City of Heroes

City of Heroes (CoH) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game originally created by Cryptic Studios prior to the IP’s acquisition by NCSoft. Previously developed by the now-defunct Paragon Studios, it is currently developed by several private servers. One of them being Homecoming Servers who have a limited license from NCSoft. The game was launched in North America on April 28, 2004, and in Europe by NCsoft Europe on February 4, 2005, with English, German and French servers. 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.
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 April 2019, source code capable of running a City of Heroes server was distributed widely. This made it possible to create City of Heroes servers outside the direct purview of NCSoft and revived interest in the game, which by then had been out of development for more than six years.
On January 4, 2024, NCSoft granted Homecoming Servers, LLC, who operated the rogue server Homecoming: City of Heroes an official license to host the game.
In 2000, writer Rick Dakan and Michael Lewis created Cryptic Studios. The company's first project was City of Heroes, the idea for the game which Dakan claims to have come up with. Dakan was named Lead Design on the game, doing mostly writing for characters and story. Even after resigning from Cryptic, Dakan remained involved with the game through the publishing of the City of Heroes comic book.
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.
On October 30, 2008, NCsoft announced a partnership with Transgaming Technologies in order to bring both City of Heroes and City of Villains and all 13 expansions to Mac OS X.
The City of Heroes: Going Rogue expansion's release was announced on May 11, 2009. This part of the game centered on the alternate reality of Praetoria and featured a new alignment system allowing players characters to shift allegiances between Heroes and Villains, giving characters access to both Paragon City of City of Heroes and the Rogue Isles of City of Villains. Paragon Studios described this as "[exploring] the shades of gray that lay between Heroes and Villains". Going Rogue was released on August 17, 2010, with pre-purchasers able to play on August 16.
On June 20, 2011, Paragon Studios announced that they were going to switch to a hybrid subscription model called City of Heroes: Freedom, adding in a free-to-play game model. Special models for former subscribers would be termed Premium Players, and current subscribers would become VIP players, who would gain access to all the content in the various upcoming game updates.
On August 31, 2012, Paragon Studios announced that it was being closed, and City of Heroes would cease all billing immediately and begin the process of shutting down the service. The stated explanation for this move was a "realignment of company focus and publishing support". November 30, 2012, was listed as the official shutdown date of the game and the servers were turned off at midnight PST. Many players arrived en masse to express their continued protest, support, and fond farewells, including messages of gratitude from the developers and moderators thanking their fans for their support and passion for the game. A variety of efforts got underway, led by players of the game, to keep the game operating past the announced date of closure.
Missing Worlds Media's president Nate Downes announced in September 2014 that he introduced an interest party who wanted to make a deal in reviving the game's intellectual property with NCSoft staff, which might enable the final version of the game to be released. No additional info was released as the involved parties were under an NDA. The effort did not succeed, and the announcement has since been removed. This may have been due to the IP being used in Master X Master.
On April 15, 2019, news broke that a private server based on City of Heroes at the time of its shutdown had been running in secret for years. Three days later, source code relating to the server had been widely distributed, and a publicly accessible server based on the code was quickly spun up. While perceived threats, legal or otherwise, saw this server shut down by April 22, multiple public servers by various teams have since been set up based on the leaked code.
On January 4, 2024, the Homecoming fan server announced that it had worked out a deal with NCSoft and was now running an officially licensed instance of City of Heroes and its expansions, free to play and funded by donations.
City of Heroes required the creation of a character in order to enter the virtual world and progress through the game. After creating a character and selecting a name (the game would check if the name was already taken on the server), players could either begin play in an isolated tutorial zone, or skip the tutorial and begin in an open low-level zone. A character's level increased by earning experience points from defeating foes, completing Missions, and exploring Zones, then returning to one of various named NPCs known as Trainers. Benefits for rising in level included more Health, more Powers to choose for the character, more slots to allocate Enhancements to Powers, and larger inventories for Inspirations (quick use items) and Salvage (crafting materials). If a player lost all of their Health they were temporarily considered defeated, at which point they could be revived through use of an item, by an ally's powers, or by instant teleportation to Hospitals on the map. After reaching character level 10, a player defeat would accrue Experience Debt which temporarily made gaining additional experience more difficult.
