Champions Online Beats Out City Of Heroes As Longest-Running Superhero MMORPG

By Jason Winter, News Editor Posted: April 23, 2018

Perfect World Entertainment and Cryptic Studios today announced that Champions Online has surpassed an important milestone, becoming the longest-running superhero MMORPG. It launched on Sept. 1, 2009, making it nine years, seven months, and 22 days old, surpassing the nine years, seven months, and three days that Cryptic's City of Heroes was live. That comparison won't ruffle a few feathers, now, will it?

To commemorate the milestone, there's an event running from April 26 to May 3 with the dubious title "Still Standing." Heroes will have to travel to a space station and deal with their personal Nemesis to save the Earth. Double XP and a costume contest will also run during the weeklong festivities.

The team also released an infographic detailing things like how many rocks have have been collected -- a superheroic task if ever there was one -- and how many costumes are currently being worn. The latter statistic says that it's enough to fill the Grand Canyon, which makes you wonder how they came to figure the costume volume/Grand Canyon ratio.

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In this article: Champions Online, City of Heroes, Cryptic Studios, Perfect World Entertainment, Ncsoft.

About the Author

Jason Winter, News Editor

Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.

More Stories by Jason Winter

Eloc 5 years ago

As the game gets older, the only dev (former player) continues to destroy the meaning of "build your own hero". By making sure that powers don't work well with ones outside their archetype and that lockboxes have drops that can only be used on one character rather than your whole account.

The "Battlefront II" of Super Hero MMOs.

Infinite 6 years ago

This game should have died instead of Marvel Heroes *sniffs*

Niizzy 6 years ago

I just hate when a game is advertised as a "F2P" and 80% of its contents are locked behind a paywall. Champions Online is one of these games.

Cromzal 6 years ago

If CoH was still around I bet more people would be playing it. CoH was the better game IMO. Champions Online had the benefit of being around at the time that going f2p with a cash shop was accepted/supported/viable. I feel CoH just missed this boat. Oh well, CO isn't a bad game(if your free form), still easy to find groups for missions. We'll see how it weather's these new super hero MMOs in development.

rickshaw 6 years ago

Well I do remember joining this for beta test way back when, I did think once think that it was a better game even though it was rushed, but being a comic fan I went with the original afterwards and not the wannabe copy.
It is good to see it really did survive though.