One of the reasons WoW had 14 million subscribers

[Moirear]

The pace is fine, but a slow, unresponsive, sluggish combat system is acceptable?

This is where the disconnect usually happens. If you believe this opinion of yours is an absolute, perfectly valid description of the game's combat system and that anybody who disagrees with you is "not seeing the truth because he or she is a white knight defending the entirety of the game as it is", you are delusional. If you believe it's just your opinion, I'll stop right there and we can agree to disagree.