I don't know what people find wrong about the quest log. I mean, they're sorted by location, main, current, failed and completed much like in the previous games. The difference here is that instead of a small description, we get the entire conversation text that led to the acquisition of the quest. I liked that idea at first, but I guess that some people's tastes differ on this.
Performance on my 3500+ / 1GB / 6800GT setup is not much worse than I had with Oblivion-- after tweaking. There are the occasional few-second load-times, but absolutely not as much as before. I can remember Oblivion having them, as well, anyway. And Oblivion still had zoning, which allowed it to have areas that gave 70+ FPS, because it was just another level, and not part of a huge world like Gothic 3's.
And Gothic 3's world is so much more fun than Oblivion's, anyway. It's much more divers and more interestingly filled. I was really amazed yesterday when I found a river with a bridge over it and a town behind. I'm not sure what town that was, but it was damn big, too.
No, I can still remember the screams of Bethesda fans when Oblivion first came out and it was not just about design issues. I distinctly remember hordes of players complaining about lack of polish, like Bethesda didn't pour any love into the game, with broken quests, rain that comes through the roof, missing horse jump animation, poor performance/optimization, crashes to desktop, the whole deal, even graphical problems. In fact, Oblivion still hangs my computer when I exit it (even after applying the patch). So I can definitely find similarities here.
I'm not saying that Gothic 3 is without problems, I'm saying that Oblivion wasn't neither. And I'm saying that it's not so bad that I can't see the huge fun world and potential that Gothic 3 has. So far the biggest problems for me is loading times (saving definitely doesn't take so long, or does it increase as the game progresses?) and the save game corruption scare. Hasn't happened, but that really shouldn't happen, ever.
All the rest of the problems are also in games like Gothic II, but for some reason people won't accept that stuff any more these days and just want their games to be totally flawless at release, all the time. Just look at Gothic I and II, man, and see how utterly unpolished it all is. Even the menu system is hard to use, with it's poor contrast between selected and unselected items.