There's an all-star NCsoft MOBA and it's got Statesman from City of Heroes
Take me down to the Paragon City.
Remember City of Heroes? Cryptic Studios' 2004 massively multiplayer online role-playing game let you create superheroes and team up with others to complete missions and fight criminals in Paragon City. I enjoyed it!
While City of Heroes maintained a loyal fanbase, it struggled, like pretty much all the MMOs of the time did, to compete with Blizzard behemoth World of Warcraft, and in November 2012 publisher NCsoft switched the lights of Paragon City off for the last time.
That was that for City of Heroes. But while NCsoft has shown little desire to revive the game, the Korean company has brought one of its most famous characters back to life - in a MOBA.
Master X Master is NCSoft's shot at the crowded free-to-play action MOBA genre. Like Heroes of the Storm, Master X Master employs an "all-star" approach to its roster of heroes, featuring characters from various NCsoft games. One of those characters is Statesman from City of Heroes.
Statesman was one of the first heroes of Paragon City and leader of the Freedom Phalanx. Not the most famous video game star around, then, but certainly one of the most prominent City of Heroes characters. If you played the MMO, you probably remember him.
In Master X Master, Statesman is a frontline juggernaut who takes damage for his team and controls the fight from the ground and the air. He's one of more than 30 Masters, as they're called, planned to be included in the MOBA when it comes out this summer. There are characters from the likes of Blade & Soul, Guild Wars 2, WildStar, Lineage 1 and 2 and now City of Heroes. A beta test is planned for 6-27 April.
With no new City of Heroes game in sight, fans have created their own spiritual successor, called Ship of Heroes. The video, below, shows off work in progress.
Ship of Heroes is being developed in the Unreal 4 engine, with an alpha planned for 2018. The Kickstarter begins on 4th April.