{"id":1027454,"date":"2026-01-14T14:05:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T14:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/?p=471719"},"modified":"2026-01-14T14:05:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T14:05:15","slug":"fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Fans gave defunct MMORPG City of Heroes a true comic book reboot in 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Massively multiplayer superhero game City of Heroes<\/em> celebrated its 20th anniversary this year. It\u2019s definitely showing its age \u2014 it\u2019s a slightly archaic, chaotic game in which players create their own Silver Age-style comic book heroes and villains and run, fly, surf, and warp around the basic metropolis of Paragon City. But you can still log in and play it, and be part of its small but passionate community.<\/p>\n

In itself, this is nothing unusual. World of Warcraft<\/em> also celebrates its 20th anniversary this year; EverQuest<\/em>, the game that inspired WoW<\/em>, has been in continuous operation for 25 years; Ultima Online <\/em>has changed hands a few times, but has been running since 1997. Provided enough players become deeply invested in these online worlds, they\u2019re predisposed to last. Even if the original developer or publisher loses interest, someone else can often be found to take on the server costs and collect the subscription fees.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/h2>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

This week on Polygon, we\u2019re exploring how superheroes are dominating not just comics and movies, but all media, in a special issue called Superculture<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

But City of Heroes<\/em>\u2019 story is different. Publisher NCSoft shut the game down in 2012, and resisted determined efforts by fans and the game\u2019s own developers to keep it online. For six years, City of Heroes<\/em> remained unplayable, and its bereft community had nowhere to go \u2014 although there were rumors of illicit playable servers.<\/p>\n

But then, in 2019, the game\u2019s source code leaked more widely, and a number of fan servers sprang up. One of these, called Homecoming, quickly established itself as the biggest and most professionally run, and in January 2024, NCSoft surprised everyone by granting the group behind Homecoming a license to operate the game.<\/p>\n

This completed an unprecedented resurrection. Almost 12 years after its demise, City of Heroes<\/em> was officially back. This is the story of a game, and a community, that refused to die.<\/p>\n

\u2018I played it religiously for years<\/strong>\u2019<\/h2>\n

City of Heroes: Homecoming<\/em> may have an official license and around 30,000 monthly active players, but it\u2019s still effectively a not-for-profit fan project, sustained by donations. The team that runs the game uses pseudonyms in public (a precaution taken to avoid community drama spilling into the real world). Over email, I talked to Widower. \u201cTrying to summarize any of our jobs in a few words is difficult,\u201d he said, but described himself as \u201ca sort of community manager\u201d who had started out as a game master on the team. Widower took his alias from his favorite villain character in the game, Ghost Widow, \u201ca ghost who can’t move on because of the untimely circumstances of her death.\u201d In real life, he works in charity fundraising; most of the team works in IT or related fields.<\/p>\n

Widower said that the Homecoming team has a wide variety of experience with City of Heroes<\/em>. Some played it from launch; others\u2019 first experience of the game was the Homecoming server. Widower started playing City of Heroes<\/em> around 2007 or 2008, when the game was just entering its second act. Original developer Cryptic Studios had moved on to make a Marvel-branded MMO, and sold City of Heroes <\/em>to NCSoft, which poached several Cryptic staff to form a new developer, Paragon Studios, to run the game. (The Marvel game was canceled, and eventually morphed into CoH <\/em>rival Champions Online<\/em>.) <\/p>\n

Also joining Paragon Studios around that time was marketing lead and former fan Hosun Lee. Lee had done a business school course in the early 2000s taught by Jack Emmert, an original designer on City of Heroes<\/em>, who was working on the game at the time and talked to the class about it. \u201cTwo years later, the game came out,\u201d Lee told me on a video call, with a screenshot of a throng of City of Heroes<\/em> players as his background. \u201cIt was like, Oh my God, I remember this game<\/em>. And so it was actually the first MMO I ever played. [\u2026] I played it religiously for years. I almost got fired over it once.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee, who had previously worked at businesses like IBM and Intel, found life at Paragon \u201cvery chaotic.\u201d It was a team of about 70 people, about 60 of whom worked directly on the game; there was also a community management team. \u201cI handled pretty much everything else,\u201d Lee said. \u201cMarketing, advertising, retention programs, monetization, PR.\u201d<\/p>\n

