Not to mention any single player or table top game wouldn't be able to be taken away.
I'd also like to point out the potential here, hopefully so it can be brought to the attention of whoever ends up buying the IP (because I'll never give up the hope that it WILL happen), that once it's in the hands of people who care about it, it would be a fantastic idea to implement some sort of offline variant of the game. Phantasy Star Online is a great example in this regard, being that you could log in and play online, or not and play solo in a re-balanced game world with fewer/weaker enemies. The greatest part of the game to me was being able to play online with other people, make new friends, and see other peoples creativity at work with costumes, power combos and how they were used, but in the event that the online game isn't sustainable for a long duration, it would be nice to have some kind of single-player version to fall back on, with recruitable NPC team-mates and such. It would definitely give people some safety net peace of mind in case worse comes to worst.
Either way, I can't imagine that NCSoft would make a deal to sell the IP and
not the game itself. It would make no sense. They wouldn't ever be able to use it again after selling IP rights, and if it's such an under-the-hood mess as described then they'd have little reason to want to hold onto it for re-purposing. I'm putting my money on this being a deal for everything. The only thing I'm unsure they'd sell, or even still
have, is the customer data such as accounts and character data, etc. etc. A year gone it's a big possibility that they've purged that information from their systems. If so, oh well, universe reboot and we'll just be forced to enjoy what it was like starting a new game all over again, if not... well I'm not sure if they'd be willing to part with that kind of data on the cheap. Either way, wait and see I suppose. Fingers crossed and sending all the best vibes to all involved with the process.