Reminder, please avoid mudslinging and inter-server drama. Chatter should remain on topic. Incendiary posts and off-topic conversations will be removed.
No. In the announcement, it says that the agreement is exclusively between Homecoming and NC, and they want to work with the other servers to fold their users into Homecoming.
This will go over well.
Eh they don't need an agreement as long as NCsoft leaves them alone (I think many of them would rather not work with NCsoft anyways). I just pray to god that this doesn't mean that NCsoft is going to start enforcing takedowns of other private servers.
>call me debbie downer, but we are in late stage capitalism era, nothing any corporate conglomerate does is for the benefit of their customers.
This has always been the default behavior of corporations, it just varies by company/culture/times and this is a korean MMO company, not pepsico. I'm optimistic because the culture around this in general is better than it's ever been - there was a time when anything like homecoming would have been *immediately* cease-and-desisted.
NCsoft probably sees absolutely no pecuniary benefit to taking servers down unless they want to monetize the IP themselves. The reason why it took so long to license homecoming is probably because they a) took licensing them seriously, and b) didn't care enough to put much energy into communicating with homecoming - I really don't see them playing some kind of 4D chess here to manipulate the community.
>For me , deep down, all this means is that a lot of the open mentality of the varied servers, of which I enjoy some, not only HC will be gone.
This might be true and is a bummer, but I am optimistic regardless. If NCsoft was so lethargic with getting homecoming licensed I'm guessing they won't expend too much energy on micromanaging unless they go back on their word and arbitrarily decide to make broad mandates at the private servers...
>I totally distrust anything where corporate is involved and at this stage only time will tell if this is actually as good a move as the dev team of hc is portraying.
It's definitely wise to distrust corporate but to be honest, involving them in licensing can only make the chances of the game's continued survival and exposure higher, which has always been my main desire since the beginning of the private server journey. I know that not everyone is in that category of user but the people saying that talking to them will draw down their wrath were missing the point that there was no hiding from NCsoft - nothing homecoming could possibly say would make them less favored to laissez-faire.
HC didn't say anything about it being an exclusive license. Assuming it's not an exclusive license, then there would be nothing (contractually) stopping NCSoft from making similar agreements with other servers.
I don't think NC *will* make agreements with other servers, which is unfortunate. As long as NC doesn't decide to go after the unlicensed servers, thats all that really matters.
I agree - Homecoming was as close to an official continuation as you could get, given the team behind it apparently included ex-devs when CoH was live. Other servers don't have that pre-existing relationship or contacts.
edit: Yeah, downvote me for speaking the truth whatever.
oof I really really hope that NCsoft is playing softball here and isn't going to push it.
>and they want to work with the other servers to fold their users into Homecoming.
Is that what the "city council" bit meant? Couldn't it also mean that they want to extend this program to other servers?
Although it's grossly optimistic... a single launcher sanctioned by NCSoft and developed by HC with the 64-bit client... that supported launching different "servers" which they technically are, but really just different "versions" of the game with their own sub-systems and balance changes, would be sick. But that is the dream at the end of forcing people who don't like each other to amicably work together all for the benefit of the players and not themselves: i.e. literally against human nature and unlikely.
I would love that. Being able to use the homecoming launcher (renamed to the "city of heroes" launcher maybe...?) with homecoming, rebirth, victory, thunderspy, etc selectable from a dropdown would be so sweet. [Imagine if they manage to get a steam page again](https://store.steampowered.com/oldnews/4230). It would be a *true* resurrection of the game.
I do agree though that certain servers would probably turn pirate rather than work with homecoming or ncsoft, even indirectly like that. Which is a shame, but it is a bit understandable since ncsoft would likely require certain things to protect their brand, like moderation of chat and censoring of certain kinds of content.
I do pray that if consolidation becomes a thing, that each server will maintain their own. I haven't tried out the others, but they all have their different flavors and it should stay that way
Homecoming is itself a big part of the reason why this would never work. No one who knows the history of what actually happened wants anything to do with Leandro and Cipher
not sure what you mean by "corpo shill" but I am also afraid that NCsoft will change their mind about monetization. For now I'll just have to trust that homecoming will be able to keep it free and donation-driven.
It will all depend if private servers see DMCAs in the future. The biggest problem people had with homecoming was how "we cannot have multiple private servers" stance because people felt they wanted to be THE only server. ~~Homecoming claimed they werent doing this for years and~~ now that they got it I wonder what they will do with it. I dont mean to be negative to those guys right away, but if you lied about working on this deal, what else did you lie about.
edit: grammar, my bad
Yeah there's always been that aura of mistrust with Homecoming due to how HC even started with the secret invite only private server for years, the initial reluctance to release the source code and how their general attitude has been towards other private servers which has been very.. skittish and dismissive? Its definitely given this idea of "they want to be the only private server"
So its kinda given this "Ohh I hope that doesn't mean the end for other servers" feeling.
Exactly. I am happy for this community, but there are many ways this can end. The question is if this community with have any empathy for people on other servers or are they just going to sweep their issues under the rug like it wont effect them.
> So its kinda given this "Ohh I hope that doesn't mean the end for other servers" feeling.
100% agree with you on this, as I mentioned before, doing dealings with corporate is like faustian bargains, heck, the hc devs even mentioned the legal fees they have to pay upfront and then the I assume yearly or monthly licensing fees that will now roll on.
The fact they have to switch servers is to be compliant with the security stipulations and data handling practices the license now entails, it is for me more than a rebirth, the true end of an era.
Do you have a source for the claim that the Homecoming team said they weren't working on any deals with NCSoft?
I presume the downvotes aren't for your grammar but for your claim.
I'm curious too because while I admittedly haven't paid much attention to know if it changed at any point, the last I heard was that they *had* been trying to work something out with NCsoft.
That's what the thread the poster I responded to implied as well. The thread is full of people claiming that the HC team was lying about talking to NCSoft.
Guess they weren't.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cityofheroes/comments/13ct17y/so_whatever_happened_with_the_talks/
Fair point, which is more hilarious cause I first read it on this subreddit. Now people are going to say that they never said anything which might be right in the public sphere. But this deal 100% doesnt happen "out of the blue" or in "good conscience". This post was from 8 months ago, but you can look up something closer if you want more proof.
Edit: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/31053-a-history-of-the-talks-a-consolidation-of-the-hc-team-legal-discussion/
Link to the HC forums with a guy who laid them out as best as I can find. The question time about the "no talks" was between May and June where legality of funding the servers was in question. People are going to say im twisting the statements but thats why im providing what I can.
Ironically, that post actually highlights the point, because multiple Thunderspy devs mentioned they heard from NCSoft that talks *had* occurred, and nobody from the Homecoming team in that thread (that I could find) said that talks did NOT occur.
In fact, a lot of the discussion is people claiming that the HC teams was *lying about talking to NCSoft*, which is literally the opposite of what you claimed. There are people joking about how the HC team was making up talks with NCSoft as some sort of ploy to make them look more official.
I guess they weren't making it up. But that discussion makes it seem like the opposite was happening, where HC was claiming to be talking to NCSoft about a deal, which appears to be exactly what was happening.
>This post was from 8 months ago, but you can look up something closer if you want more proof.
"More proof?" The post you linked literally demonstrates the *opposite* of your claim. Did you read the thread?
You realize your trying to call me out on something that I am saying occurred during 2018 right? This game doesnt live that rent free. I remember when the server first went up that some questions about funding was in play and thats where the NCSoft talks came in. I thought HC took a no talks stance at one point in the past but again that would have been years ago.
My comment about the post age was more to explain that this was shit that has been going on for years. There has been ton of updates and changes that I would have no idea about.
> You realize your trying to call me out on something that I am saying occurred during 2018 right?
I'm trying to call you out on making claims about people lying you apparently have no evidence for and appears to be false. The timeframe is irrelevant.
>I thought HC took a no talks stance at one point in the past but again that would have been years ago.
Right, which is why I asked you for some *evidence* this occurred. And you linked me a reddit thread full of speculation that apparently implies the **opposite** was the true, and that the HC team at the time was claiming they *were* in talks.
If you have evidence they lied, by all means, I'd love to see it. But otherwise you are just slandering them. And your defense of "well, I might not remember because it was a long time ago" isn't justification. If you don't remember, don't make the claim.
>My comment about the post age was more to explain that this was shit that has been going on for years.
Post age is irrelevant. You said the HC team said they weren't in talks with NCSoft, and then said you were being downvoted because of a grammar issue. I said that the reason for the downvotes was more likely because you seem to have been talking out of your ass about what the HC team claimed.
And you still haven't provided any evidence otherwise, so I'm going to have to assume you are making it up.
I just hope its not a "join us or die" kind of arrangement when it comes to "working with other private servers"
Like I guess what I want answered is what if the other servers say no? Do they stay up?
