Thanks for Watching! Leave a like for more MMORPG breakdowns similar to this, maybe even suggest the next game to cover off! Also I have a website www.dogwatergaming.com
Look the lawsuit was in 2005 and the servers were shutdown in 2012 that is 7 years after the lawsuit. So I will not agree that was one of the reasons. They did find a way to make it popular in South Korea and that was when they added the incarnate system. Where you were forced to play with others to do incarnate trials to get the salvage to craft incarnate powers. I don't know how well that system did in its original form for South Korean players. South Korean gamers love a grindy game. Even more grindy than what we are accustom to playing. I say it wasn't profits that was the problem for NCsoft. I do believe that it was no doubt making more than enough profits to keep developing the game the way the devs at Paragon Studios were doing for years. I give my reason below. If it wasn't popular then no one would've bothered about creating the private servers that were created. I still believe that it was due to the fact that NCsoft just couldn't make a game that the Western audiences loved. A lot of their attempts closed down really fast. Remember NCsoft is like Blizzard in South Korea. having to shutdown their own games that they not only published but created. Then seeing one of the games that they publish but was made by Western developers for Western gamers made them lose face. And losing face means a lot to those in South Korea. IMO that is why they had the original Lineage kept on life support till it went well past the date of City of Heroes closure. Doing it just to make them look good and save face.
i'm having a lot of fun in Homecoming COH. All the monetization practices are inverted. Everything is free and people are clamoring to give them donations money. It's been a long road to the donation economy being valid in the US so, maybe it's just the right time for it but, the amount of work they put into it isn't to be discounted.
For me, the best time in the game was in 2005, when City of Villains debuted. City of Heroes, at the time, was a little frustrating as they needed to address some balancing issues, and already players were raging about their characters getting adjusted (nerfed!) with the game being out for only a year. So it was nice to cross over into the new lands of the game, which at the time was a significantly better production, with all new art and music. As noted in the video, the developers kept on working with the game, improving it and adding content, right on through to the end, with new content in the pipeline even as the game was being shut down.
The best time for CoH for me was last week, when I figured out how to convert enhancements to make money. With the homecoming resurgence, there's plenty of people to buy my listings and I can finally play all those ridiculously expensive builds I see all over thebinternet. All the changes homecoming makes are very nice. The teleport adjustments specifically give me that wonderful feeling of snappiness as I BAMF! all over the place during a fight. The game has never been better than it is right now!
This exact sentiment.. I actually got into this game a year late with the release of CoV since it was modular I just had the villains copy. Such good times. I remember the active pvp scene too
Discovered on January 15th that this revival was happening. I used to be deeply immersed in this game, embracing the role of a farmer, power leveling players for fun and profit. The closure hit hard, and despite trying alternatives like "Champions Online," nothing quite matched the experience. For years, I lost touch with any potential City of Heroes revival, assuming it was a closed chapter. Your video echoed that sentiment, many of us thinking the servers were wiped clean. Then, my brother shared the news about Homecoming, and I've been hooked ever since. The first week, I couldn't stop creating new accounts, marveling at the system for powers and costumes. After about 20 accounts, I finally settled back into my farming routine. Now at level 50 with my first incarnate ability, I'm on a mission to maximize my enhancements by farming money. This game has me head over heels, and I appreciate having it in the hands of a company that's transparent about the associated costs. Looking forward to crossing paths with you all online. :)
I played it when I was 6 or 7 way back when, when it was originally live. I got back into it recently, and good god the nostalgia wave hit me like a freight train. While some features are...clunky to say the least, its still a fantastic game.
I played the game all the way up to closing. I played a bit on Homecoming before it became official. Now that its official, it feels like coming home again. Its not the most advanced tech-wise but its so much fun. About the donations, the team opens up the donation thread and the goal they are trying to achieve for the month and its always filled within 3 to 4 hours, then the donations are done for the month. They also release a document showing how and where all of the funds are used. I think that ncsoft gave in to the agreement because they saw how many servers are out there, how many people are playing them, and most of all they could make a bit of money for free with Homecoming team doing all of the work on the server.
I was there when it was live, when it shutdown, tried alternatives and was left wanting. Years later, scanning the net, I hear whispers on the web - the city lives. City of Heroes is a game version of a Cinderella story, a story of hope fulfilled by fans far and wide. Someone should write a book about it.
I have the original box for game and expac in cupboard outside from when it released. I have had popped into Homecoming a few times but really been playing a lot trying different builds and having agreat time with it.
I was a devoted City of Heroes player, starting in December 2004 until shutdown. My wife also played, so I paid for two accounts for most of that time. Often, one of my kids played with me on the second account. I was active on the forums, and was somewhat well-known by the community for popular guides I wrote. I was there when the servers were shut down. I was also invited to participate in the "Secret Server" a few months after it started. They were perfectly justified in keeping it secret, since NCSoft had already taken legal action on a previously shut down game. However, once the secret was out, those folks did the community a huge favor by releasing the code so others could start up private servers. Now, I continue to play on Homecoming. It is still fun to generate characters with such varied powersets. I have tried all the other Superhero games out there, but keep coming back to City of Heroes.
I completely disagree that SCORE was justified in keeping the server secret. Keeping code secret like that doesn't keep anything safe, quite the opposite actually. Had NCsoft learned of the server then they could have easily killed it, forced them to delete the code, and it'd be gone forever. However if SCORE had shared the code and spread it far and wide, like they did after the news was released, then it's forever safe. If NCsoft decided to shut down the private servers they can't because the code is so widely spread that they would forever be playing whack-a-mole. It's why I think Homecoming's agreement with NCsoft is a complete waste of time and money. All it does is put them under NCsofts control without any actual protection. NCsoft killed the game once for dubious reasons, they could choose to do so again.
