Imagine meteor getting closer every 3 days.
New monsters falling from the sky
npcs being killed (and not just disappearing but lying on the ground dead where they used to stand)
Monsters in all the main cities

They seriously could have pulled off a 2-month long apocalypse with minimal effort. A few new mobs which they could have just based on old ones (ex. death elementals, mutated mobs), and a week-long ending event.

Instead a few extra cactaur spawned at some camps and stuff like that....
And there doesn`t seem to be any actual information about what ending event there will be.

SE had the opportunity to create a ton of pre-end tensions and actually destroy their own world (which would have been great symbolically)
It also would have attracted a -ton- of people back if they did it without closing registration until the last week. And all those people witnessing an entire MMO world utterly destroyed, would want to know what happened after (which they would find out in AAR)

That`s good marketing. And SE gave up one of the best marketing and promotional opportunities of all time.

I hope the ending week will be good :x