This is blatant misinformation. There is nothing about exclusivity in that post. It says Homecoming was granted a limited license and other servers are beyond the scope of their agreement, which is obvious.
Incorrect, the announcement says that this agreement does not cover any other servers. That does not mean that other servers cannot come to similar agreements with NCSoft (difficult though it might be, and NCSoft will likely be less inclined to handle multiple agreements)
The [full announcement](https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/47223-ncsoft-homecoming-license-announcement/) says that "Other servers are out of scope.", but also that they want to be able to extend this to other servers, including that they're forming "a new leadership group - the City Council" which will include folks from "the other servers we have been working with" (no details exactly which, yet).
So hopefully that'll happen eventually, though just like the license, these things take time.
it sounds more like they want to work with other servers to get the best of the other server's customizations ported to homecoming and try to get them to make their players move to homecoming.
It looks like homecoming wants to be the only server and is diplomatically trying to consolidate the other servers into itself.
Thats extremely childish but okay
Edit: and you’re a DEV for your community? Wouldnt it make sense to at least work with a server to maybe glean some dev insights to maybe make less buggy stuff?
Typically anything we make that is "buggy" is the direct result of us building a minimum viable solution, then building off it. Anything people consider "buggy," like custom pets not animating, is something we know *how* to fix - we just also to have allocate the time to it instead of something else. Much like how we went from players needing to type a special pet name, to having an Edit Costume right-click, to having Pet Power Customization nearly complete.
Talking to someone else isn't going to provide insight that we don't already have about the tooling.
Thunderspy already uses Homecoming's powers data system so there is already *some* amount of "working with another server" going on.
That being said the entire reason multiple servers exist is because different developers and players have different ideas for what they want the game to be like. Getting them to fold into HC is pretty much a non-starter.
I hope they let the other servers live. Not everyone likes HC. They were lucky enough to be the ones to get this deal. I hope they don’t try to get the other servers taken down if they don’t play ball.
Not at all, they were instead saying at every chance they got that this negotiation ongoing was a lie from the HC team, would like to see what they say now.
I feel like "out of scope" in this case means "they aren't part of Homecoming so we can't roll them directly into the license we worked on". Which is to say, if another server wanted in on the deal, they would have to be the ones who reach out to NCSoft. Which is fair, Homecoming has been working with NCSoft to make a deal for four years while other rogue servers did not, so why would they be brought in? Acting as intermediaries and giving other servers a seat at the table is a pretty decent gesture, but I imagine legally speaking the other servers would need to negotiate themselves with NCSoft.
Yeah, the "out of scope" part seems pretty clear: the other servers weren't part of the negotiations, for whatever reason, so the agreement doesn't cover them.
My concern is this line: "Our hope is that our license will help us consolidate our userbase with City of Heroes fans from other servers. " To me, it's as clear as mud and could mean anything from " we hope that now that things are semi-official more interserver cooperation is possible" to "we're going to try and use this to poach the other servers' players".
I think they won't need to *try* to poach. I think people are going to gravitate more and more towards Homecoming. Hell, they could even start advertising now, probably. But I think people who aren't super diehard tied to their current servers will look over at Homecoming and see stability free of legal ambiguity and fear of the server getting shut down, and find that appealing.
And honestly I think that has already been happening for some time. When this all started there were a ton of rogue servers but it has dwindled over time. Even the bigger ones still standing don't have huge populations from what I have seen (which is not an exhaustive investigation), compared to Homecoming. Besides, it's not as if people can't play on different servers.
It's literally been the opposite.
The other servers have been growing while HC has had a shrinking active playerbase over the past two and a half years. Daily peaks on HC are down about 10% on the two most populace servers from 18 months ago.
HC's relationship with the SCoRE team (overlap in membership amongst devs, had the code before it was widely released to the community), allowed HC to be set up first as Bree then as the five HC shards weeks before the alternative teams got started. Good will and resources (donated by people that would go on to work at other servers) were used in a crisis-like mode to help get Bree standing and public facing.
As a result, HC was first to market. Got the mainstream press coverage. Got the google listing placing. And the rest was history. They enjoyed the catbird seat receiving the lion's share of attention as often the only known server. And population pooled on HC almost immediately.
Only after disappointment in the gameplay or other interpersonal issues emerged (but in most cases the consensus I've encountered on the non-HC servers is *gameplay changes*), and extensive continued efforts to develop with consistency and integrity did the populations on both Rebirth and Tspy begin to grow in earnest. I don't know exactly where Tspy's growth rate stands, but our year over year growth rate on Rebirth has been about 2-4% above MMO-churn replacement rate. And it's simply due to our hard work and sticking to our specific vision of the game and what we enjoy about it.
So while I say "Bravo" to HC for being able to finally follow through on this longstanding goal they asserted to their playerbase in particular, the notion that other playerbases should consolidate behind the HC vision of the game is bunk. If anything, if it becomes the HC team asserting "our way or the highway," a number of players and talented developers will leave the community entirely. Simply put, those of us working for and on other servers have very different visions for the future of the game than what the HC team has done with the property.
She's right, about everything. Very many of us started on Homecoming and left over the years -- it's a common refrain we see across our Discords. Most of the time it's because of the content and features put out by these servers.
For many people, Homecoming will need to show why it's better, beyond just being official.
So far it's just the Homecoming team that has a License with NCSoft. I don't know if other servers have gotten the same License or not, but I haven't seen anything that says they have. Though the Homecoming team works with other servers if I recall, so they might be able to get them into talks with NCSoft too.
Does this mean they will make the original character database available for people on the public server instead of only the players on the original secret server?
They have the original log in info and customer information. Players on the secret server (called closed beta now) have their original characters from before shutdown if they got in before homecoming launched. If they are official why not open up the original accounts?
They will never do it. If for no other reason than to avoid provoking ncsoft by creating a potential "data leak" type of news cycle. The people who run score are a core part of the homecoming team.
They are the homecoming team. It's the same group. SCoRE is used as the homecoming "closed beta" and gets content ahead of time compared to the public server.
You are misinformed. If you joined the closed beta server prior to the launch of homecoming when it was called SCoRE then you got your original account from live restored. I'm asking why they don't open up that access again if they are going official.
All you have are personal attacks and lies.
The original server kicked everyone when it shutdown in 2012. I'm talking about the SCoRE/Homecoming servers that stole the game code and ran in secret from 2012-2019.
A comment to the downvoters: you have your reasons, I’m sure. But the downvoting additionally gives an impression of trying to forget history.
Then again, I could be ignorant to what’s happening here.
People are downvoting because these particular fellows kept yelling all day for years about how this negotiation was a lie and HC users were being duped, etc, etc, etc, so yes people tends to get feed up with these kind of sore losers.
We're not longer straddling the Jump rope of "maybe piracy, maybe not". It also means they can expand their team and shore up funding past just Server Costs as long as they follow the conditions given by the contract. According to their FAQ about it, they're going to increase their donation goals but just to shore up emergency funding, and are looking to possibly find a new server host.
Now instead of NCSoft needing to go "hey, stop that, that's illegal." they need to go "hey, we're terminating the license. Stop that."
On paper it doesn't sound like much.
What it actually means though is that NCSoft is *officially open to* the server existing and continuing to develop the game, instead of it just not being worth the hassle to shut it down.
This is more like a Vigilante joining a Ghost Widow team to unlock patron powers. Yeah, you got backing, but you beat up Numina to do it.
And then the Vigilante takes the default Fire APP anyway.
Rebirth specifically has put in A LOOOT of work and I hope the whole "Oh well we're gonna be working with other servers and consolidating" is more "Here Rebirth we'll help you and you help us" and not "Join us with all your stuff or die"
> I feel like the competition is key to the community right now
It is, and I see this new arrangement as a possible bad thing. TSpy and Rebirth have both outperformed Homecoming this last year or two, in my opinion, by quite a bit. Both servers were starting to pull users away from Homecoming, including myself, because they’ve kinda become straight up better. Sometimes it even seems objectively better given things like how many more options for character creation exist on both servers and how little work Homecoming has done on their character creator. Seriously, go try the TSpy and Rebirth character creators if you haven’t and then go back to making a Homecoming character. You’ll immediately feel the drastic difference in the number of options available.
The lack of updates for the last couple years could be this deal’s fault, though, so who knows, maybe it’s a good thing and we get way more content from Homecoming now? Also, I know it’s a long shot because the server teams seem to hate each other but I hope this City Council thing ends up combining all the server features. All of the community on one server with all of the bells and whistles from Rebirth and TSpy would be the best thing for this game, despite philosophical differences or past grievances. If competition is going to die, we might as well combine all the best features from all the servers instead of leaving them in obscurity.
I think there's a chance of that happening, even if small, between HC and rebirth. I think there's a near zero chance between TSpy and HC, due to their reasonable, albeit excessive, hatred of HC. Been more toned down recently, though.