City of Heroes<\/em> wasn\u2019t a huge hit, although it was profitable. \u201cIt always paid the bills and then some,\u201d according to Lee. But it competed with two slightly younger games, Champions Online <\/em>and DC Universe Online<\/em> \u2014 and, as it turned out, the market for superhero MMOs had its limits. \u201cOne of the things we learned very quickly is the superhero market has a fixed audience size,\u201d Lee said. \u201cThey just went from one superhero MMO to another. […] It\u2019s the exact same number of people. It\u2019s just now they\u2019re distributed among three games.\u201d<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t enough for NCSoft. \u201cI think NCSoft at the time had ambitions to be larger, a lot more grandiose in the West,\u201d Lee said. (NCSoft declined to comment for this story.) Inspired by World of Warcraft<\/em>\u2019s massive success, the Korean publisher of Guild Wars <\/em>and Lineage<\/em> was readying an expensive WoW <\/em>competitor, WildStar<\/em><\/a>. In 2011, Paragon put together a successful free-to-play relaunch for City of Heroes<\/em>, which brought back many players and helped energize and reorganize the studio. But the following year, NCSoft decided to shut the game down. <\/p>\n

\u2018It felt like we had lost a piece of ourselves<\/strong>\u2019<\/h2>\n

At Paragon, there had been a frantic attempt to stave off the shutdown. \u201cA group of us spent probably a solid month, month and a half doing everything we can to try and save the studio and the game,\u201d Lee said. \u201cEverything from \u2018Can we scale things down?\u2019 to \u2018Can we spin the studio off?\u2019 There was even an idea to do a Kickstarter.\u201d But NCSoft would not budge, and it went ahead and announced the closure of the game and the studio.<\/p>\n

However, it hadn\u2019t anticipated the strength of feeling among the City of Heroes<\/em> community. There were in-game protests, and a petition to keep the game alive<\/a> reached over 16,000 signatures. \u201cThere was a point when it almost tipped over,\u201d Lee remembered. \u201cThe player reaction was a lot more intense than I think NCSoft realized. And so that actually forced NCSoft to go back to the negotiating table. […] Unfortunately, obviously it didn\u2019t work out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

City of Heroes <\/em>was turned off at midnight, Pacific time, on Nov. 30, 2012. Like many players, Widower was online at the time, saying farewell to the game that had meant so much to him. \u201cI was on the Beta server on the night of shutdown, which happened to be the last server to go down; around 18 minutes after everything else,\u201d he said. \u201cLFG [the main chat channel] in those last few minutes was, as you\u2019d expect, partly funereal, but there was still that irreverent humor that characterizes MMO communities all the way to the end. It was very surreal!<\/p>\n

\u201cFor so many of us, finding out the game was shutting down hurt in ways we couldn\u2019t have expected,\u201d Widower said. \u201cMany of us built communities, lifelong friendships, and in some cases marriages and families through the game and had never considered the possibility that it could one day disappear. It felt like we had lost a piece of ourselves or our second home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now homeless, the City of Heroes <\/em>community fragmented. According to Widower, most chose not to jump to the game\u2019s obvious superhero rivals; many CoH<\/em> players had a \u201cpersonal distaste\u201d for Champions Online<\/em>, he said, whereas DC Universe Online <\/em>was \u201ctoo grindy, not enough customization.\u201d Many ended up playing another Cryptic game, Star Trek Online<\/em>, gravitating to the ever-popular WoW<\/em>, or giving up on MMOs altogether.<\/p>\n

