Servers

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Overview

There are six publicly accessible servers that run the City of Heroes game. Five of these servers are all physically located in Canada, with Reunion in Germany. Server Transfers are free and plentiful, so it is not necessary to carefully select a server before starting a character.

Additionally, there are the Beta Testing Shards, of which there are presently four.

Server Order

On the server selection screen, the first server listed is the most recent one you have accessed. The remaining servers are listed in increasing order of current load. While the load does not directly correspond to population, high populations are the largest and most common causes of server load. An account that has never logged in before will not have a "last accessed" server at the top of the list, but instead will show all servers in current-load order.

Please note that if a server starts having technical issues, it will shoot to the top or the bottom of the list, depending on its current load, regardless of how many or how few players are connected to it.

Server List

Server Average Population Notes
Excelsior High Currently the highest population server
Unofficial PvP Server
Everlasting Medium Unofficial RP server
Torchbearer Low The first shard to be brought online by Homecoming
Indomitable Low
Reunion Low Physically hosted in Europe.
Victory Low Previously ran by the "Victory Team (Michiyo)", merged into Homecoming on Jan-7-2025
Unofficial designations

The PVP and RP servers are "unofficial" as purely suggestions of where to find types of play. There is no obligation to engage in PVP or RP on these servers, or to (for example) pick an RP-appropriate name, nor is PvP or RP explicitly prohibited on any other server. Reunion is physically in Europe and has a higher proportion of European players, but there's no requirement to play there or not based on where you live.

Indomitable used to be known as the unofficial PvP server at launch with enthusiasts realizing that most PvP activities occur in Excelsior. The designation moved to Excelsior shortly thereafter.

Population features

Higher population servers are more likely to host player-ran activities on a daily basis, such as Costume Contests and iTrials or Raids. Lower population servers tend to schedule the same activities on a weekly basis as it is easier to get enough players to join knowing in advance (instead of trying to run daily events and running the risk of not having enough players to start.)

Populations may shift and are subject to change. As an example, for a number of years Torchbearer was a high-population shard.

History

On January 4th, 2024 after the licensing agreement was announced, Homecoming introduced server-side boosts to XP to encourage new players to join the lower population shards instead of higher ones. Players are also permitted to move characters to lower-population servers to take advantage of the server-side boosts temporarily (while keeping in mind that a Supergroup on the prior server needs at least one player joined as a member without being automatically deleted after transfer.) The server-side boosts for all shards were ended on Tuesday, November 5th, 2024 during Weekly Maintenance.

On January 7th, 2025, the Victory private server joined the Homecoming Servers as the sixth shard to choose from when making a new character. Existing players and supergroups from the Victory private server who opted in to the one-time transfer in 2024 were merged into Homecoming as well.

External Links