I remember Battle for Wesnoth when it was just beginning. I love fantasy wargames, but most other people don't. Wargamers want hardcore reality, and fantasy fans want roleplaying, so they don't often meet and when they do it usually pisses off one camp or the other. I played it, enjoyed the hell out of it (it's basically Panzer General with some bits rearranged), and was disappointed when the main campaign ended abruptly in an unfinished scenario. Oh well, it was clearly under development, I'll come back later. That's how this kind of thing works.
When I finally saw a link to it a few years later, I remembered it and excitedly tried it again. This time the main campaign worked and there were other campaigns to download. Great! But...the campaign I played was poorly written because it was easy to get into a walking dead situation, where you had no chance to win, none. I complained about it on the official forums and was told I needed to have developed at least 2 third-level healers by the scenario I couldn't finish. Are you kidding? How was I supposed to know that? Isn't this kind of bullshit that killed the adventure game?
Larry had GRASS, but GRASS is also a word for CANNABIS, which in turn is a kind of HEMP from which you can WEAVE a ROPE, so WEAVE GRASS and you have a ROPE.
-- Adventure game logic
I started hanging around the forums since I liked the game so much and was disturbed by what I saw. The game was chosen for a "Google Summer of Code" project and had all sorts of artists and other nongamers hanging around. Super, you think, right? Not really. These people weren't with Wesnoth to make a better game, they were here to as a sort of training session. They didn't give a crap about the game itself, and it showed. They were real keen on doing the 90% of fun work, and leaving the 10% of hard work unfinished. And hell, why not? It's for your class project, after you get your letter grade for class or your SoC participation verified or your bullet point on your resume, leave it for others to finish. It's open source, if you don't like it change it yourself. And IMO this is why Wesnoth is where it is today. It's not a game, it's a continual software development project first and foremost. It can never be finished. If that ever happened, there would be no more resume polishing, and that would be a great tragedy.
I'm probably going to get an angry Wesnoth fan rebutting me with something like, "you're not a member of the community! Your opinion doesn't count because you're not a part of our ecosystem." And you know, you're right. I'm not. I'm just someone who likes fantasy wargames.