City of Heroes | |
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Boxart
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Developer(s) |
Cryptic Studios Paragon Studios |
Publisher(s) | NCSOFT |
Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X |
Release | |
Genre(s) | MMORPG |
Mode(s) | Multiplayer |
City of Heroes (CoH) was a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Cryptic Studios and published by NCSOFT. The game was launched in North America on April 27, 2004, and in Europe by NCsoft Europe on February 4, 2005, with English, German and French servers. Twenty-three free major updates for City of Heroes were released before its shutdown. The final live update, "Where Shadows Lie", was released on May 31, 2012. On August 31, 2012, NCsoft terminated its Paragon Studios development team, ending all production on City of Heroes with the last day of services on November 30, 2012.
In the game, players created super-powered player characters that could team up with others to complete missions and fight criminals belonging to various gangs and organizations in the fictional Paragon City.
On October 31, 2005, the game's first sequel, City of Villains (CoV), was launched, allowing players to play as supervillains. The stand-alone expansion pack did not require City of Heroes to run, but if the user had both games, content was added to the City of Heroes side of game play. On July 16, 2008, NCsoft merged the two games' content together. Thus, a player who only owned City of Heroes could now play City of Villains, and vice versa. Prior to this, a purchase was required to access either game's content, but they were linked by one account and subscription fee.
On November 6, 2007, NCsoft announced their purchase of the City of Heroes/City of Villains intellectual property and transitioned the staff from Cryptic Studios to a new location in Mountain View, California, to continue development of the game. The new studio on April 14, 2009, became Paragon Studios, which shared credit with Cryptic Studios for the development work. This then led to City of Heroes becoming available for download on Steam, along with other NCsoft titles, on April 22, 2009.