I really think its unfair to say that SOE and those affialated with them do not care about the playerbase. At the root, yes SOE is trying to make money. Any business that doesn't do this, isn't going to stay in business long. They've got to be able to pay the light bill and rent somehow (this is an analogy by the way).
Rothgarr, Corvic, Ttobey ect, do alot for this game and its players? Why do they do this? Well yeah its their job. But as programmers and developers its their work. Its also a game they play too. I play a Crysis Mod called Mechwarrior Living Legends, and have been part of that community for a year. In MWLL the devs are able to talk one on one with the players a little more then they can here on EQ2.
From what I've been able to gather, when you bash their work. It sorta ticks them off. If you drew something that you thought was pretty cool, and I turned around and said it sucked or why didn't you do this instead? You'd be pretty mad too. Thankfully these devs are professional in how they deal with this sort of thing. The cool thing about MWLL is they don't have to be, its non-profit (though they are reasonable about it and many have picked up jobs with real companies to develop software).
We've seen some pretty nifty stuff get added. Currency tabs, mount tabs. We've got neat guildhalls and other things to do.
Everything isn't perfect, but shoot. This stuff wasn't there when I first played EQ2 3 years ago. You have to understand that you're going to spend 1000s of hours playing a MMO. You're going to run into issues and bugs. In Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for Wii you might spend 20 hours total.
The only gripe I have is how this game runs on the majority of computers out there. But this isn't something the developers have control over. They've got to get a directive from above saying, "get this working on the majority of PCs out there." Of course this is after they collected data on what is out there. Thats not an easy task and I understand that.
But some of you have been downright ugly with your criticisms. You have to remember that developers are in a way artists. If you're going to make criticism, do so constructively. Don't say crap like, "this sucks," or "they just want my money." Coders, Imagers, Modelers, ect don't have control over all that. But they do a good job at what they do.
If you're going after the top level management with your posts, make sure you're indicating such.