MMOGs are not timeless, and one day our favorites will sunset for the final time, bringing an end to our virtual lives in that world forever. This is what happened to City of Heroes (CoH) fans last November, when NCsoft shut down the superhero-based MMOG much to the chagrin of its players.
After the announcement, fans rallied and took to social media pages, opened petitions, posted on the CoH forums, held in-game rallies, and took advantage of every other outlet at their disposal to try and change NCsofts mind in one of the largest save the game campaigns in the history of online gaming. But despite a gallant effort, NCsoft still sunset the game last November, displacing the passionate CoH fan base. But from the ashes of CoH arose two new fan projects with the Heroes and Villains and The Phoenix Project from Missing World Media.
Missing World Media is a studio made up mostly of volunteers that have been donating their spare time to help create and code a new superhero game to serve as the spiritual successor to COH. But a project this ambitious will need a little help, so Cameron Johnson, studio director for Missing Worlds Media, is looking to the one place that a dream project can become a reality Kickstarter.
In a recent interview with Polygon, Johnson confirmed that the project will be debuting on Kickstarter starting September 8th. According to the Technical Director Nate Downes, the game is nearly 1/3 complete, but theres still plenty to do before its ready for primetime, and Johnson hopes to raise enough funding from Kickstarter to license Epics Unreal Engine 3, and hire some full-time help to get the project completed and released to the displaced CoH community.
You can read more about what the team has planned for the game in the full interview over at Polygon. If all goes as planned, players should be putting on their capes and spandex once again by the end of 2015. It should be interesting to watch this develop in the coming months so stay tuned.
Source: Polygon
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