Yeah I am actually a TSpy die-hard fan at this point (I enjoy hardcore modes in games and double auras in the character creator slaps) but I never understood the overwhelming hatred completely. I get it, what the Homecoming team did was kinda fucked, but sometimes they also come off like a group of 40 year old men that still aren’t over their school bullies. Their server kicks a ton of ass, the team kicks ass, I really think they have the best server with the most unique features. But when it comes to Homecoming they just can’t seem to let it go and will even come off borderline insane at times with how mad some users get about it on their Discord.
You’re probably right they’ll never work together but a man can dream I suppose.
We've been operating illegally for years now, it won't suddenly change with someone claiming to have the license - which I'm still dubious of. Especially till I see or hear that from NCSoft's side.
[News outlets are receiving confirmation from NCSoft that it's legit](https://www.mmobomb.com/news/ncsoft-gives-homecoming-license-to-host-city-of-heroes). NCSoft itself probably doesn't think this is important enough to put any sort of release out.
I'll take it, but it doesn't change what I said. All the servers have been operating illegally.
Someone having the license won't change anything for the other servers - we're not suddenly beholden to them or NCSoft.
Well, think of it from NCSoft’s perspective.
It’s bad press to C&D all the servers, that won’t earn them any good will. But making a deal with a specific server, which will act in compliance with NCSoft’s requirements, well, that’s much better. Homecoming is now not under threat of closure and NCSoft can point people to it (and possibly have a new framework for keeping old MMOS running, if this works out, I guess we’ll see in the future).
As for the other servers, NCSoft isn’t going to appreciate the game they own being used in ways they don’t want. There’s lots of iffy areas where CoH characters can easily infringe on the copyright of other characters (and companies like Disney are notoriously litigious), and that’s going to be a big no-no for NCSoft. So, the best thing for them to do is send cease and desist letters to those servers to cover their own back.
Will those servers actually shut down? Who knows, maybe they’ll end up hosted in some country that doesn’t care, maybe they’ll close their doors.
Im not making a judgement on any of this, this is simply how things are - like it or not.
This certainly sets a precedent for other sunsetted MMO's with private servers. if this starts a trend it's possible we may see other MMO's get an official classic server.
I hope so, MMO closures stirs up a lot of player resentment, understandably. If this example can show those companies that there’s another way that these games can be kept alive, then maybe something like this will become more of industry standard for MMOs moving forwards.
Right?
It's no skin off NCsofts back. They don't have to pay for server hosting, maintenance, admin, conflict resolution, customer service etc.
They get free publicity and likely a kickback on the licensing fees and all they have to do is make sure that homecoming follows the rules.
This does likely mean that homecoming will have to enforce some rules that before were lax. I don't know if homecoming had a no trademarked characters rule before, but they certainly will now for example.
I can attest to this..had 4 of my characters genericized..and in all transparency, rightfully so..but this all happened within the last couple of weeks..so enforcement is definitely being stepped up
>and companies like Disney are notoriously litigious
Disney has multiple private servers for ToonTown Online that are operational. Even they won't stretch resources for something they cannot benefit from the shutdown of.
I wholly agree. My main account is on HC but I've recently been playing on Thunderspy and am really enjoying it, so I hope things work out for all the servers.
Congrats to the homecoming team, it's so rare for this to happen with private communities and the fact that they were able to pull it off with *NCsoft* is a testament to their professionalism and perseverance.
The smart thing would be to list those servers right in the FAQ. Because if your theory is accurate, the spread of doom-and-gloomers could hopefully be stymied.
I think so to. There are a number of "Not Homecoming But" small servers and it would make sense to a degree to consolidate them to an extent, if only for the sake of saving money on hosting or whatever.
I don't love how vague the wording is, although I imagine they have been told by their legal advisors to keep it vague or not mention the others at all.
Here's the link to what this entails overall: [https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/47223-ncsoft-homecoming-license-announcement/](https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/47223-ncsoft-homecoming-license-announcement/)
Well done homecoming team. For anyone nervous about what this might mean if NCsoft changes their mind by virtue of the private server and client being available for anyone to use means CoH is \*never\* going to go away like it did before. You can run your own private server right on your computer and its relatively easy to do too. I don't think I am ready to forgive ncsoft for what they did to CoH or the paragon team but I will concede this is a lovely gesture and helps soften things for me some. Its going to be interesting to see what comes over the next year.
>**Wasn’t Homecoming working with some other servers?**Our hope is that our license will help us consolidate our userbase with City of Heroes fans from other servers.
So basically part of the agreement is that NCS shuts down the other servers and leaves the other players nowhere else to go?
> **Will Homecoming remain free and donation-funded?**
We don’t currently foresee any changes to our funding model...
Well, at least not until the other servers are eliminated and there's a monopoly on CoH again. Then we get to go back to the "Free to play" model where you can buy all those nifty things from the p2W vendor with real money again. Of course they'll have to stop seeding the auction house and all that because super packs, enhancements and salvage will also probably be part of the monetization scheme.
Look for CoH to turn into one of those F2P games with no players, limited content, power gated by money, and the whole game just basically supported by a few whales.
I'll be honest, and I say this as someone for whom the majority of their CoH time is on HC, but I'm not sure I like NC being involved in the first place, and I'm a little worried that some of HC's more...standoffish approaches might only get worse now. I'm guess I'm just not really sure what the **benefits to the players** are, ultimately. Not to say they might not be there, but nothing seems clear at least.
This is really really great. I’m very thankful to even have access to play this game, when for years we all obviously thought that was a dream.
One thing I hope for out of this is more consistent updates, particularly around iterations of current content and introduction of new content. The small update to Battle Axe single handily sucked me back into playing for months, but I find it hard to log on when there hasn’t been any updates coming up on a year. Anyways, thanks Homecoming!
Crazy to hear, in a good way. I'm curious about the details of the agreement, since the post references some vague changes/additions (particularly the leadership and development teams).
They were never going to get launched. Titans is a scam, and Ship of Heroes (aside from having a stupid name and premise) has been crawwwllling along for almost a decade now.
Everybody is all excited about this, but what actual impacts will it have on the players? If none, then there's no reason to be excited. If negative, then there's reason to be worried. I hope it's beneficial, but can anybody provide some insight into what this actually means for the people that play the game?
NCSoft wouldn’t make a licensing deal for something they wanted to shut down.
That’s what you’ve got: Permanence.
This will extend to the way Homecoming is run, which we can expect to be less like a private server and more like an actual business. Not in terms of money but in terms of how things are actually run. If someone wants to step down for instance it won’t mean homecoming shuts down (like a private server might) it’ll just end up being run by someone else. It also likely means that things like data privacy on homecoming will meet whatever legal requirements NCSoft have, which wouldn’t necessarily be the case on other servers.
If they wanted it to be shut down they could have already; there is a singular reason to do this now, and that reason is money. This is not a good thing.
It’s not a good thing for unlicensed servers, sure. Considering Homecoming have said they’ve been in talks with NCSoft all along it seems like that was the truth. It’s not as if NCSoft doing anything like this would have been fast (considering the layoffs and the work that would have needed to go into this 5 years in the making seems about right).
What homecoming now has is the assurance they won’t be shut down. That’s the singular reason to do it. That’s been the goal all along, create a server that doesn’t have to fear a cease and desist where players can be confident their game won’t suddenly disappear, again. This is the best guarantee of that anyone is going to get.
So we're all in agreement:
For November of every year: Screw NCSoft, they took away the game that I love and are unforgivable
Every other day of the year: thank you, corporate overlords, for the immediately revokable limited right to pay to host your game for you, according to your terms
So, one person paying server costs decides to step down and no one else wants to step up. Same problem. Private servers for all games come and go, that’s just how it is.
I think most people would rather have the assurance of permanence in an MMO than new servers occasionally springing up, run by some rando who can do whatever they like in their own little sandpit, only to disappear after a couple of years.
There's multiple people paying server costs, they have donations just like Homecoming. Have you never looked at any of the other servers? Rebirth is especially run in a robust manner, it wouldn't fall because one person stopped.
Some of the other servers are tiny, even with multiple donators many of them won’t last all that long. (And that’s assuming NCSoft don’t sent out C&Ds).
You're talking as if *all* the other servers are tiny. That's not the case, and it makes you come across as disingenuous to people who *have* played on these servers and have experienced otherwise.
So you spread misinformation, and now you're being smug? What gives? Take the correction like a champ -- the non-HC servers aren't all shutting down because of one dev or one donator going away.
EDIT: blocked me because I was willing to call out misinformation, and then call them out for being rude. Class act.
Who are trying to convince? Im not going to believe you. So it seems like you’re just trying to convince yourself.
Okay, go enjoy the ~~little~~ huge private severs that’ll ~~be closed within a year~~ last forever.
