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City of Titans, a game best described as a spiritual successor to City of Heroes/Villains, has topped its Kickstarter goal by a massive amount.

Though the developers were seeking a mere $320,000, City of Titans fans donated more than twice that amount. Once the dust had settled, City of Titans stood atop a pile of cash totaling $678,189. Why should you care? Novelty. Online games are infested with elves, orcs and poorly-designed Lord of the Rings analogues, but few give players the freedom of superpowers. City of Titans seeks to change that.

"Our goal is to deliver a unique massively multiplayer online roleplaying game, created from the community of a lost universe, to build a new community for a new world," reads the game's Kickstarter description. "A brave new world containing a wealth of player choices, from costumes to powers, it continues the traditions found in its spiritual predecessor, daring to reach for new innovations no other game will touch, while standing firmly on the feel and spirit of the old."

"Players will be able to choose their own adventure, tell their own tales, and have their own agency in a superhuman world."

While intriguing, don't hold your breath just yet. There's no official word on when City of Titans might make its retail debut.

Missing Worlds Media is ramping up development of City of Titans, a fan-made successor to Paragon Studios' shuttered superhero MMORPG City of Heroes. The studio launched a Kickstarter campaign this week to fund software licenses and server upkeep.

Announced earlier this year, City of Titans aims to recreate much of the City of Heroes experience using the Unreal Engine as a framework. While Missing Worlds Media has not secured the rights or permission to develop an official City of Heroes follow-up, City of Titans will offer similar features, along with in-depth character customization options.

Since its launch on Tuesday, the project has earned over $180,000 toward its funding goal of $320,000. City of Titans is scheduled to premiere in 2015 as a paid download with an optional monthly subscription, giving members access to exclusive in-game perks.

It’s only been a year since the sun set on Paragon City and City of Heroes was sealed off. If you look at that homepage and weep and wail and pound on your desk, snottily disclaiming: “It was too soon, damnit”, then I have a thing you should look at. The previously titled Pheonix Project, a fan-made spiritual successor to the dead MMO (more…)

As you may have heard, City of Heroes, one of the oldest superhero MMORPGs, is no more. But its spirit lives on, apparently. In a Kickstarter campaign.Read more...

I loved City Of Heroes. As someone who tends to find MMOs somewhere to run around in on my own, gobble up everything single player, and then quit out and never play again, City Of Heroes was different. It was a place to me. I don’t think that’s testament to the world-building therein – I’m not sure the towns themselves were anything particularly special. I don’t think I can put it down to the superb powers, fun biffy combat, or amazing character creator either. For me it was about a certain time, with certain people. Which means I’m super-excited to see what can be done with The Phoenix Project – the fan attempt to create a spiritual successor to the now gone-forever MMO. Soon to be Kickstartered.

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City of Heroes is no more. Paragon perished, and with it, so did a home away from home for many colorful victims of radiation overdose. It was a sad day at RPS’ nuclear-powered space base, and not just because it meant the Justice League became our closest orbital neighbors. You’ll remember, though, that fans certainly didn’t go down without a THOOMKAPOWBIFFZOTT-ing fight. But, until now, we didn’t really know the other side of the story. Unsurprisingly, Paragon was waging a war of its own, and it was trying every last trick in the book to stay afloat. The part we never heard about, however, is how close the house that City of Heroes built came to pulling it off.

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One of the more miserable gaming events of last year was the closure of City of Heroes. The end of an entire world does tend to be a sad affair for those involved and even onlookers might find themselves touched by the extinction of all those lovely data-denizens. While the urban heroes may have fallen for good, Gamerzines have spotted The Phoenix Project, which aims to rise from the City’s smouldering remains. Missing Worlds Media is a “community based game studio”, made up of members of Titan Network’s ‘Save City of Heroes’ forum, among others. Their intention is clear – they want to build a new comic book world packed with heroes and villains, and they want you to be a part of it.

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I left him in there to die. I wish I’d at least taken one last screenshot. I thought I didn’t care, but now it hurts like hell. He’s gone forever.(more…)

#tribute Last night NCsoft shut down City of Heroes, a landmark game that eight years ago brought the thrills of super powers and comic-book crimefighting to an MMO roleplaying world. More »

#farewell More than eight years old, City of Heroes says goodbye tonight. In five hours—at 3 a.m. EST Saturday—NCsoft will pull the plug on both the superhero MMO and its developer, Paragon Studios. More »

The various strands of most fictional worlds fit together like melted Duplo and hunting knives, particularly when they have multiple authors and are inspired by the mad multiverses of super hero comicdom. City of Heroes is set to become a ghost town on November 30th and with closure fast approaching, Gamerzines notice that Paragon have taken to the forums to provide some closure of a different sort. You want lore? Here’s your lore.

