FWIW, SWTOR had nearly 7 years of development. Elder Scrolls Online had nearly 7 years of development. If Star Citizen isn't done in 4 years people act like the sky has fallen.
Offering a persistent universe to players and committing to keeping it up is not a trivial decision.
Star Citizen ended up basically rewriting all the netcode in CryEngine from scratch and starting a new studio because the CryTech people were going bankrupt. They wrote new code for the provisioning and deployment of server roles automatically to make sure they always dynamically handle load for whatever they need.
They also needed all the systems in place (multi-crew ships, flight physics, combat, damage models, etc) to give people a playable game worth hosting in a persistent universe. For Star Citizen, these weren't trivial things. Their physics are insanely complicated because they use realistic models for different thruster types and locations to alter how everything flies. And as ships take damage and those individual thrusters are damaged, it alters how you fly.
The ability to go seamlessly without a load screen from walking around in a spaceport, stealing a ship in that spaceport, launching into space, going extra-vehicular and boarding another ship are really impressive.
It has still been less than 4 years. In that time they hired up and created 4 studios (a non-trivial task), built a mo-cap studio, built an audio studio, filmed all of Squadron 42, put out Arena Commander, racing, a persistent universe and are hoping to release Squadron 42 at the end of the year.
Again, given that SWTOR and ESO took 7 years, I think people are just freaking out over the transparency of the project. SWTOR spent $200 million on initial development. But we're supposed to lose our minds that SC raised $115 million?
People are entitled to like or not like a game, but I love SC. I'm a backer since the Kickstarter. They have a playable game right now that is already a lot of fun with no forced microtransactions, no subscription fees, etc.
If you haven't played it yet, they just announced another free fly week. They do these every few months. Create an account, download the game and play online for free for a week.
I'll drop my referral code (since you have to create an account either way). If you do eventually back the game, you get bonus currency in game if you used a referral link. If I get 10 referrals, I get a free ship. I haven't really spammed the link all over the place, so I don't have referrals and wouldn't mind getting a free ship.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/enlist?referral=STAR-FH6N-TWPY
Use this promo code to get access to the fly free promotion:
SUMMERFREEFLY2016
That's it. You don't put in any financial information or commit to paying later. You just play for free and decide what you think.
The MMO side is still alpha and buggy, but I routinely hear players talking about some of the best emergent gameplay experiences of their life in this game, and that is this limited alpha.
