When ’ developers announced that they would be shutting the game down on Aug. 31, 2012, fans began battling for the fate of their favorite MMO. The superhero themed game, along with developer Paragon Studios, to a “realignment of company focus and publishing support” by publisher NCSoft.
Fans, funded on Kickstarter, and eventually fell back on creating their own versions of City of Heroes that couldn’t be taken away from them.and are two of the surviving mirrors of City of Heroes’ content, but neither of them have full functionality. Rumors have persisted for years in the City of Heroes community about a full private server, and they were finally confirmed by a player named Destroyer Stroyer. As, this leak — as well as the reaction to it — has led a once-dormant community to explode into chaos.Destroyer Stroyer, who identifies himself as Brian, shared his experience in a 34-minute video. The emulator SCORE (Secret Cabal of Reverse Engineers), according to Brian, has been run in secrecy by a closed community for the last six years. By revealing the existence of this secret server, Brian broke a nondisclosure agreement that he had signed. He alleges that SCORE was kept quiet by power players in the City of Heroes community.Brian’s first objection is that “playing the game, and not being able to share the game, was not fun.” Many fans lost a major emotional investment when City of Heroes was closed down, and they have been holding out hope that they can return to their digital home.His other allegation is that the secret SCORE server may have a database backup of the live game, which could include account information.In a statement to Massively OP, SCORE’s lead developer, Leandro Pardini, denied many of Brian’s accusations. He said he is not a City of Heroes subreddit moderator, that other emulation clients are not in league with SCORE’s community, and that no personal information from customer accounts was ever distributed to SCORE by Paragon’s former employees.
Pardini added that not only would this be an inexcusable privacy breach, but “that is not information that a game server would ever need to operate, and so it would have been completely pointless to share.”City of Heroes fans are in an uproar. Some are furious that there’s been a way to return to Paragon City that they didn’t know about. Many players lost long-term communities or friends over City of Heroes, and the more time that passes, the weaker those links become. Other fans are angry at Brian, feeling that NCSoft may crack down on this server as a result of the leak. (NCSoft declined to comment on the matter.)There’s also the question of who got invited and why — and as a follow-up, who didn’t get invited.
May 07, 2019 The City of Heroes community Discords have once again been in disarray today following an announcement on the original Discord by its head admin. Ahead of a post announcing the formation of a new Discord server and speaking on behalf of the Discord as well as /coxg/ and Reddit, the admin accuses the Homecoming team of dealing in bad faith with the. Guys, the people who used paragon chat as a front for the secret server and hid the game from us for years would never lie about talks with ncsoft.
For some of the players who dismissed SCORE as a wild embellishment or rumor, there’s a sense of betrayal.Pardini touched on this in his statement, writing: “This is a difficult thing to address, because nobody likes feeling lied to, even by omission. At the same time, operating under an NDA comes with some rules that are well understood. The fact that we’re talking about a server project for a game while the company that owns the IP is still active and used aspects of the IP very recently for Master X Master makes things more complicated.”Pardini apologized to any City of Heroes community member that was called a liar or “crazy” over rumors of SCORE’s existence. SCORE’s developers intend to keep developing the project in secret. They do not intend to share a progress report, and the NDA “will remain in full effect.”Pardini finished his statement by encouraging City of Heroes fans to support the developers behind the SEGS project. While the project remains in secrecy, this controversy has reignited hope for some players that they may, once again, take to the skies with characters that still hold emotional importance for them.
So apparently back when City of Heroes was cancelled, the complete source code along with user informations was copied and leaked by a dev to a guy in Argentinia.And this guy ran a secret City of Heroes private server that was fully functional. They even got all the stuff that was in development and finished it, they have new powersets and content.But it gets a bit spicier. The guy who ran the server was a head mod of the City of Heroes reddit and suppressed any discussion of private servers while at the same time stating that private servers would be impossible.And apparently he was also involved in a project that was attempting to create a private server and took many donations of fans for that. All the while having a fully functional private server he and his clique played on for the last 6 years. They even released a version of the game called 'Paragon Chat' where you could basically only walk around and chat with people as their latest development.The paragon chat and the functioning private server files were downloaded with the same launcher.Apparently even all Characters from the live servers are still there and you can continue to play them. There may even be personal information in the leaked database.This all was made public by a guy playing on that server:As a big City of Heroes fan that really makes me sad, i always hoped for a private server, i followed the Paragon Chat development and now to hear that there was a fully functioning Server with even all Characters present while those guys acted as if it would be impossible to do and even took money for the 'development'.Now we have to wait and see what happens. Apparently NCSOFT is already working on a C&D, maybe the server guys'll leak the code before that happens so that other private Servers will be possible.
There are Lineage 2 private servers that are apparently tolerated by NCSOFT even though L2 is still running, i'm not sure if they would pursue a dead game. But who knows. So apparently back when City of Heroes was cancelled, the complete source code along with user informations was copied and leaked by a dev to a guy in Argentinia.And this guy ran a secret City of Heroes private server that was fully functional. They even got all the stuff that was in development and finished it, they have new powersets and content.But it gets a bit spicier. The guy who ran the server was a head mod of the City of Heroes reddit and suppressed any discussion of private servers while at the same time stating that private servers would be impossible.And apparently he was also involved in a project that was attempting to create a private server and took many donations of fans for that.
