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[PsyberianHusky]

Is it personal preference or a legitimate point that I think the design of most MMOs are bad game design?

[Neruz]

It's a legitimate point. Most MMO's subscribe to the Everquest school of Game Design, which means pad the content out as much as humanly possible, which is poor design.

WoW is actually kind of amusing in this respect, if you look at how much stuff Blizzard can add to WoW with a single 1 year's worth of expansion, keeping in mind all the other work they do throughout the year with patches and whatnot, you realise how little actual content is in each expansion.

[Horseplank]

Is it personal preference or a legitimate point that I think the design of most MMOs are bad game design?

I think it's a good design, from a business standpoint.

Everything is elongated and drawn out to ridiculous proportions, allowing more time for money from subscriptions and "cash shop" items to roll in.

From a gaming standpoint, meh.

[BradB]

X3: Terran Conflict is chock-full of bugs! Especially memory-leaks! Even after a load of updates!
RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEE

[Draco18s]

X3: Terran Conflict is chock-full of bugs! Especially memory-leaks! Even after a load of updates!
RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEE

Obviously you never played Jurassic Park Trespasser.

[CobaltKobold]

Programming SNAFUs are not bad game design.

[Neruz]

Programming SNAFUs are not bad game design.

Indeed, they're bad programming.

[Siquo]

"Bad programming"... I just read a good one on Gamasutra:

A DOS-Game had to ship out, but every time you exited the program, it would exit with "EMM386 error: blablabla".

The programmer hex-edited the code at the last minute, and changed the error message into "Thank you for playing Wing Commander".
 

[Draco18s]

Programming SNAFUs are not bad game design.

Trespasser wasn't a programming SNAFU.  It was a "We're going to do all this cool stuff, it'll all be in the game on launch day, yadda yadda" and then realizing they didn't have the time or the money and threw it out the door unfinished.

Bad design choices led to an incomplete product.

Notably though, had Trespasser been done correctly (not tried to do all the cool stuff and not told anyone) Half-Life wouldn't have tried to fulfill those ambitions.  Trespasser was the first game to ever use ragdoll physics and the "noodle arm" inspired the gravity gun.