I'm not sure what I can say to make you feel better. It's being worked on. It's a moderately complex project, even just to get a basic server up and running, let alone enough of an AI to actually be able to do stuff. I made it clear from the outset that this is going to take a while, and when I said it, I wasn't kidding. Yes, it's been almost a year since the shutdown announcement, but a lot of that time was spent concentrating on efforts to keep the game from being shut down to begin with and to familiarize ourselves with the APIs before the game was permanently shut off. Then a bunch of time was spent picking apart the client, function by function. That effort led directly to the development of Icon by Codewalker. It was well into the new year before work on implementing a new server was started in earnest, and the guy who's leading that effort is also involved in another project as well.
So no, the private server idea isn't just a lot of talk, nor is it vaporware. Yes, there is a credible effort afoot. No, it's not just a pipe dream. You can admit that CoX is fully gone and dead if you want, but you'd be wrong. Right now, we don't need any money; we need time, as there are only 24 hours in each day, and a lot of those are taken up by mundane things such as our day jobs, eating, sleeping, doing unmentionable things with significant others, etc.
If there's someone here who's wealthy enough to hire us full-time to work on this, then that would be one thing. As it is, we're working on it as fast as we can. We recently added another experienced C programmer to the mix, so hopefully things will move faster. But I can't make any promises on any timelines. Some folks involved "in the know," so to speak, will hopefully be able to vouch for my claim that City of Heroes is far from dead. Otherwise, you'll just have to trust me that things
are moving along. Or don't. Either way, you'll eventually find out that I'm right, and I do enjoy the sweet, sweet taste of vindication.