Gamasutra's postmortem of City of Heroes and Paragon Studios says the MMO's development staff did everything it could to keep the game running—including trying to buy it from publisher NCSoft—and that plans for one final update were shot down right before the game was closed on Dec. 1.

Last night NCsoft shut down City of Heroes, a landmark game that eight years ago brought the thrills of super powers and comic-book crimefighting to an MMO roleplaying world.

More than eight years old, City of Heroes says goodbye tonight. In five hours—at 3 a.m. EST Saturday—NCsoft will pull the plug on both the superhero MMO and its developer, Paragon Studios.

Last week's vigil in Paragon City was misunderstood (including by me) to be a protest against the announced shutdown of City of Heroes, the eight-year-old superhero MMO. It was intended as a statement of support and tribute, particularly to the Paragon Studios development team that, let's not forget, is seeing the end…

Paragon Studios has announced that effective immediately, all work on superhero-themed MMORPG City of Heroes will be ceasing, and the game will be shut down by the end of the year. In a post on the official City of Heroes site, community manager Andy Belford wrote:

After more than seven years as the most popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online superhero role-playing game, Paragon Studios flips the switch on City of Heroes Freedom, potentially the most popular free-to-play superhero MMO.

Steampunk: it's everywhere you want to be, especially if the place you want to be is Paragon City circa June 1, 2011, when the City of Heroes Steampunk pack goes live.

Seven years ago today, NCsoft and Cryptic Studios released City of Heroes, providing fantasy-gorged massively multiplayer online gamers a new way to waste countless hours of their lives alongside thousands of their closest friends. Let's celebrate seven years of heroes and villains with a colorful infographic and…

In this video documentary for Paragon Studio's super hero MMO City of Heroes, the team talks us through the morality system that changes your villain into a hero and vice versa in the upcoming Going Rogue expansion.

If you've ever wished your City of Heroes mutant character could mutate just a little bit more, now's your chance, as Paragon Studios unleashes Super Booster V: Mutant on the NCsoft online store.