City of Heroes is one of my favourite games, and I’ve played enough MMOs to have very specific opinions on quest journals. I actually interviewed the hardworking fans behind its officially-sanctioned private server, Homecoming, and three of its original developers who were there for its shutdown. It’s still unmatched as an MMORPG, and I desperately want a spiritual successor.
So know that it is with no malice that I say that Ship of Heroes has left me completely and utterly baffled. First announced back in 2016, Ship of Heroes has spent the last nine years somewhat struggling.
It was intended as a spiritual successor to City of Heroes, carrying on the torch of the shut-down MMORPG—this was before private servers burst out of the woodwork after years of hiding in 2019. It’s set on a giant, metropolis-sized spaceship, hence the name, and has a lot of the same hallmarks—archetypes with primary and secondary powersets, augments you can slot in ’em, and so on.
Unfortunately, a cancelled kickstarter only saw around £26,000 of a £297,114 goal reached in 2017. Nonetheless, its developers have admirably continued development, to the point where it was actually released this week. Now, I’d typically pump my fist for an underdog, even with its rough-edged trailers. Just take a look:
Watch On
To put it kindly, none of what I’ve seen out of Ship of Heroes has exactly inspired confidence, but I like when folks see through a troubled project. And who knows, maybe if it gets enough of a following, it could—what’s that? $60? Huh?
That’s right, Ship of Heroes, that plucky indie MMORPG competing with a sanctioned private server actual game it sought to honour, has decided to release with a $45 price tag and a monthly subscription of $15, in 2025. In other words, a $60 buy-in off the bat. At least you get an optimistic “all DLCs for two years post launch.”
Monthly subscription fees are something even large-scale games with player bases in the dozens of thousands struggle to pitch to prospective players: Only World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 really stand as the last bastions of subscription MMOs, with other games subsisting (often quite successfully) on free-to-play models.
It is not going well. At the time of writing, the game has a 24-hour peak of 32 players. On launch day, 100 players gave it a try. This number dwindled to a low of 11 by Tuesday. By Wednesday, that low had spiked down to seven. Seven entire players in your $15 subscription MMO.
Things aren’t going too great on its discussion forums, either—it’s a sea of locked threads out there. Some of which are a bit hostile, but several are as innocuous as “kinda wish there was a demo” and “I sympathize with the devs despite everything. They put a lot into this project”.
A developer by the name of SoH7, who may or may not be an actual community manager, is not having a great time. “Never before has a group of posters made it exactly, brilliantly, and indisputably apparent why such rude, unfriendly and insulting people need to be kept out by our purchase price. These trolls are making our case to the game community with virtually every post.
“I picture you on stage like at the Oscars,” they continue in the locked thread, “Accepting the award on behalf of rude and insulting people everywhere. I’m sure your acceptance speech will break the internet with its power.”
I say this with as much kindness as I can muster: This really ain’t it. It’s a real shame that Ship of Heroes seems to be flopping, but laying into randoms on your Steam forums isn’t the antidote to that situation, and it doesn’t take a genius to know that a monthly subscription probably wasn’t the way to go. From Randy Pitchford to the smallest indie dev, the best tactic really is to log off.
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