#SaveCOH

It's been a short while since the City of Heroes servers were taken offline by NCSoft.  Usually when such a thing happens I feel a moment of regret, but it passes.

I felt bad when The Matrix Online (run by Sony Online Entertainment/SOE) went offline, but I didn't dwell on it.  I was annoyed when Star Wars Galaxies (run by SOE again) collapsed, but it passed.  And I always felt a pang of frustration that I never got the chance to play Tabula Rasa (a game by NCSoft that I've been told was really pushed out too fast and never got the chance to mature).

But this time it's different.  City of Heroes has been wrapped up in a tatty superhero cape and stowed in an underground tomb somewhere.  I feel like something really special has been lost.

I was never a huge player of City of Heroes.  But, it was a great game, with a huge following.  Between dabbling in other MMOs and saving up a little money, I'd put down the cash to play a month of City of Heroes here and there. It was always a fun and familiar environment that I could come back to, to relax and enjoy.

I'll admit that I was something of an alt-aholic.  I never got a character levelled up very high, but I always had fun in those start zones, and then got around to beating up the villains around Atlas park, or having a bit of a dabble in the mission architect.  You know, before things got too complicated for my little brain, or before I got bored of my superhero's sweet costume.

Putting it bluntly, now the game is gone, I feel sad.  I feel sad that I'll never slay another snake on Mercy Island, I'll never again rescue Flower Knight from those street thugs in the Paragon City Outbreak, and I'll never stand at the foot of the Atlas Park statue and enviously admire all the other superheroes and their awesome and revealing costumes.

I've been told that NCSoft said that their game was still making money, but they shut it down anyway.  It seems like such a waste.  Not only has a great game gone, with all of its epic environments to explore and fiendish foes to fight, but gone too are the social groups, the community and the camaraderie.

The loss of City of Heroes is nothing but a waste. A monumental waste.

There has been a massive movement within the City of Heroes community to coax Disney into buying or licensing the rights and the game itself. I doubt that Disney will pay for City of Heroes; their recent acquisition of Lucasarts gives them a vested interest in seeing Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures and Star Wars: the Old Republic both succeed (in the preteen and adult markets respectively).

I'm not one for vigilantism, and I would never condone illegal behaviour, but I could almost wish that someone had leaked the server code. At least we might see a few community servers then.

Somehow it seems wrong that a company can claim ownership of something that so many people want, but refuse to share it. It's like if a company designed an awesome new technology, patented it, announced it, paraded it to the world, and then hid it in a vault and refused to let anyone buy or license it. It's selfish. Sure, you could say 'that's business', and it's their right to do that. Maybe so, but that doesn't make it any less heartbreaking to the players that lost their characters and their world.

John Carmack and the team at id Software can consistently open source the latest-but-one game engine for each game they release, even though these games are still on the market and for sale. You can download the code for Doom 3 right now, if you want. It would be wonderful if NCSoft could offer their fans the same gesture.

(Please bear in mind that City of Heroes isn't new and top-secret technology either; this game was released in 2004. I doubt that there is much in there that NCSoft's competitors can plagiarise. Maybe there is a patent issue that would prevent the release of the server as free software or open-source software, but that didn't stop Carmack from releasing the Doom 3 engine/IDTech 4.  And, if it's that big of a problem, then leave it all closed-source, but at least let us copy the binaries as freeware.)

I just wish that the team at NCSoft could make one final, genuine gesture to the City of Heroes community, as a thank you and a farewell.

NCSoft representatives, if you're reading this, think of applying an open-source or closed-source-but-freeware license to the software as an investment in public relations. I'm sure it'll help 'un-sour' some of the loyal customers that now feel abandoned.