As a casual player I've never found an MMO that interests me, so catering to a hardcore audience isn't a bad idea.
They've always felt like "single player games but you need help to defeat a bullet sponge every so often". I'm sure being a part of a guild makes these segments great but when you're a new player on your own they feel unapproachable.
I'd love to play a multiplayer game where players contribute to a developing story rather than repeat the same one everyone else has done. Obviously that's a ton of work so I'm not surprised it doesn't exist.
I agree with this so much - the end of act 2 was such a narrative high I was excited to see how they topped it!
And then they didn't. And then I stopped levelling. It wasn't the climax to the story I was expecting.
I always struggled to describe what was so disappointing but you hit the nail on the head. Starting act 3 felt like I was sent in time back to act 1 - aimlessly wandering around the map until finally stumbling across the next main story point.