Hardcore fans? How about all the people who never posted here and created accounts on this forum just to let Larian know how extremely hurt they were by this patch? What these fans you talk about want is for the narrative to be open to interpretation as before. Larian themselves said there is no canon story, only your story and you can do with the characters what you want.
Anyone see my join date to this site? It's under the profile picture. And many others I may add in the other romance threads, if anyone cares to look. Many joined here because of this change.
Every who I just noticed got upgraded from "Stranger" to "Apprentice", surely have made many hardcore Astarion posts..