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''City of Heroes'' (''CoH'') was a massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on the superhero comic book genre developed by Cryptic Studios and published by NCsoft. The game was launched in North America on April 27, 2004, and in Europe (by NCsoft Europe) on February 4, 2005, with English, German and French language servers. Twenty-three free major updates for ''City of Heroes'' were released before its shutdown, with a nearly finished 24th update able to be played on the games beta server. The final live update, "Where Shadows Lie," was released on May 31, 2012. On August 31, 2012, NCsoft terminated its Paragon Studios development team, ending all production on ''CoH''〔 with the last day of services on November 30, 2012. In the game, players created super-powered player characters that could team up with others to complete missions and fight criminals belonging to various gangs and organizations in the fictional Paragon City. ==Production history== On October 31, 2005, the game's first sequel, ''City of Villains'' (''CoV''), was launched, allowing players to play as supervillains. Initially dubbed as an "expanshalone" by the developers (a portmanteau of an expansion pack and stand-alone), the game did not require ''CoH'' to run, but if the user had both games, content was added to the ''CoH'' side of game play. On July 16, 2008, NCsoft merged the two games' content together. Thus, a player who only owned ''City of Heroes'' could now play ''City of Villains'', and vice versa. Prior to this, a purchase was required to access either game's content, but they were linked by one account and subscription fee. On November 6, 2007, NCsoft announced their purchase of the ''CoH''/''CoV'' intellectual property and transitioned the staff from Cryptic Studios to a new location in Mountain View, California, to continue development of the game.〔(【引用サイトリンク】City of Heroes Announcement ) 〕 The new studio on April 14, 2009, became Paragon Studios, which shared credit with Cryptic Studios for the development work. This then led to ''City of Heroes'' becoming available for download on Steam, along with other NCsoft titles, on April 22, 2009.〔(【引用サイトリンク】City of Heroes gets Steamed! )〕 On October 30, 2008, NCsoft announced a partnership with Transgaming Technologies in order to bring both ''City of Heroes'' and ''City of Villains'' and all 13 expansions to Mac OS X.〔 〕 The ''City of Heroes: Going Rogue'' expansion's release was announced on May 11, 2009. This part of the game centered on the alternate reality of Praetoria and featured a new alignment system allowing players characters to shift allegiances between Heroes and Villains, giving characters access to both Paragon City of ''CoH'' and the Rogue Isles of ''CoV''. Paragon Studios described this as "() the shades of gray that lay between Heroes and Villains".〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=City of Heroes Going Rogue Expansion )〕 ''Going Rogue'' was released on August 17, 2010, with pre-purchasers able to play on August 16. On June 20, 2011, Paragon Studios announced that they were going to switch to a hybrid subscription model called ''City of Heroes: Freedom'', adding in a free-to-play game model. Special models for former subscribers would be termed Premium Players, and current subscribers would become VIP players, who would gain access to all the content in the various upcoming game updates. On August 31, 2012, Paragon Studios announced that it was being closed, and ''City of Heroes'' would cease all billing immediately and begin the process of shutting down the service. The stated explanation for this move was a "realignment of company focus and publishing support". November 30, 2012, was listed as the official shutdown date of the game and the servers were turned off at midnight PST. Many players arrived en masse to express their continued protest, support, and fond farewells, including messages of gratitude from the developers and moderators thanking their fans for their support and passion for the game.〔 A variety of efforts got underway, led by players of the game, to keep the game operating past the announced date of closure. Ultimately, their efforts were unsuccessful, and the game shut down as scheduled. Missing Worlds Media's president Nate Downes announced in September 2014 that he was interested in reviving the game's intellectual property, which might enable the final version of the game to be released. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「City of Heroes」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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