If people want to RP that way let them. As stated before if you don't like it then leave. Not everone plays the game the same way, and nobody is dumb for not wanting to RP in a MMORPG.
Just because someone [censored] swears dosn't mean their [censored] stupid or a dumb [censored]. There just words, [censored] , the word [censored] has many meanings and can be used in many different ways. [censored] is probably the most versitile [censored] word in the entire mother [censored] english language.
As far as heros not swearing, the Punisher was a Marine, yeah he probably used proper english in the Corp. Wolverine probably cusses like a sailor, that is before the comic book reaches the editors desk.
I know this game is rated T for TEEN, but I'm not a teen. Not everyone is going to settle for TEEN behavior (or what is falsly presented as TEEN behavior). You joined their team so there is no griefing on their part, hanging around and being offended when you have the choice to leave is griefing yourself. Then you complain that they were "taking it too far", thats for them to decided.
Just because you disagree with somthing dosn't mean it's wrong.*
*Powergaming, Min/maxing, Role Playing, Power Leveling, Cussing
I have been a roleplayer since I was 12. I am now a 37 yr old mother of two. I STILL roleplay. I rolplay in this game 
Having said that.... I would have to say that what happened to the original poster in that particular TF....
WAS NOT ROLEPLAYING!!!
If you would like to experience what most roleplayers consider roleplay, look for Psylanna, a mutated mind/kin controller, who hopes the NY state marshalls don't find her, or Scaryb, a magic illusion/storm controller, who is over 3000 yrs old, and has just recently been reawakened to the world, and so doesn't recognize many of the things (ways) around her.
Or Daemonara... a emp/psy blast defender that worked her way out of Hell (having been dlieberately placed where she didnn't belong) and is taking her revenge against the people who sent her there in the first place!
Most roleplayers are actually quite entertaining to be around. We tend to pull others into our fold, because we get into the personalities and BECOME our characters, with their ideas, desires, flaws, and all I play on Guardian.
Can we go too far? I don't think so.. since in a sense each person that logs on to this game is roleplaying to a certain extent. Think about it... how many times in a given day do you see someone wearing spandex fighting a mugger?
True enough. Though it can be tough to find others to RP with when you jump into Character. So far I've found most silently watch me then run off. <shrug> Not that it stops me in the least... I still yell at the muggers to lay off whoever they are robbing at the time. 
Make Mine COH!
"Someone has to stand up for those who can't"
- on Virtue
Skyburner - Wyldfire Agent
Silver Valor - Wyldfire Agent
Coppersmith - Shield scrapper!
Thoughts on Roleplay and too far
What you described above was an over exaggerated attempt at roleplaying. Yes, it is roleplay, but not what anyone would mistake for quality roleplay. Over exaggeration is a newbie mistake. Please understand, I do not mean newbie in a negative light; we are all newbies once!
Most people encountering any new skill or hobby will tent do over exaggerate and work off of cliché. A person beginning a martial art (fencing, karate, boxing) might first strike a dramatic Hollywood pose, much to the amusement of any veterans watching. New writers tend to write cliché plots. New artists will copy a stylized medium such as anime or manga.
Why? Its what they have seen before, and its all they have to go on. And that is okay! No new diver is Jaques Cousteau the moment they slip into a swimming pool, and new players who have just gotten involved in MMORPGs cant be expected to be witty and talented roleplayers.
Most newer roleplayers will fall into the most common clichés popularized by media; Cat-girls, vampires, tough-guys, mad scientists, dumb tanks, or plays off of well known characters like Batman, Wolverine, excetera.
Again, this is okay! As they grow and progress, so will theyre concepts. We all need a place to start from, and every idea ever though of by human kind had already been thought of, in one form or another, by the time of Socrates. The cleches were established waaay back then, and have been repeated ever since.
Besides that, most of them can be a fun place to start!
So how do you avoid clichés, or avoid playing with what look and feel like the same character played by a different player over and over? Here is what I do:
Take your cleche idea (Most first budding ideas are pretty cliché, but your mileage may vary), and give it a twist. Have another good look at the concept over all. Now give it another twist a really good wrench this time. Most experienced roleplayers have at least one good twist to make them stand out, so why not do a second? Now look again. What can be added? What can be taken away?
All you really need to do when youre starting a character (or even learning about one youve played for a little while) is have a good background concept. Who are they? What do they want? What will they do to get it? What would they never ever do? Now what might be the one time they WOULD do that thing? Then try it out! If you dont like it, whos to say you cant change it a bit?
It sounds like the folks you ended up with didnt bother to twist theyre ideas at all. They only played off the ideas of tough-guy, naughty femme fatal, depressed gothic, and crazy. Its okay, but nothing special.
So going to far? Yes and no. There is a time and place for everything, and almost any scene fitting into the superhero City of Heroes genre can be played out with taste, style, and dignity, without taking away from the experience of other players who are not interested in participating. Yes, even swearing ex-marines, depressed goths, and overly friendly femme fatals.
When it does go too far, it cant really be justified by saying Oh its roleplay! Being a jerk is being a jerk, period. My right to say and do whatever I want ends when it takes away from your enjoyment of the game. That is going too far.
The question is not Is their roleplay going to far? but Am I having fun with who Im with? If you have a couple of cat-girls rutting over the team chat channel, its probably time to find yourself a new team. The same if your tough-guy buddy cant think of anything more creative than repeating four letter words, and that bothers you. Your mileage may vary.
Give the newer roleplayers a chance, and most of them will get better. A gentle nudge and a kind word goes far with inspiring them to greater heights than I am t3h vampire! Grr!
