I wasn’t planning to put up a post for another week, maybe two-yeah, I’m planning another “annual” post, with more on that front when it happens. But the news today was a big enough bombshell that I felt compelled to comment.
About four years ago, back in the halcyon days before pandemics happened, I noted that the MMORPG City of Heroes had returned-in the form of rogue servers. I called the post “Phoenix? Or Zombie?”, because I figured either it would either rise like a phoenix from the ashes, or get smacked with a shovel and re-buried. And for several years, I waited to see if NCSoft, the owners of the IP, would do anything to the proliferation.
Well, today, the answer finally has come, and it’s a phoenix: NCSoft has officially licensed the game to the folks running the Homecoming servers. (At least, that’s the general impression from other more reputable sites; I haven’t actually *seen* anything from NCSoft, but I figure nothing will bring a hammer down harder than a false claim on their name, so I’m willing to accept it on faith here.)
What does this mean? Well, for the folks playing on Homecoming, probably nothing much (although they may have to swap launchers to the “official” Homecoming launcher). For the other rogue servers? Hard to say; it’d still be a game of whack-a-mole to take them all down, and if NCSoft wasn’t willing to bother before, I can’t imagine they’d be willing to bother now. And while it’s possible the Homecoming folks might do something, I have trouble seeing it; they run off of donations and goodwill, and legal fees might damage that goodwill-especially since the other servers aren’t doing anything that they hadn’t done prior to today, except obviously lobby for the license.
For folks who aren’t playing and wishing they could play on a legal, official server: well, today’s the day.
I’ll be honest: I never expected this to happen. At best, I figured we’d continue on as we have been, with the apparent indifference of NCSoft. Sure, I’d heard the folks at Homecoming claim they were pursuing a deal with NCSoft, but after years of Homecoming-on top of the years between the game closure and the revelation of the rogue servers-I figured it was just so much smoke. I’m not afraid to say that I misjudged the entire situation there, and was completely and totally wrong. And it’s good to be wrong, sometimes.
What this means for the future of Homecoming itself is a harder question to answer. Will it start getting paid, full time developers to build upon the game? Homecoming’s not exactly known for fast development, but it’s been an all-volunteer project to the best of my knowledge. I don’t know that this will change. But as an evil future Emperor once said, “I will watch your career with great interest.”
Faces of the Ranger 