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Recently, I spoke with folks behind the Save City of Heroes movement, and they were absolutely delightful. Intelligent, calm, organized, passionate, motivated, etc. If any qualities could actually manage to wrest an MMO from Death’s clammy grip, you’d figure those would do the trick. And, as it turns out, all the in-game and real-world events certainly got NCsoft’s attention. But now, after an agonizing wait, the recently “restructured” MMO behemoth has finally fired back. Unfortunately, it turns out that no news was good news. Sorry, everyone: No more (City of) heroes.

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It’s a strange thing, bearing witness to the end of a world. When the final voices of Star Wars: Galaxies voices cried out and were suddenly silenced, I was oddly moved by the documentation of the event, even though I’d never played the game and am the only person on the internet who doesn’t have any particular feelings about Star Wars*. The end of City of Heroes may well create similar scenes, at once absurd and poignant, and Paragon have now shared a list of the LAST EVENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. One of them is a Double XP event, which seems kind of like finally getting a gym membership just as the countdown to Armageddon begins. Full list of events and timings below.

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The official meticulously articulated RPS stance on City of Heroes’ upcoming closure is this face :( Legions of superpowered super-fans, of course, share that sentiment – whether we’re talking eight-year crime-biffing veterans or recent arrivals from the stagnant shores of normalcy. Out of the blue, NCsoft announced that it was pulling the plug, and many folks started feeling understandably Hulk smashy. But while videogame fandoms have become somewhat notorious for taking what they want by embittered force, the Save City of Heroes movement has managed to stow pitchforks and mob mentalities in favor of fundraisers and 5,000-person in-game rallies. Will that be enough, though? I spoke to campaign coordinator Tony Vazquez about the rather astonishing effort and touched bases with Paragon Studios and NCsoft to see if it’s made an impact.

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#cityofheroes Last week's vigil in Paragon City was misunderstood (including by me) to be a protest against the announced shutdown of City of Heroes, the eight-year-old superhero MMO. It was intended as a statement of support and tribute, particularly to the Paragon Studios development team that, let's not forget, is seeing the end of something it cares for, as well as the end of all their jobs. More »

#cityofheroes The City of Heroes community has called for a massive demonstration at 5 p.m. EDT in Atlas Park to protest the MMO's shutdown. [Update] But apparently it's already begun. That image shows hundreds jamming city hall, and reports say the gathering already is large enough to bring down servers. More »

Snnnniiiiiiffffff. There’s a huge amount of affection for City Of Heroes at Castle Shotgun. Long before RPS was a twinkling of an idea in our collective eye, the original four of us would play CoH together. Kieron, Jim, Alec and I were the core of a team that was joined by many others, spending more time in a game together than before or since. It’s the source of the John Is A Bad Healer meme, it’s where Jim sealed his position as a tank, where Kieron proved he could only play sissy characters that died all the time, and the source of so many anecdotes. And while none of us has played the game for years – in fact, I find it pretty unrecognisable now – it still remains an enormous shame to see its servers will be switched off. And an even greater shame that NCsoft have decided to completely close down the development studio behind it – Paragon Studios.

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#cityofheroes Paragon Studios has announced that effective immediately, all work on superhero-themed MMORPG City of Heroes will be ceasing, and the game will be shut down by the end of the year. In a post on the official City of Heroes site, community manager Andy Belford wrote: More »

It's been hanging around since 2004, but as of 2012, City of Heroes shall be no more.

Nobody likes it when an MMO shuts down, but it's especially heart-wrenching when it happens to an MMO a lot of people actually liked. City of Heroes was one such MMO that, sadly, finds itself very near its end.

Publisher NCSoft, who picked up the rights to the game from original developer Cryptic Studios, announced today that the game would cease operation before the end of the year, and that developer Paragon Studios would also be closing. The game's yearly subscription fees and microtransaction-based online store have also ceased as of today.

Launching in 2004, City of Heroes has endured developer transfers, years of competition against other MMO juggernauts, and even seemed to be doing okay in a free-to-play remodeling that took place last year. No reason was given for today's announcement, save for a brief mention of "a realignment of company focus and publishing support" at NCSoft.

Paragon's community manager posted a brief farewell on the company's site, and made special mention to any potential hiring companies out there to keep an eye out for former Paragon employees, saying "Hire these people. You won't regret it."

When City of Heroes' date of closure is officially announced, we'll undoubtedly start planning for some kind of live stream send-off.

The MMOnitor is a new series in which we ask the developers of various MMOs to explain what is going on with their game, and what that means within the wider context of the MMO. We’re kicking off with an interview with City of Heroes‘ Brian Clayton, Studio Director and Executive Producer. City of Heroes went free recently in the Freedom update.(more…)

With free-to-play models all the rage for aging and/or struggling PC MMOs, it's with little surprise we learn today that NCSoft and Cryptic Studios have opted to go that route for one of the more popular MMOs of the last several years, City of Heroes. Though the game has maintained subscribers in the low hundreds of thousands over the last few years (around 125,000 as recently as earlier this year), the title, which originally launched all the way back in April of 2004, was probably due for a bit of a shake-up, and this new F2P model looks designed to do precisely that.