@@donkyhotay4583 The flaw with your argument is that there were concerns about POTENTIAL CRIMINAL CHARGES since the code could have been considered stolen property. By keeping it secret for as long as they did, they outlasted the Statute of Limitations. I happen to know about this as there were some private discussions about the concerns in which I participated, and I'm an attorney.
@@guycoburn1633 Yes, the code is stolen property. Doesn't change the fact that a single copy of code is vulnerable while widely distributed code isn't. If you're worried about criminal liability then that's all the more reason to anonymously release the code. That not only keeps the code safe since there are now many copies but you also let others take the risk of actually running a server, or doing so from countries where laws are more lax, instead of doing it yourself. If you're the only one running a "secret" server then it's more likely that you're going to be caught because all evidence points to you.
@@donkyhotay4583 You may not understand some of the legal issues. Once the code was released publicly, the damages increase substantially. If there was one secret server, they might be able to shut things down and negotiate to avoid criminal charges. Once the code is released, the SCORE folks would have lost all leverage, and the public would know about the theft of code. From a legal standpoint, it was very smart to keep it secret.
Interesting that something similar happened to Blizzard. After players asked for one of the first releasesof WoW playable in parallel, a "classic" version, Blizzard denied that request. Then someone set up a private server which was popupar but Blizzard had it shut down. This caused a shitstorm and Blizzard is now offering this version themselves.
City of Heroes was my first MMO. I have tried others, some of them with better graphics, but CoH has a place in my heart. I have turned some of my in game players into real life friends.
Man the mid 2000s were a interesting time for the Internet (at least for me) so many MMOs I downloaded and played for like 20 minutes before getting distracted by something else can't remember the names of a lot of em tho but there were a lot guess they were pretty niche since I don't see anyone really talk about em (I know I said I don't remember the names but I'm sure I'd remember if I saw footage of em)
I never got to get this game when I was a kids, because my parents didn't believe in paying for an online game as a kid for some reason. So its nice now that I am an adult can see these games come back so I can try them :)
No one was happy when City of Heroes was shut down, it came out of no where really. I don't think the devs themself knew NCSoft was closing down the servers and service. I imagine because I have no idea, that one of the disgruntled dev leaked the source codes because they were just pissed right the F off at NCSoft. Sawman, I also heard that City of Heroes was shut down because NCSoft didn't want City of Heroes to compete with their new MMO, at the time, Guild Wars 2. I've hated NCSoft with a deep passion ever since they shut down City of Heroes. I lost friends on City of Heroes I'm not sure I can ever find again. Them giving Homecoming a license, I'm not sure chances that fact. The Homecoming Dev are really good people from what I have seen and understand with a passion for the City of Heroes. I would like to see them being paid for running it.
I think part of it is also the resources to manager an MMO, I guess if they had to hire more people or split resources it becomes less cost effective. But as I said, it was profitable, so it was a strange decision.
I was there at the end, and it was utterly heartbreaking, and I admit it, the first time I got to log in again, I teared up. It's great to be home again! #AP33!
sadly the community is awful (on Homecoming). They make everything miserable when it could be fun, don't understand modern gaming and post min max builds nonstop, threaten people on discord etc. So many people I knew that came back just in January, left because of all this. The game is awesome. mismangaged currently.
I have an account on the Homecoming server. Haven't touched it in almost ten years by now, though. Back then the Promethean tutorial was still very much bugged out at the very start, the same state it was in when it was officially shut down. It is actually great to hear that more people are joining it, but I must state that the first time I created a Hero class on that server...people were outright gawking at the fact that my draconic character looked so amazing even while I was in active RP with a friend of mine. We had, maybe, 30 people surrounding us and actively paying attention. I had one private message asking how the heck I got the outfit to actually be so dragonlike. Unfortunately, this was just yet another example of so many others who simply choose 'reptile' and hit 'random appearance' without ever exploring. The character in question is a dual blade specialist, green / forest / jungle dragon who began life on Champions Online. I somehow managed to get the wings JUST right to make the swirling colors become so flipping mesmerizing. I was able to create him almost exactly in CoH. His personality was that of a brute, and he was actually very prejudiced against humans, whereas his brother, played by the aforementioned friend, was very much the opposite and would outright chastise my character for the way he was. The loyalty of the brothers never wavered and my character only opened up to someone after several quests together. On the Homecoming server, all of the exclusive content is unlocked for everyone, and you have the option to acquire all the uniques at the town center of whichever of the three factions you chose. No payment involved either in RL or in-game currency.
The reason the profit went down was the botched indroduction of PVP. Lotsa players optimised their toons for PVP, causing a lack of an important class, the tank, in PVE. I remember: To run a TF we looked like 30 min to find a tank. And again, he couldn't tank because he didn't have the taunt power due to his PVP build... 1 hour TF for nothing, in total 1.5 hours. This made most PVE players leaving. Until they fixed this issue by introducing a second build it was too late. The remaining PVP community was far too small and the bunch of PVE players were not coming back anymore...
A lot of the drama from the reveal of the secret server was from people who were very upset because they weren't invited to join. Somehow those "special" individuals thought they should be approached out of thin air to join. There was a lot of hate thrown at Leandro who was the lead project manager, but it was a collaborative effort. The reason it got leaked was a small group were really disruptive and got kicked, so they spilled the beans hoping to get it shut down permanently. Their reasoning was if they couldn't play nobody else should be allowed to either. Their actions backfired, but they weren't heroes. They were villains trying to take the game away permanently.