Some half-functioning alternatives to the full City of Heroes <\/em>experience cropped up, like Paragon Chat<\/em>, a version of the game with no content that still allowed players to socialize as their heroes. \u201cIn the immediate aftermath of the shutdown, I spent a bizarrely large amount of time playing around with Icon, the hack to make the character creator accessible even without a server,\u201d Widower said. Like many members of the community, he had a feeling that City of Heroes<\/em> couldn\u2019t and wouldn\u2019t stay dead forever. \u201cI always figured I would just wait until the game came back eventually \u2014 though I did not expect to be part of that myself!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Oh shit, there\u2019s a Fight Club\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Hosun Lee said he first started hearing rumors of a fully playable City of Heroes <\/em>server three or four years after the 2012 shutdown. \u201cI guess there was kind of like a Fight Club<\/em> rule,\u201d he said. \u201cYou don’t talk about Fight Club.\u201d The code of silence didn\u2019t hold, though, and a few years later, word got out. \u201cSomebody did<\/em> talk about Fight Club. Then, when people found out, it’s like, Oh shit, there\u2019s a Fight Club<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In April 2019 it was revealed<\/a> that a private server had been in operation, in secret, for years. Many in the CoH<\/em> community were incensed at being left out, but the controversy led to widespread distribution of the game\u2019s source code and the establishment of multiple publicly available fan servers. \u201cA lot of people, some of us among them, were very angry that the game had been hidden from them for six years, as was their right,\u201d Widower said. But a nucleus of fans that would soon become the Homecoming team \u201cthought differently,\u201d he said. \u201cWhile the circumstances surrounding the leak were not what anyone would have wanted, we recognized the opportunity to bring the game back for real, and immediately started working towards that goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Widower said the Homecoming team came together within days that April through an organic cascade of introductions: \u201cA couple of people who had the knowledge and resources to run a server got together, and they got introduced to someone who knew how to handle community projects, and someone who knew how to handle the legal and financial aspects, and some people who knew how to handle the mess of the code. They picked up a couple volunteer game masters (among them myself) and off to the races we were! The community came along afterwards \u2014 we were pretty much the only [public] server in town for a few weeks there, so people came and never left.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many fans in the community were nervous about investing time in servers that had a dubious legal right to exist. Surprisingly, the Homecoming team wasn\u2019t worried. \u201cQuite the contrary,\u201d Widower said. \u201cWe were in contact with NCSoft from day one in pursuit of having a friendly, stable, and long-term version of the game for everyone to enjoy, and we believed that working with NCSoft was the only way to make this possible.\u201d A bigger concern was just keeping the server on its feet. \u201cIt was absolute chaos,\u201d he said. \u201cOf course we expected a lot of people would want to play, but I don\u2019t think we realized we would have so many players on at once that the servers were struggling to keep up. We had very little time to learn, scale, and optimize. […] It helped that, in spite of never having met before, everyone on the team got on very well together and also was very willing to obliterate their sleep schedules.\u201d<\/p>\n

Homecoming was far from the only big unofficial City of Heroes <\/em>server \u2014 another, Freedom, is still going \u2014 but it had a first-mover advantage and quickly amassed the biggest community. Yet Widower reckons it was the Homecoming team\u2019s professionalism that won it the official license from NCSoft. \u201cI don\u2019t know how familiar you are with private servers in general, but they tend to be full of drama,\u201d he said. \u201cWhile we can\u2019t control what anyone else does, we have tried to run Homecoming as if we were a real studio running a real MMO, with all the strictures that entails. I know a lot of our players feel secure in the knowledge that the server won\u2019t implode because of internal conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\u201cWe have tried to run Homecoming as if we were a real studio running a real MMO\u201d<\/p>\n

Widower<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

The team were handy coders, too. What the Homecoming team has done with City of Heroes<\/em> is \u201cmind-bogglingly impressive,\u201d according to Lee, compared to what Paragon\u2019s team of professional developers managed. \u201cWe had a dedicated team of people who lived the code, who were being paid to do that. And honestly, I think we still barely kept things going. The game is [made of] what people call spaghetti code \u2014 it’s years and years of development on top of each other, so nobody knows what anything does anymore. And that was hard enough when we had access to the source code. To find out that there\u2019s a group of amateurs who, I guess, reverse-engineered it and are able to add things into the game that we [never could was amazing].\u201d Lee cited the Homecoming team\u2019s addition of asymmetrical costumes, a community ask the Paragon team had never been able to figure out how to deliver.<\/p>\n

It still took NCSoft years to agree to grant Homecoming an official license. No money changed hands; according to a FAQ<\/a> on the license, Homecoming is \u201cnot required to pay any up-front or recurring license fees.\u201d Lee thinks the publisher\u2019s decision was generous, unusual, and highly significant. \u201cI was surprised, and it\u2019s not because I have any ill will towards NCSoft,\u201d he said. \u201cAt least from the outside, they get nothing out of doing this. The easiest thing for them to do would\u2019ve been to just ignore the gray servers, maybe send a couple cease-and-desists. That\u2019s less work, less money involved. But the fact that they decided, Hey, we\u2019re going to do something that pretty much nobody else would think of doing, which is give you guys a license\u2026<\/em> It made me feel great, actually.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018We\u2019re too stubborn to let it die<\/strong>\u2019<\/h2>\n

