I've played quite a few MMOs over the years, starting with EverQuest. I've also seen quite a few reasons for them failing leaving me with significant trust issues.

First how do I measure failure. BioWare has stated that SW:TOR is profitable, with seven US Servers after a mass exodus from the game with massive server consolidation and going FTP/PTW. Now I know BioWare isn't going to open their books for me to take a peek, but while they may be writing on the right side of their ledger with black ink, how may zeros are there. Did they plan to make hundreds of dollars on this game?

I've seen quite a few MMOs collapse in this fashion. To be fair some of the things that kill an MMO aren't the fault of the Devs.

Botting/gold farming/goldseller spam. This more than anything else killed Aion. The Devs were warned about this before release and ignored the warning.

Harassment. I quit playing WoW because I was tired of the nonsense that went on in trade chat and having a 12 year old tell me what he did to my mother.

Hacks/exploits. Anyone else enter an 8/8 battleground in SW:TOR and notice 12 players on the other team? Add to this the fact that beta testers of the game discovered these exploits and sold them on their websites instead of reporting them so the holes could be filled in by the Devs.

Twinks/Elitist thinking. I noticed this first in EverQuest, like Heirloom gear in WoW, it produced the unwanted effect that new players were not worthy. If you can't keep new players your game will die.

Great start/mediocre middle to end game. Who can forget how awesome the first 20 levels of Conan were only to segway into text dialog in the higher level zones. Rift and LOTRO suffered from this too.

Nightmare UI. Having so many spells/abilities that you can't keep track of them all with no macro's to help. In PvP you have to focus on your opponent, not your UI.

Using the Nerf Bat to balance PvP. This is why I quit playing GW2. This more than anything frightens me about ESO. Aion tried two factions with a neutral NPC faction. What on Earth makes anyone think that three factions with an NPC faction can possibly work. I think we can expect to see the Nerf Bat early and often.

Emphasis on group play at the expense of solo players. Why I gave up on EverQuest 2. You couldn't go anywhere without a group. This was also a problem with SW:TOR and GW2, with storyline missions that required you to form a group to complete.

Trash classes. In GW2 the top tier raiding classes were; Guardian, Warrior and Mesmer. The rest were trash classes. For example I had a 60 Necro that watched the end of every fight from the floor. The GW2 Devs solved this problem by nerfing the Mesmer and Warrior and I quit playing.

Listening to the loud/obnoxious/angry players. Most of us don't want what they want in their shouting rants on the forums. Still the Devs listen to them and the rest of us vote with our feet and leave.

Well enough I suppose. One last thing, I believe that even now hackers are compiling a list of exploits to determine which race/skill set will dominate PvP. They will sell this information on their web sites and by the time the Devs close those loop holes it will be too late.

Is it too much to expect an MMO that will still be growing a year after launch?

If ESO invests in GMs to monitor the game. Suspend accounts for harassment. Ban accounts for buying items/gold and using exploits. Pay attention to the players who don't shout in the forums. Well this game might just succeed, maybe.

Like I said I have trust issues.

Encountering terrible people is a key aspect of every online game. You can't just CHANGE that, you know? You can't just wave a magic wand and force everyone to play nice and fair. ZOS would have an easier time removing all the salt from the ocean.

If the PVP part of the game is not a nice place to be due to the people who are there, then I will go back to the PVE area and not worry about what anyone else is doing.

MMO's and more specifically MMORPG's are basically at a dead end right now after WoW distilled MMO's down into their essence. We (some more than others) are now waiting for someone to completely reinvent the genre. Most of the issues listed in the OP are just symptoms of that predictability and stagnation. I'd love to have that same sense of wonder and awe that I had when I first started playing DAOC, but I've given up hope on that occurring with any game that fits in to our current definition of MMO/MMORPG.

1. And this surprises you? Do you honestly think a big company like that (especially one with such a huge reputation) is going to admit that they screwed up bigtime.

2. You're going to have gold sellers no matter what, there is no possible way for mods/devs to get rid of every single gold seller/spammer. It is just part of being an MMO

3. Welcome to the human race, ever been to a sports game, not much different

4. nope, never noticed it and never read about it, i honestly have a hard time believing this as it would be all over the forums if true. Link please? As for the "speed" hacks and so forth, most of those are not cheats/hacks at all, but abilities being used and a player not understanding what they are seeing.

5. Twinking (to some extent) and min/maxing is just part of any RPG, it is only obvious and actually pronounced when you play an MMO. It is an integral part of RPG's. Also some people just like numbers. Yeah, min/maxers can go to far and say some crazy things (like a 0.8% actually matters) but most of them ignored and are only a small part of the playerbase.

6. This is because of how MMO's are designed. They want you to fully explore and do many quests, etc. Most MMO designers seem have some sort of weird mental block against people who only care about endgame and they expect everyone to take their time to get to max level. This allows them to finish/add more content to endgame and flesh it out while still giving a good low-mid level experience.

7. I actually agree here, some games have gotten to a point where you are not looking at the main screen anymore, just looking at the UI and when you next cooldown is ready.

8. what do factions have to do with the nerf bat? Also, while i agree it is better to buff things than to nerf things, there are times where nerfing something is the only thing that makes sense. For example, In DDO a Wizard could literally one-shot pretty much anything in the game. you really cannot buff everyhting to that level and have to bring that down to a normal level. Of course, they did that too much and made Wizards unplayable for a while, but still....

9. It is called a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER online game for a reason. Some Solo content is good (including leveling), but the majority should be forced into a group. Also, SWTOR had no such thing with story missions. You can EASILY solo the entire storyline with ease.

10. This happens because people start complaining about a class and something to do with it (usually they lose to it in PVP) and then complain on the forums and despite many people trying to tell them how to beat them they ignore it and whine about the stuff being OP. It IS bad, but mostly blame the players for this, not just the devs.

11. go to 2 and 3.

12. Yup, and you could technically do that with ALL TES games as well (the Breton passive in the single-player games is so OP that it makes all the other races a moot point is a good example). Welcome to an RPG, a genre where numbers matter, at least to some extent.

I was really sad after Star Wars. It was a great IP that they turned into fudge.

But I love fudge!

I was sad after BOTH Star Wars MMOs revealed their true colors. At least with TOR it was right away and didn't give anyone time to become truly invested like SWG did.

OP: I understand those trust issues for sure. I would say, from experience (not blind fandom or faith mind you) that the ZOS team have so far been some of the best devs out there when it comes to being humble, listening to feedback and responding accordingly. They also seem to be appropriately concerned about infrastructure and security. I hope they don't let us down and I have faith they won't, and this comes from a guy who has been burned by every MMO dev team under the sun. I think we're in good hands.

Bad fudge.

I am wary after EA's involvement with bioware. I see it as the Indiana Jones South Park Episode w/ Lucas and Spielberg.