The setting of the game, Paragon City for Heroes and The Rogue Isles for Villains, was divided into different Zones accessed through in-game transportation systems. Especially dangerous zones called "Hazard" or "Trial" zones, which teemed with larger groups of enemies, were marked in red on the in-game map and were much more dangerous than normal zones. The Villains' setting, the Rogue Isles, consisted of islands connected by a network of ferries and helicopters while the Heroes' setting, Paragon City consisted of regions separated by giant energy "War Walls" (which were justified in the back story) and were connected by direct access points and a Metropolitan Transport system styled on a light rail. A few zones were accessible to both heroes and villains; some were cooperative zones, while others were player versus player (PvP) zones. Praetoria, for characters created in the Going Rogue update, lacked War Walls, allowing more or less free movement between areas.
Players initially moved around the zones by jogging or using a minor speed-increasing power such as "Sprint". As heroes grew in level and accumulated more powers, they could choose among four higher speed traveling powers: Teleportation, Super Speed, Super Jumping, and Flight.
As characters leveled-up, players could choose new powers from the character's primary and secondary power sets, as set during creation, or from shared power pools. The power pools contained the four travel powers and other generic, usually utilitarian, powers that fell under categories such as Fitness, Concealment, and Leadership. In addition, as characters leveled up, they gained access to new costume features, including the ability to change between up to five costumes and unlockable costume parts such as capes and auras (unlocked after missions).
Quests in the game were known as missions, and were obtained through various channels, generally from various NPCs the player met in the game. Although missions could be completed alone, the player had the option to form Teams with other player characters to play off of each other's characters' strengths and abilities. The level of the characters used, size of the team, and a separate difficulty scale chosen by the player called Notoriety, all affected the difficulty of the mission. Missions could take the form of an instanced area where the player(s) must defeat a boss, save NPC characters held hostage (sometimes taking the form of escort missions), or search the instance for a certain object or number of objects (such as clues or defusing bombs), while other Missions required that players defeat a certain number and type of mobs, possibly in a defined area of the game. Some missions are part of story arcs that involve the player in a larger narrative that tells some of the back story of the setting. Task Forces (City of Heroes), Strike Forces (City of Villains), and Trials (both) were particular missions that could be completed multiple times, but only as part of a team, and had to be completed in entirety to earn particular rewards for completion, such as the ability to respec a character's chosen Powers and Enhancements.
Cooperative play also took the form of larger player-created clans called Supergroups, reminiscent of comic book groups such as the Justice League, the Avengers, or the Brotherhood of Mutants. Players part of Supergroups could team up together or convene in Bases (introduced with City of Villains). Bases were used for social meeting or housing special items used in crafting Inventions, serving as a collective item vault, or to recover after losing all Health in the overworld. Supergroups in turn could form Coalitions with each other for increased collaborations. Coalitions were generally formed for the raids featured in the game.
Another form of cooperative play was the Sidekick feature, which allowed for characters of disparate experience levels to participate in the game together. A Sidekick's experience level would be temporarily risen to be close to their partner's level, and their Health and strength would be scaled to their artificial level, while any experience or Influence they gained was scaled to their original level. A reverse feature known as Exemplar was added later, which artificially lowered the level of a higher level character (also removing access to powers unavailable at their new level), but they earn experience at their original level, which is useful in removing Debt, or gains Influence rather than Experience. For the release of City of Villains, these features are Lackey and Malefactor. Issue 16 overhauled the system such that it was automatically scaled to the "Anchor", which was either the player on the team whose mission the team was set to perform or the team's leader.
Players could also set "leveling pacts" which allowed two players to sync up the experience their characters gained, although this was disabled in a later update.
Other game features included auction houses and crafting inventions to make characters more powerful or unlock further costume options. The Architect release gave players the ability to construct custom mission arcs, with customized enemies and layouts that could then be played by all other players. The Going Rogue expansion allowed players to switch their alignment using Tip Missions collected from defeated enemies.
In character creation, the player first selected a character's origin and archetype, then primary and secondary power sets. Next, the actual avatar with its costume was created. Then the player had a choice of customizing the colors of his/her powers. Lastly, the player chose a name and could optionally write a background story to add some flavor to the character, as well as creating an individual battle cry.
There were five origins a player could choose for his/her character that dictated what type of enhancements the character may use, affected which single short-ranged power they begin with (in addition to powers obtained from their primary and secondary power sets), and influenced the various enemy groups that the character went up against. These origins were as follows:
A special "Incarnate" origin was programmed for various NPCs in the game who obtained powers from the fictional Well of the Furies. The "Incarnate System" added additional powers for the player to choose from after completing difficult missions.
