City Of Heroes - A Final Goodbye

City Of Heroes - Shutting Down

When I woke up this morning, I received an unusual e-mail from an MMO game I played before. Though I haven’t visited that game since 2007, it’s quite disheartening to see that a good online game is shutting its doors to the public. City of Heroes is officially shutting down this day, December 2, 2012… COH is one of the major MMORPG that is based on a make-your-own-superhero mechanics. It’s the father of character customization which gave way to other online games to follow its footsteps. I also enjoyed this game for a year, discovering many powerful skills for my toons, and meeting a lot of superheroes in the process.

As like any other online games out there, it needs a community to follow it and a group of gamers to invest on it by paying their monthly subscription; this converts into revenues which help run their operations. Also, COH needs manpower and resources to exist; without these important components – it will really come to this point. It is clear that there’s a big shift in online gaming these days, as most MMORPG goes for Free-To-Play business model – with micro-transactions for their revenues. With these changes, most Pay-To-Play online gaming companies will have no choice but to convert their games to the FTP model, because it will be very hard to compete with other new free online games when they still stick with their old system.

Flying around Paragon City is one of the most iconic scenes I remembered about this game. And partying with other superheroes to tackle high-level dungeons is really an experience I will never forget. Most of my virtual friends came from this game and several of them are still an active player of COH. But now, everything must come to an end, and this final goodbye will surely break the hearts of loyal fans – which have been there from the very beginning.

Nothing is really permanent in this world and that include our favorite games. City of heroes will forever stay in our memories and hearts. As it made an impression in the gaming industry and its contribution to a new genre (Superhero MMO) will always be remembered.

Posted in: City of Heroes, online games