At this rate it wont be long before we're paying 15$ a month to look at screenshots.

Why is the game so poorly optimized? Why do we still seem to have memory leak issues when they've reportedly been fixed? Why is this game such a performance hog, when there are better looking games on the market that can be run on a rig half as good?

I dont run a top end machine, but it's certainly not low end either. I dont have video performance issues with any other current games that I play - everything from assassin's creed 3/4 to diablo 3, even crysis - but with ESO I have to run the absolute minimum settings just to get by, and if I tab out, switch characters, or stay logged in for more than an hour or two my performance starts to plummet.