@@frequencyoftruth2303You realize there have been decades of Marvel and DC comics going back to the 1940s, right? Gee, I wonder where they get their ideas? It’s a mystery.
The best thing about the private server was that I had access to all of my original toons and could keep their stories going. Homecoming is fantastic, but it means having to start all over again.
Nope. Account data was a separate thing from payment data. Even Paragon could not get to it without going through the company that ran the payment side. There was more to it then that, but that's the important part. So yes the "secret server" could pull up characters by account name. No they couldn't compromise your personal, or financial data. It was guessed that they had gotten info from the test server. But that was a guess. As to the drama of the whole chain of events? I'm sure it could fill a few movies worth of cloak and dagger. I do know it took most of that time (4 1/2 years of it) for them to rebuild the dev end functions. Importers, toolsets, and all that boring stuff. They didn't have a studio copy of the data it seems. They all so seem to have rewritten a huge amount of code so that the game can be run on current systems. The studio data/programs were so much of an undocumented mess that no one ever knew everything about how they ran. "As was the practices for studio's" almost all code writing was done by contractors. When they were done, they were gone. The old forums were full of chatting about how much spaghetti code was there. TLDR: No they never had your data, just some log in server side stuff.
I remember being online when the servers shut down. It was bitter sweet. All my friends were there. My girlfriend (now wife) hated the game. I am so excited to tell her it's back! Lmao. Time to see what the boys are doing.
When I was overseas in 2008 my girlfriend (who was still the states) and I would meet and play just before she would go to bed (9pm for her was 12pm for me, so I would play during my lunch). She called it digital dating, and we did it almost every night for 4 years. I credit CoH for keeping us together during that time and I will always be grateful for it. Next month we'll be celebrating our 12 wedding anniversary.
CoH was my absolute favorite MMO. I was devastated when it shutdown. When it resurrected I was ecstatic and continue to play it. The Homecoming server has suffered from power creep changes by their devs where it’s not challenging to play anymore but still love it.
What is interesting further is that the Marvel MMO was never released and only caused the domino effect on CoH. DC Eventually did launch their game but there was still something about it that didn't quite feel the same as CoH was. It was such a great game in its time and thankfully through the determination of a few, we get to relive today. CoH is dear in my heart as it paved the way for my creative writing. Awesome video!
City of Heroes was and still is the best MMO out there. So much customization, so many powerset combos to play with and the long-forgotten debuffer and controller playstyle!
I played this at launch, like most MMOs at the time. The character creation was cool, and the super hero powers were cool, but everything else got boring fast. Generic city blocks where you fought generic thugs copy pasted all over the place. I quickly went back to playing my regular, much better MMOs: Final Fantasy 11 and WoW. They scratched my itch for old school punishing grindy long term goals MMO (FF11), and condensed easy mode quality of life MMO (vanilla WoW).
City of Heroes blew up at launch. I was in the Beta. BTW, you missed a couple of noteworthy competitors. Dark Age of Camelot was moving into golden years. Shadowbane, an ubisoft title, had just released a short while before this. Lineage 2, another NCSoft title was just a few month old as well. Eve Online was starting to get a lot of attention. Everquest 2 was released at the same time, though the original version is very different from EQ2 now. Maple Story was less than a year old. Star Wars Galaxies was coming into it's own.
I played from the beginning to the end, and I can neither confirm, nor deny that I had ever played on any 'Secret Server'. 🙂 I love playing on Homecoming, they have made so many updates, and new powers, and new costumes, that it almost feels like it never shut down. And yes, I was one of the players with toons in Atlas holding a protest sign.
I was in the beta for this and played all thru live. When WoW came out, and many of my SG friends left, that really worried me about the game. Then it closed and that was horrible. When Homecoming started up, i was there playing it once again and im so happy I can now play it with my wife and daughter again! Its a great fun game and Its great to be a Cape again!
It’s still a private server with private server quality and private server pop. It’s dead once you get past a certain point, the lag is crazy, and I lost over 100m a few times when their servers hiccup and wipe your stuff from the AH. I’ve stopped trying to play after a month. The support left me hanging for over a week, as well. Can’t say I didn’t try though.
How was CoH not popular in Korea? It's grindy as all asian mmo's should be and you can have barely dressed female characters. I mean it ticks all the boxes.
Similar to Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean Online closing and then years later being restarted by fans of the original game. I think they had to change the new title to Legends of Pirates Online but it's the same exact game and completely free. Good to see fans keeping something they love alive and game studios not being jerks and stopping them.
It's pretty odd how peeps were craving a superhero MMORPG with great customization when Champions Online is right there. Granted it doesn't have a great story or questline, but the customization is superb.
@@bX-rk2oo At some point when I have time if I remember SWG has more steps for downloading it and IDK where my old copy is so it can wait or maybe one day we will get a new Star Wars MMO
@@sawmanUK they are not even close. DCU is more of an action RPG that just happens to be an MMO as well, but the feel is completely different and feels more restricting if you view from the MMO perspective. though if what you want is an action rpg based on known super heroes, it's fine for that. but still kind of an apples/oranges comparison. now Champions on the other hand was a direct competitor, billed as a spiritual successor, and fell flat pretty much out of the gate. honestly had COX never shutdown i don't think CO would have stuck around at all. the art style was much more love it/hate it, the gameplay was OK but felt more restricting, and the content was never really there, it's like cryptic hit a financial wall almost immediately after release and flailed about helplessly trying to recover but never making any progress.
