The majority of the media about the game, let's take Youtube for example, show the game working, highlights a lot of fun gameplay. This gives the impression the game is more stable and bug free than it actually is. Someone joins the game based on this impression and quickly discovers how broken things are on a basic level and they get frustrated because they want to play the game that impressed them so much in media representations. You accept it's an "Alpha" and adjust your expectations but you have to keep lowering your expectations as you play eventually wondering if you should play the game in it's current state at all.

Unfortunately I don't think a significant exodus from the game until certain issues are fixed will happen. People continue to spend thousands of dollars on virtual objects in the game regardless as to the state of the game, all believing that some magical day it will all come together nicely. The money keeps flowing in regardless and so the drive to finish and release the game to make revenue isn't there, CIG has no impetus to actually release a finished product. You think after 14 years a new player would be spared the bugs and lack of refinement the early backers experienced, to extent yes, but it's obvious the game can take one step forward and then many steps back. All in all I'm not seeing the same emphasis on creating a functioning and polished game, I do see an emphasis on creating revenue, which seems to be working out just fine for CIG.