There were five basic hero archetypes, which affected a character's power choices and team role throughout the game. Blasters were versatile damage dealers, capable of fighting at short or long range against one or many opponents, but had relatively little health. Controllers were adept at preventing enemies from moving or acting through inducing status effects, as well as possessing pet summons. Defenders turned the tide of battle with weakening enemy attacks (debuffs) and ally-strengthening (buffs). Scrappers were melee fighters with a greater chance of critical hits against tough opponents such as bosses. Tankers possessed great defenses and the ability to take hits for the team, as well as powers to adjust aggro towards them.
There were also five basic villain archetypes. Brutes dealt increasing damage as they attacked or were themselves attacked. Corruptors could cause damage at range, with high chance for critical hits against wounded targets. Dominators assailed enemies with status effects and direct damage. Masterminds summoned, upgraded, and controlled combat pets. Stalkers were stealthy fighters, dealing critical hits when hidden or when accompanied by a team.
There were also two epic hero archetypes which were unlocked after reaching level 20 (level 50 prior to Issue 17) with another hero character. Peacebringers were peaceful symbiotic aliens that had light based powers. Warshades were war-like symbiotes that were normally enemies to the Peacebringers but had reformed their evil ways. Both archetypes were capable of shapeshifting into a more offensive or more defensive form. The villain side mirrored this, with two branching villain archetypes which were unlocked after reaching level 20 (also level 50 prior to Issue 17) with another villain character. Both are rank-and-file soldiers for the villainous group Arachnos (Soldiers and Widows) attempting to make a name for themselves, each with two distinct specializations.
With Issue 21, players could now create a character and go through a tutorial involving the destruction of Galaxy City by Shivans that allowed them to choose their alignment, such as a heroic Corruptor or a villainous Blaster. Heroes went to Paragon City, and Villains went to the Rogue Isles. Characters created with Going Rogue started the game in Praetoria, and chose whether to be a Loyalist, who followed Emperor Cole, or to be in the Resistance, who opposed him. In Praetoria, however, things were not so black and white. There were good and evil people on both sides, and, when leaving Praetoria at level 20, players could choose their character to be either a Hero or a Villain. The alignment could also be changed later on, allowing for Heroes to go Vigilante before becoming Villains or Villains to become Rogues before being redeemed as Heroes.
Similarly to other MMORPGs, City of Heroes/Villains had various items that were rewarded within the game. However, many of these items were described as intangible or other-worldly; such as "inspirations" (temporary power-ups) or "inf" (an abbreviation of "influence", "infamy", or "information", for Heroes, Villains, and Praetorians, respectively, which was used instead of money), which were abstract ideas in the real world. "Enhancements" — slottable attribute boosts — also covered a range of ideas and items from magic enchantments to technological gadgets to training techniques. With the release of Issue 6, while in supergroup mode, a setting that could be toggled on and off, players accumulated prestige points which were used to improve the supergroup base.
Issue 9 brought the Invention system to the game, which allowed characters to combine other dropped items they salvaged and recipes to create various goods. Invented enhancements could provide better bonuses than normal enhancements, including set bonuses for slotting invented enhancements from the same set into the same power. Costume pieces and limited-use temporary powers could also be invented.
In addition to these, there were also collectible badges for players to earn. Gained for performing various actions in game (such as moving over specific places in each zone, defeating certain numbers of enemies, healing allies, and taking damage) most served no functional purpose for players, except to provide characters with tag lines under their character names. However, a few, called "Accolades" gave players access to temporary powers and permanent bonuses to health and endurance (the game's equivalent to mana or magic points) and were gained by collecting other badges.
Players also had the option of purchasing a vast array items on the Paragon Market. Introduced with City of Heroes: Freedom, the Paragon Market was a cash shop wherein players could purchase, for example, power sets, costume sets, temporary powers and boosts, character renames and respecs, extra costume slots, and access to game content that to which they might not normally have access. The currency used on the Paragon Market was Paragon Points, which were either purchased with real money through the Market or awarded as bonuses for VIP subscribers.
In City of Heroes there were multiple NPC groups that players fought as part of random encounters. Many enemies were found on the streets of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles, whereas others were found in specific instances or areas. There were also Giant Monsters and zone events that took place in parts of the city that were even more uncommon, such as Lusca the giant octopus in the waters of the Independence Port zone or the Ghost of Scrapyard that wanders through Sharkhead Isle. Enemies in instances were also graded with easier NPC's at the start of the map and more difficult enemies towards the end of the instance.
The setting of City of Heroes is the fictional Paragon City, located in Rhode Island in the United States.
