Why start discussions like this and then when someone doesn't agree with your opinion you say they're defending NCsoft or white knighting. No one here is saying NC is perfect and that they make good decisions, I agree with half if not all of the points you mentioned about them.
I just don't agree with the part about the game dying because I always see full channels in a lot of areas on my server, I never had a problem finding groups for dungeons, faction chat is always active, and I've visited the starter zones a few times and see a couple new players running around during the day.
Obviously your experience is different from mine or otherwise you wouldn't have made the topic but just because some don't agree doesn't automatically mean we're defending NC.