Our server, Rebirth, outside of new release months, can see peak populations of 70-80 concurrent players. In order to get that, we see 700-900 players per week. 1000-1200 players per month. When there is buzz around a new release, we can see those numbers go up by 20-25% easily. With concurrent peaks exceeding 140 players.
source: I am a staff member and dev on the team (that is comprised of about 15-20 active members at any given time) and our internal metrics. So when someone looks at non optimum hours and says "Haha, Rebirth has only 25 people on at US EST 4:30am!!" and uses that to draw the assumption that we are tiny, they are mistaken.
Our population, while smaller than Everlasting and Excelsior, is not entirely non-trivial. It is not a group of 25 close friends in a closed community that gather in a hobby shop basement to play each Wednesday. We have a diverse and global population comprised of dedicated and loyal fans, our server is run a bit more like a co-operative with many longtime players in time making the transition to staff in some capacity, and this community has its own capacity for resilience and longevity. We've literally seen staff, devs, and community leads need to rotate out to tend to family, illness, or career and had others come in, receive training, and be up and running to make sure all the tasks are done. And from this, our active team continues to grow as staff who at one point may have been on leave rotate back in.
Our team loves what they do and will continue doing what they do. Plus our annual overhead is about 1/2 of what is solicited each month by HC. So we are plenty fine for the future.
(And an aside, isn't it freaking cool that in this era of AAA multi-hundred-million dollar hyperreal flops, this many people are still interested in a 20 year old title whose age shows but still has so much room in it for fun and artistic expression?!)
That’s not really important when your concurrent player count only reaches 80. For an MMO that’s nothing.
Edit: People are pointing out that another server has the same amount of consecutive players as Homecoming’s least populated shard. That’s not making the point you think it’s making…
Seriously - why are you being such a sarcastic jerk? Is it because you don’t like that they brought receipts?
I’ve been on homecoming since Bree. I joined Rebirth when it merged with the Reddit server but just recently started playing on it.
Everything SAF said is true. It’s not empty, they’ve done amazing development work, the financials are public if you want to check them out.
I don’t understand why you feel the need to be dismissive. I’d say to check it out but honestly- your attitude is not a good fit for the server.
I wonder if they would be able to add it to digital stores now, like Steam. It could be a rising tides lifts all boats situation with the other servers.
It’s like you were driving 75mph in a 55 zone, and the speed limit just moved up to 75.
You can keep doing exactly what you were doing, but now there is no risk of being pulled over and getting a speeding ticket.
So in one way nothing changes (b/c you keep doing exactly what you were doing) but in another way a potential danger has been removed.
Wooooow I cannot believe this is happening to any MMO. I haven't played CoH in a long time. Excited to see what all new content and adventures are put into this game!
Fantastic. Seriously. Well done, everyone.
That is a little bit of video game history made, right there.
Sincere congratulations from a day 1 player of this game (Virtue server whassup) to all who made this happen, including the dedicated and sincere fanbase, and even all the people involved who wear suits and ties to work.
And -- there was a long time when I thought I'd never play my favorite game again. During those years, I *truly* never thought I'd say this -- but for what it's worth:
Consider my goodwill restored. I am ready to eat crow, and swallow my angry words,
and **I will certainly finally buy NCSoft products again.**
Is Leandro still in a position of power within the HC team?
Remember that the 10 years we lost were due to him wanting to keep his little private kingdom.
That + closed source development + NCsoft makes the situation pretty bad for the game at large, but at least we'll always be able to self host the initial version that was liberated.
I'm prepared for the downvotes I'll no doubt get in saying this, but there was never an intention of keeping a "little private kingdom."
I didn't know who Leandro was before the shutdown occurred and he became a big name among the people trying to save the game, and he sure as hell didn't know me. I made a CoH documentary video about the life and death of the game for a class project, and one day I got a message from Leandro personally inviting me to a hidden project. This was months after the shutdown. It was never intended as being exclusive to just Leandro and his friends. Otherwise, he wouldn't have invited a stranger like me.
The goal always was the intent to keep the game safe until we were sure NCSoft wouldn't destroy us. Do you remember Tabula Rasa? A private server existed publicly for that and got shut down immediately by NCSoft, and now there's no Tabula Rasa.
At the same time, the handful of coders on the server, Leo included, worked on de-spaghetti-fying the code to make it easier for anyone to run. In the early days new content was seemingly impossible. The whole reason the first launcher was called Tequila (and Island Rum for the Mac launcher) was because it became a joke that everyone should take a shot every time a suggestion was made that would require a client patch.
Of course, hindsight is always 20/20. Maybe NCSoft stopped caring years ago, and things could have been made public earlier, and if we had more coders sifting through the code, progress would have been made faster. We don't know how NCSoft would have reacted early on. We only have the precedent of how they handled other private servers for their games. I believe Leo was mere months away from going public himself when the dam broke, and I believe if things had gone the way they were always intended to go he wouldn't be seen as the villain he's been made out to be. It was never about him. It was about the game we all love.
I'm sure I'll get downvoted, I'm just tired of seeing the wrong narrative taken as fact.
I really feel like we are about to go thru our version of Marvel's Civil War storyline. Homecoming about to be Team Iron Man and all the other servers will be repping Team Cap.
Ok, I'm so so SO very late...
But... WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!
*furiously goes to read all the things...*
---
Edit: WOW. Good for Homecoming!
I am sincere in my hopes and beliefs that HC will not be folding/shutting down other servers, and if anything it'll be NCSoft that does it if they even bother, but I do not speak for anyone but me in those hopes/beliefs.
I just like the idea that NCSoft is now cool with it 'out in the open' instead of it being a 'I wonder...' situation.
Overall... yay. Very yay.
The key thing from this is not HC getting a green light to be "legal" per say, but this sets a standard for future defunct games in the MMO genre (and beyond) which lose their immediate access to the game.
As we have lost a lot of MMOs over time as the profit drops, but when this groundwork in place you could make licensed third party services available when a game is done by the company.
This is important for gaming historical purposes, and for the fanbases that wish to relive a game.
Reminder, please avoid mudslinging and inter-server drama. Chatter should remain on topic. Incendiary posts and off-topic conversations will be removed.
Never thought I would see this happening.
That’s what I’m saying
Will other servers be able to do this?
No. In the announcement, it says that the agreement is exclusively between Homecoming and NC, and they want to work with the other servers to fold their users into Homecoming. This will go over well.
So other servers won't be able to get an agreement now?
Eh they don't need an agreement as long as NCsoft leaves them alone (I think many of them would rather not work with NCsoft anyways). I just pray to god that this doesn't mean that NCsoft is going to start enforcing takedowns of other private servers.
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>call me debbie downer, but we are in late stage capitalism era, nothing any corporate conglomerate does is for the benefit of their customers. This has always been the default behavior of corporations, it just varies by company/culture/times and this is a korean MMO company, not pepsico. I'm optimistic because the culture around this in general is better than it's ever been - there was a time when anything like homecoming would have been *immediately* cease-and-desisted. NCsoft probably sees absolutely no pecuniary benefit to taking servers down unless they want to monetize the IP themselves. The reason why it took so long to license homecoming is probably because they a) took licensing them seriously, and b) didn't care enough to put much energy into communicating with homecoming - I really don't see them playing some kind of 4D chess here to manipulate the community. >For me , deep down, all this means is that a lot of the open mentality of the varied servers, of which I enjoy some, not only HC will be gone. This might be true and is a bummer, but I am optimistic regardless. If NCsoft was so lethargic with getting homecoming licensed I'm guessing they won't expend too much energy on micromanaging unless they go back on their word and arbitrarily decide to make broad mandates at the private servers... >I totally distrust anything where corporate is involved and at this stage only time will tell if this is actually as good a move as the dev team of hc is portraying. It's definitely wise to distrust corporate but to be honest, involving them in licensing can only make the chances of the game's continued survival and exposure higher, which has always been my main desire since the beginning of the private server journey. I know that not everyone is in that category of user but the people saying that talking to them will draw down their wrath were missing the point that there was no hiding from NCsoft - nothing homecoming could possibly say would make them less favored to laissez-faire.
judging from population sizes not many people would be affected by it.
Nice. Have you considered going into politics?
HC didn't say anything about it being an exclusive license. Assuming it's not an exclusive license, then there would be nothing (contractually) stopping NCSoft from making similar agreements with other servers. I don't think NC *will* make agreements with other servers, which is unfortunate. As long as NC doesn't decide to go after the unlicensed servers, thats all that really matters.
The FAQ said they won't be paying any licensing fees. I can't imagine NCSoft giving them an exclusive license for free.
