The game has always been pretty mediocre. I think what people are seeing now is a large number of people coming out of the honeymoon phase. I guess it's a little harder to justify all the questionable decisions now that we can't fall back on the whole "The game is relaunching from total failure! Of course they're going to play it safe!"

To be clear, I'm not saying the game is bad, just that it isn't anywhere near as good as the old hype would have you believe and nowhere as good as it could potentially be.