Golden Girl

This one has alternative pictures:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42y2vO-7-5U

There's a very big human interest angle to the story - just look at all the posts we've had about how the game has helped people in RL.
There's also an angle as a follow up to the ME3 disaster - players demanding certain basic standards from game makers/publishers.
Then there's the "99%" angle - consumers vs big companies.
Or, if you want a nationalistic angle, an American game based on one of the most iconic aspects of American pop culture is being ditched by a large multi-national corp that just doesn't get it, with the loss of 80+ American jobs.
Then there's the social networking angle, with Twitter and Facebook being used to organize a rescue attempt.
And then there's also the fact that people just plain love an underdog story - along with the theme of the endangered game being players fighing to save the world from fictional villains are now having to fight to save their virtual world in real life.
The extemely open and accepting nature of the community and the game that lets you be anything could also generate attention from several news sites with a cyber bullying/homophobia/female friendly/family game angle.

The big problem we have is that a kickstarter would take time to set up, and the devs, quite rightly, have themselves and their families to support, and can't really hang around without a job, relying on the players being able to pull off a minor miracle for them.
Getting NCSoft to suspend the closure until a buy-out could be put together would also create probelms, as most/all of the devs would very likely - and quite rightly again - not want to work with NCSoft again after the way they've been treated - so by the time we'd gotten the game away from NCSoft, the dev team would have dispersed to jobs at other studios.
It looks like our only hope to preserve the game and the dev team is for there to be a buy-out from another publisher very soon.

We might all be able to do something together - that's how Kickstarter projects work - but we'll need NCSoft to play ball.

City of Heroes isn't just another game.

A lot of us do - and we're fighting to make it happen in some way.

It's not lost yet - and no matter what happens in the next 3 months, it is going to continue in some form after November 30th.

Your help would also be really welcome if we can get anything going to save the game or even just the IP.

We'd all love to to still be able to run this one for us - or a new version of it - and if we do manage to save something from from this more-than-a-game, we'd love to have your help, even if it was just giving us advice.

Because there are still penty of question marks about the future right now.

Some of us aren't planning to.

A core made up of original devs would work - after all, Positron and War Witch were the only 2 of the "first gen" devs left - devs have always come and gone on the project, but because there was continuity provided by the longer term devs, the spirit of the studio was always there, and was absorbed by all the new arrivals - so as long as there was a core who knew what Paragon Studios was and stood for, then they could pass it on to the new team.

EDIT: If you look as all the red name stickied goodbye threads, Wa Witch is the only one there whoe's a "first gen" dev - all the others came to the studio later, some were even orginally just players - and they all took on board the Paragon Studios culture.

A lot of us aren't.

CoH is still profitable - if it wasn't, that would have been the reason they gave for the shutdown, not this vague "refocusing" stuff.

It wasn't City of Heroes - there's something very special about this game and its community.

Currently, I think that the IP may be cheaper than the required amount of shares.

The "nonprofit" part's the key bit - they're not using his property to make money for themselves.

The thing is, any new game would have to be very similar to CoH - that's why people are fighting this shut down - the only thing that can replace CoH is CoH2, and even then, it'd still have to be familiar.

Well, as it's still profitable, with a very loyal player base, and possibly several of the dev team still available, it could be an attractive investment - but only if NCSoft wants to play ball.

Head to the Titan Network: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php - that's where the rescue attempt is being put together.