Quote Originally Posted by ZedxKayn View Post
So? Not all criticism has to be constructive. Saying "x is not fun" doesn't make the criticism worthless, it's player feedback. It's as constructive as "wow I enjoyed the story so much!" yet you never see people say "tHaT'S nOt CoNsTrUcTiVe CrItIcIsM" to that. It's up to the devs to figure out what to do with any type of criticism positive or negative, constructive, neutral or abrasive, to ignore it, acknowledge it, think about it, because the statement "x is not fun" doesn't stop being true for the player because it wasn't presented with a wall of text on how to perhaps make x more fun. Additionally, I'd reckon the feedback of players that quit can be extremely valuable for the devs, probably more than the positive criticism.
My take is the main difference is how you proceed as a developer. When people say they're really enjoying something, even though it would be nice to know more specifics, it's passable to simply translate that as "the approach we're using right now is working, keep doing more of the same." When someone just says something is "bad" on the other hand, without specifying what, it's a lot more difficult to make changes. Knowing "everything is likely good" is much more informative than "something is not good, but who knows what or why."

I see the issue as less a community "allergic to criticism" (the multiple threads providing specific, constructive criticism on things like certain races, for example, show a community completely accepting of criticism), and more taking issue with people who directly insult and attack the dev team while proclaiming themselves the all-knowing arbiters of what is "good" or "bad," and frequently it ultimately boils down to "the devs wrote a different story than I wanted them to write, so I'm going to call it bad."

And for every person who seems to get on people's cases for disliking something about EW, I can likely equally point to another person who seems unable to accept that many people enjoy it.

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.
This is also a great point. The data points at the moment, though, show that the current expansion is their most successful. The opening and patch-release peaks have seen the largest playerbase yet, and even the between-patch troughs are still significantly higher in terms of active players than similar troughs in any past expansion. Taking specific critiques under advisement is useful, but completely altering your approach when the overall feedback is overwhelmingly positive is generally a terrible strategy.