What exactly is "ill intent"? To people who aren't able to get on the game this week to claim their rewards for the completed season stuff, then they're kind of screwed aren't they? Also leveling up to 61 is no easy task, it takes a lot of time and with only a few hours left in the night, it might not be enough. Grinding is a lot more than just getting up to level 61, it's collecting all the mats for getting your PEN gear which is mind numbing. I don't know anyone personally who loves to grind their brains out 3000 mobs at a time. It sounds like a big waste of time and it's a lot more palletable to do it over the course of days rather than taking a whole evening to do.

I don't really care for my toons but there are a lot of people who made plans accordingly and BDO changed their mind out of the blue. There's no reason why they should have shortened it, perhaps they are low on money or are trying desperately to keep their numbers as high as they can for their investors? I don't know. But what they did is morally wrong for a game company to do.

Where did they announce that?  Everything I saw in-game and under "Events" said Sep 29 up until they changed it on the Sep 8 patch.

I got full PEN Tuvala this season very easily, but my wife who has played exactly the same amount of time as I have still doesn't have full PEN.  She still has all the accessories to do and is unlikely to get there by patch.  Last season, we both managed to get full PEN with no issues.  The season before, she got full PEN easily, I kept blowing up mats/downgrading and ended up finishing the season with PRIs and DUOs except for the free PEN accs for getting to lv61.  RNG is RNG, though I think there might be some technique to managing failstacks across alts as I started taking that more seriously last season, but my wife claims she's doing the same as I explained to her so maybe I just got lucky this time and last.