City of Heroes MMO

The City of Heroes MMO is a superhero-themed MMORPG owned by NCSoft.

It was originally developed by Cryptic Studios and released on April 28, 2004. Control of the MMO was then transferred to Paragon Studios, a subsidiary of NCSoft.

City of Hereoes was a subscription-based MMO considered revolutionary at the time because of its costume creator, which allowed users to create characters using a vast array of options.

The MMO adopted the Free-To-Play/Pay-For-Features/Subscription hybrid model on September 13, 2011.

On August 31, 2012, NCSoft announced the shutdown of Paragon Studios and the planned sunset of the MMO. The news resulted in the single-largest protest campaign to save the MMO. At one scheduled protest by MMO players, their presence in one single city zone required the game server to create 33 instances of Atlas Park. "Atlas Park 33" or "AP33" became a rallying point for protesters to keep the game going for for NCSoft to sell the property to another company.

Despite the protests and the devastating effects on NCSoft's own financial value because of the negative publicity, the MMO was shut down on December 1st, 2012.

Related Information

Although the game has been shut down, information about the MMO continues through the Paragon Wiki website, and two separate development groups are attempting to create a similar environment.

City of Heroes was originally the MMO that served as the environment for The Cape Radio, but with the closing, they have since split their focus on both Champions Online MMO and The Secret World MMO.