Do you remember "City of Heroes"? It was a much-beloved but
not-too-successful MMORPG first released in 2004 that let you play out
your super-hero fantasies. Facing off against "World of Warcraft", it
struggled to survive eight years before NCSoft pulled the plug on its
servers. It was one of the earlier "AAA" MMORPGs that went
free-to-play with 'premium' (paragon) features restricted to paying
members.

The gameplay was... well, it was what you'd expect from an MMORPG...
and a 2004 MMORPG at that. But its character creation allowed for some
very varied player classes, and its ability to create your own hidden
lair was neat. It wasn't really my sort of game, but I could
appreciate it for what it was trying to do. But its player base was
fanatical about the game (they were second in their obsessiononly to
the weird nerds who played "Star Wars: Galaxies". Not that I know
anyone who would fit that description ;-). Because of how customized
your character was, it made the game more open to role-playing

So there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth when the game shut
down amongst its users. But, being heroic nerds, they didn't take the
removal of their game lying down, but quickly spun up their own
quasi-legal servers and just kept playing. Sure, it wasn't quite the
same; these servers weren't as full-featured, had a tiny population,
and were at constant risk of getting shut down... but it was better
than nothing. After all, as much as they might hope otherwise, the
writing was quite clear: "City of Heroes" was dead, gone, not coming
back.

Except... last week it was announced that "City of Heroes" is coming
back. NCSoft, owners of the property, have just granted a fan server
an official license.

What this means in reality is, as yet, uncertain. Will the server mods
be allowed to distribute the code? Sell access? Can they advertise the
game? Offer premium content? Or are they obligated to keep operating
as before - half-assed and without support - except without threat of
being shut-down?

One big advantage for the people running the servers is that - now
that they are no longer hosting illegal code - they've more
alternatives when looking for hosting options. Sadly, the code itself
remains closed source and the licensing is only for the one specific
group.*

So even though I know this change won't affect me much, still I'm
thrilled to hear this news. With so many modern games being pulled out
of our hands by publishers, it's nice to see - for once - the trend
reversed and an old favorite being returned to the hands of its fans.

* see below for what little details are available
https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/47223-ncsoft-homecoming-license-announcement/

On 1/16/2024 1:14 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> Do you remember "City of Heroes"? It was a much-beloved but
> not-too-successful MMORPG first released in 2004 that let you play out
> your super-hero fantasies. Facing off against "World of Warcraft", it
> struggled to survive eight years before NCSoft pulled the plug on its
> servers. It was one of the earlier "AAA" MMORPGs that went
> free-to-play with 'premium' (paragon) features restricted to paying
> members.
>
> The gameplay was... well, it was what you'd expect from an MMORPG...
> and a 2004 MMORPG at that. But its character creation allowed for some
> very varied player classes, and its ability to create your own hidden
> lair was neat. It wasn't really my sort of game, but I could
> appreciate it for what it was trying to do. But its player base was
> fanatical about the game (they were second in their obsessiononly to
> the weird nerds who played "Star Wars: Galaxies". Not that I know
> anyone who would fit that description ;-). Because of how customized
> your character was, it made the game more open to role-playing
>
> So there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth when the game shut
> down amongst its users. But, being heroic nerds, they didn't take the
> removal of their game lying down, but quickly spun up their own
> quasi-legal servers and just kept playing. Sure, it wasn't quite the
> same; these servers weren't as full-featured, had a tiny population,
> and were at constant risk of getting shut down... but it was better
> than nothing. After all, as much as they might hope otherwise, the
> writing was quite clear: "City of Heroes" was dead, gone, not coming
> back.
>
>
> Except... last week it was announced that "City of Heroes" is coming
> back. NCSoft, owners of the property, have just granted a fan server
> an official license.
>
>
> What this means in reality is, as yet, uncertain. Will the server mods
> be allowed to distribute the code? Sell access? Can they advertise the
> game? Offer premium content? Or are they obligated to keep operating
> as before - half-assed and without support - except without threat of
> being shut-down?
>
> One big advantage for the people running the servers is that - now
> that they are no longer hosting illegal code - they've more
> alternatives when looking for hosting options. Sadly, the code itself
> remains closed source and the licensing is only for the one specific
> group.*
>
> So even though I know this change won't affect me much, still I'm
> thrilled to hear this news. With so many modern games being pulled out
> of our hands by publishers, it's nice to see - for once - the trend
> reversed and an old favorite being returned to the hands of its fans.
>
>
>
>
>
> * see below for what little details are available
> https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/47223-ncsoft-homecoming-license-announcement/

