City of Heroes fans have got their wish: spiritual successor City of Titans has been successfully funded through Kickstarter, to the tune of $678,000. The volunteer developers originally sought $320,000 to make the superhero MMO a reality. With more than double that goal, backers have funded the base game and seven stretch goals, adding more power and customisation options for their superheroes.
“There are no words to express, to convey, the feelings all of us here at Missing Worlds Media are going through right now,” wrote the team in a Kickstarter update. “But there is one thing we can tell each and every one of you. Thank you!”
Following the closure of City of Heroes, Missing Worlds Media formed as a team of fans willing to volunteer their time to develop a successor. They spent a year organising their globally disparate team, assigning development roles to members based on their skills, and working on prototypes of what would become City of Titans.
You can see some of those first builds in their pitch video:
Once the 100-strong team had become focussed they turned to Kickstarter to raise funds to turn their prototype superhero MMO into a fully-fledged free-to-play game. One that could sustain its own future development.
By 7 October City of Titans had hit its $320,000 funding target.
From there the campaign turned to stretch goals. The next $130,000 were directed to developing Android and iPhone apps, as well as a Mac port of the game. The apps will let you build avatars for use in the game.
At $500,000 things became more interesting. Heroes gained new movement abilities, allowing them to swing between buildings, surf through the sky on the back of a cloud/manhole cover/some other infeasible object, or simply leap about the city like Daredevil. Oh, and new auras mean that heroes can appear to burn the air about them as they prepare to soar into the sky.
$600,000 added five new power sets for heroes. Superpowered players will be free to throw fireballs, freeze rays, and boulders at their enemies. There will be more powers available but the team are still working out which are most popular. I’ve my fingers crossed for mind bullets.
The stretch goals met at $550,000 and $650,000 are less exciting than new powers but will please cosmetic players. They added new wing sets to choose from as well as new costumes and capes that will be available at launch.
With the campaign now complete Missing Worlds Media can turn to the hard task of developing a vast MMO as their first game, all without publisher backing and a team working on no salary. They plan to launch the game’s first beta in the latter half of 2015. I imagine the biggest challenge may be keeping together a team of 100 volunteer developers till then.
On the Kickstarter page there are many, many updates detailing how exactly City of Titans is expected to function once it’s released. If you’d like to learn more about the MMO that would be the best place to start.
The team are still discussing means of letting those who missed the Kickstarter back the project. Until then they’ve asked that potential backers, instead, consider pledging support towards Steve Fillimore’s cancer treatment.