Honestly I think the "Problem" is just the demo, they did a terrible job with this thing in context with what the game actually is. Alot of people are proving this, I have three friends who were convinved they would not buy it because they did not want a linear level based action game. Lots of people in this thread alone have gotten that impression from the demo.
This demo does so little to tell people what this game is really about that it's pretty shameful, I was only able to get two of the three to change their mind when showing them the streams of the game. They just did this the wrong way, if they want to demo a game like this, you need to do it like Amalur did. Let people mess with the character creator, and then give them a solid hour or so of playtime. Let them explore, let them experiement with their characters class, skills, etc.
Some people just won't like it, because no game is for everyone, but I strongly think this demo is giving people a terrible impression of what this game is, or what it could offer.