Back in the mid-2000s I played a Korean mmorpg called The Empire of
Martial Heroes for a while. I remember this whole thing rather fondly,
and so seem to have other people as well. There was just something very
interesting about the whole world it was presenting, which was a wuxia
fantasy setting which most likely is far from being as special as it was
back then. One of the more interesting things was that you could open an
item shop yourself by just putting down a stand somewhere (where you got
the table and the chair from you were using for that is anybody's
guess...). This made the whole world feel actually lived in, as you
basically encountered an everchanging market of vendors whenever you
entered a settlement.
Anyway, the game was shut down maybe a year or two after I started
playing, and for years people were carrying the torch for this
long-shuttered game. Until, that is, they reopened a private server last
year, which they had been coding for decades basically.
It can be found here: https://brightmh.com/
Unfortunately the game is not quite as good as I remember. I think it
was the first MMORPG I actually played (that is, after Rubies of
Eventide, which was way more boring) and after years of playing other
MMORPGs the controls just feel... off. I tried it and gave up in
frustration pretty soon. Well, it was a mid-2000 free-to-play MMORPG.
Maybe I should try again.

On 1/15/2024 4:14 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> Do you remember "City of Heroes"?

Yes, I loved it when the game was new. But it slowly changed for the
worse. I loved City of Villains as well, but it also slowly changed for
the worse.

> So there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth when the game shut
> down amongst its users. But, being heroic nerds, they didn't take the
> removal of their game lying down, but quickly spun up their own
> quasi-legal servers and just kept playing.

Well, a very small group not much more than a D&D group had their one
server for a very long time. Other people who weren't aware of that
tried to make their own clones, unsuccessfully. A couple years ago the
severs and client was released to the wild.

Homecoming put their spin on that out and got around 10,000 players to
start, though that dwindled over the next few months, I'm not sure what
it's at now. Their spin was way easier and quicker and perhaps got rid
of a bit too much of the grind. I had done everything there was do in
about 3 months.

I had posted here about it of course.

And of course there was a few alternatives for the superhero MMO at that
point. One even made by the same people who made CoH, but it was a
micro-transaction mess, and I actively disliked that one. The DC heroes
of course, but that's only good if you want to play DC, and of course
has the micro-transactions as well, that one just didn't grab me.

And the marvel game which was fun (not as fun) but again
micro-transactions and was again shut down for some reason.

> Except... last week it was announced that "City of Heroes" is coming
> back. NCSoft, owners of the property, have just granted a fan server
> an official license.
>
>

Now that's news, it was rumored they were in talks, but I assumed that
was just rumors.

Yes, what that means?

--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'

On Tue, 16 Jan 2024 06:57:11 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>On 1/15/2024 4:14 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>>
>> Do you remember "City of Heroes"?

>Now that's news, it was rumored they were in talks, but I assumed that
>was just rumors.
>
>Yes, what that means?

There are a few more details on the site, but mostly it seems to be
that the server admins have received official blessing from NCSoft...
and very little else.

And it wasn't free either; apparently the people running the server
are paying for the privilege.

It isn't without disadvantage; as said, one of the biggest problems
with these sorts of fan-run servers is that - due to the
quasi-legality of it all - they tend to be fairly ephemeral. One nasty
glance from the IP owners' lawyers and the servers vanish like morning
mist. For similar reasons, it is often difficult to find reliable
hosting for the service; a lot of cloud-servers and CDNs look askance
at people running blatantly unlicensed code on their computers.

So this gives the people running the game-server some necessary legal
cover and potentially more hosting options. The TL;DR of this is that
the servers should become more reliable and be able to scale up, if
necessary.

Beyond that... well, there's a new TOS being released, so obviously
NCSoft had some requirements in that area (probably something along
the lines of, "don't hack or distribute our code, and don't allow
players to do anything too outrageous - no "Captain Nazi!" superheroes
- that would smirch our good name. It's also an acknowledgement of
NCSoft's IP rights, which sets precedent against any other fan-run
servers (should NCSoft wish to pursue them) and puts Homecoming - the
people running the servers - on notice. As one of the larger City of
Heroes fan-servers, they were probably getting too big for NCSoft to
ignore. But Homecoming can't go back to it's semi-legal ways anymore.
Having signed this deal, they have to either keep paying NCSoft, or
totally shut down now.

Still, I can't fault NCSoft. They /could/ have done a Blizzard and
just sued the server owners. Instead, they came to an arrangement that
works out best for them (good PR, some extra cash on the side), and
the players.

I just wish NCSoft had done one better and open-sourced the code
entirely (even if I recognize that would be a huge can of worms... but
I can dream)

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
>Except... last week it was announced that "City of Heroes" is coming
>back. NCSoft, owners of the property, have just granted a fan server
>an official license.
>
>What this means in reality is, as yet, uncertain.

There really isn't any uncertainity here. The Homecoming servers will
continue to operate the way they have for years, with the game being
completely free and funded by donations.

This really only makes a difference for people who wanted to play City
of Heroes, but were reluctant to play on "pirate" servers using a pirated
copy of the game. Now it's all completely legal and legitimate.

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca:11068/
db //