City of Heroes and developer shutting down

I stopped playing just before Going Rogue went live. I felt the game had gotten tired and boring after Architect. It seemed like they were devoid of new ideas at the time and wanted to shrug off their efforts. That, and the Architect system turned the game into a haven for power-leveling. It was such a ridiculous joke that people were going from level 1-50 in as little as a day of playing. Kinda glad they're putting the game out to pasture. Its long past due.

Fun memories with this game. Quite a shame, but this looks like a case of "all things come to and end." Really though, those guys should be hired. They deserve to have someplace to go with their talents. Good luck to them.

I will really miss this game and the in-game community. I have never spent so much time or money on one game. Unfortunately, the writing was on the wall as the population continually dwindled over the years. The most telling statement was how many recent comments there were of "I have fond memories of playing that game" but that did not equal a current paying customer. They picked up some steam in producing content for the last year but it was not enough and not differentiated enough from previous content, let alone what was available in other, more modern MMOs. But, I loved every little bit of it.

Now, with more time to sober the outrage I initially felt at the announcement of its closure, it is hard to not see the disadvantage the game faced versus the current landscape of video games.

The only thing I get to be happy about is I don't have see some old forum posters continually destroy the game anymore with their overly righteous attitude and disguised vitriol at any player that disagreed with them even in the slightest. Good riddance, Forum Cartel.

Yep me too , played it years ago for some months.

A great game for its time , but i enjoyed DCUO more though.

Too bad, years ago I played CoH/V for months.The customization is awesome and it's still the best superheroes MMO (CO and DCUO completely sucked).Making it partially f2p (in reality you'd miss a lot of content with the free subscription) was the first sign of CoH/V being let down. I'm wondering from where Blizzard will copy "new" WoW's features after CoH/V closes.

The character customization in this game was second to none and set a new standard for MMOs. However, the rest of the content was mediocre at best, but still the game was successful and lasted a long time for an MMO standard. Sad to hear Paragon Studios is being shut down, but that is how the gaming industry works and the employees know this; most of them will find work on bigger and better projects if they haven't done so already.

Sad to see. Lots of great memories on that game. I've logged more hours fighting for and against the likes of Arachnos than any other online game in my life. Hopefully the development team gets picked up in the near future. They're quite a talented group of individuals.

Another reason to be very careful where you take your money, especially for virtual goods in online games.

That's a shame. It's one of those games I've wanted to play ever since I was a kid but never got around to because I couldn't pay for the monthly subscription. I forgot it went F2P but now it's too late. Sad to see them go.

@aesoprjigheioug I wish when they shut these games down that they would open source the servers. Let the community run their own servers if they want to keep the game going.

Can't say as I'm sorprised. This has not been a good year for studios wiyh many being shut down-mainly by Activision.

The only Real Memory of this game i have was flying around areas and stuff like that i have played this game in ages but i might re install this for one last hurrah for this game,Good Luck to all the employees i think you've made a lot of people happy making this game.

Just saw this and an very sad to see it go, thoughts go to the staff who have given so much to the game through the years.

@aesoprjigheioug I'll sign even though it is probably a waste of time. COH was my first MMO

I'm more sad about people laid off than the closing of the game itself, given that there may be private servers of that game. But seriously laying of people? They could have transferred them to Guild Wars 2 or something. Talk about loyalty to their employees. Tsk tsk tsk.

I suppose this fate is destined for Guild Wars 2.

@aesoprjigheioug Complete waste of time.

Even if all 7000 people continued playing it regularly, that won't turn enough profit to make it worth while.

Signing a petition is the easiest thing anyone can do, because they know no-one will call them out personally for not acting upon that which they have signed for.

I wonder if anyone will literally kill themselves over this news. I know just how serious some people take MMO's and the time they invested in them.

@aesoprjigheioug

Thanks for the link. I signed it.

well, looks like NCSoft found where they're gonna get more servers for Guild Wars 2. Another company that disregards the best interests of their customers between all their merchandise games. What happens when GW2 starts its decline in player pop like TOR and Rift and every other MMO thats started since WoW came out. Oh well, lost a stable community.

This news makes me sad. I've played, literally, more than a couple dozen MMOs and, for me, City of Heroes was always the best. Was a paid subscriber for two and a half years, 500% more time than what I spent in any other MMO. I'll always have fond memories of CoH, the friends I made there, my supergroup, exploring Paragon City, super-jumping around, defeating giant monsters, joining the seasonal events and fighting crime. Heck, you could spend hours and hours in the character creator alone! I've bee playing some recent MMOs and still see them doing some things that CoH did better years before.

