed them.

Travel Powers put the 'fun' in functional in a big way.

They got tab-targeting RIGHT. WoW has never even come close, despite trying time and time again.

They really nailed world geometry and obstructions... you didn't snag on them, but they were crisp and reliable line-of-sight defenses.

Massive pulls were an art form and seriously fun.

The music really worked for me (I love synth, what can I say) ... simple, well suited, and it captured the unique attitude/theme of each zone perfectly. Even today, you could probably play 10 random zone music clips, and I'd probably guess half of them right.

 

[Clara D.]

Catgoyle because I like teh puns -- Stone/Stone Tank

Through a ritual gone bizarrely awry, one of the city's many gargoyles has been given life. Now it seems to want to thump things...

And forgot the other part of the gag, here she is in proper colors:

 

[Puretone]

One of City of Heroes’ rogue servers, Reborn/Pleiades, was just shut down by its operator | Massively Overpowered

I'll be honest, I'm not really surprised at the drama from reddit based server. I won't be surprised at the 4chan one imploding either. I do feel bad for the players that had made that shard their home.

Homecoming is being run by the people that were running paragon chat and the badge hunters site when CoX was live. They're pretty chill and mature about criticism including some from other hosts about not sharing the code. Though they will help anyone set up their own server, just not the code. They're fairly well regarded and respected in the CoX community.

Yeah the UI was so-so, but what really made the game shine, imho were a number of large and small factors:

The character creator allowed a lot of freedom, and even gave you space to write in your backstory. People put a lot of effort into it. Most MMO's that'd be filled with "Come at me dork! I'll Flatten ya!" garbage... but the CoH community took pride in their characters and developed them.

Travel Powers put the 'fun' in functional in a big way.

They got tab-targeting RIGHT. WoW has never even come close, despite trying time and time again.

They really nailed world geometry and obstructions... you didn't snag on them, but they were crisp and reliable line-of-sight defenses.

Massive pulls were an art form and seriously fun.

The music really worked for me (I love synth, what can I say) ... simple, well suited, and it captured the unique attitude/theme of each zone perfectly. Even today, you could probably play 10 random zone music clips, and I'd probably guess half of them right.

FYI, the Homecoming team -is- working on the UI. They added cooldown timers to powers so you know how soon a power will be up. It's a great improvement. They also updated some of the really old costume symbols that were pixilated with graphics improvements. Something the Live Devs never got around to doing. They also got rid of an alpha glitch on one of them.

Particles drop now and are able to be affected by your character. Leaves fall to the ground and bullet casings fall to the floor and you can stir them up by walking through them.

Having come back to it, I've got to say that graphically the world itself is as good, if not better in some cases, than many builds in SL. Sure characters are a bit blobby around the hands, but there's been a lot of improvements added to costuming. Certainly the last time I checked, WoW had the same problem with hands.

Every month they open up paypal to donations to pay for the servers. They get the goal within an hour. They have 'unofficial' PvP, RP and even an EU server. There's 5 so far to choose from.

One final note, Homecoming servers have surpassed over 100K accounts. With the ability to have 1000 characters per account there's very little dual boxing. They do allow having 2 or 3 accounts but ask people not have more than that. Apparently they can tell if someone is dual boxing vs a household with multiple players too.

There's plenty to do and plenty of people to play with any time of the day.

 

[Clara D.]

FWIW, have small but fully functional bases on Excelsior (Vendors/Trainer/Tailor/Teleport/Crafting)
If anyone wants to take a looksee or just borrow 'em:

Blue Side
SG: Miscellaneous Excelsior Heroes
Code:MEH-4680

Red Side
SG: Collective Chaos Community Project
Code: CCCP-4625

Global is @Catgoyle

 

[Cristiano]

Catching up with City of Heroes’ Homecoming rogue servers as NCsoft negotiations continue | Massively Overpowered