Fans of City of Heroes might yet see the return if their beloved superhero MMO. President of Missing Worlds Media Nate Downes says he’s been in talks with NCsoft, who own the property, regarding the resurrection of the property.
Downes says the current deal is this: ”The CoH IP would be spun to its own company, to handle licensing. This company would itself license the existing engine from NCSoft for the creation of a maintenance mode, using a binary copy of the i23 server.”
That essentially means Missing Worlds, who are currently developing a spiritual successor to City of Heroes called City of Titans, would end up making an actual, official successor to the game. They’d restart the retired COH servers (without restoring character data, sadly), which would allow them to transition smoothly from the original to its successor.
It’s not quite a done deal yet, so fans should be cautiously optimistic. ”So where are we now?”, writes Downes. ”Right now, still discussing terms, ideas, limits. The challenges we have been given we stepped up for and handled. Likely there will be discussions and adjustments right up until the moment the deal is signed. The whole thing may fall apart.”
That said, it’s a far more hopeful time for fans of City of Heroes than it was even a few months ago. ”They could have ignored us from day 1,” explains Downes, ”but they did not. They may not operate at the pace we would like, but they are at the pace they are comfortable with. At this point, the ball is in their court.”
We’ll keep our eyes peeled for any further developments. You can find out more about Missing Worlds’ City of Titans on the Kickstarter page.