All the while having a fully functional private server he and his clique played on for the last 6 years. They even released a version of the game called 'Paragon Chat' where you could basically only walk around and chat with people as their latest development.The paragon chat and the functioning private server files were downloaded with the same launcher.Apparently even all Characters from the live servers are still there and you can continue to play them. There may even be personal information in the leaked database.This all was made public by a guy playing on that server:As a big City of Heroes fan that really makes me sad, i always hoped for a private server, i followed the Paragon Chat development and now to hear that there was a fully functioning Server with even all Characters present while those guys acted as if it would be impossible to do and even took money for the 'development'.Now we have to wait and see what happens.
Apparently NCSOFT is already working on a C&D, maybe the server guys'll leak the code before that happens so that other private Servers will be possible. There are Lineage 2 private servers that are apparently tolerated by NCSOFT even though L2 is still running, i'm not sure if they would pursue a dead game. But who knows.Also a big fan of CoX.What baffles me is why they never attempted to make a F2P version of it. I mostly blame NCsoft for that.
I mean, if I game as terrible and as buggy as Hellgate London can make a comeback, then it should theoretically be possible for CoX to do so as well. I mean, how expensive could it really be to simply run a single server with a skeleton crew of software engineers just to keep it from burning down by accident? When did that happen and how did I miss it? OoWell, I guess it was justified in being shut down then. It still makes me a little angry to lose access to the game, though.
No not really. It made money, it just not made enough money for NCSOFT.
That annoyed me the most, i played during the FTP phase, COH wasn't a loss for them. They could have just let it run on life support and made some money at the side while doing nothing. But no.Thats why i really hope they leak the server software, a private server would be great, especially since their software apparently is 100% functional, raids and all. No not really.
It made money, it just not made enough money for NCSOFT. That annoyed me the most, i played during the FTP phase, COH wasn't a loss for them. They could have just let it run on life support and made some money at the side while doing nothing. But no.Thats why i really hope they leak the server software, a private server would be great, especially since their software apparently is 100% functional, raids and all.Yeah, me too!I had been aware of Herochat(or whatever it was called) for some time now, but never bothered because I'd heard it was just appearance. You could run around the basic city and do some costume stuff, but that was it.But if there was a private server with fully working abilties and such.Id be awful tempted to sign up and play. No not really. It made money, it just not made enough money for NCSOFT.
That annoyed me the most, i played during the FTP phase, COH wasn't a loss for them. They could have just let it run on life support and made some money at the side while doing nothing. But no.It wasn't making enough. The game had no more growth potential, at best it would maintain that revenue but more realistically it would continue to dwindle.Couple onto that the Paragron was working on multiple prototypes for new games that never panned out and were all canceled and you have a studio working on a game that was going to eventually sunset one way or another.AND ADDITIONALLY, NCsoft is a publisher with limited resources and that plays exclusively in the MMO market. At the time they closed CoH GW2 had just launched and was absolutely crushing it, and they were ramping up to release WildStar. GW2 was seeing explosive growth and WildStar had fantastic potential, so they closed CoH to shift resources away from supporting that title - which wasn't going to grow - towards titles that had the potential.It sucks, but it's business.
It wasn't making enough. The game had no more growth potential, at best it would maintain that revenue but more realistically it would continue to dwindle.Couple onto that the Paragron was working on multiple prototypes for new games that never panned out and were all canceled and you have a studio working on a game that was going to eventually sunset one way or another.AND ADDITIONALLY, NCsoft is a publisher with limited resources and that plays exclusively in the MMO market. At the time they closed CoH GW2 had just launched and was absolutely crushing it, and they were ramping up to release WildStar. GW2 was seeing explosive growth and WildStar had fantastic potential, so they closed CoH to shift resources away from supporting that title - which wasn't going to grow - towards titles that had the potential.It sucks, but it's business.The main issue with CoH making money, is that the game and Paragon studios were doing well enough for themselves, but were not making enough money in Korea, which is where NCSoft is based and where most of their playerbase (and therefore revenue share) comes from. And City of Heroes was never popular in Korea, despite their attempts to draw in some Korean heroes and folklore.At least, that is what I recall reading, several years ago. The main issue with CoH making money, is that the game and Paragon studios were doing well enough for themselves, but were not making enough money in Korea, which is where NCSoft is based and where most of their playerbase (and therefore revenue share) comes from. And City of Heroes was never popular in Korea, despite their attempts to draw in some Korean heroes and folklore.At least, that is what I recall reading, several years ago.Citation needed.NCsoft has always known their western titles developed by western developers are made for western audiences, not their own.
CoH was generating enough revenue to keep the game alive and supported, but that was mostly it. They weren't generating enough revenue to grow or expand the studio or really do anything beyond trying to keep revenue stable.GW2, for example, from what we know doesn't make squat in Korea compared to other regions. But that doesn't matter, because GW2 is designed for NA/EU audiences primarily, and consequently that's where most of the revenue comes from. Like I said: I've read it several years ago.
If I happen to find it again, I'll update this. Though it's unlikely I'll find it.My skepticism comes from working with NCsoft around that time (though not for them as an employee). This was never anything I ever heard in the slightest.There were a ton of really bad theories from salty fans (and still are) that aren't based in reality in the slightest, and unfortunately I've seen some of them gain quite a bit of steam from time to time despite being largely nonsense.