Here's a thought for you to chew on. And it's a very basic one.
Time zones.
Consider how difficult it is to even schedule negotiations when the time zones of California and Seoul Korea are as far apart as they are. I just looked at a time zone map. It's 12:00 Midnight in California as I write this (a little bit after by the time I'm finished). And it is 4:00 PM in Seoul of the NEXT day. So California is wrapping up Friday moving into Saturday. Seoul is into 4:00 PM of Saturday.
So - SOMEBODY has to be inconvenienced in order to do these negotiations, assuming that they are talking directly to the home office in Korea. Either someone from either side has to come over in person. Or if negotiating live via "Virtual Meeting Room" then someone has to either get up at some ungodly hour or stay up late by the same amount.
Then there's a language barrier to overcome, as well as cultural to some degree. The Korean side most likely knows English on some level. But that's not guaranteed. Perhaps translators have to be involved. There may be legal specialists on either side having to navigate the legalities from one language to another as well.
If a group of former Paragon Studios employees is negotiating with NCSoft, then most of these hurdles are likely having to be overcome on THEIR end, not from the S.Korean one. And any expenses are likely going to have to come out of pocket on the western side as well. (This is a guess on my part since it would seem at first glance that the Western end of things is the one that had to get the ball rolling in the first place and wasn't in a strong negotiating position to begin with. Though maybe that could change over time.)
So the basic logistics of these negotiations may be a big part of what's taking so long. It may be difficult to even schedule a meeting where all the parties can be properly represented. How many of these sessions can even be arranged per week? I'm guessing there's really only been one or two per week. Maybe three, tops. With a lot of email and such flying back and forth in-between.
Hit Streak (Brian Clayton) showed up at AP 33 the other night around Midnight California time, 2 AM my time (Dallas, Texas) for a little while. It didn't occur to me then, but later I realized... The guy may have JUST come out of one of those negotiation sessions! It makes sense, doesn't it?
He may have shown up at AP 33 to give -himself- a morale boost after a draining day of these negotiations.
VV? You're talking with Brian. How close am I to guessing right on any of this? I don't THINK any of the above speculation is NDA breaking if Brian were to confirm it. It's just talking about logistics.