Celebrating the 20th birthday of City of Heroes: an MMO resurrected by the people who loved it enough to 'bring the game back for good'

Atlas holds up the globe upon his shoulders in Atlas Park, a zone in City of Heroes.

City of Heroes is celebrating its 20th anniversary this weekend. The fact that it's a party, rather than a wake, is astounding to me. Despite being shut down in 2012, City of Heroes can be played easily today on various private servers—most notably, the now-officially-sanctioned Homecoming. 

To put a milestone on this long and fascinating road, I reached out to both former City of Heroes developers and the current Homecoming team to ask about their experiences—both working on the live game, and the miracle act of necromancy its community worked to bring it back from the dead. But first, a history lesson is in order.