Paragon City is divided into several smaller neighborhoods that had varying enemies and progressively higher levels of enemies within them. The arbitrary divisions between zones are explained in game by the presence of "War Walls", powerful force fields derived from alien technology which were used to defend various areas of the city. Heroes set out by dealing with low-powered street gangs in the initial zones, working their way up to fighting increasingly dangerous threats — such as organized crime, corrupt corporations, hostile aliens, and supernatural terrors.
The Development Team continually expanded City of Heroes with free downloadable patches/updates as well as free game expansions dubbed "Issues". All Issues were made available to both City of Heroes and (as of Issue 6) City of Villains titles throughout the lifespan of the game, improving features in both games with each release.
City of Villains was released in 2005 as a stand-alone expansion, an expansion that did not require the original City of Heroes purchase to work. It offered five new character archetypes that were, at the time, exclusive to Villain characters, new maps, and began the first PvP Zones (versus the Arena, which were instanced maps made for PvP fighting) of the game. City of Villains also was playable with the same subscription fee that paid for City of Heroes access after buying City of Villains. The retail box included four CD-ROMs for installation current to Issue 6, one of four limited edition HeroClix figures of the game's villains, a poster of a map of the Rogue Isles, and a serial code that gave access to the game and one month of game play. Also included was a code for a 30-day trial for City of Heroes, as both games were currently separate. Since 2008, after the NCSoft acquisition of the intellectual properties, owning either City of Heroes or City of Villains unlocked both titles at no additional cost.
City of Heroes: Going Rogue was released in 2010. Unlike City of Villains, Going Rogue was an expansion rather than a stand-alone expansion and required the original game to play. Going Rogue added an Alignment system, which allowed players to switch from Hero to Villain and added two intermediate Alignments: Vigilante, as a player progresses from Hero to Villain, and Rogue, as a player progresses from Villain to Hero. Players with Vigilante or Rogue characters had access to both City of Heroes's Paragon City and City of Villains's Rogue Isles until they change to Hero or Villain. The expansion also added the Praetorian Earth dimension where players could start out as neutrally-aligned Praetorians (choosing any of the ten basic Archetypes available to Heroes or Villains), either deciding to side with Emperor Cole's ruling faction and become a Loyalist or side with the Resistance; the allegiance could change as the player chose and completed missions. Praetorian players could also attack new Neutral mobs and would eventually be able to play a mission that allowed them to choose to be a Hero or Villain and complete gameplay in the original games. Going Rogue also granted access to four new power sets, new costume sets and auras, and introduced missions that started after defeating mobs that affected the player's Alignment.
Starting in 2008, "Booster Packs" were also released sporadically around Issue updates. Booster Packs did not function like expansions (adding content to the game), but rather added optional costume sets to the game's character creator and user interface, and were available on the NCsoft Store for a one-time fee. Although each of these packs were themed after their similarly named character option in the game (so far character origins and power sets), their features could be applied to any or all the characters in a player's account regardless of their actual origin, archetype or powers. There was also a "Mini-Booster" pack for the purchase of an in-game jetpack for 30 days of real time.
As of August 30, 2011, Booster Packs were no longer available for sale on the NCSoft website. While costume pieces were still available in the Paragon Market under the Booster Pack names for one price, the prestige powers and emotes had been separated from the packs as an additional purchase.
On February 24, 2012, Heroes and Villains Super Packs were introduced to the Paragon Market after feedback from the beta release of the program was made known by the players.
A few in-game item packs were released to allow players to gain in-game items from select box releases of the game at a lower cost than repurchasing the title at retail price. Item packs only contained the items in an Edition release, and did not come with free playtime or (in the case of expansions) the added game content that require an expansion purchase in order to use.
As of August 30, 2011 virtual item packs were no longer available for sale on the NCSoft website. The individual costume pieces and powers were available through the in-game store.
The City of Heroes development team also initiated events based on North American and European holidays and observances, starting with Halloween in 2004, followed by a Winter Event in 2005, and finally a Valentine's Day event in 2006.
City of Heroes granted a commemorative badge during its anniversary month of May and often scheduled special events and surprises during May. On the game's fifth anniversary on April 28, 2009, and on the same day during the sixth anniversary for 2010, an outbreak of Giant Monsters of every type was released throughout the game in all zones for players to defeat within a 24-hour span.
