Are Intel/Altera dropping mysupport?

In terms of support from Intel, you get what you pay for. When I worked for a large five letter telecom company when we had any issue with an Intel device at all they would send over an army of FAEs and support folks to our site to resolve the issue. But of course my company bought hundreds of millions of dollars of Intel devices per year.

Intel is not going to do the same (nor should it be expected to) for every lone Tom, ****, and Harry in a university lab that has bought one development board from some vendor (not Intel) and has a boatload of support issues. They will direct you to online self help sites (like this) or Intel/Altera self help web pages.

By the way Xilinx behaves the exact same way. We had our Xilinx FAE on speed dial in our lab (and he had his own access badge into the building) so he could come to our lab on demand.

If you are a noob that is lost, best to find someone in your school / organization that has been around the block already and get to know them really well.