Heartwarming / City of Heroes

• The "Leaving Praetoria" mission for a Praetorian character is nice, especially for those who've chosen to go heroside. The character gets to see and talk to many of the people you've helped during your time, who usually vow to continue fighting in your name and wish you luck in Primal Earth.
• The in-game wedding of Manticore and Sister Psyche' based on the game dev's real-life wedding.
• The 2012 Valentine's day event ending with the resurrection of the Red Widow. After the death of Statesman Lord Recluse was very volatile since he didn't get to do it himself. Ms. Liberty opts to awaken the good in him by putting together a resurrection of his late girlfriend, Red Widow. The goal for heroes is to soften Lord Recluse's heart with The Power of Love and for villains making Lord Recluse happy is never a bad thing. At the end of the ordeal Red Widow is brought back to life and confronts Lord Recluse to remind him of what is really important, not bitterness or some old grudge with Statesman... but World Domination! Considering Lord Recluse's otherwise Unstoppable Rage over the death of Statesman Red Widow practically gives him a Cooldown Hug. True they are both Card-carrying super-villains but you can tell they genuinely love each-other.
  • The weird thing is Ms. Liberty's plan sort of works. After the event, Lord Recluse is up for a lot more Enemy Mines with the heroes including helping to save Paragon City from the Sky Raiders, countering a Praetorian invasion, sending troops to save Dark Astoria from Mot and even shows up to take on Tyrant himself prior to the final phase of the Incarnate trials and Red Widow is right there at his side when he does.
• Ice Mistral had always been a crazed anarchist so it was genuinely surprising when she throw's herself to Mot to keep Scirocco from feeding himself to the soul-devouring monstrosity. Scirocco's following Love Epiphany is genuinely heartwarming especially since he goes from Despair Event Horizon into full on Righteous Fury after seeing Ice Mistral take the bullet to snap him out of his funk.
• The people of Virtue Server, upon learning that a member of the community passed away, came together for a candle light vigil in Talos Island, a zone known for having a high occupancy due to being a highly traveled zone for players. The memorial was so large in attendance, that the maximum occupancy was reached. Most of those in attendance did not even know the player.
• Virtue players struck again upon learning of City of Heroes being shut down, and held a torchlight vigil in Atlas Park. They filled 33 instances of AP. And "Atlas Park 33" remained up until the moment the plug was pulled.
• After the announcement of the closure of the game, the player base united to buy the entire studio dinner. A dinner at which several players crashed the party to pay the dev's entire drink tab.
• Again, after it's impending closure there's this. If you don't feel moved after reading it, there's something deeply wrong with you.
• Almost a decade after the game's closure, a group of diehard fans managed to restore the game on their private server. When the news of the server existence broke out, thousands of players flocked into it. Ladies and gentlemen, City of Heroes is back, albeit unofficially.
  • The private servers saw a weekend increase from a sparse amount of accounts to about 1/3rd the pre-cancelled peak active account numbers. The extra load had made it difficult to stay logged into servers until those running it were able to find a server space that could handle the swell... the problem was they needed to pay for it and couldn't ask the players to subscribe as that would make the people running it accountable to copyright laws. They decided to raise funds through donations, but only to the tune of the payment needed to keep the servers running. Fans lined up to donate and they had reached the cap in minutes.
  • A lot of people played private servers with an ever-looming sense of dread that at any time NCsoft could bring the hammer down on them with a cease and desist order for copyright infringement or for taking money for a property that they didn't own. And then they did the exact opposite in a way nobody saw coming when they both endorsed and officially licensed Homecoming to continue operating with their blessing, allowing the server to come into the public eye without having to remain and open secret and allowing them to gather donations for upkeep without any fear. After this announcement, the Homecoming team has even began openly musing about resuming development of new features and story for the game. There's no more unofficially about it, City of Heroes is back!