to launch the game without using the NC Soft Launcher you must do the following:
1) From your Manage Bottles window, select your City of Heroes bottle and click on Run Windows Command.
2) Select cityofheroes.exe from your City of Heroes program folder.
3) to access the live server, at the end of the string append the following arguments: -project CoH -auth 64.25.36.4
4) to access the test server, at the end of the string append the following arguments: -project
CoH -auth 64.25.36.21
5) to access the beta server, at the end of the string append the following arguments: -project
CoH -auth 64.25.36.19
for example, to access the live server it would look like this at the end of the string: cityofheroes.exe -project CoH -auth 64.25.36.4
You can add on other arguments in addition as needed, should you encounter mouse cursor problems or the freezing "Loading" bar bug.