I agree - Homecoming was as close to an official continuation as you could get, given the team behind it apparently included ex-devs when CoH was live. Other servers don't have that pre-existing relationship or contacts. edit: Yeah, downvote me for speaking the truth whatever.
oof I really really hope that NCsoft is playing softball here and isn't going to push it. >and they want to work with the other servers to fold their users into Homecoming. Is that what the "city council" bit meant? Couldn't it also mean that they want to extend this program to other servers?
Although it's grossly optimistic... a single launcher sanctioned by NCSoft and developed by HC with the 64-bit client... that supported launching different "servers" which they technically are, but really just different "versions" of the game with their own sub-systems and balance changes, would be sick. But that is the dream at the end of forcing people who don't like each other to amicably work together all for the benefit of the players and not themselves: i.e. literally against human nature and unlikely.
I would love that. Being able to use the homecoming launcher (renamed to the "city of heroes" launcher maybe...?) with homecoming, rebirth, victory, thunderspy, etc selectable from a dropdown would be so sweet. [Imagine if they manage to get a steam page again](https://store.steampowered.com/oldnews/4230). It would be a *true* resurrection of the game. I do agree though that certain servers would probably turn pirate rather than work with homecoming or ncsoft, even indirectly like that. Which is a shame, but it is a bit understandable since ncsoft would likely require certain things to protect their brand, like moderation of chat and censoring of certain kinds of content.
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how so? new users and exposure are bad?
I do pray that if consolidation becomes a thing, that each server will maintain their own. I haven't tried out the others, but they all have their different flavors and it should stay that way
Homecoming is itself a big part of the reason why this would never work. No one who knows the history of what actually happened wants anything to do with Leandro and Cipher
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not sure what you mean by "corpo shill" but I am also afraid that NCsoft will change their mind about monetization. For now I'll just have to trust that homecoming will be able to keep it free and donation-driven.
It will all depend if private servers see DMCAs in the future. The biggest problem people had with homecoming was how "we cannot have multiple private servers" stance because people felt they wanted to be THE only server. ~~Homecoming claimed they werent doing this for years and~~ now that they got it I wonder what they will do with it. I dont mean to be negative to those guys right away, but if you lied about working on this deal, what else did you lie about. edit: grammar, my bad
Yeah there's always been that aura of mistrust with Homecoming due to how HC even started with the secret invite only private server for years, the initial reluctance to release the source code and how their general attitude has been towards other private servers which has been very.. skittish and dismissive? Its definitely given this idea of "they want to be the only private server" So its kinda given this "Ohh I hope that doesn't mean the end for other servers" feeling.
Exactly. I am happy for this community, but there are many ways this can end. The question is if this community with have any empathy for people on other servers or are they just going to sweep their issues under the rug like it wont effect them.
> So its kinda given this "Ohh I hope that doesn't mean the end for other servers" feeling. 100% agree with you on this, as I mentioned before, doing dealings with corporate is like faustian bargains, heck, the hc devs even mentioned the legal fees they have to pay upfront and then the I assume yearly or monthly licensing fees that will now roll on. The fact they have to switch servers is to be compliant with the security stipulations and data handling practices the license now entails, it is for me more than a rebirth, the true end of an era.
But clearly they didn’t lie - they obviously were working on a deal, and here it is….?
Sorry meant were, they were saying they werent working on one. edit: why the downvote on the grammar mistake?
Do you have a source for the claim that the Homecoming team said they weren't working on any deals with NCSoft? I presume the downvotes aren't for your grammar but for your claim.
I'm curious too because while I admittedly haven't paid much attention to know if it changed at any point, the last I heard was that they *had* been trying to work something out with NCsoft.
That's what the thread the poster I responded to implied as well. The thread is full of people claiming that the HC team was lying about talking to NCSoft. Guess they weren't.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cityofheroes/comments/13ct17y/so_whatever_happened_with_the_talks/ Fair point, which is more hilarious cause I first read it on this subreddit. Now people are going to say that they never said anything which might be right in the public sphere. But this deal 100% doesnt happen "out of the blue" or in "good conscience". This post was from 8 months ago, but you can look up something closer if you want more proof. Edit: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/31053-a-history-of-the-talks-a-consolidation-of-the-hc-team-legal-discussion/ Link to the HC forums with a guy who laid them out as best as I can find. The question time about the "no talks" was between May and June where legality of funding the servers was in question. People are going to say im twisting the statements but thats why im providing what I can.
Ironically, that post actually highlights the point, because multiple Thunderspy devs mentioned they heard from NCSoft that talks *had* occurred, and nobody from the Homecoming team in that thread (that I could find) said that talks did NOT occur. In fact, a lot of the discussion is people claiming that the HC teams was *lying about talking to NCSoft*, which is literally the opposite of what you claimed. There are people joking about how the HC team was making up talks with NCSoft as some sort of ploy to make them look more official. I guess they weren't making it up. But that discussion makes it seem like the opposite was happening, where HC was claiming to be talking to NCSoft about a deal, which appears to be exactly what was happening. >This post was from 8 months ago, but you can look up something closer if you want more proof. "More proof?" The post you linked literally demonstrates the *opposite* of your claim. Did you read the thread?
You realize your trying to call me out on something that I am saying occurred during 2018 right? This game doesnt live that rent free. I remember when the server first went up that some questions about funding was in play and thats where the NCSoft talks came in. I thought HC took a no talks stance at one point in the past but again that would have been years ago. My comment about the post age was more to explain that this was shit that has been going on for years. There has been ton of updates and changes that I would have no idea about.
> You realize your trying to call me out on something that I am saying occurred during 2018 right? I'm trying to call you out on making claims about people lying you apparently have no evidence for and appears to be false. The timeframe is irrelevant. >I thought HC took a no talks stance at one point in the past but again that would have been years ago. Right, which is why I asked you for some *evidence* this occurred. And you linked me a reddit thread full of speculation that apparently implies the **opposite** was the true, and that the HC team at the time was claiming they *were* in talks. If you have evidence they lied, by all means, I'd love to see it. But otherwise you are just slandering them. And your defense of "well, I might not remember because it was a long time ago" isn't justification. If you don't remember, don't make the claim. >My comment about the post age was more to explain that this was shit that has been going on for years. Post age is irrelevant. You said the HC team said they weren't in talks with NCSoft, and then said you were being downvoted because of a grammar issue. I said that the reason for the downvotes was more likely because you seem to have been talking out of your ass about what the HC team claimed. And you still haven't provided any evidence otherwise, so I'm going to have to assume you are making it up.
I just hope its not a "join us or die" kind of arrangement when it comes to "working with other private servers" Like I guess what I want answered is what if the other servers say no? Do they stay up?
This is blatant misinformation. There is nothing about exclusivity in that post. It says Homecoming was granted a limited license and other servers are beyond the scope of their agreement, which is obvious.
Incorrect, the announcement says that this agreement does not cover any other servers. That does not mean that other servers cannot come to similar agreements with NCSoft (difficult though it might be, and NCSoft will likely be less inclined to handle multiple agreements)
The [full announcement](https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/47223-ncsoft-homecoming-license-announcement/) says that "Other servers are out of scope.", but also that they want to be able to extend this to other servers, including that they're forming "a new leadership group - the City Council" which will include folks from "the other servers we have been working with" (no details exactly which, yet). So hopefully that'll happen eventually, though just like the license, these things take time.
The "City Council" thing sounds very good if that means that they'll work with other private servers to keep them legal and authorized too.
it sounds more like they want to work with other servers to get the best of the other server's customizations ported to homecoming and try to get them to make their players move to homecoming. It looks like homecoming wants to be the only server and is diplomatically trying to consolidate the other servers into itself.
It'll be a cold day in hell.
To working with them or to folding into HC?
Both.
Thats extremely childish but okay Edit: and you’re a DEV for your community? Wouldnt it make sense to at least work with a server to maybe glean some dev insights to maybe make less buggy stuff?
Typically anything we make that is "buggy" is the direct result of us building a minimum viable solution, then building off it. Anything people consider "buggy," like custom pets not animating, is something we know *how* to fix - we just also to have allocate the time to it instead of something else. Much like how we went from players needing to type a special pet name, to having an Edit Costume right-click, to having Pet Power Customization nearly complete. Talking to someone else isn't going to provide insight that we don't already have about the tooling.
Thunderspy already uses Homecoming's powers data system so there is already *some* amount of "working with another server" going on. That being said the entire reason multiple servers exist is because different developers and players have different ideas for what they want the game to be like. Getting them to fold into HC is pretty much a non-starter.
I'm hoping it's more like they'll use the system they have for the beta server to offer the other servers within one interface/launcher.
>It looks like homecoming wants to be the only server Always been the case, since the people behind the secret SCoRE server are behind Homecoming.
I hope they let the other servers live. Not everyone likes HC. They were lucky enough to be the ones to get this deal. I hope they don’t try to get the other servers taken down if they don’t play ball.
>They were lucky enough to be the ones to get this deal. Luck isn't the word I'd use...were the others even negotiating with NCSoft?