On English: For an excellent read on the history of the English language, try Bill Brysons The Mother Tongue: English and how it got that way. ^_^
-Aeon
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The official rule is you should use shall any time you are talking in first person (I or we), otherwise you should use will. In modern language, shall is going the way of the dodo.
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Modern AMERICAN language, to be specific.
Other things that are going away:
most of the relative pronouns
This is the man whom you stole it from?
This is the man that you stole it from?
This is the car which you were talking about?
This is the car that you were talking about?
This is the place where we ate?
This is the place that we ate at?
Adverbs:
Let me do this real quick. (I myself am a frequent abouser of that one)
Some uses of to: (it's becoming a word form instead)
I gotta go.
Whom:
The vast majority of the time, people forget to use this instead of who when they're referring to a person that is operating as a grammatical object rather than a subject.
However. we have some things that stubbornly refuse to die.
Such as:
the medieval spelling system: knight....."gh" is a spelling structure for a sound that hasn't been in the English language since before Shakespeare.
We have 13 vowels in the English language. For these thirteen vowels we have 5 symbols (unless you include y, in which case we have 6). The consonants are in a less serious position and I don't remember the skewed numbers off the top of my head, but still, sheesh when are we going to sit down and fix our alphabet so that people don't have a mental hernia trying to figure out our spelling rules and all the exceptions.
Also, we still have that bloody useless c that French fopped onto us. It doesn't do anything you can't do with a k or an s. The only thing close is when you put it together with a h to get the ch sound.
As to adding new stuff, one of English's greatest strengths is the vast number of synonyms and antonyms we have for different words. It allows a very impressive ability to shade meanings in our speech. And we are gathering new words everyday. If there's one thing English is good about, that is utilizing the languages of other cultures to change and build our own. (probably comes from being on a little rock in the middle of nowhere that got invaded six or seven times before the Normans finally took over)
Still, if I learned nothing else from my linguistics classes, it's that:
Shift happens.
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Hey, you got some flak for it, mate, but I liked the mini-lesson. Maybe I'm just crazy...
To belatedly second what others said, you were dealing with lousy roleplaying.
Lousy but unbroken RPing is worse than part-time, half-hearted RPing, to those of us who are serious RPers.
RPing extreme cliches isn't RPing. What it is, I'm not sure. Some lame form of comedy. But yeah, I'm an UBAR RPer, and I woulda dropped that group pretty fast, unless I was just somehow in a very silly and energetic mood.
Choosing a Controller V2 | Splattrollers | Plant/Rad | Fire/Storm | Mind/Emp & Mind/Rad
Weird Controller Powers | Conf & XP/Time | Controller Damage
Being a Healer | The word Necessary | Natural Concept Characters
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As far as heros not swearing, the Punisher was a Marine, yeah he probably used proper english in the Corp. Wolverine probably cusses like a sailor
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Being a Marine I had to mention that it is not Corp. it is Marine Corps, We are not a corporation. Although it has its beurocracy and politics. Believe you me, marines do not use proper english, sailors have told me to "tone down my language" F*CKING SQUID!!! Also just to hijack this post further, what about shan't, nobody mentioned shan't!! 
Skyburner - You do that also....I yell for them to stop and I get other heroes asking what am I doing......../ignore.
Ladiestorm - Almost the same amount of time. Since Chainmail ( OK, time to cry. I said I would if I typed that 1 more time.) Hope to see you on Guardian.
Blood_Wolffe - Now you musta been a Grunt. Couldnt get your head in a jar??? ( J/K, I was an Airdale. It always killed me the bar fights with Grunts, yet when a DogFace or FlyBoy came in, I new the grunts had my back.)
and Shan't = Shall Not. Well at least I'm positive that Shat is past tense of Sh*t. Maybe to Not Sh*t is what Shan't really means.
RolePlaying is what you make of it. Some people will hate you for not ALWAYS being in character. Some will hate you because they dont understand when you are in char. A RL friend of mine cant draw a stick figure to save his life, yet he does have a good eye for what Art is. Some people think that working the Stats or Mechanics is a form of RPing.
I had a Hero *ahem* tell me that he knew 5 forms of RPing, and that my inability to kill fast enough is not RPing. I still giggle at that.......5 forms..........hehehehehe.
If that is what the OP really had to deal with......Sounds to me like they were 12 yr olds, and that is the extant of their combined experiences. As it is harder for some to portray a character that is no where near anything they have ever experienced.
Am I defended their RPing.......I guess, kinda.........Cant help but be the Devil's Advocate........Would I have stayed around...????.....Not after asking them to tone the heavy profanity down and them not.......especially if someone thinks they have the right to berate me......You aint my Mother/Wife/Goddess/or King, and I wont tolerate it from them either........but if thats what they call RPing and it makes them happy, well so be it......I still wont be teaming with them at any point in the future.
The members in my SG tell me they never played RPG's growing up. For what I have explained to them, and for how they ( I guess you can call it that.) understand RP, It is interesting.......1 standard that is excepted is RL is considered our Secret ID's. As since we are all adults, and some with children and all with RL responsibilities. That explains that. Whether you wanna talk about it and how is up to those talking. I am the only true RPer in my SG. ( well we have some new members, so we SHALL see.)
Heh yeah I do. Though I've not had other heroes ask me what I'm doing yet. But I get the feeling several are thinking it!
Make Mine COH!
"Someone has to stand up for those who can't"
- on Virtue
Skyburner - Wyldfire Agent
Silver Valor - Wyldfire Agent
Coppersmith - Shield scrapper!
Man, you just described my RL friends.