City of Heroes, a relic from the MMORPG era of modern gaming, might be making a comeback now that "Homecoming," a famous fan-hosted server, has been licensed by the game’s publisher to develop the game further. Read on to learn more.
City of Heroes: Homecoming Announces Official NCSOFT Licensing
A little over a decade after its official shutdown, City of Heroes might be making a comeback with City of Heroes: Homecoming, henceforth referred to as Homecoming. The fan-hosted server kept the game alive well after its expiration date through its members’ collective effort and donation drives – an effort that seems to have finally paid off.
As announced in its official forums, "Homecoming has been granted a license to operate a City of Heroes™ server and further develop the game – subject to conditions and limitations under the contract." The project will remain free and donation-funded, although hosting the servers officially may bring additional costs – more on that later.
The announcement went on to clarify that "NCSOFT still owns the City of Heroes intellectual property and its derivatives" and that "NCSOFT has always had (and will continue to have) the right to demand that Homecoming shuts down." While the looming thought of NCSOFT just showing up one day and pulling the plug on the whole project doesn’t inspire the most confidence among the player base, an official collaboration makes this outcome less likely, as the announcement clarifies later on.
"This agreement provides a framework under which Homecoming can operate the game in a way that complies with NCSoft’s wishes in hopes of minimizing the chances of that happening. We’ve had a really positive and productive relationship with NCSoft for over four years now, so we do not anticipate there being any issues."
Homecoming Overheads and Donation Targets to Rise Due to Licensing
While this is great news for those who kept Homecoming running for years, it’s not all happy endings and superhero landings. Officially hosting a server brings with it new costs and larger overheads. This is certainly doable for a company, but for a donation-driven and community-managed server, regardless of licensing, this could potentially pose a few problems.
"Our overheads will increase slightly to keep up with our commitments as a licensee," the announcement stated. "In the short term we will be increasing our donation targets in order to build up a disaster recovery fund. This will be roughly equivalent to 30% of our annual costs."
In addition to the additional server costs, there will be one-time legal fees that need to be paid to ratify the licensing. Again, some uncertainty lies in the future of Homecoming, but the team behind the project did state that "We’re now free to explore alternate hosting options, which may alter our ongoing costs."
Regarding the Inclusivity of the Licensing Agreement
Homecoming isn’t the only custom server project running at the moment, however, and many were questioning the inclusivity of the licensing agreement. Unfortunately, the announcement confirmed that NCSOFT offered Homecoming a limited agreement and that other servers were "out of scope."
This doesn’t bode well for players populating said servers, though the Homecoming team did state that "[We] hope that our license will help us consolidate our users with City of Heroes fans from other servers."
Whether this will extend the life of City of Heroes or solidify its demise, we can’t really say right now. Until then, fans of this beloved relic from the MMORPG era of gaming can only hope that this deal actually managed to save the day.
Source:
City of Heroes: Homecoming's Official Announcement
