City of Heroes Homecoming Revives Players Choice Awards
Not every story in Architect Entertainment is a story. Anyone who has spent real time on City of Heroes: Homecoming knows this. A large share of the player-made arcs in the system exist for one reason: to farm experience or push characters up the level curve as quickly as possible. That is not a complaint. It is simply how the tool gets used.
But there is another side to Architect Entertainment, and the Homecoming team wants to put it in the spotlight. The Players Choice Awards are back. The awards ran on the original game during its retail days. Now they return to celebrate arcs that actually try to tell a good story.
A Familiar Tradition Returns
For newcomers, Architect Entertainment is City of Heroes' built-in mission creator. Players use it to write and publish their own story arcs, complete with custom enemies and characters, for others to play. Homecoming is the fan-run server that keeps the game alive, and it has kept the system available to its community.
The point of the Players Choice Awards is simple. They give the storytelling crowd a moment of recognition in a space usually crowded out by efficiency builds and XP grinds. Nominations are now open, and the competition will decide which arcs on the platform deserve the top spots.
This is not a dry popularity contest with nothing on the line, either. The Homecoming team is putting up real prizes for the winners: Influence, cosmetic packs, and Prismatic Aether. For a community that has kept the game running on its own terms, a reward handed out by the server team itself carries some weight.
The Four Categories
The awards are split into four categories, roughly following the different sides of the game's world:
- Best Heroic/Vigilante arc
- Best Villainous/Rogue arc
- Best Neutral/Praetorian arc
- Best custom NPC or group
The first three cover full story arcs aimed at different alignments. The fourth stands apart, and it is a smart inclusion. A memorable custom villain or a well-designed enemy group can carry an arc on its own. Writers who put serious effort into their characters now have a category that rewards that work directly.
The Rules
There are a few restrictions worth knowing before anyone fires off a nomination. First, you cannot nominate your own arcs. This is about players recognizing other people's work, not self-promotion.
Second, arcs already nominated for Dev's Choice are off the table. So are arcs that already sit in the Hall of Fame. That leaves room for lesser-known work to get noticed instead of the same established favorites winning again.
Third, there is a cut-off date. Only arcs published before November 2nd, 2025 are eligible.
Each entry will also be checked. Three judges will verify that every nominated arc meets the criteria before it moves forward. Players who have a favorite arc in mind can head to the official forum thread to submit their nominations.
Our Take
This is a small event on paper, but it says a lot about how Homecoming approaches its community. The server is not just keeping old content running. It is also reviving the social traditions that made City of Heroes feel like more than a game. A player-run awards program from the retail era coming back on a fan-run server is a neat bit of continuity. It suggests the team sees player creativity as part of the game's identity, not a side feature.
It also fits a wider pattern. Homecoming has kept adding to the game, as it did with its recent Onslaught PvPvE arena mode. Elsewhere, revived MMOs keep growing beyond what their original developers left behind, from the Marvel Heroes rogue server adding new modes to a Warhammer Online fan project building original dungeons. Fan servers are no longer just preservation projects. Many are turning into living games with their own plans.
The rules here look built to push attention toward overlooked work. Excluding Hall of Fame and Dev's Choice arcs gives hidden gems a real shot. It is worth watching whether the winners draw new players into story-focused arcs, and whether Homecoming makes this a regular fixture. If it does, Architect Entertainment could become known for its writers again, not just its farms.