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City Of Heroes Ends As Paragon Studios Closes

 Games, Hero Community  No Responses »
Sep 012012
 
The original City of Heroes box art
Krypton Radio Newswire
The original Cryptic Studios box art for City of Heroes

The original Cryptic Studios box art for City of Heroes

In a surprise statement yesterday,  Paragon Studios announced that would be closing its doors forever.  All development on its popular City of Heroes online game has been halted, and the service will close sometime before the end of 2012.  It was parent company NCSoft’s decision to close its wholly owned subsidiary.  No explanation for the closure has yet been offered.  All  recurring billing and Paragon Market purchases have ceased effectively immediately.

The players went immediately to the City of Heroes the official forums to express their shock and disbelief; the move came as a surprise to nearly everyone, as from a player’s perspective the game had been doing very well.  A petition to get NCSoft to save Paragon Studios and City of Heroes has been set up at change.org, but the move may be financially motivated.  The revenues City of Heroes generates may be enough to sustain Paragon, or enough to allow NCSoft to move forward with its next big project with which to grow the parent company, but not both.  By the end of the year, despite the petition, City of Heroes players may be displaced by the hundreds of thousands.

City of Heroes was launched in 2004, developed by Cryptic Studios and published by NCSoft.  The game was the focus of a heated copyright infringement dispute launched by Marvel Comics.  Marvel’s assertion was that the superhero designer features of CoH made it possible to infringe on Marvel-held copyrights by allowing users to recreate copyrighted character designs.  The suit was thrown out when it was discovered that Marvel’s legal team had fabricated its own evidence.

City of Heroes was followed by the release of City of Villians and various other spinoff titles; most recently Krypton Radio reported on a promotional effort as recently as last April for the eigth anniversary of the world’s most popular superhero MMO.  Obviously, at that point Paragon had no clue that NCSoft might be planning to shut them down before the year was out.

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Links

Game Maker Cryptic Studios Discovers Breach of Servers From 2010

 Animation, Business, Comics, Corsair's Chronicles, Cybercrime, Internet, Net Culture, Science Fiction, Special Reports, Star Trek, Superhero  No Responses »
Apr 262012
 
cryptic_logo_on

Krypton Radio Newswire

 

Cryptic Studios, maker of the popular MMO’s Star Trek Online, Champions Online, Neverwinter, City of Heroes, and City of Villians; has issued a press release indicating that they have just recently discovered a serious breach of their security systems from 2010.

 

IMPORTANT CUSTOMER SERVICE NOTIFICATION REGARDING UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS

At Cryptic Studios, your privacy and security is important. As part of our ongoing efforts to monitor and enhance security, we recently detected evidence of an unauthorized access to one of our user databases. The unauthorized access occurred in December 2010, and evidence of this has just been uncovered due to increased security analysis. Continue reading »

City of Heroes Launches Issue 22

 Comics, Games  No Responses »
Mar 072012
 

NCsoft and Paragon Studios has launched City of Heroes Issue 22: Death Incarnate. As the first major free update to City of Heroes Freedom, the update introduces new powers and costumes, exclusive VIP content, expanded endgame features and reintroduces Dark Astoria, a zone corrupted by evil magical forces.

Death Incarnate new features:

- Dark Astoria Incarnate Zone: Dark Astoria becomes a Co-op Incarnate Zone in Death Incarnate, allowing level +50 players to participate in the “danse macabre” co-op style gameplay as they traverse the dark, twisted, undead nightmare that has become Dark Astoria.
- Darkness Power Set: A horrifying new Power Set for Controllers and Dominators, Darkness Control allows players to command shadows and spectral minions to terrorise their foes.
- Dilemma Diabolique Incarnate Trial: Heroes and Villains must band together against the evil sorceress Diabolique as she wrests the power from the banished god Mot. If she succeeds in her plans, all of creation will be in jeopardy as she moves to take her “rightful” role as the master of all creation.
- More content for all levels: Fight off the Shivans as they attack Bloody Bay by grouping up in the new PvE Trial Drowning in Blood. Take your Hero or Villain through new Mission Arcs in Steel Canyon and Cap au Diable. Save Talos Island and Sharkhead Isle from Adamastor’s rage as he cuts a wave of destruction across the islands in the new Adamastor Zone Event.

City of Heroes Issue 23 is in its final stages of pre-production and Issue 24 is currently in the works, according to the MMO’s new producer Melissa Bianco.