It's good to see the story being told. As someone who played the game since it went live in 2004, I have a couple comments. First, the Star Wars game wasn't an immediate competition for CoH. It came out about a year later, but when it did, it pulled a LOT of nicest people away for 3-6 months (or permanently) and the community goodwill felt different after that. Still one of the best communities ever on an MMORPG, but not the same. Second, The Marvel lawsuit was also early on, but happened many years before the game began a true decline. One of the reason that Marvel failed was that it was found out during the case that almost all the players running around with Marvel-looking characters were Marvel employees. Marvel threw in the towel after that. XD Thanks again for giving some attention to this wonderful game. :)
Played back in middle and early high school, and while I can't say that I was there for the shutdown (life uh... gets in the way) I've always had fond memories of it. I even still have some of the comic books they sent out for subscribers. Playing it again is a combination of a potent nostalgia trip, and a constant source of "when did they add *that?*"
Well.. that happend before - with Ultima Online. As far as i know, EA/Origin didn't follow suit with the hundrets of private servers across the world. Some Private Servers are still running, despite UO still runs on retail servers.
Played this a lot. Still my favourite game of all time. I was there at the beginning, and there at the end. The community was the absolute best. I've never played a game like it. It had everything you would want. I wish I'd taken more screenshots of my characters. I'd frame and mount them to remind me of the genuine friends I made along the way.
Saying that the Marvel lawsuit was in part to blame for the shutdown, from my understanding, is misleading. That suit was in 2004, the game wasn't shutdown until 2011. This is the first I've heard of Marvel employees creating the offending characters. I have heard of an author creating character from their books in the game, but that was after the law suit and an anti-copyright system was put in place.
So imagine you just published a mmo and you are then sued by marvel right after. It would have had negative connotations with ncsoft. (The documents are free to read online , I’ve linked them below. ) it’s not to say it was a direct cause but it certainly is something that could of been part of the final decision
@@sawmanUK if it was such a concern it wouldn't have lingered for seven years, IMHO. It would have likely killed any chance of Homecoming getting the license for NCSoft now it it were, no?
@@randywatson1982 i thought about playing it but i'm from Europe and don't even know if it's worth because of the population. I also heard that the game was p2w a few years ago, so idk
After it turned free to play i logged in one day and there was zero people playing. Like actually zero, at least on the two most popular servers i had my characters on
![[CODE] ADMIN ABUSING every EXPLOITER in Blox Fruits](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/x_ymd2Kx064/mqdefault.jpg)
![[CODE] ADMIN ABUSING every EXPLOITER in Blox Fruits](/img/tr.png)
Thanks for Watching! Leave a like for more MMORPG breakdowns similar to this, maybe even suggest the next game to cover off!
Also I have a website www.dogwatergaming.com
Look the lawsuit was in 2005 and the servers were shutdown in 2012 that is 7 years after the lawsuit. So I will not agree that was one of the reasons.
They did find a way to make it popular in South Korea and that was when they added the incarnate system. Where you were forced to play with others to do incarnate trials to get the salvage to craft incarnate powers. I don't know how well that system did in its original form for South Korean players. South Korean gamers love a grindy game. Even more grindy than what we are accustom to playing.
I say it wasn't profits that was the problem for NCsoft. I do believe that it was no doubt making more than enough profits to keep developing the game the way the devs at Paragon Studios were doing for years. I give my reason below. If it wasn't popular then no one would've bothered about creating the private servers that were created.
I still believe that it was due to the fact that NCsoft just couldn't make a game that the Western audiences loved. A lot of their attempts closed down really fast. Remember NCsoft is like Blizzard in South Korea. having to shutdown their own games that they not only published but created. Then seeing one of the games that they publish but was made by Western developers for Western gamers made them lose face. And losing face means a lot to those in South Korea. IMO that is why they had the original Lineage kept on life support till it went well past the date of City of Heroes closure. Doing it just to make them look good and save face.
The Superhero Cinematic Universe we deserved
i'm having a lot of fun in Homecoming COH. All the monetization practices are inverted. Everything is free and people are clamoring to give them donations money. It's been a long road to the donation economy being valid in the US so, maybe it's just the right time for it but, the amount of work they put into it isn't to be discounted.
For me, the best time in the game was in 2005, when City of Villains debuted. City of Heroes, at the time, was a little frustrating as they needed to address some balancing issues, and already players were raging about their characters getting adjusted (nerfed!) with the game being out for only a year. So it was nice to cross over into the new lands of the game, which at the time was a significantly better production, with all new art and music. As noted in the video, the developers kept on working with the game, improving it and adding content, right on through to the end, with new content in the pipeline even as the game was being shut down.
The best time for CoH for me was last week, when I figured out how to convert enhancements to make money. With the homecoming resurgence, there's plenty of people to buy my listings and I can finally play all those ridiculously expensive builds I see all over thebinternet.
All the changes homecoming makes are very nice. The teleport adjustments specifically give me that wonderful feeling of snappiness as I BAMF! all over the place during a fight.
The game has never been better than it is right now!
This exact sentiment.. I actually got into this game a year late with the release of CoV since it was modular I just had the villains copy. Such good times. I remember the active pvp scene too
Discovered on January 15th that this revival was happening. I used to be deeply immersed in this game, embracing the role of a farmer, power leveling players for fun and profit. The closure hit hard, and despite trying alternatives like "Champions Online," nothing quite matched the experience. For years, I lost touch with any potential City of Heroes revival, assuming it was a closed chapter. Your video echoed that sentiment, many of us thinking the servers were wiped clean.
