Well, you wanted the City of Heroes private server code, and you got it.
"It was uploaded to a Discord server somebody started who we don’t know," a Discord source who is familiar with the situation told me. The files spread like wildfire after 300 people congregated there. It is not the character files. It doesn’t contain mission files or NPCs. But it is a large piece of the puzzle needed to reverse engineer the game.
It's all part of an ongoing story we've been reporting on all week. Last week, information about a City of Heroes private server was released online. The community then agitated for the purveyors of the code to be distributed to everyone and not just a select few. It became clear last night that there was a possible solution to the drama.
Ahead of the drop of the files, we spoke to the anonymous Discord participants who were apparently given the code to clean up and roll out to the public. Here's their story.
MassivelyOP: Do multiple people have access to all files so that they can be hosted independently by different people? Or is this just one of those situations where everyone gets a different thing, and only their combined powers can make a server run? Are all of these files accessible to everyone? Or will it be restricted to a group of people vetted for running a community server.
Everyone will be able to have access. This seems to be a most satisfying approach. We aren't going to make a server. It's upto the community to decide what they want to do with it. That seems to match Leo's wish.
The person who holds the code does not have the characters. Leo still does. It's the server code, as far as we can tell. I don't want to speak for Leo, but I believe personally that he intends to give it back to us in a way that ensures we get our characters and not characters belonging to other people. He is not involved at this time. I'm assuming that any issues regarding the character information will be addressed at a later time! The character database is not yet available.
What is being done to ensure the code stays with the community forever? Like, what if everyone with a copy gets hit by a bus?
Not much immediately. [The person who received the code last night] was only a random dude.
What is happening to the actual existing SCORE server and the people on it and their characters? Is it over?
How can people protect themselves against legal action beyond the Great Scrobening?
He scrubbed it. We don’t know! It's scary to be honest. Either way, it should be clear: We are operating independently from Leo. Nothing we speak should be taken as an official Leo message. Dude's dealt with enough hardship as it is.
We want to thank all our sources for being honest. We want to be clear: we do not encourage illegal activity. We advise everyone involved to carefully consider their actions.
Concerning characters: "I am receiving a lot of resistance about releasing [the character data] both in- and out of SCORE. This is because players don’t want their characters to be made available to everyone. So, I am putting off releasing the character database until the dust settles so that the community can make a decision.
Servers: "Piggs are not there because server runs slower when you have piggs. But all the data that WOULD be in piggs files will be there. [...] All servers I set up will use the same binaries as SCORE, which is internally called Issue 25: Unbroken spirit. It will be the easiest to deploy because it already has tools to create accounts, remove all the microtransaction garbage such as the Paragon rewards tree, and many other optimizations. I'm sure there will be many complaints about this not being a pure release and that it requires a lot to be changed. Be patient. It will take much longer to get a server set up if I have to roll back my repositories to early 2013 and hunt down a version of the data files that would play nice with it and does not have massive gaps in content. I don't think such an version exists. This was a huge reverse engineering project that took several months to make something usable. Update, April 18, night Last update from us tonight: Leandro notified us that folks are getting very close to getting a preliminary server online. It's expected this evening, possibly within the next few hours. Gonna be honest, I'd love to be there to watch it, but I rather desperately need to sleep before I fall over, so instead, if you're up and want to see some weird history, you can go watch it yourself in the #build-compile-discussion channel on the CoH Discord. Update, April 19, 2019, morning We have updated the article on "unicorn", adding a short summary of our conversation about NCsoft. Grn online (No matter your beliefs, please stop harassing the person.
Reddit and Titan Network forums contain information about the ongoing progress on the various projects. Updated: April 19, 19:00 p.m. We've posted the promised Lawful Neutral column regarding legalities in playing on rogue websites. Again, we can't recommend doing anything illegal. Updated April 19, afternoon: A Discord player informed us that there was a screengrab from an "article" which superficially appears to be from Massively OP. It purportedly reports that NCsoft is investigating the private servers. While we have no doubt NCsoft is aware of the community's efforts right now, the article itself is an absolute fake. We didn't publish that article and I'm sure our regulars will spot the formatting and prose mistakes that make it so.
According to Discord chats public, work on the initial server is still ongoing. Although we are unable to link directly to the site at this time, we are confident that you can find what your looking for on Reddit. :) Update, 20 April evening The test server was made available! With a ridiculous name!
It's not my screenshot. I'm not running it. They're just playing with us. Thanks to the lovely lady who sent it to me. :)
We cannot advise anyone to do anything illegal. Again, we cannot. Information about the server can be found on Discord and Reddit.
Are you still a little confused? You are not alone.