The first of all of these was Homecoming, which launched mere days after the code was liberated. In total, MassivelyOP now counts nine total private servers, with misty-eyed names like Rebirth, Unity, Victory!, and Project Ouroboros. There was an initial fear (or perhaps fearmongering from the cabal) about legal action if the code got out, but that hasn't happened so far. Those files quickly spread across the internet, with small collectives of amateur programmers banding together to prop up their own interpretations of the data SCoRE was hoarding. On April 18, a week after SCoRE's revelation hit the internet, the server's top brass made the decision to leak their code to a Discord channel. The kismet arrived because, basically, everyone has gotten what they wanted.

Scroll through the forums today, and you won't catch a whiff of the bloodshed. 'People are sharing pictures of their characters all the time, asking for help, organizing events and such.' ' back to what used to be: Friendly, helpful, accepting of newcomers,' says one of the subreddit's new mods, who took over earlier this year after the SCoRE debacle. A prevailing sense of sanguine calm has settled on players. It's been three months since the City of Heroes insurrection, and miraculously, things have mostly gone back to normal. (Image credit: NCSoft) It takes a village

And then, in April, all of that changed forever. Instead, the City of Heroes subreddit morphed into a repository of old screenshots and threadbare memories. While a few fragmented mirrors of the old content washed up on the internet, none of them rebuilt Paragon City in the way players remembered. When the apocalypse hit and the server bays were taken offline, City of Heroes lifers seemed fated to spend the rest of the decade in exile. City of Heroes never managed a World of Warcraft-like cultural zeitgeist, but the game's optimistic mid-century modern glean, and the fantasy of creating your own Justice League, resonated with a small, eternally dedicated community. In 2012, NCSoft terminated Paragon Studios, the developer that supported superhero MMO City of Heroes since its launch in 2004. Here's the quick version of what led to this moment, in case you missed it.

The community wanted to retake their city, and they wanted to string up the supervillains responsible for letting them go hungry.

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