Couple of observations:
1 - reading this thread has been pretty eye-opening. Aside from some specific shills posting here, it is pretty clear the launch has been a disaster. Between three people I know that got the game on launch day, only one has been able to play more than about 1-2 hours. That's REALLY bad.
2 - this doesn't even compare with the D3 launch. I think D3 had a lot more gameplay issues at launch that were patched and Blizzard is still working on (drops, difficulty, missing features, etc) but it was mostly playable for folks. There was some downtime, and a little waiting the first few days, but it was OK. The AH was really the worst, but that is secondary to me over actually playing the game.
3 - I have a copy of SC5 on delivery today from Amazon. Apparently got delayed due to snowstorms here, but maybe that was a blessing because if I got this 2 days ago, I probably would be more frustrated than I am now. Anyway, trying to decide if I should install and see if I can play, let it sit for a while and then try it out, or just flat-out return it and maybe get it at a later time when I can get an offline hack or something.
I consider myself a pretty big SC fan. I played all SC games, except 4 (just didn't have time around when that came out) and it sucks to see this type of launch. My brother, on the other hand, is a HUGE fan and has spent hundreds of hours on probably every SC game. He is really bummed and had the game downloaded right at launch and still has yet to play more than 5 minutes before either a crash or a server timeout. Wondering how long he will go until he is fed-up and shrugs-off the whole franchise.
Congrats to EA for managing to shed dedicated fans to a franchise for over twenty years, in just days after a new game launch. Seriously, that takes EFFORT to work that hard to turn loyal fans against you.
This is why I find myself more and more dusting-off old titles and playing them. We are well on our way to building a 'dark gaming decade' where no one will play the games that are released now in the future, because of both quality and accessibility.