Day of Darkness

Nexon is very big on GM "impartiality" and "objectivity", which they maintain by minimizing contact with "the natives".
If a GM got friendly with a player, he might use his powers to help that player (for example, by "getting rid of ks'ers" - without knowing whether the player really was in that map first), and that won't do.
Recall that they forbade the MWLB to police their own worlds, for the same reason.

Of course the result is that GMs know nothing and care about nothing. While "everyone in Scania" (or any other world) knows who their major hackers and dupers are, and where the botters nest, and which shops have stolen gear, Nexon remains ignorant. If GMs are online when hacked items are smega'ed, they don't know enough about the game to even recognize these items as impossible.
But who cares? The important thing is that they show no favoritism.

Although I can see where you're coming from (and I agree that they need to be impartial), getting to know the community does not cause favoritism - it simply means that they know what the community as a whole thinks about certain things. Speaking of impartiality, I'd like to bring up Basil mods (inb4 comments about Basil). I come into contact with three of them somewhat often, and I believe they consider me their friend (or two of them, at least - I have one on my BL, and one frequents the forum I post on a lot). Yet when I PM them explaining why a certain suspension is invalid, they counter-explain the validity of the suspension, and the suspension holds.

Here's what I think - GMs should appear human.

You know that police officers in the real world are always there, you know that you can find them if you need them, and you know you can talk to them if you have a problem. With GMs, you have no idea if they're there, you have no idea where you can find them if you need them (because, let's face it - the ticket system is extremely impersonal as well as complete bullpomegranate), and if you don't know where to find them, how are you supposed to talk to them?

It's about communication and the effect of GMs on the community - knowing that GMs are there makes us feel like Nexon is putting in the effort to ban hackers and that they're actually trying to keep the game clean.