I believe ETW was victim of loudmouth complainer syndrome, a handful of people with problems kicking up such a fuss that it seemed a lot bigger than it was. I dont know anyone who has had any major problems with ETW.
With a truly broken game, like Damnation, you know its real because people complaints will come from more than one source.
Well, I agree that ETW wasn't broken from the point of view of stability and game breaking bugs. However, the no land invasions AI retardedness made the campaign essentially pointless, which, for me, meant that the game turned into a coaster, and not a very good one, at that. And also, it annoys me a great deal they needed months to release a patch to fix a bug that had already been fixed in previous iterations of the series. It's really gross incompetence.