No, it's not this either/or. It's not expecting everything is perfect. It's looking at the part of the selling point premise -- the first thing you get about the situation and why it needs heroes -- and saying that it doesn't pass the smell test. Now, after that, it's entirely true that there's a number of people that aren't bothered by the smell, and some that are, but this isn't about adventure perfection, it's about asking why one of the core premises for the adventure is presented without any facilitation for suspension of disbelief when, as shown by this thread, it would have been simple to do.
As I've said a number of times, I see how these things happen because I've done these things. Luckily, most of mine got caught in review, but my program had to learn how to look for these things -- they don't just stop happening because we regret them. So, I get how it happens, and I don't expect perfection, and, for goodness sakes, the sales figures for WotC aren't really motivation to undertake a review of their review process, but that doesn't reduce or remove the validity of this criticism. The two year long deep winter is a poorly presented and unexplained premise that has caused some to have trouble with their enjoyment and suspension of disbelief. How many? Don't know, ENW is hardly representative of the wider hobby. I have to think that anyone that lives in the North of the globe (and a few places in the South) would at least scratch their heads before doing their own work to justify it, but that need to justify or explain away how one of the core premises of the adventure just to align with experience is a problem -- this is precisely the work the writers are supposed to be doing!
I don't need perfection, far from it. I would like the writers to do the basic job of presenting a core premise that hangs together rather than immediately make me question it because it violates my experience and knowledge and doesn't even try to justify that. This is the main job of a fantasy writer -- to violate your experience and then give you a reason to suspend disbelief. We have the violation, where's the reason? It's been advanced that it's to play an adventure, and that's laudable, but I can play lots of adventures -- why is this one special or different enough that I should do extra work to suspend the disbelief? This is where just a little bit of extra work on the premise could go a long way. That's not perfection, though.
