Goremise - though I agree with your post in general, the big difference I see are those that are spending more time complaining, over and over, as opposed to defending. They may want to call it defending, but the way they bring it up is as a whine. I played many years on WoW, and nearly every time there was a big change, all the whiners could come out of the closet, talk about the game's demise and how everyone that was passionate would leave. Has that happened?? No, the game is still strong (currently though I do not know, as I quit over a year ago, because I was tired of it and did not care for the direction of the newest expansion). Similar is happening here - so many people complaining.
A big complaint is about the GbG, which I can see in a sense, but I can also see that the GbG here is a very simplistic game, it has none of the complexities of a true PvP environment. So many players here seem to have a sense of entitlement, and use that entitlement to complain and create facts and figures from the space between their ears.
There are many problems with exploitation, but because certain players are used to using this exploit as part of their game play for years now, well then, reducing the effect of the exploitation has destroyed the game and made certain GB's pointless. What a bunch of rubbish. Again, entitlement. Fixing things is not as simple as turning a switch. Fixing an exploit can often lead to unintentionally creating new exploits - which players will definitely try to use to their advantage.
I have also seen multiple times where there are players with multiple accounts on the same world, against the Terms of Service, and although I have reported some of them, months later they are all still active. So what to do - from my point, ignore, as obviously nobody cares.
The future life of a game lies in enticing new blood into the fold, as the old blood is full of bad disease, such as entitlements, cheating, bots and whatnot.
Programming is a complex language, especially when it has been around for years, with new items added and different coders taking part. A true fix can only be done in pieces as it gets fixed/adjusted, or stay in development until it is considered fully fixed - which can take a very long time, especially in an environment like this one (i.e. years of code and multiple additions of new ages)
If certain players want to do nothing less than whine and complain, they are the players that need to go. Figuring out the difference sometimes between whining and feedback can be difficult to see. If players do not want to be accused of whining and crying all the time, then it is better that they learn how to properly critique a process, as otherwise, how can those particular players ever be taken seriously.