I've discussed this with other people, and the main problem--the one we simply cannot get around--is the amount of time it will take before a new CoH is ready for play in the most limited (think Atlas Park, Perez, Hollows and King's Row ONLY) version. Look how long it took before The Secret World (no relation to my "Secret World Chronicle" and we had the name first) was ready. It began production under a different name around 2004, changed the name to the current one in 2007ish, and only this year went live. That's almost 8 years (and 2 or 3 different studios) of production time. How many players are going to wait for ONE year, much less four to eight? Not many, is my bet. If we could get our hands on....oh....20 or 30 million dollars, we could speed that up. But the reality is this will be, like The Secret World, a slow, mostly part-time-only, undertaking. People gotta eat, and failing Tony V coming up with a lot of folks to pony up in the six figure range, there is no getting around it, the "studio" we create will be a fraction of the size of Paragon Studios and we would be doing absolutely everything from scratch.
I agree completely with Victoria's assertion, if only because I investigated this myself. The Secret World is an extreme example, because it was plagued with turnover, funding and studio problems, and I believe a change in game engine after it had already been started. But nowadays, that seems to be the rule rather than the exception when you're not George Lucas with a few hundred million sitting around. It's highly likely a CoH-like game would take 2 to 3 years to just get off the ground, even with shortcuts. If things go wrong, like, oh, say, the economy, it could definitely take 2 or 3 times as long.
Meanwhile though, let me try to address several other posts on the subject at once:
Open source/community designed is a BAD idea when putting together a project of this size. The only project I know of that's this large, and has no corporate backing, is the WINE project. Those of you who have watched it and/or been involved know that the WINE project is horribly unresponsive, and plagued with disagreements which have led to it being splintered into several branches. Imagine the destruction that would cause to an MMO! Several competing forks of the same game project, all with different client and servers, and just the act of downloading it and logging in is a hellish experience (anyone try to install WINE and succeed?).
Another problem with community owned is if everyone owns it, nobody does. Controlling mods and cheating will become impossible, and then the game would lose players fast. Maybe Apple's model (community created, corporate reviewed content) might work, but I'm not sure.
As for "legal" steps, I happen to have a game/publishing studio! It's registered as an LLC, and was being formed in order to produce an unrelated 3D game sometime in the near future (which is why I was testing game engines as well) for portable devices. That may come in handy.
On the topic of developing a new game: I have reviewed several commercially available game engines, and I've chosen one I like - and it has a similar zone design system to CoH! But I won't say too much what I've been planning or how far my really small team has gotten, because...
a) I'm still afraid I'll develop an ugly case of foot-in-mouth disease if nothing comes of it, or something happens preventing it;
b) If I talk too much about the plan, there's always a chance a lot of effort and time will be put in and someone with more money and staff will steal the entire thing and get to market first; and
c) I do NOT want to overshadow the CoH buyout/licensing efforts - the new game effort is a long-term plan because even if CoH is saved, its near death means its days are numbered, and I'd like to possibly have a replacement ready when that time comes. In fact, I'd prefer if CoH were saved first because it would buy the time needed to put some real design into a new game.
Ask me questions about it if you'd like, but I'll only be able to give limited answers until it gets closer to a functional demo.