Weird, I know.
The saga of City of Heroes is pretty unique as far as dead MMORPG's go. The result has been a playerbase that is unusually loyal to a game that's long gone, and who have gone out of their way to remain loyal on the faith that doing so will eventually help the game be revived.
Also, the CoX playerbase is unusually vehement about NCSoft. Most gamers shrug their shoulders and either say, "That's business." or "That's EA.", mourn a bit, and then move on to something else. The number of people in CoX social media groups that still talk about the game and also still talk about their animosity towards NCSoft is astounding, IMO.
From what I've read about MxM, the suits at NCSoft may or may not have greenlit the use of Statesman, et. al. for the purposes of keeping their trademarks alive, but the developer(s) who proposed and implemented the decision had only good intentions in doing so. I imagine that everyone involved was baffled by the cold shoulder turned on the game by ex-CoH players in the USA. Differing cultures aside, it's just really unusual even by American standards for the players of a game to hold a grudge forever as so many ex-CoH players seem prepared to do. I've sometimes wondered if that cold shoulder does more harm than good, but it is what it is. A significant number of people feel HARMED by NCSoft and they won't be happy until they are completely out of the picture.
And, of course, the years of "we're close to achieving something; be patient" messages has served to keep the myth of the player buyout alive way longer than it ordinarily would have lived for most other games. (Note that I'm using the word "myth" in it's more academic meaning here; I'm not implying anything about the truth or falsehood of any of those messages.) Given that, it's not weird at all that many people are still holding on, hoping for Pandora's Box to open once again.
Personally; I think that the recent surge in interest in SEGS and its relatively recent growth from one-guy-with-a-dream into a fully-fledged team is a tacit acknowledgement by the still-remaining fan base that most of us expect that all "efforts" have failed and that it's basically up to us now to realize whatever vision of the original game we're capable of realizing.