I own a small business. I'm am speaking in terms of running a business, not the game. Call it good for R&D, call it "the watchdog," call it what you will. Not only monitoring the forum, but also giving input shows all of us jerks that there are real people who care about us as much as the game. Most of us will never leave the game but every month some new person signs up and makes a wish and gets bashed by all of us insensitive jerks.....
So let's call it 4 noobs a month are treated poorly by us and get no reply from the HTC team..... Those 4 noobs do not resubscribe. That comes out to an addition 60 USD per month, per group of 4 noobs. Over a 12 month year it that rough figure of 4 new people per month drop off comes to a little under 5000.00 USD.
I'm willing to bet HTC reads them, there is no law set in stone that he has to reply to them, is there?
Forget what is good or bad for the game, it's just bad for business. And if business gets worse and worse, then what happens?