Familiar Hack

I disagree.

The primary cause of the population's acceptance of hackers is not the size of the population. It's Nexon's attitude.
Sad fact of life is that most people obey the law only out of fear of punishment. When Maplers see that hackers get away with everything, they stop caring and decide to grab whatever they can for themselves.

Nexon is also to blame for changing the game. It used to be so grind-intensive that only the most masochistic stuck around more than 30 or 50 levels. Nexon has made it progressively easier, trying to appeal to a much broader audience - not non-gamers, but non-grinders. Lazy instant-gratification people, who used to be pushed to private servers, are on GMS now and are happy to use any "shortcut" to make it still easier and faster to "win", even when the win is a rather meaningless "level 200".

I actually do agree in that Nexon's inaction is ultimately the biggest reason. As well as with everything you said.

I still think mainstream exposure is a factor though, after all, some hackers are people who understand how games work, from a technical angle as well as the 'bigger picture'.Truly exploiting the game with awareness of the consequences for all other players. However, many casual players lining up for hacks, from what I've seen, sincerely can't comprehend the effects some hacks have on the community. Heck, some don't even comprehend the idea of a community itself.

When it comes to community issues in general, size seems to matter. WoW and LoL : you'll find a lot of blogs raving on crappy communities like we do here. Smaller ones do better in that respect. Dragonica remains my favorite gaming experience to date community wise, even though i was only around 3 months before THQ tanked. Forums were a mess due to the GMs not moderating though, ingame it was much better save for a guild rivalry or two.