Do you think it was really lying early on (implying intentionally deceiving knowing full well they would not be able to deliver what they were promising)? I think there was a lot of naive optimism and overpromising, probably because JC was new to the industry, but IIRC the actual lying started happening after 0.23 and JC's departure. IMO that was probably the moment the company realised they couldn't deliver on their promises and started, for example, to use 'constructive ambiguity' to charge people to play in a persistent universe which they knew they were going to delete later.
And, as with everything else it was trying to be, DU was a poor successor to eve online too. The real selling point was if you wanted a game which had all of these different facets available that could grow over a very long time. I think with proper focus and planning DU might have got somewhere really good after, say, 10 years of growing had it not alienated most of the players early on. SO I don't think it was really lies.