Why does everyone complain about STORY based MMO's?

[Lauront]

It's just a cheap way to dismiss negative sentiment.

At my work, we maintain a very close relationship with the people who use our software. We spend a lot of time tailor building or tweaking features to accommodate our customers particulars, and it would be laughably irresponsible for us to ignore negative sentiment towards a feature just because the criticism "Wasn't constructive enough". Customers, particularly in the entertainment space, may not be equipped to understand or communicate effectively exactly why they don't like something. Professional designers/developers are supposed to have the skillset to contextualize and understand negative sentiment about their product, even when it's not particularly descriptive or nice.

Exactly. At the end of the day it's up to the business to figure out why the feedback is the way it is. Yeah, sure, they won't lose sleep over a handful of people leaving, but a customer saying they dislike something, or simply ceasing to consume your product without even saying anything, is a data point in itself, and one to explore further. Larger businesses devote entire departments to extracting insights out of their customers' behaviour, because it is so uncommon (particularly in mass retail relationships, like this) that they will give you enough to go on with just the first pass of feedback - and that's assuming they offer any besides their actions. Nonetheless, you as the business are still faced with the fact that they may cease the relationship, they may be spending less than they otherwise have been/could be etc., so whether you like how "constructive" the feedback you're getting or not, it couldn't matter any less. Grow complacent and dismissive about it at your peril. There's other things for a consumer to spend their money/time on. It's very easy to turn that kind of thing into an excuse to not do proper research into what your customers are telling you, either in words or through actions.