Then, my brother shared the news about Homecoming, and I've been hooked ever since. The first week, I couldn't stop creating new accounts, marveling at the system for powers and costumes. After about 20 accounts, I finally settled back into my farming routine. Now at level 50 with my first incarnate ability, I'm on a mission to maximize my enhancements by farming money.
This game has me head over heels, and I appreciate having it in the hands of a company that's transparent about the associated costs. Looking forward to crossing paths with you all online. :)
I played it when I was 6 or 7 way back when, when it was originally live. I got back into it recently, and good god the nostalgia wave hit me like a freight train.
While some features are...clunky to say the least, its still a fantastic game.
I was around the same age, my dad loved this game and he let me play it. He's so happy it's back up and running and so am I.
I played the game all the way up to closing. I played a bit on Homecoming before it became official. Now that its official, it feels like coming home again. Its not the most advanced tech-wise but its so much fun. About the donations, the team opens up the donation thread and the goal they are trying to achieve for the month and its always filled within 3 to 4 hours, then the donations are done for the month. They also release a document showing how and where all of the funds are used. I think that ncsoft gave in to the agreement because they saw how many servers are out there, how many people are playing them, and most of all they could make a bit of money for free with Homecoming team doing all of the work on the server.
I was there when it was live, when it shutdown, tried alternatives and was left wanting. Years later, scanning the net, I hear whispers on the web - the city lives. City of Heroes is a game version of a Cinderella story, a story of hope fulfilled by fans far and wide. Someone should write a book about it.
I have the original box for game and expac in cupboard outside from when it released. I have had popped into Homecoming a few times but really been playing a lot trying different builds and having agreat time with it.
I was a devoted City of Heroes player, starting in December 2004 until shutdown. My wife also played, so I paid for two accounts for most of that time. Often, one of my kids played with me on the second account. I was active on the forums, and was somewhat well-known by the community for popular guides I wrote. I was there when the servers were shut down.
I was also invited to participate in the "Secret Server" a few months after it started. They were perfectly justified in keeping it secret, since NCSoft had already taken legal action on a previously shut down game. However, once the secret was out, those folks did the community a huge favor by releasing the code so others could start up private servers.
Now, I continue to play on Homecoming. It is still fun to generate characters with such varied powersets. I have tried all the other Superhero games out there, but keep coming back to City of Heroes.
I completely disagree that SCORE was justified in keeping the server secret. Keeping code secret like that doesn't keep anything safe, quite the opposite actually. Had NCsoft learned of the server then they could have easily killed it, forced them to delete the code, and it'd be gone forever. However if SCORE had shared the code and spread it far and wide, like they did after the news was released, then it's forever safe. If NCsoft decided to shut down the private servers they can't because the code is so widely spread that they would forever be playing whack-a-mole. It's why I think Homecoming's agreement with NCsoft is a complete waste of time and money. All it does is put them under NCsofts control without any actual protection. NCsoft killed the game once for dubious reasons, they could choose to do so again.
@@donkyhotay4583 The flaw with your argument is that there were concerns about POTENTIAL CRIMINAL CHARGES since the code could have been considered stolen property. By keeping it secret for as long as they did, they outlasted the Statute of Limitations. I happen to know about this as there were some private discussions about the concerns in which I participated, and I'm an attorney.
@@guycoburn1633 Yes, the code is stolen property. Doesn't change the fact that a single copy of code is vulnerable while widely distributed code isn't. If you're worried about criminal liability then that's all the more reason to anonymously release the code. That not only keeps the code safe since there are now many copies but you also let others take the risk of actually running a server, or doing so from countries where laws are more lax, instead of doing it yourself. If you're the only one running a "secret" server then it's more likely that you're going to be caught because all evidence points to you.
@@donkyhotay4583 You may not understand some of the legal issues. Once the code was released publicly, the damages increase substantially. If there was one secret server, they might be able to shut things down and negotiate to avoid criminal charges. Once the code is released, the SCORE folks would have lost all leverage, and the public would know about the theft of code. From a legal standpoint, it was very smart to keep it secret.
Interesting that something similar happened to Blizzard. After players asked for one of the first releasesof WoW playable in parallel, a "classic" version, Blizzard denied that request. Then someone set up a private server which was popupar but Blizzard had it shut down. This caused a shitstorm and Blizzard is now offering this version themselves.
City of Heroes was my first MMO. I have tried others, some of them with better graphics, but CoH has a place in my heart. I have turned some of my in game players into real life friends.
Man the mid 2000s were a interesting time for the Internet (at least for me) so many MMOs I downloaded and played for like 20 minutes before getting distracted by something else can't remember the names of a lot of em tho but there were a lot guess they were pretty niche since I don't see anyone really talk about em (I know I said I don't remember the names but I'm sure I'd remember if I saw footage of em)
I never got to get this game when I was a kids, because my parents didn't believe in paying for an online game as a kid for some reason. So its nice now that I am an adult can see these games come back so I can try them :)
No one was happy when City of Heroes was shut down, it came out of no where really. I don't think the devs themself knew NCSoft was closing down the servers and service. I imagine because I have no idea, that one of the disgruntled dev leaked the source codes because they were just pissed right the F off at NCSoft.
Sawman, I also heard that City of Heroes was shut down because NCSoft didn't want City of Heroes to compete with their new MMO, at the time, Guild Wars 2.
I've hated NCSoft with a deep passion ever since they shut down City of Heroes. I lost friends on City of Heroes I'm not sure I can ever find again. Them giving Homecoming a license, I'm not sure chances that fact. The Homecoming Dev are really good people from what I have seen and understand with a passion for the City of Heroes. I would like to see them being paid for running it.
