Sadly, that is almost precisely what is happening with Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2. Characters developed in Guild Wars 1 will not be portable to Guild Wars 2 and -- no -- that doesn't sit well with (much of) the GW community.

I wish NCSoft had "sublet" Guild Wars 1 to another game developer, because I think the game still has a lot of great features that are scheduled for termination in Guild Wars 2: it's heroes, its instancing, its marvelous soloability (all "group content" is all soloable through the use of NPC/henchmen assistance). Few other online games offer anything like this.

I imagine much the same fate will befall CoH1 if a CoH2 is ever produced.