This was a question asked of players of City of Heroes on the Reddit City of Heroes sub, this was my reply… I thought it was worth posting here as well as it explains some of why I do what I do and where.
Original Thread on Reddit
My reply on Reddit
What are your feelings surrounding a world you have lost, or that rather died, in City of Heroes?
When City of Heroes closed I’d not played it in quite a while, I felt that even though I was losing a game I had loved it wasn’t something I was likely to play again anyway. I’d become disillusioned when the game went from pay to play to a hybrid “Freemium” model, and the changes to make the game pay for NCSoft. I’d been playing on/off since the EU launch and made some great friends, had some very enjoyable times, but most of my friends had either moved on prior to “Freemium” or left soon after. And like a lot of MMOs City of Heroes is more fun with friends (and I say that as an avid multi-boxer).
I found out about the shutdown IIRC from a Facebook post on a fan page (probably Titan Network), but by that point NCSoft had stopped people from resubbing so I could only access a handful of characters across my 3 accounts, many of whom were only accessible because they were low levelled and not characters I had much feeling for. So in reality my time in City of Heroes ended months if not years prior to the official shutdown.
After it was finally gone, I was sad but not heartbroken. I had never achieved some of the things I want to do in City of Heroes, now I never could. I occasionally dreamed that if I won the lottery I’d go off to NCSoft and buy the game/IP/server code and restart… but I never won the lottery… and eventually it slipped from my mind apart from some fond memories of friends made and battles fought.
What’s the experience like restarting on a private server from the one you left? Did you bring something with you and if so what?
I probably found out about the new servers through Titan Network (again), I wasn’t a regular reader, I’d long since given up hope that the game would ever appear again. I knew that there had been several efforts by different groups (or different people in one group) to get NCSoft to either relaunch the game or to sell it so those groups could relaunch the game. I kept my eyes open but wasn’t expecting much.
I’d seen the efforts on the parts of several small groups to create a successor game based on the same concept but using a new IP… I was more interested in that, though again not really very hopeful. Every now and then I’d see something mentioned in the more widespread gaming press about these successor projects but mostly the consensus of opinion was that if they happened it would be a long time off. And from my PoV they were using non-MMO centric engines so my style of play would probably not be possible anyway.
When I first found out about the HomeComing project, it was mostly down to the fighting about who was to blame for the previous private server. (Score?) And as I was in the middle of whichever game I was playing at the time I didn’t immediately drop that to relaunch my fight against evil.
But in time I started out on HomeComing. HomeComing is enormously polished in my opinion but differs from the experience I remember from live by being much simpler. Almost but not quite the difference between WoW Classic and WoW Live. The levelling curve is much flatter, farming is pretty much encouraged (or not prevented/nerfed). And I quickly reached the Incarnate end game on several characters… this only took a couple of months. And after three or four I had several max level farmers (on three accounts), several max level Incarnates with them fully T3 slotted… and the game which took on live well over a couple of years to get boring… got boring again.
Earlier this year once again bored with other games I decided to try out some other servers. HC is very polished and there is a physical server in my home region (EU) so pings are great, but the devs actively want to prevent the use of more than three accounts in multi-boxing, they also (and this was since I last played) would ban people who streamed or released video of their servers. I would imagine that many people flouted both or one of these rules. It’s a free game, you can almost certainly get away with doing what you want and if banned just make a new account, and with HC being so easy to level on it wouldn’t take much to do just that. I don’t work that way, they’re providing me with something I want to enjoy so I’ll try and stay within the spirit of their rules.
So I looked at the other servers, I wanted the option of recording or streaming though I don’t do it often. I also want to try playing more than three accounts at once. HC has 4 or 5 populated servers, none of the others have this level of population. Nor do they have so many of the rules.
I wanted to try levelling a team of 8 from level 1 to 50 and then unlock a complete some of the Incarnate content. I tried some different servers. Cake looked great but I needed a GM/Dev to create the accounts and they could only supply 2 (their server their prerogative IMO). I tried Rebirth, but had issues getting their official launcher to work. So I moved on to ThunderSpy.
I have been there for a couple of months now, it does have some rough edges but overall I haven’t experienced any of the negatives that put me off joining it back when I first found out about the new servers. I find their stance on changes to other servers for the most part logical, even when I don’t necessarily agree with them. I enjoy the more involved levelling process and I enjoy the fact that most 50s I meet have earned their way there and not just by door sitting in an AE farm.
And I have levelled two teams to 50 through normal content, so I have no done what I set out to do, I have some further things I want to try and I’ll probably continue to play my level 50 teams. The devs are still actively developing new ideas and at least one of those looks like it might flesh out into a new team.
I’d love to see a new server one day with the levelling curve and overall playstyle of Live/ThunderSpy/etc but with many of the QoL & polish from HC and without the HC restrictions. So now my lottery win dreams would work toward that.
I’d call the server Hope, it’d be designed to match the playstyle of Live and AE would be heavily nerfed (or removed) and most if not all of the Pay to Win services that HC offers would be harder to get. I’d use a similar code base to TSpy but add/keep many of the content updates and polish of HC… but it’s a dream not something that is ever likely to happen in reality.