I think part of it is also the resources to manager an MMO, I guess if they had to hire more people or split resources it becomes less cost effective. But as I said, it was profitable, so it was a strange decision.
Good vid. I stopped playing when they announced the servers were going to shut down, it was accurate to everything I can remember.
You didn't cover how amazing this is compared to other mmos being free. Anyways you seemed based somewhat.
Based ?
@@jonjones7854Likely auto correct to be fair.
@@jonjones7854Hardly based the game is objectively amazing compared to modern MMOs. If I want a glorifier chat room I'll fucking play a sp game.
This game still captures flying better than any other game I've ever played.
This is my thought exactly. All of the different forms of movement made such an impact of the way you played.
I was there at the end, and it was utterly heartbreaking, and I admit it, the first time I got to log in again, I teared up. It's great to be home again! #AP33!
Huh?
That music when you first hit the login screen again after so many years away.....straight tears.
some great information you gathered! i’ve been playing again for a few weeks and its better than i remember
I enjoyed this style of video! I'd gladly watch more of these retrospective videos, especially ones like this that have such an interesting story.
It was certainly a rabbit hole, I might make it a feature on the channel going forward!
What a twist! Great video! I enjoyed this
Such high praise from the might stabz 🥹
sadly the community is awful (on Homecoming). They make everything miserable when it could be fun, don't understand modern gaming and post min max builds nonstop, threaten people on discord etc. So many people I knew that came back just in January, left because of all this. The game is awesome. mismangaged currently.
I have an account on the Homecoming server. Haven't touched it in almost ten years by now, though. Back then the Promethean tutorial was still very much bugged out at the very start, the same state it was in when it was officially shut down.
It is actually great to hear that more people are joining it, but I must state that the first time I created a Hero class on that server...people were outright gawking at the fact that my draconic character looked so amazing even while I was in active RP with a friend of mine. We had, maybe, 30 people surrounding us and actively paying attention. I had one private message asking how the heck I got the outfit to actually be so dragonlike. Unfortunately, this was just yet another example of so many others who simply choose 'reptile' and hit 'random appearance' without ever exploring.
The character in question is a dual blade specialist, green / forest / jungle dragon who began life on Champions Online. I somehow managed to get the wings JUST right to make the swirling colors become so flipping mesmerizing. I was able to create him almost exactly in CoH. His personality was that of a brute, and he was actually very prejudiced against humans, whereas his brother, played by the aforementioned friend, was very much the opposite and would outright chastise my character for the way he was. The loyalty of the brothers never wavered and my character only opened up to someone after several quests together.
On the Homecoming server, all of the exclusive content is unlocked for everyone, and you have the option to acquire all the uniques at the town center of whichever of the three factions you chose. No payment involved either in RL or in-game currency.
Its actually insane how ahead of its time city of heroes is.
The reason the profit went down was the botched indroduction of PVP. Lotsa players optimised their toons for PVP, causing a lack of an important class, the tank, in PVE. I remember: To run a TF we looked like 30 min to find a tank. And again, he couldn't tank because he didn't have the taunt power due to his PVP build... 1 hour TF for nothing, in total 1.5 hours. This made most PVE players leaving. Until they fixed this issue by introducing a second build it was too late. The remaining PVP community was far too small and the bunch of PVE players were not coming back anymore...
What really killed it is when they introduced that place where you can create your own missions. Completely died after that
As someone who played I'm glad you had a good time in Paragon City 🎉
A lot of the drama from the reveal of the secret server was from people who were very upset because they weren't invited to join. Somehow those "special" individuals thought they should be approached out of thin air to join. There was a lot of hate thrown at Leandro who was the lead project manager, but it was a collaborative effort. The reason it got leaked was a small group were really disruptive and got kicked, so they spilled the beans hoping to get it shut down permanently. Their reasoning was if they couldn't play nobody else should be allowed to either. Their actions backfired, but they weren't heroes. They were villains trying to take the game away permanently.
Leandro became my biggest hero the day I got my Invite to Paragon. It's nice to know people that know people
Another banger video Mr sawman! I liked and commented. You are the greatest RUclipsr ever.
(I commented. Please stop holding my family hostage)
haha glad you liked it... maybe now ill let your family go... maybe
This mmo did have a wild story 😂
Yea similar to marvel and others now makes you wonder where they got the idea.
@@frequencyoftruth2303You realize there have been decades of Marvel and DC comics going back to the 1940s, right? Gee, I wonder where they get their ideas? It’s a mystery.
The best thing about the private server was that I had access to all of my original toons and could keep their stories going. Homecoming is fantastic, but it means having to start all over again.
I just can't handle how quiet Paragon is by comparison.
that was one of the most disturbing things, that all your private account data also existed on some random dudes hard drive
Nope. Account data was a separate thing from payment data. Even Paragon could not get to it without going through the company that ran the payment side. There was more to it then that, but that's the important part. So yes the "secret server" could pull up characters by account name. No they couldn't compromise your personal, or financial data. It was guessed that they had gotten info from the test server. But that was a guess. As to the drama of the whole chain of events? I'm sure it could fill a few movies worth of cloak and dagger. I do know it took most of that time (4 1/2 years of it) for them to rebuild the dev end functions. Importers, toolsets, and all that boring stuff. They didn't have a studio copy of the data it seems. They all so seem to have rewritten a huge amount of code so that the game can be run on current systems. The studio data/programs were so much of an undocumented mess that no one ever knew everything about how they ran. "As was the practices for studio's" almost all code writing was done by contractors. When they were done, they were gone. The old forums were full of chatting about how much spaghetti code was there. TLDR: No they never had your data, just some log in server side stuff.
