Cult online action RPG Marvel Heroes, after more than eight years offline, has player-run servers at last

In November of 2017, MMO action RPG Marvel Heroes was shut down. Though it had the traditional rough launch, the basic idea of “Diablo but you can be Scarlet Witch” had promise, and turned itself around after some updates. Though not enough to save it when Marvel eventually cut ties with developer Gazillion Entertainment. While the plan was to keep Marvel Heroes running until the end of 2017, it ended up being “sunset” two months early, and that was that.

Until now. Marvel Heroes has been resurrected, with a server emulator finally hitting 1.0. The first player-run server came online in Tahiti up and others are on the way. I reinstalled it via Steam, made an account on the Project Tahiti website, launched it with the parameter -siteconfigurl=mhtahiti.com/SiteConfig.xml, and was able to join a queue of 1,706 players this morning.

I eventually made it into the game, though the server was restarted before I could finish the tutorial. Fortunately, a singleplayer alternative has also been made available. You can download a server emulator on Github, follow the setup instructions, and play solo without having to worry about lag or disconnections while things settle down.

There’s a Pastebin to keep track of player-run servers as more come online. You may also need this link to the Internet Archive’s backup of the final build. I’m glad to see Marvel Heroes enjoy this extra life, because it really was knockabout fun.