The day that City of Heroes players have dreaded for the last few months has arrived. Tonight, at 2:59am, all City of Heroes game servers will be taken offline for good. At the same time, all official City of Heroes social media and community sites and pages will be shut down as well. The sunset of the still-popular, still-profitable MMORPG is an event that leaves many players scratching their heads, as publisher NCSoft's stated reasons for shutting down the game and its developer, Paragon Studios, don't make sense to most people.
Charleston, WV, City of Heroes player George Pryor is angry at NCSoft for shutting down the only MMORPG he's ever played. "They're basically closing the game because it doesn't make as much money as some of their other games," he says. "It is making money, mind you, just not as much as other games. Why you would shut down a game that's still making money for you is crazy. I will never play another NCSoft game."
Fans of City of Heroes didn't take the news of the game's sunset lying down. There were several valiant efforts to prevent the shutdown, including a petition at change.org with over 20,000 signatures and well-organized activities spearheaded by the people behind the fan site group, the Titan Network.
Despite the best efforts and hopes of thousands of City of Heroes players, the game will be closing down tonight, bringing an end (at least for now) to the most popular superhero MMORPG ever. Even with the closure, however, attempts to resurrect the game will continue for the forseeable future, as fans continue to petition NCSoft to sell the franchise to another company. There are even efforts to create a "spiritual successor" to the game in the form of a community-driven superhero MMORPG.
South Charleston resident and City of Heroes player Craig Morehouse plans on playing the game all day today, until they take the servers down. "The sadness of the day shouldn't take away from the fact that Paragon Studios, and Cryptic Studios before them, created one of the best games ever, a game that would, in the hands of a more competent publisher, keep going on quite awhile longer," Morehouse says.
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