Ship of Heroes Shutting Down: Was Homecoming the Real Culprit?

So Ship of Heroes is sunsetting next week. Shocking? Not really. But here's a question worth chewing on: would it have stood a chance if Homecoming had never brought City of Heroes back?

Let's rewind a bit. City of Heroes is still the high water mark for superhero MMOs. That's not just nostalgia talking — it's a genuine benchmark that no game in the genre has managed to top. And then, years after the official servers went dark, the game came back. Officially, even. That's a wild turn of events that nobody saw coming.

Here's where it gets interesting. Ship of Heroes was built in that strange limbo period when City of Heroes was gone but not forgotten. It was one of several spiritual successors trying to fill a void that, frankly, a lot of players never stopped mourning. The pitch was simple: give the superhero MMO crowd a new home.

But then Homecoming happened. And suddenly, the void wasn't a void anymore. Players who had been waiting for a replacement got the original back instead. Why settle for a lookalike when the real thing is right there, officially supported and free to play?

That's the cruel irony here. Ship of Heroes may not have been killed by a lack of quality or effort. It may have been killed by timing — by the return of the very game it was trying to succeed. As MOP's Eliot has pointed out, the fact that City of Heroes still holds the high water mark is remarkable in itself. But the fact that it came back and reclaimed its throne? That's a whole different level of remarkable.

So we're left with a genuinely tough question. Would Ship of Heroes have succeeded if Homecoming didn't happen? Maybe. Maybe not. The superhero MMO space is brutal, and even without City of Heroes around, there's no guarantee players would have flocked to any single successor. But it's hard not to wonder what could have been.

What do you think? Would Ship of Heroes have carved out its own niche if City of Heroes had stayed gone, or was it always fighting an uphill battle? Let us know in the comments.