The citizens approve!

With the new model, any player can create a hero or villain and play all the way up to level 50 for free. That said, there are also Premium and VIP subscriptions that offer a bit more in the way of content for more dedicated players. Anyone who has previously paid for a City of Heroes account is automatically labeled a Premium member, and by jumping back in with the new game client, you'll retain all of the veteran rewards, super boosters, and other various things you've acquired over the course of your play time. New players can also become Premium members by purchasing any amount of Paragon Points, AKA the in-game microtransaction currency.

VIP players will still pay a monthly subscription fee, but will get free access to the Going Rogue expansion content, specific VIP servers, and also a monthly allocation of free Paragon Points to spend on whatever superheroic bric-a-brac their heart demands.

You can find a full breakdown of the different subscription models at the official City of Heroes website, if you're thinking about jumping back into the battle of good spandex versus bad spandex. Maybe now might be a good time to bust out my old villain, Captain MonkeyPants. He was quite the scourge, that one.

#cityofheroes After more than seven years as the most popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online superhero role-playing game, Paragon Studios flips the switch on City of Heroes Freedom, potentially the most popular free-to-play superhero MMO. More »

You know, the only MMO I’ve ever missed playing, apart from Eve Online, is City Of Heroes. I am vaguely tempted to see if I can somehow resurrect my age old tanker character in the new, free world that NCSoft are touting. I bet it’s changed a bit since I was last in there over three years ago. The latest update “Freedom” has a bunch of stuff new content (see below for the full feature list) but also opens up the game pretty substantially, allowing people access to most of what made the game great (character creation) and the capacity to play through to level 50. Paragon’s Brian Clayton says of the update: “We aren’t just flipping a switch and going ‘Free-to-Play.’ We’re embarking on the biggest content and feature update to City of Heroes in its seven-year history.” I hope he’s right, because I have a genuine soft-spot for the ageing villain-biffer.(more…)

City of Heroes will be NCsoft’s first major foray into the strange, wild land that is free to play MMOs. There is, though, the little matter of what the superhero game’s current subscriber base will make of this. Well, they can find out right now, more or less. The free to play reboot, City of Heroes Freedom, won’t launch fully until later this year, but any and all current active subscribers can jump right in as of yesterday. There are prizes and live events and shopping and all that funfair-sounding stuff to be seen and had. Useful bulletpoints await below. Oh, and apparently if you reactivate your old account now-ish, you’ll also get to try out the headstart.(more…)

Tell 'em you want your freedom!

The next expansion revealed at San Diego Comic-Con 2011!

Paragon Studios' superpowered flagship MMO City of Heroes is surfing the ever-growing trendwave of paid online titles moving into the free-to-play market. The developer has announced City of Heroes Freedom, a free version of the seven-year-old game which will launch later this year. The MMO will follow an increasingly popular model, giving free players access to a partial list of areas and features available to paid subscribers -- however, in an unusual twist, free users will be able to pick and choose exactly which features and areas they want to access.

Premium subscribers get access to the whole kit and caboodle, as well as special rewards they'll be able to choose from every month. These include new costumes, consumables and power sets, almost ensuring their supernatural superiority over their free-to-play counterparts. Basically, they'll be the Justice League to the free players' Alpha Flight.

#mmo Superhero MMO City of Heroes is killing its monthly fee with the advent of City of Heroes Freedom as the game transitions from subscription-based model to a new, free to play one. More »

Well, looks like later in the year City of Heroes is going to be free-to-play-until-you-are-overcome-by-hat-greed, according to Paragon Studios and NCSoft. They’re calling it City of Heroes Freedom and it’s set to contain all the content garnered from the 20 expansions to the game thus far. The free account will let you biff and kerpow until level 50 and give you access to all Hero and Villain zones but as ever those willing to subscribe will get “exclusive VIP benefits, content and services.”(more…)

We're waiting to hear how Cryptic's move to Perfect World will impact its existing games.

It took Atari less than three years to decide it didn't want to hold onto City of Heroes developer Cryptic Studios, but Perfect World, a company well versed in MMOs, has swept in to pick up the pieces.

Perfect World isn't as well known as, say, Blizzard Entertainment, but the company has a sizable presence in the free-to-play market, which has seen more success in Asia than over here.

It's unclear what, if any, impact the sale will have on Cryptic's development slate, which includes a Neverwinter Nights project with Atari. The press release says Cryptic is currently working on that game and "unannounced projects and is rapidly diversifying its portfolio of games to reach beyond the traditional MMORPG genre."

I've reached out to the developer for some clarity.