class="MsoNoSpacing">style="width: 620px; height: 388px;" alt=""src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/253750">

Everything

comes to an end eventually. Whether it’s a

job, a movie, or a beloved family pet, there comes a point when it can

no

longer carry on. Everyone handles such endings differently, no matter

what the

subject matter. This is even true for video games and especially MMOs.

Over the

years, a number of titles have had their last hurrah – Auto

Assault, The Matrix

Online, Tabula Rasa, and City of Heroes are all dead and gone.

Whenever

this happens, the game community in question is

quite obviously upset, hurt, and angered over the decision. Most of the

time,

those feelings come out in the form of emails, forum posts, website

creations,

and other outlets. Some players even toss legal concerns to the wind

and work

on creating emulators by mining the data of the game in question. Argue

the

legality of such projects all you want, but if a person or company

doesn’t own

the intellectual property rights, then they have no right to create an

emulator, no matter how much they love a game.

In

the past, these various forms of outcries have fallen

on deaf ears and the game in question eventually becomes nothing more

than a

footnote in the annals of MMO history. Tales of glory and adventure

still get

told around the campfire late at night, but in the end,

they’re nothing more

than memories. Believe it or not though, this tale may have a different

ending.

class="MsoNoSpacing">

style="width: 620px; height: 388px;" alt=""

src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/253748">

Rather

than accept defeat, one group of enterprising

individuals have gone a different route and created their own company

called

Missing Worlds Media. Their intent? To create a spiritual successor to

the game

they all loved so much, City

of Heroes.

It may seem like an impossible task, but their href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/">recent

fund raising efforts say

otherwise. In less than a single week, the company

has met its initial fundraising goal of $320,000. In fact, as of the

time of

this writing, they’ve even surpassed their first stretch goal

and are sitting

at a whopping $386,000+ with 24 days still left to go.

With

this kind of support being shown so quickly in a

Kickstarter endeavor, we decided City

of

Titans deserved some digging

into so we reached out and spoke with the

game’s Project Lead, Chris Hare. Chris was there during the style="">City of Heroes

beta and stuck with the

game until its untimely end. He’s seen the highs and

he’s witnessed the lows

first hand. It was the support of the game’s fans that

initially prompted him

and others to start work on City

of

Titans. The project hit some

bumps along the road (as any volunteer-only workgroup

will) and some involved members split off to pursue other projects.

Fast

forward to today and the progress the team has made

is clear. As they explain in their Kickstarter video, they’ve

been busy testing

different systems, different engines, and more. Once it was decided

what would

be needed to complete the project, it was time to start requesting

funding.

While they’ve broken down the costs of some things such as

licensing costs for

the graphics engine, there are still some areas that haven’t

been disclosed

yet. When asked about this, Chris said an update on the companies

infrastructure needs will be coming in the future.

class="MsoNoSpacing">

style="width: 620px; height: 388px;" alt=""

src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/253749">

style="">City of Heroes

had a history of community involvement and Chris was quick to confirm

that City of

Titans would involve players in

a similar fashion but even more so than its predecessor. In fact, there

are

quite a few interesting plans in the works Chris was kind enough to

make us

privy to, but that we can’t share until they’re

publicly announced by Missing

World Media themselves. Let’s

just say

that if they can be pulled off, former style="">City

of Heroes players are going to

be very happy.

One

of the more interesting pieces of the conversation we

had involved the vision for the game. The initial goal is to allow

players to have

a traditional story-guided experience, all the way to level 50 if they

so

choose. Chris also stated, “ style="">I consider

playing multiple characters to be part of the end game of City of

Heroes –

experiencing things through different perspectives and different

missions.”

He wants this concept to continue in City of Titans, but with all the

bells and

whistles attached that you can imagine. There are big plans for lots of

possible storylines players will be able to play through from level 1

to 50.

style=""> Before

I let Chris

go, there was one topic in particular I had to bring up because

let’s face it –

a world of superheroes and supervillains naturally lends itself to PvP.

I told

Chris that I thought City of Heroes should have allowed some

superheroes to try

and mess up my bank job when I’m holding it up as a

supervillain. The two sides

should be actively working to screw the other side over. When I brought

up my

issues, he laughed excitedly and would only say, “ style="">Let’s just say PvP is a hot topic”.



