What makes City of Heroes so special, and worth saving?
Well, for me it is how versatile and creative the game is.
Most games lock me in to their preformed characters. I either have a character with a full story where I can only customize gear, or I have a character I can give a background to but that background choice has little to no effect. City of Heroes allows me to really let my imagination loose and play virtually any kind of character at all, from almost any genre. Fantasy, Horror, Sci-fi, Martial Arts, Contempory Action Hero ... almost anything I wanted could be created somehow and made to be effective.
Most games lock me in to a particular style of gaming. With City of Heroes we have people who play to collect badges and accolades, people who enjoy PvP combat, people who explore the incredibly rich in-game lore, people who play solely in teams, people who play solo, people who almost purely roleplay and hardly touch the content at all, and people who create missions for others to play. The game was not a game, but almost more of a virtual world in which one could play many different games, in many different ways. Making builds was a strategy game. Mission Architect, Base-Building, and RP plots were building games. Badges and Accolades made for a collecting game. It could also be a first-person shooter, a team third-person dungeon run, and many other games, all at once or whatever you chose to follow.
The game could be picked up near instantly for casual gaming, yet had enough strategy, depth, plot exploration and customization to immerse oneself in for years of hardcore play.
In summary, it was a game that let you make of it whatever you would. It was so versatile that there was something for virtually everyone in the game, and not just a minor part of that something, but enough flexibility to be whatever game you wanted it to be. There was grinding for 'stuff' if you wanted, but there was also the ability to play for years without ever grinding the same missions over and over if you chose to fully explore the arcs or mission architect.
That alone is such a rare quality, such an amazing achievemnt that it alone deserves respect and adoration (which its players have given it). However, it added more. It was a pioneering game that has expanded the entire genre of MMO gaming across its many years of development. The first game to make levels largely meaningless for putting teams together. The sidekick system. Free flight travel. The richest character creator. So many other innovations that the game deserves a spot in gaming history that few games can match.
And these innovations are not just of the past. What really makes City of Heroes so special, above all of the freedom, creativity, personalisation, community spirit, staff support, is that after almost 9 years, there is no other game on the market that offers anything even marginally close to the same gaming experience. The game is utterly unique, in so many, many ways.
To me, that is what we need to get across, with each of those points leading to entire sections that expand and illustrate those points clearly. Show how diverse the characters could be. Highlight the different styles of gaming, and how one player could be playing Van Helsing, alone hunting the monsters, while another player was part of a super group like The Avengers, and another was in a millitary group with guns. How one player could be an ancient magical spirit, and another could be a high-tech spaceman from the far future.
Show how base-building could be its own game, and highlight some of the amazing artistic creations, even though the tool to build with was often compared to trying to build a brick wall using chopsticks to lift and position the bricks.
Show a few of the detailed Roleplay characters, and show how they could create their own lore completely if they wished. How they were able to create their own world and their own stories. Show how the Mission Architect could fit in with that creation process.
Show some of the artwork and stories that the game would inspire and enable through the forums and beyond.
Highlight some of the community spirit, from fundraising to conventions, from the devs sharing an in-game wedding with the players, to many players finding out-of-game weddings from in-game meetings.