While I can't say I've paid more for less as a whole, I've definitely had a higher fun to dollar with SC than many other more finished, flashier games. It's what you make of it and the people you meet along the way, just like any other MMO. It definitely has its warts and issues, but I think a lot of people also hate it because they were told it was bad and evil and I don't think that's really true. It has the trappings of any large game service products which people call greedy but it does cost a lot to run. I think a lot of the criticism boils down to that's a lot of money and not a lot of fast progress, and that's fair but this game is also unique in being public from a far too early point of development and many other games with smaller scopes are just as slow when developing a new engine/IP (relative to the scope) but the public doesn't see much until we get to just about this point in development.