A Korean open beta of City of Heroes, entitled City of Hero (시티 오브 히어로, Siti Obeu Hieoro), was launched on January 18, 2006. However, the game's official release was cancelled. The Korean CoH team directed its players to a coupon for an account on the US servers as compensation.
City of Heroes and City of Villains employed several servers. The servers were divided between the North American and European markets, with separate European servers with language localization for German and French speakers. The North American servers were based in Dallas, Texas, while the European servers were moved from Germany to a new site in the US in November 2010.
In the United States, City of Heroes sold 330,000 copies ($13.8 million) by August 2006, after its release in April 2004. It was the country's 53rd best-selling computer game between January 2000 and August 2006.
In 2004, Computer Gaming World hailed the game, saying, "City of Heroes blows a superpowered gust of fresh air into an increasingly stale sword-and-sorcery MMO world."
In 2009, IGN, The Escapist, and Allakhazam praised City of Heroes: Architect Edition, which added the ability to create missions.
The game received additional praise because the characters of inactive players were not deleted, even if the player's subscription had been canceled or inactive for an extended period of time. In anticipation of the release of City of Villains, Cryptic announced on October 10, 2005, that effective October 24, 2005, characters below level 35 on accounts that had been unpaid and inactive for more than ninety days would have their names flagged as unreserved allowing new users to take the name. The character itself was left untouched, and a player who lost his character's name was given the option to choose a new one. This policy was suspended on May 4, 2006, because Cryptic's data-mining had shown that very few names were being taken in this fashion anymore; Cryptic said thirty days' notice would be given prior to future changes to the name policy. On July 31, 2007, Cryptic announced that the name policy would go back into effect as of August 29, 2007, but would apply only to characters under level 6.
Computer Games Magazine named City of Heroes the ninth-best computer game of 2004. The editors wrote, "In a genre dominated by games that try to be all things to all people and end up doing nothing particularly well, it's particularly refreshing." It received runner-up placements in GameSpot's 2004 "Best Massively Multiplayer Online Game" and "Most Surprisingly Good Game" award categories. During the 8th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated City of Heroes for "Computer Game of the Year", "Massively Multiplayer/Persistent World Game of the Year", "Outstanding Innovation in Computer Gaming", and "Outstanding Achievement in Game Design". At the following year's awards ceremony, the expansion City of Villains won the "Massively Multiplayer Game of the Year" award outright (tied with Guild Wars).
As in most other MMORPGs at the time, players were required to subscribe to City of Heroes by paying the publisher (NCsoft) a monthly fee to continue playing City of Heroes. Portions of the subscription costs went to supporting a full-time "live" team, which developed additional content for the game; other portions supported the significant server maintenance and bandwidth costs.
Continuing active subscriptions were also entitled to "Veteran Rewards". The system rewarded players with costume pieces, extra powers, supergroup base items, respec opportunities, and other minor in-game perks to all characters (both hero and villain characters) on any server tied to the active subscription. Inactive accounts did not accrue time for Veteran Rewards.
As of September, 2008, City of Heroes had around 124,939 subscribers in the US & Europe, according to financial reports released by NCsoft in November 2008.
On June 20, 2011, City of Heroes announced the City of Heroes: Freedom subscription model, which was implemented in September, 2011. The servers were free-to-play, with limitations on what Free players could access. Players who had their subscriptions lapse would become Premium players, and would have access to everything they used to have, but would be limited to what they would be able to access in the game's future updates unless they signed up for a VIP subscription. The VIP subscription added free access to the Going Rogue game content, and a monthly VIP Rewards system (as opposed to the quarterly releases of the Veteran Rewards). There was also an in-game market where all players could purchase points to purchase expansions to the game; VIP subscribers were given a monthly stipend of these points at no extra charge.
The first City of Heroes novel, The Web of Arachnos, by Robert Weinberg, was published by CDS Books (an imprint of the Perseus Publishing Group) in October, 2005. The novel chronicles the back stories of the Statesman and Lord Recluse, the central iconic characters in the City of Heroes and City of Villains franchises. A second novel, The Freedom Phalanx, written by Robin Laws, was released in May, 2006, and detailed the re-formation of the hero team the Freedom Phalanx in the 1980s. The story centers on the fledgling heroes Positron and Synapse, but also includes Manticore, Sister Psyche, and Statesman. The book's villains include Lord Recluse, Doctor Null, Shadow Queen, and Revenant. Artist George Pérez provided the covers for the first two novels, as well as lending his name to one of the early areas of the game itself, Perez Park. A third novel titled The Rikti War was announced by CDS at the time the first novel was published, with an August 2006, scheduled release date. The book was reportedly going to cover the epic trans-dimensional war between Earth and the Rikti home world, however the book was later cancelled. James Lowder served as editor and packager of the City of Heroes novels for CDS.
