City of Heroes developer Paragon Studios fought until the bitter end to save the MMO from shutting down last year, including attempting to buy the title from publisher NCsoft, former lead designer Matt Miller told Gamasutra.
The studio initially attempted to broker a deal to find a new publisher for the MMO; however, while the developer was in talks with a potential buyer, nothing came of it. A group of 20 Paragon staff then began talks regarding buying out the game directly from NCsoft to keep it from closing. In addition, Paragon was interested in acquiring two other unnamed NCsoft-owned projects.
Unfortunately, NCsoft sent word the game would shut at the end of 2012. To thank players for their time, Miller hoped to give players a final mission that had them fighting off an alien invasion; unfortunately, this was also canceled by NCsoft as the module was "too bug-ridden and it was going to cause customer-service comlpaints and they didn't want to have to deal with that."
City of Heroes was originally developed by Cryptic Studios and launched in 2004. Paragon took over development in 2009, and NCsoft announced the studio's closure and the game's end on Aug. 31, 2012.