Servers
Overview
There are fifteen publicly accessible servers that run the City of Heroes game, these servers are all physically located in Dallas, Texas, as of November 11th, 2010. Originally eleven of these servers were available to only the North American version of the Game Client and four were available to only the European version of the Game Client. Following a global merge of the server list all fifteen servers are now available to all City of Heroes players, accessible through either of the original Game Clients, or the new NCLauncher.
Additionally, there is a test server called the Training Room (available for both US and EU players) on which patches and other changes are tested before release on the live servers. In preparation for Going Rogue, a new test server was launched called GR Closed Beta.
Bug! With the global list merge, EU players can now use the one and only Training Room (aka Test) Server. However, the function for EU players to copy characters from the Live Servers to Test has not been implemented yet, but is coming... soon.
On the server selection screen, the first server listed is the most recent one accessed. The remaining servers are listed in increasing order of current load. While the load does not directly mean population, high populations are the largest and most common causes of server load. 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.
The only real differences between servers are the hardware requirements (more popular servers have more/better hardware) and the fact that Zukunft and Vigilance are displayed in German and French, respectively. A more "emotional" difference between the servers depends on the community that has built up surrounding each one.
Servers
| Server | Average Population | Notes |
|---|---|---|
|
Champion |
Low | |
| Defiant | Low | Defiant was one of the four EU servers prior to the global server merge. |
| Freedom | High | Typically the most populated US server. Popular PvP server. Originally named "Prime" during the beta-test, but was renamed upon release. |
| Guardian | Low | |
| Infinity | Medium | |
| Justice | Low | |
| Liberty | Low | |
| Pinnacle | Medium | Popular "Badge-Hunting" server |
| Protector | Low | |
| Triumph | Low | Formerly a testing server, before being relaunched as a regular one. |
| Union | Low | Union was one of the four original EU servers prior to the global server merge. |
| Victory | Medium | |
| Vigilance | Low | This server is intended for French-speaking players and was one of the four original EU Servers prior to the global server merge. |
| Virtue | High | The unofficial "role-playing server. (see also: The Unofficial Handbook to the Virtue Universe) |
| Zukunft | Low | This server is intended for German-speaking players and was one of the four original EU Servers prior to the global server merge. (Zukunft is German for "Future".) |