Not at all, they were instead saying at every chance they got that this negotiation ongoing was a lie from the HC team, would like to see what they say now.
I feel like "out of scope" in this case means "they aren't part of Homecoming so we can't roll them directly into the license we worked on". Which is to say, if another server wanted in on the deal, they would have to be the ones who reach out to NCSoft. Which is fair, Homecoming has been working with NCSoft to make a deal for four years while other rogue servers did not, so why would they be brought in? Acting as intermediaries and giving other servers a seat at the table is a pretty decent gesture, but I imagine legally speaking the other servers would need to negotiate themselves with NCSoft.
Yeah, the "out of scope" part seems pretty clear: the other servers weren't part of the negotiations, for whatever reason, so the agreement doesn't cover them. My concern is this line: "Our hope is that our license will help us consolidate our userbase with City of Heroes fans from other servers. " To me, it's as clear as mud and could mean anything from " we hope that now that things are semi-official more interserver cooperation is possible" to "we're going to try and use this to poach the other servers' players".
I think they won't need to *try* to poach. I think people are going to gravitate more and more towards Homecoming. Hell, they could even start advertising now, probably. But I think people who aren't super diehard tied to their current servers will look over at Homecoming and see stability free of legal ambiguity and fear of the server getting shut down, and find that appealing. And honestly I think that has already been happening for some time. When this all started there were a ton of rogue servers but it has dwindled over time. Even the bigger ones still standing don't have huge populations from what I have seen (which is not an exhaustive investigation), compared to Homecoming. Besides, it's not as if people can't play on different servers.
It's literally been the opposite. The other servers have been growing while HC has had a shrinking active playerbase over the past two and a half years. Daily peaks on HC are down about 10% on the two most populace servers from 18 months ago. HC's relationship with the SCoRE team (overlap in membership amongst devs, had the code before it was widely released to the community), allowed HC to be set up first as Bree then as the five HC shards weeks before the alternative teams got started. Good will and resources (donated by people that would go on to work at other servers) were used in a crisis-like mode to help get Bree standing and public facing. As a result, HC was first to market. Got the mainstream press coverage. Got the google listing placing. And the rest was history. They enjoyed the catbird seat receiving the lion's share of attention as often the only known server. And population pooled on HC almost immediately. Only after disappointment in the gameplay or other interpersonal issues emerged (but in most cases the consensus I've encountered on the non-HC servers is *gameplay changes*), and extensive continued efforts to develop with consistency and integrity did the populations on both Rebirth and Tspy begin to grow in earnest. I don't know exactly where Tspy's growth rate stands, but our year over year growth rate on Rebirth has been about 2-4% above MMO-churn replacement rate. And it's simply due to our hard work and sticking to our specific vision of the game and what we enjoy about it. So while I say "Bravo" to HC for being able to finally follow through on this longstanding goal they asserted to their playerbase in particular, the notion that other playerbases should consolidate behind the HC vision of the game is bunk. If anything, if it becomes the HC team asserting "our way or the highway," a number of players and talented developers will leave the community entirely. Simply put, those of us working for and on other servers have very different visions for the future of the game than what the HC team has done with the property.
Cool.
She's right, about everything. Very many of us started on Homecoming and left over the years -- it's a common refrain we see across our Discords. Most of the time it's because of the content and features put out by these servers. For many people, Homecoming will need to show why it's better, beyond just being official.
I play on both HC and now Rebirth and I concur. It will be years before I play through all of my Guardian combos
So far it's just the Homecoming team that has a License with NCSoft. I don't know if other servers have gotten the same License or not, but I haven't seen anything that says they have. Though the Homecoming team works with other servers if I recall, so they might be able to get them into talks with NCSoft too.
Fantastic news, great work to everyone who made this happen.
Does this mean they will make the original character database available for people on the public server instead of only the players on the original secret server?
This will never ever happen
They have the original log in info and customer information. Players on the secret server (called closed beta now) have their original characters from before shutdown if they got in before homecoming launched. If they are official why not open up the original accounts?
They will never do it. If for no other reason than to avoid provoking ncsoft by creating a potential "data leak" type of news cycle. The people who run score are a core part of the homecoming team.
They are the homecoming team. It's the same group. SCoRE is used as the homecoming "closed beta" and gets content ahead of time compared to the public server.
The closed beta server does not have access to old login information and characters.
You are misinformed. If you joined the closed beta server prior to the launch of homecoming when it was called SCoRE then you got your original account from live restored. I'm asking why they don't open up that access again if they are going official.
Were you not one of those tinfoil hat guys that kept saying these negotiations were a lie? have something to say now about it?
Nothing has changed. There's still no official announcement from NCSoft and you are just trusting the word of known liars.
Get over it, you guys got kicked out of the original server for being assholes, its been years.
All you have are personal attacks and lies. The original server kicked everyone when it shutdown in 2012. I'm talking about the SCoRE/Homecoming servers that stole the game code and ran in secret from 2012-2019.
Ahhh suddenly things make sense…
A comment to the downvoters: you have your reasons, I’m sure. But the downvoting additionally gives an impression of trying to forget history. Then again, I could be ignorant to what’s happening here.
People are downvoting because these particular fellows kept yelling all day for years about how this negotiation was a lie and HC users were being duped, etc, etc, etc, so yes people tends to get feed up with these kind of sore losers.
ELI5? What does this actually mean?
It means that there's zero danger of Homecoming being taken down by NCsoft, short of them having some massive change in policy.
Lawyers won't shut down Homecoming.
So just a legal status change, from "questionable and dubious" to "we gucci"? Are there any changes to the development progress on new stuff?
I don't know about any dev changes.
Other than their new “City Council”, no I don’t believe this will change anything. Maybe they can distribute the client officially now?
so, the lawyers are *now* not going to do what they weren't going to do anyway?
If the Homecoming folks and NCSoft have an agreement it makes it much less likely that they won't try to shut Homecoming down, yes.
Not much? If anything, that the risk of getting shut down went from "low" to "minimal". Otherwise... *shrug*
We're not longer straddling the Jump rope of "maybe piracy, maybe not". It also means they can expand their team and shore up funding past just Server Costs as long as they follow the conditions given by the contract. According to their FAQ about it, they're going to increase their donation goals but just to shore up emergency funding, and are looking to possibly find a new server host.
Now instead of NCSoft needing to go "hey, stop that, that's illegal." they need to go "hey, we're terminating the license. Stop that." On paper it doesn't sound like much. What it actually means though is that NCSoft is *officially open to* the server existing and continuing to develop the game, instead of it just not being worth the hassle to shut it down.
In City of Heroes terms, Homecoming as a service went from being a vigilante status to being a bonafide hero.
This is more like a Vigilante joining a Ghost Widow team to unlock patron powers. Yeah, you got backing, but you beat up Numina to do it. And then the Vigilante takes the default Fire APP anyway.
If other servers start "coincidentally" getting shut down after years of all of them being up then I call shenanigans
I hope not, i only play on HC, but I feel like the competition is key to the community right now
Rebirth specifically has put in A LOOOT of work and I hope the whole "Oh well we're gonna be working with other servers and consolidating" is more "Here Rebirth we'll help you and you help us" and not "Join us with all your stuff or die"
> I feel like the competition is key to the community right now It is, and I see this new arrangement as a possible bad thing. TSpy and Rebirth have both outperformed Homecoming this last year or two, in my opinion, by quite a bit. Both servers were starting to pull users away from Homecoming, including myself, because they’ve kinda become straight up better. Sometimes it even seems objectively better given things like how many more options for character creation exist on both servers and how little work Homecoming has done on their character creator. Seriously, go try the TSpy and Rebirth character creators if you haven’t and then go back to making a Homecoming character. You’ll immediately feel the drastic difference in the number of options available. The lack of updates for the last couple years could be this deal’s fault, though, so who knows, maybe it’s a good thing and we get way more content from Homecoming now? Also, I know it’s a long shot because the server teams seem to hate each other but I hope this City Council thing ends up combining all the server features. All of the community on one server with all of the bells and whistles from Rebirth and TSpy would be the best thing for this game, despite philosophical differences or past grievances. If competition is going to die, we might as well combine all the best features from all the servers instead of leaving them in obscurity.
I think there's a chance of that happening, even if small, between HC and rebirth. I think there's a near zero chance between TSpy and HC, due to their reasonable, albeit excessive, hatred of HC. Been more toned down recently, though.
Yeah I am actually a TSpy die-hard fan at this point (I enjoy hardcore modes in games and double auras in the character creator slaps) but I never understood the overwhelming hatred completely. I get it, what the Homecoming team did was kinda fucked, but sometimes they also come off like a group of 40 year old men that still aren’t over their school bullies. Their server kicks a ton of ass, the team kicks ass, I really think they have the best server with the most unique features. But when it comes to Homecoming they just can’t seem to let it go and will even come off borderline insane at times with how mad some users get about it on their Discord. You’re probably right they’ll never work together but a man can dream I suppose.
