By relatively minor I meant a large portion of these issues live in the category of "technical hiccups and such" and not in the core of what the game itself is.

By relatively minor I meant a large portion of these issues live in the category of "technical hiccups and such" and not in the core of what the game itself is. A slow and buggy game can become a faster and stable game over time with patches and polish, a game that is boring, dull or put simply, a bad idea won't become much better. You can't polish a turd and make something better out of it. Take VtM: Bloodlines as an example. People stack patches on top of patches from random websites only to be able to play this game in a somewhat acceptable state, and yet it's a well-known darling of gaming circles. By impact this is indeed nowhere near minor. I'm just saying most of this could be avoided, and the core of the game, regardless of its issues today, is appealing.