First
If what you say is true about Relic staff reading the forums (certainly not all but I'm sure some of the more passionate devs like to lurk here) I really do feel for them. It can't be easy working working so hard and seeing your hard work not live up to it's full potential because of management/publisher pressures. I think by now anyone with a clue should know that the a good portion of the people at Relic are genuinely passionate about gaming and designing games that they would like others to enjoy. I'm sure it can't be easy, especially for some of the original vcoh devs, to see what has happened to Relic with the THQ debacle.
In saying that, it's clear that many of the problems with coh2 stem from management/publisher pressures to produce more profit from the CoH Title and less time spent on balancing/bug fixing. This isn't just an issue with CoH, it's happening to all PC titles as the devs who are passionate about gaming have less and less control of all aspects of game design.
If the devs at Relic really DO care about their work so much, they should be doing what they can to un-fuck the toxic corporate atmosphere at Relic/SEGA (the upper levels of Relic at least). Not an easy thing to do, considering how many game devs without work there is in the world. Either they try fix Relic (and therefore the entire CoH franchise) from within or they do what some of their colleagues from the past have done and leave to start their own studios/join existing outfits.
For all we know there is already some dev(s) inside Relic who care about what is happening to the CoH franchise and are trying to change the way things work in Relic. If this is the case (as it sounds from your post Napalm) then not many outside of Relic would know because of the stifling-NDA and gestapo-like secrecy of Relic/SEGA. I really do hope this is the case, as I have THOROUGHLY enjoyed and gained literally THOUSANDS of hours play in both DoW and CoH. If there really is anyone from Relic who is doing this, please, keep it up, you're doing god's work
Btw Cynthia if you are reading I'm sorry for the stream trolling, creepy foot fetish was just the first thing that got me a ban so I kept at it