There has not been a single major patch without a critical issue since Endwalker.

[EaraGrace]

Other than Bozja and related content (in my opinion), you listed most of the more legitimate complaints that were made and continue to be made, which sort of indicates the complete opposite of the point you are trying to make. Unless your post was sarcasm, then carry on.

Point being that EW is not unique for those suggested problems, and those claiming the game has recently struggled are we wrong. Given that EW has so far avoided or addressed several of the problems that plagued SHB, I’d say things are fine.

[Vahlnir]

Given that EW has so far avoided or addressed several of the problems that plagued SHB, I’d say things are fine.

Not really. Most of these problems still exist, regardless of whether they were present an expansion ago or not. As far as the state of the game is concerned, things are probably considered fine by a lot of people, but that doesn't mean it is all sunshine and rainbows and magical unicorns.

[LisSquid]

Has anyone actually lost their character to DC/World Travel? I know it's a threat I see rolled around, but I have never had it verified personally. Granted, I have never truly looked.

As is anything else, yeah I'll beat the dead horse about declining quantity. The quality of core features are still good where subjectivity isn't involved (while I loathe the last half of the MSQ, that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the mechanics of it all the way through!) It's just.. not much. We're used to that, though, so eh.

ETA because I'm sleepy: My favourite mini-game in Endwalker is to find all the major assets that aren't aligned properly. At least they fixed bench half phased into the wall in Sharlayan!

[Vahlnir]

Has anyone actually lost their character to DC/World Travel? I know it's a threat I see rolled around, but I have never had it verified personally. Granted, I have never truly looked.

I haven't so much as left Diabolos to shop around my local servers, and I have no desire to DC travel. Definitely not something I want to risk. lol

[Arzalis]

I'd say it's little things like the lack of Miqo'te ears in headgear that happened at the very start of ShB. They used to do that. There are some pretty good examples of similar headgear in ARR that have them to ShB and EW sets that don't. Now they just sell cash shop gear that cuts them off too.

Stuff like that by itself isn't a huge deal, but it adds up along with other things that you handily listed to show a trend downward. They're removing or reducing things we've typically gotten left and right. Even the things we do get have been pretty messed up lately, which would understandable for a studio who wasn't used to MMOs, but this game has been going on for a while. If they don't have systems to reliably test for failures under stress now, then they never will.

ShB is generally praised for it's MSQ (which I think it deserves) but with their clearly dwindling available resources, it's obvious that's where most of the focus on the game goes. The main issue with EW is the MSQ had the same level of attention at the expense of everything else, but the MSQ just didn't land for a lot of people. So I think that's why you're seeing an uptick in complaints.

Also, yeah. I wasn't sure if the one above post is sarcasm either. It pretty clearly lists objective quality issues (along with some subjective ones.)

[LisSquid]

Someone had made a graphic a while ago showing how much they have cut from unique assets. I wish I could remember the thread so I could plop it here.

[Reap00]

Housing glitch. EW queue bugs (which had to be resolved by a Redditor and not their own engineers). And now... DC visit shenanigans.

This has never happened at this alarming frequency in HW, SB, and even ShB.

What is going on?

None of the above issues are critical. Critical would be something that would no longer allow people to play the game at all. These are inconveniences that are swiftly resolved. Try again troll.

[Theodric]

I don't recall ShB being nearly as divisive as EW. Especially when accounting for opinions voiced by players who have been invested in the game for a decent amount of time.

[Catwho]

Housing glitch. EW queue bugs (which had to be resolved by a Redditor and not their own engineers). And now... DC visit shenanigans.

This has never happened at this alarming frequency in HW, SB, and even ShB.

What is going on?

Software development of a mature product.

Source: I work in software development for a mature product. Bugs happen.

[Arzalis]

Software development of a mature product.

Source: I work in software development for a mature product. Bugs happen.

I work in software dev too.

Bugs happen, of course. If they consistently happen across multiple major releases, then something needs to change. At that point, your testing methodology is flawed and needs to be re-examined.