Can Champions Online overcome launch issues?

Reading the CO forums (or Massively comments for that matter) is kind of strange... half the people complain that the game is too easy, the other half that it's too hard. And they're both right, in a way.

CO is currently very build-dependent. If you have a good build, with lots of defense, health regen, and tap DOTs, than you're set. If you don't have a good block or a good defense passive, then you're screwed. Personally, I took the last free respec and made my char from an almost all Darkness to a mixed spec with a skills from a number of frameworks. Now I can solo group quests several levels above me, and emerge from super villain fights with 100% HP.

The best advice for new CO players (or people re-rolling or respecing) is to spend a lot of time on the forums, and deciding what you want: a flat-out OP char or a concept char that has enough of the good skills to still be viable. Too many skills are fairly useless in this game, and sadly, concept characters are usually easy to play. They really need to balance the game better.

Can anybody show me any MMO that didn't have a spectacularly awful launch? The first month or two after every MMO in the history of the industry has always been disastrous; the MMO industry is consistently rough on its early adopters. I see it come up in conversation on this blog often enough to know that at least some of you remember how bad World of Warcraft was at launch time. EVE Online was barely more than Tradewars in Space when it shipped, and it was still buggy as heck. And that doesn't even count the ones that flamed out.

What separates the successful MMOs from the ones that fall by the wayside is not how good or bad their first month is, or even their second. What separates the successes from the failures is the 3rd month, or the 4th. Are problems being patched quickly? Are exploits, botters, and spammers either rapidly patched out of existence or aggressively policed? Is there a patch with at least some of the content that was promised during development but not ready at launch time up on the test server? Is at least one person inside the company with access to the developers acknowledging the problems and posting realistic tentative schedules for fixes, and are those deadlines being hit?

Judge an MMO by those questions, not by how many bugs there were in the first month, not by how many nerfs there were in the first month, not by how many level ranges there were where you ran out of content during the first month, not by how hard it was to get into the servers during the first month. The only question even worth asking during the first month (let alone during open beta) is whether or not the fundamental design of the game is fatally flawed. The rest is just routine MMO industry launch trouble, something that's pretty much inevitable given the complexity of a modern MMO and the resultant management and budgeting challenges.

The game needs more content. End of story.
How long the devs take to add more is anyone's guess.