1.) No Windows 2000 support. (fixing this alone may or may not change my mind, but it would certainly be a step in the right direction)
2.) They advertised so much more than they actually seem to have delivered. They talked so much about formations and stances and how to form your army up to better take on different kinds of oppositions, none of which they'll be including. They talked about diplomacy with native americans. Is it just me or does "walk up and build a trading post on their land" not seem so much like an in-depth diplomacy to anyone else?
3.) I saw screenshots of native american warriors hunting on the plains, explorers making treaties with indian chiefs while children play in the background, towns people and other characters standing around talking to each other while idle. I thought this implied that this would feel like a vibrant, alive world. There isn't so much as a patrol command, much less vibrant scripted activity in the world. I understand that screenshots don't always represent the final product, but at LEAST don't have the screenshots advertise a game that you're not even developing, please? Maybe I'm being unfair, but that seems like fairly common sense to me.
4.) One more thing. I realize this kind of refers back to the first item on this list, but they said at E3 that "a computer capable of running Age of Mythology decently will be able to run Age of Empires 3 decently." Except not with Windows 2000? And they also don't mention that without that bloom effect which is only supported on extremely new and beefy video cards, the colors look quite comparable to Age of Mythology actually, if not worse. Except I could run Age of Mythology at high resolutions just fine, but if I turn AoE3 up above 800x600 at all, it lags all to hell.
I understand that it's a much bigger more advanced game, all I'm saying is: "Don't talk a bunch of big smack that you can't back up."
Then again, I guess that marketing tactic worked for Fable.
My conclusion: Big time disappointment. Is it still a good game? Yeah, probably. But there's alot of good games out there. They promised that this would be something revolutionary, but now I seriously doubt that.