Heck I made something like 673 characters because I absolutely loved the customization!
I remember being online when the servers shut down. It was bitter sweet. All my friends were there. My girlfriend (now wife) hated the game. I am so excited to tell her it's back! Lmao. Time to see what the boys are doing.
Maybe your wife will like it this time around? :D
When I was overseas in 2008 my girlfriend (who was still the states) and I would meet and play just before she would go to bed (9pm for her was 12pm for me, so I would play during my lunch). She called it digital dating, and we did it almost every night for 4 years. I credit CoH for keeping us together during that time and I will always be grateful for it. Next month we'll be celebrating our 12 wedding anniversary.
Is that the Valheim music starting at 6:40??
Never heard of this game but they have CAPES! A 2004 game with CAPES!!!! ZOS are you paying attention 🤣🤣🤣
It's amazing rn
CoH was my absolute favorite MMO. I was devastated when it shutdown. When it resurrected I was ecstatic and continue to play it. The Homecoming server has suffered from power creep changes by their devs where it’s not challenging to play anymore but still love it.
What is interesting further is that the Marvel MMO was never released and only caused the domino effect on CoH. DC Eventually did launch their game but there was still something about it that didn't quite feel the same as CoH was. It was such a great game in its time and thankfully through the determination of a few, we get to relive today. CoH is dear in my heart as it paved the way for my creative writing. Awesome video!
City of Heroes was and still is the best MMO out there. So much customization, so many powerset combos to play with and the long-forgotten debuffer and controller playstyle!
I played this at launch, like most MMOs at the time. The character creation was cool, and the super hero powers were cool, but everything else got boring fast. Generic city blocks where you fought generic thugs copy pasted all over the place. I quickly went back to playing my regular, much better MMOs: Final Fantasy 11 and WoW. They scratched my itch for old school punishing grindy long term goals MMO (FF11), and condensed easy mode quality of life MMO (vanilla WoW).
City of Heroes blew up at launch. I was in the Beta. BTW, you missed a couple of noteworthy competitors. Dark Age of Camelot was moving into golden years. Shadowbane, an ubisoft title, had just released a short while before this. Lineage 2, another NCSoft title was just a few month old as well. Eve Online was starting to get a lot of attention. Everquest 2 was released at the same time, though the original version is very different from EQ2 now. Maple Story was less than a year old. Star Wars Galaxies was coming into it's own.
I played from the beginning to the end, and I can neither confirm, nor deny that I had ever played on any 'Secret Server'. 🙂 I love playing on Homecoming, they have made so many updates, and new powers, and new costumes, that it almost feels like it never shut down. And yes, I was one of the players with toons in Atlas holding a protest sign.
My favorite game! I couldn’t believe when they did what they did! It’s nice to have it back. Love the community and everything about it.
I was in the beta for this and played all thru live. When WoW came out, and many of my SG friends left, that really worried me about the game. Then it closed and that was horrible. When Homecoming started up, i was there playing it once again and im so happy I can now play it with my wife and daughter again! Its a great fun game and Its great to be a Cape again!
It’s still a private server with private server quality and private server pop. It’s dead once you get past a certain point, the lag is crazy, and I lost over 100m a few times when their servers hiccup and wipe your stuff from the AH. I’ve stopped trying to play after a month. The support left me hanging for over a week, as well.
Can’t say I didn’t try though.
I played the game a very long time ago growing up and it was fun in my opinion.
How times have changed. CoH was shut down because it wasn't profitable "enough". Now games are losing millions...
How was CoH not popular in Korea? It's grindy as all asian mmo's should be and you can have barely dressed female characters. I mean it ticks all the boxes.
I was part of the closed beta of this game back in 2003/2004 and played the shit out of it, was so damn fun
6:41 vid starts playing a Valheim in-game song. I was thinking…why does this sound so familiar?
I miss the original version better it's too easy to power level and way too much going on but glad it's back
NCSOFT has not granted Homecoming a License of any kind.
Been playing City of Heroes a lot recently after the big announcement. This game was so ahead of its time it's not even funny.
From America F@#k Yeah to Valhiem forest music, 10/10 on the music choices🤝
I was on live from issue 2 until close on live. That was a hard day. Lost many friends.
I really want a game that plays like CoH, but looks like Champions Online.
i wish i could love this game, but i just cant.
the combat & gameplay loop bored me to death.
Great game. I played it so much I gave myself RSI playing it.
I remember being in the beta for this game. I wish someone would take on doing a graphics upgrade
Long Live Homecoming, long live CITY OF HEROES!
Similar to Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean Online closing and then years later being restarted by fans of the original game. I think they had to change the new title to Legends of Pirates Online but it's the same exact game and completely free. Good to see fans keeping something they love alive and game studios not being jerks and stopping them.
Yea dude don't compare that game to the glory of cox it doesn't hold a candle and Disney can fuck off!
Heroes Rise Up! '24
I would thank the boys and invincible for the success too.
Could you please provide a safe link to downloading this game? Thanks so much 🙏
Should be in the description, but it’s the homecoming server
forums.homecomingservers.com
New season of The Boys starts june i think. 😊
A lot of modern mmos have been shut down. Wildstar comes to mind.
I was there at the birth, death, and resurrection. There is a lot of content in this game.
Hope you can finaly make your dreams come true in 2024 and be invited in to the ESO streamteam.
2024 will be my year :,)
It's pretty odd how peeps were craving a superhero MMORPG with great customization when Champions Online is right there. Granted it doesn't have a great story or questline, but the customization is superb.
