Dig superheroes? Like games? You’ll want to check this out.

One of our favorite pastimes, when not reviewing the latest movies or cracking open a good book is, reliving the the first decade of the century (this one…I’m not that old) with a quick round of City of Heroes (CoH).

City was originally launched back in 2004 by NCSOFT. Over the next eight years, it evolved into one of the most dynamic - and fun - massively multiplayer online role-playing games of the day.

Players would create superheroes (and later supervillains) that patrolled and prowled the streets of Paragon City, Rhode Island, in search of opportunities to save cats stuck in trees…or put them there, rob (or protect) banks, and fight each other or team up to battle alien invaders, fascists leftovers from WWII, zombies, and much more.

Characters were (for the time) very customizable, storylines were rich, and there was effectively no end to available content. I played the game religiously from 2004-12 and was still discovering new things when…Spoiler…(ok, maybe not a spoiler, but certainly something that spoiled the mood of many) NCSOFT decided to pull the plug on the game and pull the rug out from under around 70,000 active players.

Tic toc…tic toc…

Over the next seven years fans came to accept the loss and looked forward to the release of new games to scratch their superhero itch, but nothing ever really took the place of CoH.

Then…

In 2019, stories began to emerge that a small group of players acquired the code for the game and had been running their own server since 2012.

Shortly later, the code was shared and in the year since a multiverse of City of Hero server sites have come on line. Some have introduced new powers and character types, while some have worked hard to remain as faithful to the last live version of the game, but all have brought back to life something that old players never though they would experience again: logging on in front of Paragon City Hall in Atlas Park, congregating around Ms. Liberty, and launching into battle against Outcasts, Nemesis, zombies, and a rich cast of bad guys.

The future of this public version of CoH remains cloudy, but given that a year has passed since the code made its way back into the world and NCSOFT has not opposed it (and in some cases encouraged its spread), it seems likely that the grandparent of online superhero gaming is back for good.

Before sharing info on how to connect, I have to do a little “expectation management.” The game is old and online gaming (and graphics) have evolved a lot over the last decade. Updates have made it more customizable, but the most common complaint is that: “Look…it’s good and all, but the combat and character systems are basically old school Dungeons and Dragons rules - just used for superheroes and villains.”

To that I reply: “I like old school Dungeons and Dragons rules.”

If you do too, you can download everything you need to play HERE. There are a number of servers out there, but this is to Homecoming, the most populated and the one I hop on when I have a few minutes to beat down some bad guys.

Not a Movie Review…but Five out of Five Stars for Making the BMB Cat Purr.

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