Appreciate you not jumping down my throat. You're right, it is a low bar, and HD2 does clear it pretty easily. But you and I both know that publishers won't hear the part about the game being fun (or they won't care). My point isn't that HD2 is bad, just that publishers will see its success and completely misinterpret why it's successful. They'll see a live service game doing well and think that people want more live service games, not fun games.
The real message being sent is that you can release a $40 always-online PVE game with MTXs and rootkit anti cheat and gamers will tolerate all of it if they think it's fun...