Anyone else just feeling really disapointed this expansion?*vent*

[Solarra]

I am feeling rather disappointed with EW, mainly with the MSQ and the pacing, although honourable mention must go to the numerous escort quests and the totally annoying stealth quests that have you following an NPC (one or two would have been fine imo).

This is new for me, in other expansions I've enjoyed the MSQ more with each playthrough (yes, even ARR), now I'm skipping cutscenes when I go through on an alt.
Even on the first playthrough the pacing was a major issue, especially towards the climax. I could have done with far less of the Loporits, and the slow questing around the final area of Labyrinthos killed any sense of urgency.
After playing through again, I took a closer look at the things that had bothered me a little the first time round. Without the excitement of wanting to know what happened next, the flaws became more apparent. The expansion felt rushed, done to a formula and full of plot holes and lazy devices.

Garlemand felt really rushed, I was so looking forward to meeting some of the main Garlean characters and seeing more of this area.
Need to get to the moon? Well there's this oh-so-convenient device that gets reconfigured (by magic) and there you go! For me, there was far too much of this type of thing, getting over what appeared to be insurmountable difficulties with absolute ease.
Too many times I found myself thinking along the lines, 'But if we could do this, then why didn't we just...?'
I found Hermes unlikeable and totally illogical and inconsistent in his motivations, which could have been the basis for a really great antagonist, except all of that was skated over and I felt we were expected to just accept his view of the world.
Similarly, Venat's motivations were never questioned and we are expected to simply approve her actions without reservation.
I felt the 'emotional' moments were rather manufactured. I have felt teary while playing through other expansions, but this is the first time I felt the game was really trying to manipulate the player's emotions in an almost cynical way, maybe it has just been overdone.
Fake deaths... again!... yawn.
After getting quite fond of the Scions and feeling like one of the team in Shb, I felt EW undid a lot of that good work and left me feeling rather fed up with them all. I was so happy they were going off to do their own things for a while and so disappointed that 10 mins later, we had to get the team back together.

I am hoping this is going to be like SB, a rather disappointing MSQ that was saved by the later patches. However, the story of 6.1 didn't shine at all. It was obvious who the Scions should have spoken to before going into that dungeon and just unbelievable that was the one person they decided not to let in on their little scheme.
G'raha turning from world leader to teenage fan-boy was disappointing too.
6.2 was better, but time will tell.

What's really lifted the expansion for me is the story behind the raids. That has been excellent so far and very enjoyable.