The servers could be shut down a legal order at any instant, zapping all the characters rolled up and played. In return, the Homecoming folk have been quietly reimposing some of the IP restrictions NCSoft had to keep themselves out of trouble with other companies (so sorry, Wolverclaws dude).Īll of this means’ things are precarious. The Homecoming crew has been in negotiations with NCSoft to allow them to continue and not get a cease-and-desist so far NCSoft has been holding back, almost certainly because they realize that the djinn is out of the bottle and stomping on the “out” servers won’t keep others from loading up the same code in private.

Probably the most widely known of theses servers are running under a common label of “Homecoming,” and that’s where Margie and I are playing (on the Everlasting shard, for those interested). The secret came out this past spring by one of the players finally squeeed too loudly about it and it became openly known - and SCoRE then distributed their code to anyone who wanted it, ensuring it couldn’t be stamped out. The backstoryĪfter NCSoft shut down CoX in 2012, apparently some clever folk calling themselves SCoRE (Secret Cabal of Reverse Engineers) backward-engineered a bunch of stuff and got the game running, on a private server accessed by a handful of players. But the gameplay is as good as ever, the rich backdrop and fun social aspects are all there, and it’s been a huge treat (and, of course, time suck). Are the graphics a bit out of date? Sure.

There’s that old phrase that you can’t go home again, but diving back into CoX has been just gobsmacking fun that feels completely natural. So in case anyone was wondering (Narrator: “Nobody was wondering”), yes, I have been playing a lot of City of Heroes on the rogue Homecoming server.

People still play city of heroes