The tale of City of Heroes <\/em>is a rare heartwarming story to come out of the mercenary world of live-service games, where the hard work of game developers and the passion of game communities is so often snuffed out at the whim of business calculus. It says a lot that NCSoft has been willing to work with the game\u2019s community to keep it alive, but this would never have happened without that community\u2019s dedication and perseverance. And that, in turn, is all the more remarkable when you consider that City of Heroes <\/em>was offline for so long, and that it had never been a particularly big game \u2014 or even a very accomplished one.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Lee attributes City of Heroes<\/em>\u2019 remarkable stickiness to two things: the \u201cnearly infinite possibilities\u201d of its character creator and, paradoxically, its unbalanced, janky game design. These combined to create perhaps the perfect sandbox for superhero wish fulfillment, which in turn attracted a highly engaged and welcoming community, which morphed it into \u201ca lot more of a social game versus a combat game.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found that so many of our players spent a good chunk of their time just in the character creator alone,\u201d Lee said. \u201cAnd then once you left the character creator… Combat in the game is so broken! Because the people who made the game, this was the first MMO they ever made, so they didn\u2019t really think about scaling, or balance, or definitely not PvP at all. And so what people found was this is a game where you live out your power fantasies, where you do the broken things that no sane game designer would ever implement. But these are people who didn\u2019t know that, so this is a game where you can fly, you can summon 30 different minions, create nuclear explosions, and then go to a virtual rave right afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of things CoH <\/em>has going for it that other games don\u2019t,\u201d Widower said. \u201cThe original setting, the unique and complex approach to gameplay and character power, the endless possibilities for self-expression, and perhaps most importantly a community that is famously one of the friendliest in MMOs.\u201d That point about self-expression has been key, Lee agreed. \u201cThe thing [fans] kept expressing to me the most consistently was just, it allowed them to express themselves. [They had] the ability to express interest in different communities that maybe they didn\u2019t feel comfortable doing so, or just being who they are.\u201d<\/p>\n

