One of City of Heroes’ rogue servers, Reborn/Pleiades, was just shut down by its operator

    
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Bad news for a sliver of the the City of Heroes rogue server community tonight: The Reddit-backed Reborn server known as Pleiades has apparently shut down abruptly over what has been characterized as “irreconcilable differences” among its leadership. The gamer who was hosting the server made this announcement in Discord this evening, informing players on the shard that he was pulling down the server and handing the databases over to the remaining staff for migration elsewhere:

In-game, players were given the news by one of the server’s GMs, who seems to be suggesting there wasn’t much warning given ahead of the closure.

A source with relevant technical expertise tells Massively OP that it would be challenging but not at all impossible for other servers to potentially rescue lost characters should the server itself not come back online, but fortunately it sounds as if a server migration is indeed possible, as multiple sources have suggested to MassivelyOP that the Discord-backed Rebirth server group has offered aid and that all hope for Pleiades’ players isn’t lost. We’ll be updating this article with the details of any future transition as soon as we know for sure (we’re expecting statements later this evening/weekend when the chaos settles, so try not to panic in the meantime).

Additional server groups have issued public statements of their own. “We are aware of the apparent shutdown of the Reborn / Pleiades server,” a Homecoming representative posted to Discord. “Please be considerate to the players who have, at least for the moment, lost their characters and community. This is not a competition, we all want the same thing: to keep the City of Heroes alive. We will provide any support we are able to the remaining team and their players if requested.” The rep also noted that he had no reason to believe the server shutdown was the result of a “legal issue or C&D.”

Our sympathies go out to the holders of Pleiades’ 3731 accounts who just lost an MMO home tonight.

With thanks to Justin and Wakkander.

Update 06/09/2019 12:40 PM EDT
We spoke with the admin of the Reborn/Pleiades server and Discord, Rayne, today; she reiterated to us that she had little warning before the announcement and that work on figuring out a resolution for the affected players continues. According to Rayne, Reborn’s staff is in possession of character data and multiple server groups have offered specific assistance with rehoming Pleiades’ accounts, including Homecoming, Rebirth, and /coxg/. Efforts right now are focused on a proper account recovery system to facilitate that process, though there are no ETAs right now. In the meantime, Rayne says that her players have been encouraged to play elsewhere: “If they want to see what else is out there, I encourage them to use the CoH pservers list.”
Update 06/11/2019
More from the server owners on Sunday and Monday night:

Update 06/12/2019
This update was made for Pleiades players last night, and it’s mostly good news.

Update 06/22/2019
Good news for fans of the Pleiades server: It’s officially relaunched and back in business.

“First off, we’ve got the valentines day event active as part of a ‘summer of love’ type of approach, and we have the summer blockbuster planned to be started soon as well. We figure since things kicked off after this years usual major events, we might as well play a bit of catchup. Secondly, double xp is back on! Remember if you’re out-leveling content, you can turn off xp temporarily in your options->general under the miscellaneous section. You all missed a week or two of play time, hopefully this should help you get caught back up. Lastly, we have a poll that will be posted a bit later in regards to an upcoming patch, but we need your help to decide how to approach this. We have a few fixes ready from ouroboros for Savage Melee, and for Radiation Melee and Defense. But while Savage Melee is more or less fine, Radiation Melee and Defense have some glitched visuals that look a bit odd. Ouroboros is working on fixing those up. We originally had Psi Melee disabled due to broken fx and polish, so this would be a shift in our approach to what content to push to the server, and thus, all of you. We’ll have better addressment of these questions in the poll, so stay tuned!”

Got City of Heroes community news you think we should cover? Drop us a note!
We’ve been covering the City of Heroes resurrection since April, when a secret six-year-old City of Heroes server running the game’s original code was exposed. That code was eventually turned over to the community, and now there are multiple public and private servers for the beloved superhero MMORPG, with over 100,000 people on Homecoming alone. NCsoft has neither commented publicly nor taken legal action but is still in talks with players regarding the game’s future.
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