Yeah, I'm in support of the idea of players crowdfunding a purchase/revival, but honestly, I have no idea who you are, have no reason to trust you with my money, and have no idea if you've looked into the legal issues needed. For all I know, you're some random person looking to buy up the CoH IP and sit on it.
You're probably a very well-meaning player, who just doesn't want to see the game die, but now is NOT the time for something like this, and you're not the person to be running it. If/when the time does come, and the game does need us to pool money together to save it, we need to make damn sure that there's only one effort collecting money, and that it happens only once, so we don't spread ourselves thin. And by that time, we need to have a company formed, we need to have sought legal advice, and we need to know for a fact that NC is actually willing to sell the game. After all, they might well just see a revived CoH as a potential competitor to their games, and decide that killing it permanently is worth any bad PR.
Honestly, your heart's probably in the right place, but if we do this, we need to do it right. And I only really see that happening as part of a proper, official effort by the Titan Network, not a kickstarted effort by a player who hasn't thought it all through. Rest assured, this idea has been considered, just not moved forward on yet.
Valid points, but there is nothing wrong with getting it started. The goal and trick is to avoid starting multiple competing ones. Starting it before NCSoft will even converse is not counter-productive, but it is a bit of a...gambit. Not "gamble," but gambit.
Primarily, it will likely get their attention, and allow the effort to be taken seriously, if it gains proper momentum.
You have good points on "starting a company" and all that; that takes money and investment that
do turn this into a gamble, however. The beauty of a Kickstarter is that it starts as a pledge effort; only when it meets its goals is anything charged. So we set the minimum at a high enough level that it won't be trivially met - which, honestly, is going to be the case for any reasonable bid for this property. Even "$1 million" is likely just a "we're serious about this" amount, not a final offer.
The other thing that this effort does is enable us to form a formal entity and seek out other corporate partners. Running a business is no mean feat, and getting experts into the management positions - all the way up to a board of directors and CEO, etc. - is crucial.
I have business goals in mind for CoH, should this go through.
The final concern you raise - a revived CoH being seen as a potential competitor for their other games - is the biggest. But no effort to buy it from them will cause them to kill it with prejudice greater than they already have shown; NCSoft has likely already concidered CoH as a competitor with their other projects internally. If that is their concern, then it will likely be reflected in price negotiations, if nothing else. They must be taking a hit, just closing down a property like this. Defraying their costs by selling it off will be attractive, if it is taken seriously. Measuring it against future projects and competition is only another concern when considering whether to recoup the sunk costs. So our job will be to ensure that they see it as a net positive.
Which, again, requires that we be taken seriously. The sooner a show of how well-supported this effort will be in serious, real-money terms gets going, the better chance there is of there being a whole product to buy, rather than a half-gutted studio which will require still further investment before it can even get back to nominal functionality. It is this time crunch that convinces me we need to work together on this front now. These things take time to get going. And CoH is running out of it.
Personally, I want the transfer to go smoothly, which means before the lights go out.
