...sound business sense. If they continued to allow purchases....
:: Facepalm! :: You're. Not. Listening.
In simple monosyllabic English -- I did not say they should let us buy once the date passed. I said warn us first. What part of that is so hard to get?
"If you purchased points on 8/28 to get Nature..."
My experience contradicts you.
"I24 went into open beta on 8/8, probably around the same time the decision was made to close..."
As you say, it's a case of one hand not knowing what the other hand is doing. Another example of the disconnect between NCSoft and Paragon Studios that culminated in Paragon (so I understand, hearsay on this point) getting all but bodily thrown out the door. It still had the side effect of making the abrupt closure announcement all the more shocking and infuriating.
"Not fraud. It's called 'puffery'"
It's called lying. I'm not gonna bandy words with you.
I don't expect anyone to operate the game at a loss for our benefit. I do expect them to take cost-cutting measures, attempt alternative business models, to keep the game going so long as it has some kind of paying audience, just like so many of the other venerable MMOs out there. Their advertising contains that promise, and instead NCSoft has done the opposite. Sadly truth-in-advertising no longer exists and we no longer expect it, and put a figleaf over it with doubletalk words like "puffery."
"...understandable because they don't know how to handle this kind of outcry."
Y'know, I don't see what's so difficult about it. Early on, I wrote a thread called "how to shut down an MMO" that, since NCSoft if determined to destroy this game, outlined how to do it in a way that defuses as many harsh feelings as possible. It's not hard, it's called empathy, taking the trouble to imagine yourself in the other guy's shoes and anticipate how he'd feel and react. Y'know, "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you."
And that's not a cultural thing either. Master Kong's (Kong Tzu, "Confucius") works reached Korea and he said that about five hunded years before Yeshua did.
Aggelakis, no offense, but I swear if you weren't listed as a Paragon Wiki Admin, I'd suspect you of being an NCSoft sock puppet. You are completely out of touch with why the community here is so upset with NCSoft. It's not just that they're closing the game, it's how they're closing the game and how we're being treated. Heavens, do you really suppose we'd all be cheering when NCSoft's stock falls, creating and posting 'net memes, buying the Devs dinner in sympathy, dredging up the Garriott mess, just because the game's closing? I for one am not that petty. These are legitimate grievances.
"We're the first to get really stank about it."
If I may speak on behalf of the good folks gathered here, we're the first to have so many ethically sound and logically valid reasons.
And Blade and Soul is still pornography.