A few points:
1. Bethesda is still developing new single player games for both Fallout and Elder Scrolls. This was made clear from the very beginning as when ESO was first announced the initial reactions were "OMG, this means no single player games" and Bethesda was quick to say this was not the truth.
2. Elder Scrolls Online is pretty much charging standard rates. The cost is box plus subscription. You cannot consider that truly "double dipping" as that has been the way MMOs were being sold since pretty much the very beginning. I say pretty much because the first MMOs actually charged you by the hour or minute. But Everquest, WoW, Ultima Online, and others all used this basic business model.
So far I have yet to run into any real micro transactions. The outrage over this so far was because people who bought standard editions of the game got all POed that people who bought the Collector's Edition got a free horse. Unlike other MMOs the mount system in ESO is a little more advanced, as your mount levels up when you feed it once a day, and you can raise it's base speed, sprinting, and carrying capacity (it adds to your inventory). Bethesda's response was to release a brown version of the same horse as an add on for the game, so those who didn't buy a collector's edition could get the same benefit. While this appeased some whiners, it pretty much got other whiners on their case about starting with micro transactions.
This does not mean there will not be other micro transactions later however, but so far there don't seem to be any that I have seen.
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THAT said, I myself as a player (and former beta player) will tell you that the game itself isn't great. As I said with Beta it has potential, like a lot of MMOs do, but a lot of it depends on what they do with it, and how fast.
I do agree that the combat is a bit of a mess, it's one of those cases where people complained about everything being a "WoW clone" and so they set out to create a more active kind of battle system where you have to aim melee attacks and such, rather than everything being "tab target, auto attack, and use abilities". Really he only part of the system that is WoW-like is tying your abilities to hotkeys (and really there aren't many more efficient ways to do it). It also seems to have taken some nods from say "The Secret World" where while you could have a dozen or more abilities it only lets you have 5 things you can do active at any given time (and one "ultimate" power) which forces you to pretty much create micro-builds within each class. Weapon switching being less for having an actual alternate weapon, as much as a way to access another 5 abilities.
I've still got my eye on "Wildstar" somewhat, but the way things are looking is that I doubt we'll see another great MMO until Blizzard again shows everyone how it's done. ESO seemed to fall into the trap of innovation for the sake of innovation without testing itself too heavily. What's more it seemed to isolate itself from the fans, where the open betas were more for stress testing than actually getting feedback (and their feedback was through some rather impersonal surveys that didn't allow for a lot of expression).
I'll probably play ESO for a little while before I drop it (burned out on other games), unless of course it does something to seriously kindle interest. For the most part "Neverwinter" (which it's combat reminds me of for some reason) did this kind of combat better. Albeit Neverwinter is one of the most monetized games I've run into, while people have a kneejerk reaction to subscriptions, I actually find things like "pay for inventory space" even more annoying.
