Who will save the Heroes?

You know something I hear from my readers all the time? An awful lot of you guys love to play City of Heroes. I've played it myself, and although I never became a regular, I had a blast.

You've probably already heard that the company that owns the game, NCSoft, has announced plans to close it down.

This is a game that some folks have been playing for more than 8 years. And, understandably, they feel as if the rug is being yanked out from under them. Some of them have come to me, and now I'm coming to you.

There are a number of ways for you to get involved:

There's a petition to persuade NCSoft to simply reverse their decision to pull the plug on City of Heroes.

There's a petition to convince them to open-source the code for the game.

You can add your voice on Twitter, by commenting with a #savecoh hash tag.

And, most importantly, you can bookmark this forum, Save Paragon City, where they are doing an incredible job of organizing people who want to get involved.

Go look at that forum. You'll see threads labeled "Call to Action." Inside those threads are detailed instructions on becoming part of the movement in whichever ways you're most comfortable doing so.

Getting involved in such an organized and coordinated manner is incredibly powerful. If you want to help, go to that thread and follow their instructions.

Don't believe me? According to CNN, these things are having an effect.

"You have their attention. They are listening."

That was the the insider news regarding NCSoft, given to the virtual crowd at a player run on sever rally. Taking a page from the Occupy movements, over 2500 players logged in to 'camp' the virtual city hall, to recap the actions of the last week and show support of the game. All that was missing were the tents.

The message continues to spread and gain momentum. As the signaure count of the main petition passed 16,000, #SaveCOH became a top trender and the effort has picked up celebrety endorsements from the likes of Neil Gaiman, Mercedes Lackey and others. As this virtual experiment becomes more organized, it is no wonder this has made the heads of NCSoft turn.

All they need now is a few Evil Inc henches (my new gender-neutral form of henchman... do you like it?) to get involved. So get out there... and then come back here and tell us what you did and how it went.