City of Heroes - Production History

Production History

On October 31, 2005, the game's first sequel, City of Villains (CoV), was launched, allowing players to play as supervillains. Initially dubbed as an "Expanshalone" by the developers (a portmanteau of an expansion pack and stand-alone), the game did not require CoH to run, but if the user had both games, content was added to the CoH 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 CoH/CoV intellectual property and transitioned the staff from Cryptic Studios to a new location in Mountain View, CA to continue development of the game. The new studio on April 14, 2009, became Paragon Studios, which shares 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 expansion City of Heroes: Going Rogue's future release was announced on May 11, 2009. The game centers on the alternate reality of Praetoria and features a new alignment system allowing players characters to shift allegiances between Heroes and Villains, giving characters access to both the Paragon City of CoH and the Rogue Isles of CoV. Paragon Studios describes this as " 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 gameplay model, as well as special models for former subscribers termed Premium Players, and current subscribers become VIP players, who will gain access to all the content in the various upcoming game updates.

On August 31, 2012, Paragon Studios announced that it was being shut down, and City of Heroes would cease all billing immediately and begin the process of shutting down the service. November 30, 2012, has been listed as the official shutdown date of the game. The stated explanation for this move was a "realignment of company focus and publishing support." A variety of efforts are underway, led by former Paragon Studios employees and players of the game, to keep the game operating past the announced date of closure.