I never rush out and buy a game as soon as it's released. I never, ever pre-order. There was only one exception : X-Com Apocalypse, I bought that one as soon as I saw it, but I was younger then.
I will take your advice and avoid MoO3 like the plague.
But we should be asking ourselves, why is MoO3 such a poor game ? Not how, plenty has been said about that, but why ? Did the original developer sell the rights to another company ? Were any of the people who worked on MoO2 on this project ? Was there interference from the publisher ? In other words, what went wrong ? Owning the MoO line was supposed to be like owning a license to print money, how did they manage to make such a mess of it ?