To tie in with the game, NCsoft released two original comic book series that featured various characters from within the games themselves. The original series by publisher Blue King featured the heroes/roommates Apex and War Witch with their neighbor Horus. The later series from publisher Top Cow featured signature heroes and villains from both City of Heroes and City of Villains such as Statesman, Positron, Lord Recluse, and Ghost Widow, along with scripts by well-known comic book creators Mark Waid, Troy Hickman, and Dan Jurgens. Both series were originally free for subscribers to the games, but later they were provided for an extra subscription fee with the game and for free in digital format afterwards on the official City of Heroes website. The Blue King series ran for 12 issues, after which the Top Cow series ran for an additional 20 issues, ending in July 2007.
Alderac Entertainment Group also worked with CoH to create a collectible card game featuring characters from the game, as well as several original characters. The game's website also allowed players to create a game-compliant card for their own online character.
The City of Heroes team worked with Eden Studios, Inc. to create a tabletop role-playing game based on the game. While a free preview version of the game was released, the game was indefinitely delayed due to the cancellation license with Fox on their Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel role-playing games. Eden owner George Vasilakos later made a statement in 2008 that they were waiting on information from the copyright holders, but no news arose after this date.
The various collector's editions of City of Heroes and City of Villains included exclusive HeroClix figures of signature characters from the game. These included Statesman (without a cape), Manticore, Ghost Widow, Lord Recluse, Positron, Black Scorpion and Mako. There was also a separate, Limited Edition version of Statesman wearing a cape.
In June 2007, it was announced that the producer for the Transformers film, Tom DeSanto, had acquired the option to make movies and television shows based on the City of Heroes franchise. In February 2008, it was announced that DeSanto had indeed begun preparations for the film. A plot summary had been released detailing that the movie itself takes place during the first Rikti War.
In November 2004, Marvel Comics filed a lawsuit against City of Heroes developer Cryptic Studios, publisher NCsoft, and game administrator NC Interactive (NCI), alleging that the game not only allowed, but actively promoted, the creation of characters who infringe copyrights and trademarks owned by Marvel. The suit sought unspecified damages and an injunction halting further sales and shutting down the game.
The game included in its user agreement strong language against such activity, however. It forbade the creation of potentially infringing characters, and NCI had been known to rename or "genericize" such characters. The User Agreement additionally held players accountable to indemnify (reimburse) NCI and its affiliates against third-party infringement claims, and demanded either a granting of sole ownership in player created content, including characters, to NCI, or a warranty that a third party owner of the rights in player created content had made such a grant.
Marvel subsequently admitted that some of the allegedly infringing characters cited in the complaint had been created by Marvel's own investigators. In March 2005, the court struck those exhibits from the complaint. The court also dismissed with prejudice some of Marvel's claims. The dismissed claims included all indirect trademark infringement counts, because Marvel had not pleaded commercial use of Marvel's marks by the game's players. Commercial use is a required element of infringement under American trademark statutes.
On December 12, 2005, all remaining claims were settled under undisclosed terms. The game's operators asserted that the settlement did not require changes to the character creation engine.
Despite the litigation, in October 2006, Marvel Comics selected Cryptic Studios to develop its own superhero MMORPG for Windows Vista and Xbox Live, titled Marvel Universe Online. The alliance surprised players, but developer Matt "Positron" Miller assured fans on Cryptic's official website that development and maintenance would continue separately on both games, proved later by the complete split between City of Heroes and Cryptic Studios. Marvel Universe Online was eventually cancelled by Microsoft.
On November 6, 2007, NCsoft announced that it would assume ownership of both City of Heroes and City of Villains. As part of a push to further develop City of Heroes, the company also announced the formation of a new development studio dedicated to new titles as well as their interest in distributing and administering their future works once launched. This new team was centered on key members of the Cryptic and NCsoft City of Heroes/Villains teams who accepted the NCsoft offer to join their new studio in Northern California. The sale of the City of Heroes IP granted Cryptic Studios the freedom to work on its new superhero MMORPG (at this time, an RPG/Action hybrid) Champions Online without concerns of conflict of interest.
Shortly after having acquired full ownership of the property, NCsoft granted all existing and former City of Heroes account holders access to both games (City of Heroes and City of Villains).