Appreciate your counterpoints, but again you're making lots of assumptions here. You're better than that, Sly. When crossing into a land of giants, an ant has to grow its perspective, if not its size.
Given all of the events that we've had in the last 3 months, it's easy to turn NCoin into more than enough adena to buy all of those items -- that's if he bought them and didn't make some of the items himself. I got an Insanity talisman in one of the events. I got 3 Greater Jewels in another. In the current event I've enchanted 5 Magic Sticks up buying the scrolls from other players and have "won" 3 stage 5 jewel boxes and two Dragon claws. Sold them all. You do the math on that profit. And no, I didn't sell my condo, or burn through half of my paycheck buying Ncoins in order to make that happen. If I can raise that kind of adena from just one event, imagine what others like some we both know who have won multiple Dragon Weapons in this event can earn.
Recognize that if someone does have enough money to drop thousands on a game, it's their right to do so. Stop judging. It reeks of envy, not righteous indignation.
I get it: NCSoft's profit model pisses you off and you blame players. Newsflash: NCSoft has been this way since f2p started. It's the whole purpose of f2p. Direct your anger where it belongs, not on the new players who are coming to the game and keeping the damn lights on for us. Make no mistake, if this game doesn't reach an acceptable profit target, they will shut it down. (No, nothing we do will force them to reevaluate what that target is.) It's basic capitalism and Business 101. Sorry that NCSoft is not nearly as nostalgic or warm & fuzzy about the nature of this relationship as the players are.
Lastly, some of those prices that you reference are based on AH and market. If a person is stupid enough to pay instead of enchanting his or her own stuff, they deserve to get hosed. Enchanting a +10 set doesn't cost hundreds of billions. Neither does +14 on a bow. Any Fortune Seeker (rather fitting name) with LUC and enchant scrolls can churn out multiple high OE items in a week, sell them for 1,000,000x what it costs to make (primarily to scared idiots afraid to OE, or who think ridiculous AH price is an "acceptable" market price to pay) and then rinse and repeat. The real cost is what NCSoft charges to upgrade those items to limited or PVP/PVE status. But players don't control that, do they?
Apologies for the long post and to the OP for derailing his thread. He was trying to be helpful to the community at large and I didn't mean to detract from that.