I think, in retrospect, most would have said, "Hmm...start over or no game...start over or no game....Okay, we'll start over!"
I think that would be a common, though not universal, sentiment on
this board. But the folks posting here are hardcore CoH fans. The devs always said that forum users were a minuscule faction of the total player base. I think its reasonable to expect that many of the more "casual" players would be turned off by the loss of their account info.
In addition, not having access to the user info means the game's new owner wouldn't have access to the email addresses of the player base. So they wouldn't be able to contact people and tell them about the changeover and where/how to set up a new account. Advertising and word of mouth would bring some people back but you're not going to reach everybody.
While it was profitable, CoH didn't have a huge player base. Losing just 25% of the player base (a really generous estimate given the above circumstances) could well drop the game below the threshold of profitability. I imagine
that is the calculation that lead to the buyout's failure.