Earlier this year, we noted that superhero MMORPG Ship of Heroes was eyeing an arrival on Steam, and as of today, it’s finally happening. Or at least, is about to happen; as I type this, the Steam page isn’t accessible, but presumably it’ll be approved shortly [Update: It’s up now for wishlisting!]. In addition to the obvious audience-reach benefits of Steam, the devs are hoping it’ll improve players’ experience during open tests as well.
“Originally, we planned to host SoH without using a platform, like [World of Warcraft] or [Black Desert],” Heroic Games says. “But during our Betas, several players reported needing hours to download the game, and hours more for every patch. We needed a better downloader/patcher. […] In 2021, after our mission Beta, we looked into building or licensing a new patcher. After reviewing the options, Steam stood out as having the best patcher available, and it has performed flawlessly in two housing Betas. Typical patch times are down from hours to minutes!”
The announcement post also discusses the studio’s efforts to automating account creation through Steam and preparing for bottlenecks and bigger crowds when the game actually launches, ideally later this year (it’s already been postponed a few times): “We’re still aiming for a game launch at the end of 2023, but whatever happens, you will see very significant advancement and expansion of what you have played before.”
Ship of Heroes is the most recent and probably last of the multiple crowdfunding superhero MMOs that were announced in the wake of the closure of the original City of Heroes; Ship, however, appears to be the closest to actually launching and has hosted several public betas along the way, as we’ve been chronicling. We’ve collected a smattering of our more interesting stories and impressions below.
