I remember when swtor launched and the glorious shit fits that were thrown over the high resolution graphics not being in at launch. Then, bioware scrambled over themselves to get the high resolution graphics out... At a time when a part of the population was having difficulty running the game on "low".
Looking back, I feel that bioware should have ignored the complaints about graphics and focus on the features.
When I look at Gw2, tera, rift, swtor... On ultra they all blow the industry standard out of the water.
But the higher detail comes at a cost. People are less accepting of a poor animation if the figure is more life like. Take the human rogue eviscerate. Not only is it poorly animated, but the legs ignore footing and current movement (sometimes it doesn't. Most of the time it does). So your character does an electric slide while wiggling his arms out in a weird wobble motion. But, its cartoonish and is perceived as such.
Now, all the other games have these sort of animation issues in one form or another. But they are far more jarring despite being less obvious.
People report that they "just don't look right".
So, not only does raise the graphics bar raise the animation bar... But they most likely devoted testing and man hours on getting all the tearing fixed. Before they added ranked WZs or a group finder.
I really feel like that's a bit messed up priority wise.
Now, you can debate weather certain features are "needed" in a MMO but you definitely do NOT need shiny graphics to play it.
I don't know. It irks me.
I would rather a game launch with its core game strong, pvp and pve, and the features that go with its core, group finder and ranked, than the game be pretty.
Might just be me though.