it is customer-friendly enough that we will learn to love it.
I don't think so. A lot of our overall mileage is in international travel, and that is probably true for perhaps 33-50% of the traveling population (for me that was 3X in 2010, 7X in 2009). RR 1 made it attractive to split our business between a legacy carrier for international & WN for domestic. RR 2 loses that appeal. There will be a major shift of WN customers to AA, UA/CO & DL.
One of the major reasons I've always kept miles & reward trips around is for emergencies & last minute bookings so my wife can accompany me. Mandating a premium rate of points for an anytime fare in the last couple weeks negates that.
WN + RR 1 made sense for us even when we were both paying real $ for our fares. WN + RR 2 doesn't. It's not an issue of not being able to "game" the system -- the system no longer offers sufficient value.
RR 2 will be a useful program only for medium/long-haul/strictly-domestic flyers.