"What constitutes a smear?"
As you say, undefined term, legally. If you say bad things about others that are false, that's slander. Print it, it's libel. True and verifiable things you can say all you want; it's called journalism.
"I do want to remind everyone of our original goals of keeping our nose clean with NCSoft. Lately we have been getting dangerously close to launching some serious smear style campaigns."
To be honest, I've kinda accepted that NCSoftcore fully intends to shut the servers down as planned, and there's nothin' we can do about it. I've been in revenge mode for weeks. And I'm pretty sure the damage has already been done: NCSoftcore and Nexon won't be able to do business with Western gamers for the foreseeable future unless they change their ways. Now we just translate all the journalism into Korean.