It is happening with another ncsoft game, wildstar. The nexus forever guys are slowly resurrecting the game.
Ill check it out, thanks for the heads up!
All im saying is Star Wars Galaxies was also an Amazing game
There are private servers for that game if you are interested.
@@bX-rk2oo At some point when I have time if I remember SWG has more steps for downloading it and IDK where my old copy is so it can wait or maybe one day we will get a new Star Wars MMO
I'm 7th
CoH was my last NCSoft game and will remain so!
I guess I knew someone who knew someone who knew someone.
Just started playing it yesterday
It's surprisingly easy to get into, but im not sure how it matches up to Champions Online and DC Universe
@@sawmanUK true, honestly I didn’t like DCU online very much, never tried champions though.
@@sawmanUK they are not even close. DCU is more of an action RPG that just happens to be an MMO as well, but the feel is completely different and feels more restricting if you view from the MMO perspective. though if what you want is an action rpg based on known super heroes, it's fine for that. but still kind of an apples/oranges comparison. now Champions on the other hand was a direct competitor, billed as a spiritual successor, and fell flat pretty much out of the gate. honestly had COX never shutdown i don't think CO would have stuck around at all. the art style was much more love it/hate it, the gameplay was OK but felt more restricting, and the content was never really there, it's like cryptic hit a financial wall almost immediately after release and flailed about helplessly trying to recover but never making any progress.
Was that the team America theme in the beginning? I love it!
When you abandon a game you shouldnt be able to claim you still own it.
9:30 and a dash of sexism. Delightful.
Sexism?
Private severs for Dark Age of Camelot
Cheers! For COH Homecoming.
It's good to see the story being told. As someone who played the game since it went live in 2004, I have a couple comments. First, the Star Wars game wasn't an immediate competition for CoH. It came out about a year later, but when it did, it pulled a LOT of nicest people away for 3-6 months (or permanently) and the community goodwill felt different after that. Still one of the best communities ever on an MMORPG, but not the same. Second, The Marvel lawsuit was also early on, but happened many years before the game began a true decline. One of the reason that Marvel failed was that it was found out during the case that almost all the players running around with Marvel-looking characters were Marvel employees. Marvel threw in the towel after that. XD Thanks again for giving some attention to this wonderful game. :)
Diminishing Returns killed it.
Now this is a heroic tale!
Get rid of pvp. Its horrible.
I always felt NCSoft was trying to pull people from Cryptic/Paragon Studios and put them in Arenanet to move development for GW2 more along.
Played back in middle and early high school, and while I can't say that I was there for the shutdown (life uh... gets in the way) I've always had fond memories of it. I even still have some of the comic books they sent out for subscribers. Playing it again is a combination of a potent nostalgia trip, and a constant source of "when did they add *that?*"
Well.. that happend before - with Ultima Online. As far as i know, EA/Origin didn't follow suit with the hundrets of private servers across the world. Some Private Servers are still running, despite UO still runs on retail servers.
Played this a lot. Still my favourite game of all time. I was there at the beginning, and there at the end. The community was the absolute best. I've never played a game like it. It had everything you would want. I wish I'd taken more screenshots of my characters. I'd frame and mount them to remind me of the genuine friends I made along the way.
I was just saying how there's a major lack of super-hero MMOs so I'm glad to see this coming back
Still love and play CoH
I geave it a shot after all these years, and I just don't love it anymore. There are far better games to be playing in 2024.
Star wars galaxies and city of heroes was and is the best mmorpg ever hands down. I miss it so much.
You say you don't see it happening (8:37)... but it's happening right now!
First.
Always and forever!
City of Heroes changed my life... and I still love playing it.
Nice video !
Big shout out to all the OG healers on Hami raids with TP and rez 😊
Saying that the Marvel lawsuit was in part to blame for the shutdown, from my understanding, is misleading. That suit was in 2004, the game wasn't shutdown until 2011. This is the first I've heard of Marvel employees creating the offending characters.
I have heard of an author creating character from their books in the game, but that was after the law suit and an anti-copyright system was put in place.
So imagine you just published a mmo and you are then sued by marvel right after. It would have had negative connotations with ncsoft. (The documents are free to read online , I’ve linked them below. ) it’s not to say it was a direct cause but it certainly is something that could of been part of the final decision
@@sawmanUK if it was such a concern it wouldn't have lingered for seven years, IMHO. It would have likely killed any chance of Homecoming getting the license for NCSoft now it it were, no?
@@dafyd201 it took them 12 years and it’s the only server 🤷♂️
@@sawmanUK there are other CoH servers. Do a search for Thunderspy. (There's a couple others, too.)
@@sawmanUK Homecoming isn't the only server, they're just the only server that thinks dealing with NCsoft in any way is a good idea.
i played this back in the day. then i went to wow...i was going back and forth for a while on there...id like to play it again if i could
i mean , you can ?
Yeah I tried it..I remember it a lot differently...DC universe online is much better
@@randywatson1982 i thought about playing it but i'm from Europe and don't even know if it's worth because of the population. I also heard that the game was p2w a few years ago, so idk
Unleash the bdo video already my man 🌋
This MMO was literally born the same day as me
This level of violence is uncalled for
@@theprecipiceofreason go ahead, feel old.
Ah yes... Homecoming the official SJW 'community'. I will stick with the other private servers thanks.
After it turned free to play i logged in one day and there was zero people playing. Like actually zero, at least on the two most popular servers i had my characters on
I like the old CoH CoH, but I think CO has a way way better character creator.