Polishing existing flaws to an unequalled degree.
If you polish a flaw, it shine all the brighter.
Here is a summary of what should have been changed/improved and was merely polished, making it perhaps even more painful:
- Raiding enforcement. Most players don't want to raid or don't want to see it enforced at the end of the grouping gameplay, regardless of what the majority want, they enforce it to please a few geeks who show them unending loyalty back, as you reward the unworthy.
- PvP is broken. Take DAoC, remove most features, and polish what you kept.
- Balancing is overdone, diversity is almost unexistant. Every group you make there will be at least 2 characters that will be clones of each other. yeah players are balanced, at the cost of diversity.
- Traveling is slow/immersive. You want to cross the world...it would be a long, uneventfull, boring travel, when you do it for the 473905 times.
- Few characters models of significant differences.
- Easy to understand, easy to master. It is sweet when a game is easy to understand, when it is clear what you need to do to improve...but when it is easy to master (compared to any other MMO out there), this is bad. I am all for a casual game, but at least, make it hard to master, so there is a reason to play it beyond a point.
That's been said, it is not a complete disaster. As you can read in other reviews, the games has many strongpoints and I won't waste your time about these, I rather focus on what should have been improve and wasn't. We are talking about Blizzard, not going to welcome a product they do as if if was done by some Indie devs, but considering it is done by Blizzard...I have higher standards, and they where not meet.