If a game creates a place where players can more fully be themselves, then those players are liable to cling on to that game like their life depends on it. \u201cReally, City of Heroes<\/em> refuses to die because we won\u2019t let it die, because we\u2019re too stubborn to let it die,\u201d Widower said. \u201cBecause we\u2019re too stubborn to die. Because we believed. And I feel very privileged, as I think everyone at Homecoming does, to have played a part in vindicating that belief. City of Heroes<\/em> remains.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Massively multiplayer superhero game City of Heroes celebrated its 20th anniversary this year. It\u2019s definitely showing its age \u2014 it\u2019s a slightly archaic, chaotic game in which players create their own Silver Age-style comic book heroes and villains and run, fly, surf, and warp around the basic metropolis of Paragon City. But you can still log in and play it, and be part of its small but passionate community. In itself, this is nothing unusual. World of Warcraft also celebrates its 20th anniversary this year; EverQuest, the game that inspired WoW, has been in continuous operation for 25 years; Ultima Online has changed hands a few times, but has been running since 1997. Provided enough players become deeply invested in these online worlds, they\u2019re predisposed…<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1027455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1027454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polygon"],"yoast_head":"\nFans gave defunct MMORPG City of Heroes a true comic book reboot in 2024 | Arcader News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Massively multiplayer superhero game City of Heroes celebrated its 20th anniversary this year. It\u2019s definitely showing its age \u2014 it\u2019s a slightly archaic,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fans gave defunct MMORPG City of Heroes a true comic book reboot in 2024 | Arcader News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Massively multiplayer superhero game City of Heroes celebrated its 20th anniversary this year. It\u2019s definitely showing its age \u2014 it\u2019s a slightly archaic,\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Arcade News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-01-14T14:05:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"480\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"270\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Arcade News\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Arcade News\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"14 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Arcade News\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/8460f5e5076b52fb2369f2f7ce6f2839\"},\"headline\":\"Fans gave defunct MMORPG City of Heroes a true comic book reboot in 2024\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-01-14T14:05:15+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":2877,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2024\\\/11\\\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Polygon\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\\\/\",\"name\":\"Fans gave defunct MMORPG City of Heroes a true comic book reboot in 2024 | Arcader News\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2024\\\/11\\\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-01-14T14:05:15+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/8460f5e5076b52fb2369f2f7ce6f2839\"},\"description\":\"Massively multiplayer superhero game City of Heroes celebrated its 20th anniversary this year. It\u2019s definitely showing its age \u2014 it\u2019s a slightly archaic,\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\\\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\\\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\\\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2024\\\/11\\\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2024\\\/11\\\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024.jpg\",\"width\":480,\"height\":270,\"caption\":\"Fans gave defunct MMORPG City of Heroes a true comic book reboot in 2024\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\\\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Fans gave defunct MMORPG City of Heroes a true comic book reboot in 2024\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/\",\"name\":\"Arcade News\",\"description\":\"Free Arcade News from the Best Online Sources\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/8460f5e5076b52fb2369f2f7ce6f2839\",\"name\":\"Arcade News\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/3fea48a614d86edd987bc7bb25f4707c69546d4b1f78ad4aa20b26316bad1f9d?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/3fea48a614d86edd987bc7bb25f4707c69546d4b1f78ad4aa20b26316bad1f9d?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/3fea48a614d86edd987bc7bb25f4707c69546d4b1f78ad4aa20b26316bad1f9d?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Arcade News\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/cricketgames.tv\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/arcader.org\\\/news\\\/author\\\/arcade-news\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Fans gave defunct MMORPG City of Heroes a true comic book reboot in 2024 | Arcader News","description":"Massively multiplayer superhero game City of Heroes celebrated its 20th anniversary this year. It\u2019s definitely showing its age \u2014 it\u2019s a slightly archaic,","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Fans gave defunct MMORPG City of Heroes a true comic book reboot in 2024 | Arcader News","og_description":"Massively multiplayer superhero game City of Heroes celebrated its 20th anniversary this year. It\u2019s definitely showing its age \u2014 it\u2019s a slightly archaic,","og_url":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\/","og_site_name":"Arcade News","article_published_time":"2026-01-14T14:05:15+00:00","og_image":[{"width":480,"height":270,"url":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Arcade News","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Arcade News","Est. reading time":"14 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\/"},"author":{"name":"Arcade News","@id":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/8460f5e5076b52fb2369f2f7ce6f2839"},"headline":"Fans gave defunct MMORPG City of Heroes a true comic book reboot in 2024","datePublished":"2026-01-14T14:05:15+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\/"},"wordCount":2877,"commentCount":0,"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024.jpg","articleSection":["Polygon"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\/","url":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\/","name":"Fans gave defunct MMORPG City of Heroes a true comic book reboot in 2024 | Arcader News","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024.jpg","datePublished":"2026-01-14T14:05:15+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/8460f5e5076b52fb2369f2f7ce6f2839"},"description":"Massively multiplayer superhero game City of Heroes celebrated its 20th anniversary this year. It\u2019s definitely showing its age \u2014 it\u2019s a slightly archaic,","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024.jpg","width":480,"height":270,"caption":"Fans gave defunct MMORPG City of Heroes a true comic book reboot in 2024"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fans-gave-defunct-mmorpg-city-of-heroes-a-true-comic-book-reboot-in-2024\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Fans gave defunct MMORPG City of Heroes a true comic book reboot in 2024"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/","name":"Arcade News","description":"Free Arcade News from the Best Online Sources","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/8460f5e5076b52fb2369f2f7ce6f2839","name":"Arcade News","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3fea48a614d86edd987bc7bb25f4707c69546d4b1f78ad4aa20b26316bad1f9d?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3fea48a614d86edd987bc7bb25f4707c69546d4b1f78ad4aa20b26316bad1f9d?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3fea48a614d86edd987bc7bb25f4707c69546d4b1f78ad4aa20b26316bad1f9d?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Arcade News"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/cricketgames.tv"],"url":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/author\/arcade-news\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1027454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1461966,"href":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027454\/revisions\/1461966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1027455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1027454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1027454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1027454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}