The game gives you a featureless lump of digital clay to work with during character creation, and so I set about examining my old screenshots in detail to bring these toons back exactly as they had been before.Īnd when I started playing, I knew why the moniker “Homecoming” was entirely apt. I felt like a digital sculptor making sure I had exactly the right face, the correct color of hair or costume. Those screenshots I mentioned? Those became invaluable for reincarnating my long-lost characters. I spent the next couple of days recreating the Hero and Villain toons closest to my heart.
Then this music started to play, and I felt the old fire rekindle in my heart. Within minutes a blue banner popped up bearing the word “Loading…” in the City of Heroes font. Not long after, she came over and walked me through how to make an account. It took a little bit of finagling, but she got on to the Homecoming server and recreated her signature Corrupter toon, the incomparable Darqueen. In late June, however, one of my friends (the same friend whose house I was in that night) found the Homecoming message boards. There have been many false starts over the years, and just like occasional rumors of a Firefly Season 2 in the works, I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Then in-game screenshots popped up in my social feed here and there. Whenever I would feel nostalgic, I would revisit them with a bittersweet smile, reflecting on the time I had spent in Paragon City and the Rogue Isles.Įarlier this year, I started hearing rumors of an active server somewhere on the web. I had a bank of in-game screenshots from way back in 2006, and they had somehow survived more than one computer crash. I had lost a part of myself that night, and I thought it was forever.
Just tossed in the dustbin.įor years afterward, whenever the game would come up in conversation, I would feel a twinge of pain. All the memories, all the colorful characters (affectionately called “toons”), the rich worldbuilding, the stories, the battles won and lost, all gone. I know there are many things to cry about in this world, and a game is not usually one of them, but the tears came all the same. I remember leaving my friend’s house, getting into my car, and bawling my eyes out in the cold-and I wasn’t even a regularly active player at the time. I logged in, ran around for a little while, and finally picked a spot to bid farewell to not only one of my favorite characters but also the game itself (more on that below). The servers were due to shut down at midnight. In a move that many (myself included) found particularly callous, NCSoft decided to kill the game, despite its popularity with die-hard fans. The community had held out hope that the beloved MMO would find a home, or at least some way to keep running. I went over to a friend’s house to say good-bye to one of my favorite games of all time: City of Heroes/Villains. November 30th of 2012 was not a good night.
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