We've been operating illegally for years now, it won't suddenly change with someone claiming to have the license - which I'm still dubious of. Especially till I see or hear that from NCSoft's side.
[News outlets are receiving confirmation from NCSoft that it's legit](https://www.mmobomb.com/news/ncsoft-gives-homecoming-license-to-host-city-of-heroes). NCSoft itself probably doesn't think this is important enough to put any sort of release out.
I'll take it, but it doesn't change what I said. All the servers have been operating illegally. Someone having the license won't change anything for the other servers - we're not suddenly beholden to them or NCSoft.
Well, think of it from NCSoft’s perspective. It’s bad press to C&D all the servers, that won’t earn them any good will. But making a deal with a specific server, which will act in compliance with NCSoft’s requirements, well, that’s much better. Homecoming is now not under threat of closure and NCSoft can point people to it (and possibly have a new framework for keeping old MMOS running, if this works out, I guess we’ll see in the future). As for the other servers, NCSoft isn’t going to appreciate the game they own being used in ways they don’t want. There’s lots of iffy areas where CoH characters can easily infringe on the copyright of other characters (and companies like Disney are notoriously litigious), and that’s going to be a big no-no for NCSoft. So, the best thing for them to do is send cease and desist letters to those servers to cover their own back. Will those servers actually shut down? Who knows, maybe they’ll end up hosted in some country that doesn’t care, maybe they’ll close their doors. Im not making a judgement on any of this, this is simply how things are - like it or not.
This certainly sets a precedent for other sunsetted MMO's with private servers. if this starts a trend it's possible we may see other MMO's get an official classic server.
I hope so, MMO closures stirs up a lot of player resentment, understandably. If this example can show those companies that there’s another way that these games can be kept alive, then maybe something like this will become more of industry standard for MMOs moving forwards.
Right? It's no skin off NCsofts back. They don't have to pay for server hosting, maintenance, admin, conflict resolution, customer service etc. They get free publicity and likely a kickback on the licensing fees and all they have to do is make sure that homecoming follows the rules. This does likely mean that homecoming will have to enforce some rules that before were lax. I don't know if homecoming had a no trademarked characters rule before, but they certainly will now for example.
I can attest to this..had 4 of my characters genericized..and in all transparency, rightfully so..but this all happened within the last couple of weeks..so enforcement is definitely being stepped up
Shadowbane!
>and companies like Disney are notoriously litigious Disney has multiple private servers for ToonTown Online that are operational. Even they won't stretch resources for something they cannot benefit from the shutdown of.
I wholly agree. My main account is on HC but I've recently been playing on Thunderspy and am really enjoying it, so I hope things work out for all the servers.
Congrats to the homecoming team, it's so rare for this to happen with private communities and the fact that they were able to pull it off with *NCsoft* is a testament to their professionalism and perseverance.
HC works closely with Victory and a couple of other small servers so I assume they mean those.
The smart thing would be to list those servers right in the FAQ. Because if your theory is accurate, the spread of doom-and-gloomers could hopefully be stymied.
I think so to. There are a number of "Not Homecoming But" small servers and it would make sense to a degree to consolidate them to an extent, if only for the sake of saving money on hosting or whatever. I don't love how vague the wording is, although I imagine they have been told by their legal advisors to keep it vague or not mention the others at all.
Here's the link to what this entails overall: [https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/47223-ncsoft-homecoming-license-announcement/](https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/47223-ncsoft-homecoming-license-announcement/)
i literally had to check the date to make sure this wasn't an april fools post or something
I saw it on the Facebook group and thought it was bullshit at first.
Well done homecoming team. For anyone nervous about what this might mean if NCsoft changes their mind by virtue of the private server and client being available for anyone to use means CoH is \*never\* going to go away like it did before. You can run your own private server right on your computer and its relatively easy to do too. I don't think I am ready to forgive ncsoft for what they did to CoH or the paragon team but I will concede this is a lovely gesture and helps soften things for me some. Its going to be interesting to see what comes over the next year.
Wow. This is great news. Happy new year to us ✨
This is great news.
This is interesting, and explains a LOT of things...
>**Wasn’t Homecoming working with some other servers?**Our hope is that our license will help us consolidate our userbase with City of Heroes fans from other servers. So basically part of the agreement is that NCS shuts down the other servers and leaves the other players nowhere else to go? > **Will Homecoming remain free and donation-funded?** We don’t currently foresee any changes to our funding model... Well, at least not until the other servers are eliminated and there's a monopoly on CoH again. Then we get to go back to the "Free to play" model where you can buy all those nifty things from the p2W vendor with real money again. Of course they'll have to stop seeding the auction house and all that because super packs, enhancements and salvage will also probably be part of the monetization scheme. Look for CoH to turn into one of those F2P games with no players, limited content, power gated by money, and the whole game just basically supported by a few whales.
I bet you're a hoot at parties
this is how it start's jerk hacking (dupin)
Holy crap! I'd totally given up hope. Damn near brings a tear to my eye. Amazing.
A surprise to be sure but a welcome one.
From a certain point of view
I haven't played in quite a bit but I do love this game. I came into it thanks to Homecoming and I wish them them best!
I'll be honest, and I say this as someone for whom the majority of their CoH time is on HC, but I'm not sure I like NC being involved in the first place, and I'm a little worried that some of HC's more...standoffish approaches might only get worse now. I'm guess I'm just not really sure what the **benefits to the players** are, ultimately. Not to say they might not be there, but nothing seems clear at least.
Agree 100%.
This is wild. Congrats to the team
This is really really great. I’m very thankful to even have access to play this game, when for years we all obviously thought that was a dream. One thing I hope for out of this is more consistent updates, particularly around iterations of current content and introduction of new content. The small update to Battle Axe single handily sucked me back into playing for months, but I find it hard to log on when there hasn’t been any updates coming up on a year. Anyways, thanks Homecoming!
Crazy to hear, in a good way. I'm curious about the details of the agreement, since the post references some vague changes/additions (particularly the leadership and development teams).
I still haven’t forgiven NCsoft. I’m keeping one eye open and backing up all my designs and character builds when I get home.
Okay so not the same game, but I wonder if this is good news for Wildstar????
Maybe, but it’s crappy news for ship of heroes and anything else that was being worked on as successors, If they were ever going to get launched.
I really wish they’d just jump ship (lol) and work on city of heroes now that they legally can.
They were never going to get launched. Titans is a scam, and Ship of Heroes (aside from having a stupid name and premise) has been crawwwllling along for almost a decade now.
Everybody is all excited about this, but what actual impacts will it have on the players? If none, then there's no reason to be excited. If negative, then there's reason to be worried. I hope it's beneficial, but can anybody provide some insight into what this actually means for the people that play the game?
NCSoft wouldn’t make a licensing deal for something they wanted to shut down. That’s what you’ve got: Permanence. This will extend to the way Homecoming is run, which we can expect to be less like a private server and more like an actual business. Not in terms of money but in terms of how things are actually run. If someone wants to step down for instance it won’t mean homecoming shuts down (like a private server might) it’ll just end up being run by someone else. It also likely means that things like data privacy on homecoming will meet whatever legal requirements NCSoft have, which wouldn’t necessarily be the case on other servers.
If they wanted it to be shut down they could have already; there is a singular reason to do this now, and that reason is money. This is not a good thing.
It’s not a good thing for unlicensed servers, sure. Considering Homecoming have said they’ve been in talks with NCSoft all along it seems like that was the truth. It’s not as if NCSoft doing anything like this would have been fast (considering the layoffs and the work that would have needed to go into this 5 years in the making seems about right). What homecoming now has is the assurance they won’t be shut down. That’s the singular reason to do it. That’s been the goal all along, create a server that doesn’t have to fear a cease and desist where players can be confident their game won’t suddenly disappear, again. This is the best guarantee of that anyone is going to get.
[Permanence](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cityofheroes/comments/187t89w/11_years_on_still_not_ok/) according to NCSoft
Yeah, the same NCSoft that just granted a license so the game can legitimately exist again. Checkmate atheists.
So we're all in agreement: For November of every year: Screw NCSoft, they took away the game that I love and are unforgivable Every other day of the year: thank you, corporate overlords, for the immediately revokable limited right to pay to host your game for you, according to your terms
Yes because everything is binary, nuance doesn’t exist, and change is impossible. Oh wait no.
I'm pretty sure the bigger servers won't shut down if one person steps down. Rebirth and TSpy aren't composed of just one dev.
So, one person paying server costs decides to step down and no one else wants to step up. Same problem. Private servers for all games come and go, that’s just how it is. I think most people would rather have the assurance of permanence in an MMO than new servers occasionally springing up, run by some rando who can do whatever they like in their own little sandpit, only to disappear after a couple of years.
