Wow I know this game is loved, but picketing city halls and national monuments? With all that's going on in the world, a video game shutting down should get national attention? I get it you're upast, as am I. Been playing since May of '04 myself. We need to be reasonable though.
Everyone should understand a few things just to save yourselves an emotional roller coaster.
City of Heroes was grossing less than a million dollars a month, meaning less than 12 million per year. When you deduct operational costs including paying the 80 people that they had working in the game, the game was barely breaking even.
NCSoft knows they have a 100,000 ish player base. They know they are going to piss off this 100,000 ish player base by closing the game. They did it with Tabula Rasa and Aion already, so they know what to expect. In order for this petition to do any good, you will have to show them not only did they underestimate the player base, but that these people are willing to financially support the game. Unfortunately, when compared to other mmo's, we don't have the numbers. We would need approximately 1,000,000 players willing to pay.
They will not release the game, unless it will bring them a decent price. They won't risk one of their own games becoming competition for their other titles. The only way I see this happening is if Cryptic offers to buy it back, which it won't since it's competition for their game "Champions Online".
I am sorry, I know how much this game means to everyone, again I've been playing for 8 years now, but it WILL end. Do your best, but please don't pin all hopes on succeeding. And please don't make all us gamers look like complete morons by tryin to tell the rest of the world that this is a life altering event worthy of an "occupy" movement.
Michael