City of Heroes’ unofficial Homecoming server will continue to live on.
The superhero MMO has been dead since 2012, but in 2019, players created a private, free-to-play server to keep it going. Its creators revealed NCSoft gave them a limited license to resume operations.
Sometimes when an MMO dies, players are able to keep it going for a few years before a full shut down. This license isn’t a full-on revival, but this acknowledges how players still see life in City of Heroes.
“This agreement,” they said, “provides a framework under which Homecoming can operate…in a way that complies with NCSoft’s wishes in hopes of minimizing the chances of [a shutdown].”
City of Heroes’ City Council
As part of the agreement, the Homecoming team formed a leadership group called the City Council to run the project going forward. The team is also created its own launcher with an in-house installation and patching solution.
On the player side of things, they said player accounts and characters will remain unaffected. Homecoming will still be free-to-play, and still run on player donations.
However, other non-Homecoming private servers may no longer stick around. Those servers, which formed after City of Heroes’ code released, are “out of [our] scope,” said the team.
As a potential fix, the team hoped to integrate players from those servers into their own.
Overall, the Homecoming makers hope their relationship with NCSoft continues to stay positive. Of the future, they said they “don’t anticipate there being any issues.”
Homecoming’s FAQ on the new license and what else it means for things going forward can be read here.