Popular games for collection City of Heroes

City of Heroes was a superhero based MMORPG that ran from April 2004 to November 2012. In April 2019, source code capable of running a City of Heroes server was distributed widely. This made it possible to create City of Heroes servers outside the direct purview of NCSoft and revived interest in the game, which by then had been out of development for more than six years. As of January 2024, NCSoft has not moved to have servers based on this source code shut down. On January 4, 2024, NCSoft officially granted Homecoming Servers LLC who operated the rogue server Homecoming: City of Heroes an official license to host the game.

CoV was released as an "expanshalone" release, or an expansion that did not require the original City of Heroes purchase to work (i.e. stand-alone). It offered five new character archetypes that were, at the time, exclusive to Villain characters, new maps, and began the first PvP Zones (versus the Arena, which were instanced maps made for PvP fighting) of the game. City of Villains also was playable with the same subscription fee that paid for City of Heroes access after buying City of Villains. The retail box included four CD-ROMs for installation current to Issue 6, one of four limited edition HeroClix figures of the game's villains, a poster of a map of the Rogue Isles, and a serial code that gave access to the game and one month of game play. Since 2008, after the NCSoft acquisition of the intellectual properties, owning either City of Heroes or City of Villains unlocked both titles at no additional cost.

City of Heroes: Going Rogue was released in 2010. Unlike City of Villains, Going Rogue was an expansion rather than a Stand Alone and required the original game(s) to play. Going Rogue added an Alignment system, which allowed players to switch from Hero to Villain and added two intermediate Alignments: Vigilante, as a player progresses from Hero to Villain, and Rogue, as a player progresses from Villain to Hero. Players with Vigilante or Rogue characters had access to both City of Heroes's Paragon City and City of Villains's Rogue Isles until they change to Hero or Villain. The expansion also added the Praetorian Earth dimension where players could start out as neutrally-aligned Praetorians (choosing any of the ten basic Archetypes available to Heroes or Villains), either deciding to side with Emperor Cole's ruling faction and become a Loyalist or side with the Resistance; the allegiance could change as the player chose and completed missions. Praetorian players could also attack new Neutral mobs and would eventually be able to play a mission that allowed them to choose to be a Hero or Villain and complete gameplay in the original games. Going Rogue also granted access to four new power sets, new costume sets and auras, and introduced missions that started after defeating mobs that affected the player's Alignment.