Alright, so, Season 1 was what it was. Some of the people it attracted was only because of the "horror" aspect to it, or even just the action scenes. When they saw that there was going to be a romance, they became disappointed. However, this was just a minority of people. Personally, I rather there be one than having a series where it's just brainless fighting and the same type of development that comes with any series like that. Either way, it was mostly the 2nd arc of the 1st season that quite a lot of people disliked, since they compare it with the 1st arc a lot. People wanted the "death game" aspect, but when you look at the arc by itself, it still had enjoyable moments and fights, imo. Some complain about Asuna not being strong during that part, which just makes no sense, since she's held there by a GM and then even still tries to escape and succeeds in helping with the keycard. Besides, no one ever said that the death aspect would be gone forever (and no, I'm not talking only about GGO). Also, the OVA was nice as well, at least after the recap.
About GGO, I liked it mostly because of the sense of danger in it, as it kept me on edge the whole time. The mini arc about the sword after that was meh, and then Asuna's arc after that was pretty cool and filled with feels (but also awesome fights). Then we have the upcoming arc, "Alicization". Everyone I saw who has read the Light Novels has said that this arc will (supposedly) be the one of the best or the actual best one. I'm highly looking forward to it. In fact, it would be pretty dumb to claim/judge without watching or reading something first.
In conclusion, people might have different tastes, that's nothing new,but when it comes to overall quality of the anime itself (including both the good things and the flaws), it's a pretty good anime. If it didn't suffer from overhype backlash, there would be almost no one complaining. In fact, since you never even really see fanboys crying over it nowadays, just the ones who can't let go and are still bashing (even without having watched it) are just either: fanboys of other anime series, the usual trolls or just ignorantly following that bandwagon. They're the loudest minority, who like to complain, unlike the majority who enjoyed it and who mostly don't bother going online to voice it. So you shouldn't really care, at all. It's because it became so popular that it reached a lot of people who liked it, but also a lot of people who didn't. I would've personally also preferred if some parts were dragged out longer or just simply had more, but that's me and it didn't stop SAO from being good anyway.