Most of the MMO community is fully aware that City of Heroes, one of the most beloved and widely played superhero MMO’s of all-time, will be shutting down its servers soon.
From the official announcement made on the City of Heroes official site:
In a realignment of company focus and publishing support, NCsoft has made the decision to close Paragon Studios. Effective immediately, all development on City of Heroes will cease and we will begin preparations to sunset the world’s first, and best, Super Hero MMORPG before the end of the year…
Thank you for your years of support. You’ve been with us every step of the way, sharing in our challenges, encouraging us to make City of Heroes better, more than everyone else thought it could be…
What we learned on August 31 is that City of Heroes will be closing its doors (rumored to be this November 30), a decision that is unlikely to waver based on reasons that are not publicly known (but can’t stop us from assuming).
But the biggest lesson we’ve learned isn’t that “all great things must come to an end”, it’s what City of Heroes and video games are TRULY all about.
While outsiders claim the video game world is a waste of time, members of the City of Heroes community are teaching us some of the most powerful lessons in loyalty and faith.
The City of Heroes community is spending their final moments executing “protests”, which have functioned more as tributes for the game they love. It’s not a group on strike trying to wreak havoc until their demands are met, it’s a united group of individuals who are standing together during what otherwise would seem to be their most divided hour.
It has created rallys that on this past Saturday night, allowed 45,234,528,435 to wave their proverbial flag (actually a torch) and stand together in solidarity — not to demand anything, but to prove that nothing can break the spirit of a game that has given so much for so long.
Perhaps the most touching aspect in all of this are the fans who have LITERALLY given back to the game makers at Paragon Studios. Fans recently raised about $1,000 in three hours to treat the City of Heroes team to a free meal at their favorite restaurant.
This is coupled with several more tributes fans are currently planning for later this week. According to the site’s official thread:
September 20th and 22nd- Two massive joint task force runs are scheduled for September 20th at 9 p.m. EDT and September 22nd at noon EDT. Players are asked to gather in Steel Canyon in record numbers to run Positron’s Task Force en masse, showing that the entire playerbase is indeed Positron’s Ally.
Below is footage of the most recent protests from TwitchTV (try and ignore the irony of the Borderlands 2 commercial positioned in front of it).
Keep fighting the good fight, the worst thing that comes of it is that City of Heroes goes out as one of the tightest and most dedicated fan bases in the history of MMO’s, and raises the bar for whatever game(s) follows.
One can only hope members of “the outside world” is paying some attention to the actions of the gaming community, who are teaching everyone a valuable lesson: you don’t fight when you think you can win or because you think you are stronger, you fight because when someone takes away one of the greatest things you love, it’s the only thing you know how to do.
For more information on joining the fight, visit the game’s Facebook page and the page to save The City of Heroes.
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Paul Nyhart – who has written 891 posts on The Jace Hall Show.
Paul Nyhart is the Head Editor and Writer of JaceHallShow.com covering everything from game reviews and previews to the cultural impact of video games.

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