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.

On August 31, 2012, NCsoft terminated its Paragon Studios development team, ending all production on City of Heroes[3] with the last day of services on November 30, 2012.

This made it possible to create City of Heroes servers outside the direct purview of NCSoft[5] and revived interest in the game, which by then had been out of development for more than six years.

[11] 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.

[18][19] 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.

[23] 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.

[27] 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Other game features included auction houses and crafting inventions to make characters more powerful or unlock further costume options.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[30] 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 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.

[42] 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.