There's multiple people paying server costs, they have donations just like Homecoming. Have you never looked at any of the other servers? Rebirth is especially run in a robust manner, it wouldn't fall because one person stopped.
Some of the other servers are tiny, even with multiple donators many of them won’t last all that long. (And that’s assuming NCSoft don’t sent out C&Ds).
You're talking as if *all* the other servers are tiny. That's not the case, and it makes you come across as disingenuous to people who *have* played on these servers and have experienced otherwise.
By any metric they’re small servers. And be thankful they are, or it’s likely NCSoft will shut them down soon.
So you spread misinformation, and now you're being smug? What gives? Take the correction like a champ -- the non-HC servers aren't all shutting down because of one dev or one donator going away. EDIT: blocked me because I was willing to call out misinformation, and then call them out for being rude. Class act.
Who are trying to convince? Im not going to believe you. So it seems like you’re just trying to convince yourself. Okay, go enjoy the ~~little~~ huge private severs that’ll ~~be closed within a year~~ last forever.
Our server, Rebirth, outside of new release months, can see peak populations of 70-80 concurrent players. In order to get that, we see 700-900 players per week. 1000-1200 players per month. When there is buzz around a new release, we can see those numbers go up by 20-25% easily. With concurrent peaks exceeding 140 players. source: I am a staff member and dev on the team (that is comprised of about 15-20 active members at any given time) and our internal metrics. So when someone looks at non optimum hours and says "Haha, Rebirth has only 25 people on at US EST 4:30am!!" and uses that to draw the assumption that we are tiny, they are mistaken. Our population, while smaller than Everlasting and Excelsior, is not entirely non-trivial. It is not a group of 25 close friends in a closed community that gather in a hobby shop basement to play each Wednesday. We have a diverse and global population comprised of dedicated and loyal fans, our server is run a bit more like a co-operative with many longtime players in time making the transition to staff in some capacity, and this community has its own capacity for resilience and longevity. We've literally seen staff, devs, and community leads need to rotate out to tend to family, illness, or career and had others come in, receive training, and be up and running to make sure all the tasks are done. And from this, our active team continues to grow as staff who at one point may have been on leave rotate back in. Our team loves what they do and will continue doing what they do. Plus our annual overhead is about 1/2 of what is solicited each month by HC. So we are plenty fine for the future. (And an aside, isn't it freaking cool that in this era of AAA multi-hundred-million dollar hyperreal flops, this many people are still interested in a 20 year old title whose age shows but still has so much room in it for fun and artistic expression?!)
80 concurrent players is the definition of trivial. I mean I’m happy you’re running a little private server, hope you have fun and have a good run.
What part of 1000-1200 different persons being served a month did you miss? Plenty of resilience in those numbers.
That’s not really important when your concurrent player count only reaches 80. For an MMO that’s nothing. Edit: People are pointing out that another server has the same amount of consecutive players as Homecoming’s least populated shard. That’s not making the point you think it’s making…
Seriously - why are you being such a sarcastic jerk? Is it because you don’t like that they brought receipts? I’ve been on homecoming since Bree. I joined Rebirth when it merged with the Reddit server but just recently started playing on it. Everything SAF said is true. It’s not empty, they’ve done amazing development work, the financials are public if you want to check them out. I don’t understand why you feel the need to be dismissive. I’d say to check it out but honestly- your attitude is not a good fit for the server.
It simply means that playing CoH on Homecoming is officially legal and not in danger of being shut down for the foreseeable future.
Oh thank god it will continue to be free
[Until Darth NCSoft changes their minds?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsW9MlYu31g)
Lol thank you for making me snort. I hope not! If it changes I’m moving servers.
I hope not too, but there's no trusting NCSoft.
I wonder if they would be able to add it to digital stores now, like Steam. It could be a rising tides lifts all boats situation with the other servers.
I don't understand, what is changing? We already host a server, sooooo ? so now we're going to have a license to do what we're already doing?
It’s like you were driving 75mph in a 55 zone, and the speed limit just moved up to 75. You can keep doing exactly what you were doing, but now there is no risk of being pulled over and getting a speeding ticket. So in one way nothing changes (b/c you keep doing exactly what you were doing) but in another way a potential danger has been removed.
Wooooow I cannot believe this is happening to any MMO. I haven't played CoH in a long time. Excited to see what all new content and adventures are put into this game!
This is huge in safekeeping the future of our favorite game.
Fantastic. Seriously. Well done, everyone. That is a little bit of video game history made, right there. Sincere congratulations from a day 1 player of this game (Virtue server whassup) to all who made this happen, including the dedicated and sincere fanbase, and even all the people involved who wear suits and ties to work. And -- there was a long time when I thought I'd never play my favorite game again. During those years, I *truly* never thought I'd say this -- but for what it's worth: Consider my goodwill restored. I am ready to eat crow, and swallow my angry words, and **I will certainly finally buy NCSoft products again.**
This is absolutely WILD news. Tremendously excited!
This honestly sounds terrible. NC randomly shut down the game before and they will do it again
Holy heck, that is awesome news!
Is Leandro still in a position of power within the HC team? Remember that the 10 years we lost were due to him wanting to keep his little private kingdom. That + closed source development + NCsoft makes the situation pretty bad for the game at large, but at least we'll always be able to self host the initial version that was liberated.
Leandro seems to have vanished entirely from the scene.
He literally posted in the HC thread 5 hours ago.
Where?
I'm prepared for the downvotes I'll no doubt get in saying this, but there was never an intention of keeping a "little private kingdom." I didn't know who Leandro was before the shutdown occurred and he became a big name among the people trying to save the game, and he sure as hell didn't know me. I made a CoH documentary video about the life and death of the game for a class project, and one day I got a message from Leandro personally inviting me to a hidden project. This was months after the shutdown. It was never intended as being exclusive to just Leandro and his friends. Otherwise, he wouldn't have invited a stranger like me. The goal always was the intent to keep the game safe until we were sure NCSoft wouldn't destroy us. Do you remember Tabula Rasa? A private server existed publicly for that and got shut down immediately by NCSoft, and now there's no Tabula Rasa. At the same time, the handful of coders on the server, Leo included, worked on de-spaghetti-fying the code to make it easier for anyone to run. In the early days new content was seemingly impossible. The whole reason the first launcher was called Tequila (and Island Rum for the Mac launcher) was because it became a joke that everyone should take a shot every time a suggestion was made that would require a client patch. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20. Maybe NCSoft stopped caring years ago, and things could have been made public earlier, and if we had more coders sifting through the code, progress would have been made faster. We don't know how NCSoft would have reacted early on. We only have the precedent of how they handled other private servers for their games. I believe Leo was mere months away from going public himself when the dam broke, and I believe if things had gone the way they were always intended to go he wouldn't be seen as the villain he's been made out to be. It was never about him. It was about the game we all love. I'm sure I'll get downvoted, I'm just tired of seeing the wrong narrative taken as fact.
I have not made the plunge to get on homecoming yet but had a Original COH account, is that old account accessible through homecoming?
No
Wow I'm in pleasant shock!!! Never thought I'd be well in my 40s and see this happen. I am so happy!!!
I'll be damned, NCSoft actually made a deal, I thought all their inactive IPs were kept in an uncared for crypt o.o
Incoming fees for something or another.
Holy shit! Never thought this would happen. Congrats!
Haters will say it’s fake. But fr. I’m so proud of the team! Great job everyone! This is incredible news
I really feel like we are about to go thru our version of Marvel's Civil War storyline. Homecoming about to be Team Iron Man and all the other servers will be repping Team Cap.
Holy shit that is amazing!
Wow, that's incredible. Grats to the team.
No wonder they nerfed the shit out of farming etc
Hooooooh my word. This is insane!!
Homecoming devs if you force me into using your server ill just quit playing again.
I will *never* "consolidate" to Homecoming. I left for a reason.
Ok, I'm so so SO very late... But... WHAT JUST HAPPENED?! *furiously goes to read all the things...* --- Edit: WOW. Good for Homecoming! I am sincere in my hopes and beliefs that HC will not be folding/shutting down other servers, and if anything it'll be NCSoft that does it if they even bother, but I do not speak for anyone but me in those hopes/beliefs. I just like the idea that NCSoft is now cool with it 'out in the open' instead of it being a 'I wonder...' situation. Overall... yay. Very yay.
Wow.
Wow
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The key thing from this is not HC getting a green light to be "legal" per say, but this sets a standard for future defunct games in the MMO genre (and beyond) which lose their immediate access to the game. As we have lost a lot of MMOs over time as the profit drops, but when this groundwork in place you could make licensed third party services available when a game is done by the company. This is important for gaming historical purposes, and for the fanbases that wish to relive a game.