I'll tell you my point of view about what ncsoft do ...
They saw they lost players, players started to play aion/wow, and what ncsoft said .. "hm .. they like it .. let's transform l2 in wow/aion slowly ... and get our players back" so they added new sh*ts, and more new sh*ts, and alot more new sh*ts, till l2 started to look like wow/aion
But still ...