A lot has been said here and I was hopeful NcSoft would see reason before the game shutdown, but since they went forward with the closure it has become clear, to me and my former YouTube team, that CoH is gone. NcSoft got what they wanted, they were shocked by the outpouring of frustration by the CoH community and their response was to make it as difficult as possible to get the game back online in a profitable form. Why? Well, if they wouldn't be making money off it they probably wanted it to fade so it wouldn't generate as much revenue for whoever they might sell it to.
Sadly, timing is everything here. The damage has been done and two spiritual successors have arisen which, to a prospected buyer of CoH, would showcase that the community has, indeed, moved on. This will make it very hard to find a buyer, if NcSoft is even willig to sell the IP, which I highly doubt. The more likely scenario is one of the two, or both, projects finding backers and being pushed full steam ahead. Inesting time and effort in getting an old MMO back online and coaxing the community back is simply not good business sense. Better to cultivate those here toward a new endeavor.
As to NcSoft. The lesson here is, to all of us, don't follow a slash and burn comapny. They used CoH, and its playerbase, to fund other projects and when those were ready they cut the cord. For me, I knew this was coming back in January 2012 when CoH timecard were recalled and replaced with NcSoft timecards which could not be used for CoH. That spoke volumes to me, but I was hoping it was merely a sign of rebarnding the gamecards to including CoH Bucks or some such thing. Sadly, I was wrong. No, my trust in NcSoft is gone and the campany can rot in the quagmire of bad PR they brought upon themselves. And if they ever launch a game here in the states again I will be the first on those forums educating people.
As for CoH I hope someone steps forward to put the game back online, but as more time passes that becomes less likely. The Dev team is shattered and the code for the game is a monster to work with, as many devs joked in the closing days. I have not given up hope in VV, hell she's one of the authors I idolize as far as work ethic is concerned, but I am finding myself more and more looking forward to the Phoenix Project and Heroes/Villains than I am a return to CoH.