[Endrance]

NCSoft would never do that, unless they'd charge you real money for it. It's just another potential reason for them to make people play the game longer by making a new character. While I don't think that being able to change factions would be a good idea, gender change isn't as stupid as it seems. To be honest - I've been unhappy also with my char in several games after some time and in many of those games I would've needed a LONG time to redo all the stuff I've done for my character, so much that it just didn't seem to be worth it. So I get the motivation behind it. Since MMORPGs are still just games, I don't see a reason why a gender change would be stupid anyhow, as long as the developers make it have sense (which many of you are probably unable to think of). Although I also understand that many people refer to the real world in that case, which makes a gender change seem a little... transvestite'ish. And most people tend to not want something like that in a "cool" fantasy-like Game (while they could make it be less uncool by throwing characters in an astral world, where some mysterious power (probably done by some kind of "gods") changes their appearance for a rational reason).
Oh and, a gender change could also only be possible once (maybe twice or the option to be able to change back forever). So that "everytime you want" argument can easily be negated.