Again, they are a game company, not some evil organization that feeds on human suffering and hates people who gave them money for years. Attributing malice to any of this is idiotic, it is at worst misguided.
I agree with princezilla here - I don't see any "malice" per se, in what NCsoft does.
There's an old adage, something along the lines of: "Never attribute to malice what can be accounted for by sheer ignorance and stupidity".
With respect to the North American gaming market, NCsoft makes the proverbial "box of rocks" look like Einstein.
Their approach, in the NA market, strikes me much more as "gross incompetence" than anything else... They're like a plumber who, instead of fixing the drippy faucet you called him for, ends up flooding your entire home...
I can't speak for anyone else, but that "plumber" would never come near my home again, and in the same way, NCsoft will never sell a product to me again either.
Frankly, they should stick solely to the Korean marketplace, where they seem to have at least a small vestige of a clue.
Regards,
4
PS> @downix -- interesting commentary, thanks for sharing it.