@Ruffianopatsu:

What they actually said back then was 'It's possible, but it's a huge amount of work and we can't justify doing it right now.'

All that changed, of course, when NCsoft bought CoX and there was a lot more money available. Things like the marketing survey suggested powers customization was coming, and the devs started dropping increasingly heavy hints. That was in 2008. They haven't rushed it out to compete with CO, they've been working on it for over a year now.