I've not played it in years, but I'm sure as hell will download it again and take a final tour around Paragon City. For the Altimates! CoH is part of my history and one of the best games I played.

"You gave them all those old time stars

Through wars of worlds - invaded by Mars

You made 'em laugh - you made 'em cry

You made us feel like we could fly"

I played it for about 6 months as well. Loved the game, but was also playing EQ2 and then WoW and really didn't have time for all of them. So I just quit CoH and played WoW & EQ2 for year and then quit EQ2. Unless you are single with no life at all, if very hard to play 2 or more MMO faithfully. At least with GW2, I can play it casually on my own time and don't have to worry about a subscription. Same thing can be said for Planetside 2, when that finally gets released. R.I.P. City of Heroes. You were a fun and entertaining game

Only 65 comments in this article? See this is what I'm talking about. If the series were on console in addition to PC more people would know/care about City of Heroes. At least then if it were an online RPG with offline campaign & co-op. Those people who paid for the subscription on the PC version and now feel neglected can come over to consoles to get back into playing City of Heroes. Say goodbye obscure super hero franchise, thanks a lot for ditching your fans..

What's that? City of Heroes is confirmed for all 3 major consoles!? Holy **** on a turtle that is the single most awesome thing I ever--oh wait the PC game is going free-to-play and the devs are determined to kill the series. So much for City of Heroes reaching star-studded status, I only wished they brought it over to consoles and turned it into an RPG that allows you to fully customize your heroes (since consoles suck at MMO's making it into an RPG would be the only viable option).

Who knows? Perhaps the series would've reached a wider audiance. It could've become so lucrative NCSoft wouldn't have reason to shut them down, jobs will be saved.

City of Heroes was the first MMO I ever really enjoyed, but I can't say I'm sorry to see it shutting down. I'd rather have these guys working on something new than continuing to mess with a game that has been painfully outdated for so long. I hope Gamespot will keep us apprised of new games designed by the old Paragon crew. They really did a lot of cool stuff with CoX over the years.

You know it is things like this that makes me wish that MMO developers would release some sort of 3rd party server patch for their games when they shut down their servers, that way people that still enjoy the games can either buy dedicated servers so that they can still play with some of the friends or even set it up on their own PC and solo the game.

This is why I hate playing games that rely on a connection to online servers, especially when you pay a monthly subscription fee for the game and it gets canned anyway (ahem... EA).

I really hope all the people who get laid off find new homes amongst other companies fast.

Never played the game myself, but for what iv'e seen and read about it they seem very talented and passionate in what they do. I wish you all the best of luck in the future!

@Suikogaiden This is probably not the place to ask for a refund.

Not surprising really. Me and my best friend loved this game at first and played the hell out of it the first couple months but both quit before reaching a half a year, and then didn't even stick past two months with City of Villains. I gave it a try again a couple months ago but couldn't get past 3 days. Sad to see people losing their jobs though.

@armorninja49 "Shame to see that plate of prime rib taken away...but at least we still have this bread that was moldy right out of the oven..."...is what I got from that :P lol

I honestly haven't played it in a long time, but I have a lot of great memories on it. It really is a shame they're shutting it down. Champions Online, DC Universe...no matter how much newer those may be, they don't stand up to CoH at all. Looks like I'll be returning while I can. It will be greatly missed :/

This game is too old, it's older than World of Warcraft. It has to die one day, especially since there are much better alternatives like DC Universe.

It will be missed, CoH got me hooked on MMO rpg's and the character creator is why i play champions. Made plenty of friends that turned to RL friends from CoH, this is a sad day.

RIP City of Heroes. On of the old school MMOs that paved the way. Still had one of the best character creators of any mmos even to this day. Had a lot of fun in this game pre WoW.

It's sad. These MMOPRGs are slowly dying. It' is a fad that has come and gone. Sure a few still hang on, but it is dying.

I can't get over how often I see the Rock Band/Guitar Hero games in the bargain bin these days.

This really sucks. I first got into the series when City of Villains released. Got the collectors edition for it and loved every second of it. Then I ended up buying the Heroes version and I think that was even more fun. I haven't played for a few years but the thought has been in my head over the past few months that I should maybe play it again. It was only about a month ago that I was telling my girlfriend of all the great times I had with this game. It's really sad to see it go. Sure, we have Champions Online and DC Universe, both of which I've played and enjoyed also, but they're not the same. Farewell Paragon City, you will be greatly missed... =(