I have taken a try at the game, you are right the glamour of the trailers is not so straight forward, in the game you have to do a lot of stuff for all the cool stuff, but I do still think it's a good game and I'm still proud to have pre-ordered it.
Glad to hear that, we don't need another Colonial Marines fiasco. How about the multiplayer mixing with single?
They said the online features can be deactivated completely. I assume there will be also an offline mode then. In this offline mode there shouldn't be any anti cheat mechanism but we can only say for sure when we get our hands on it.
About the graphics. The E3 trailer was before the new consoles went public. That was a time where nobody knows what power the consoles have (or not have). So after the consoles were announced, the reduced the graphics. But recently there was also a trainer by Nvidia showing the full PC graphics.
Personally I think Watch Dogs will be a great game but somehow it will be also disappointing. Not because of the graphics or anything like that. Nobody except Rockstar Games have managed to create an open world title that makes fun outside of the story. And this will be the biggest weakness of Watch Dogs.
The hacking elements will become boring soon. As they make only sense if you use them in a specific context. For example to eliminate your opponents or break into something. Instead hacking into civilian bank account's or reading their messages is a thing you'll drop after one or two hours.
We will see when the game comes out.
I agree on your statement with the fun outside of story, but they have actually addressed that. Random events will occur around, if you play enough and such, yeah it will become boring because you will have tried mostly all. But there will be plenty to explore, a lot of random things generated around, some not so random because it's cause of something you did elsewhere, but they did good. And yes multiplayer is possible to disable entirely, anti-cheat. I can't say for sure there.
@Techowl, how did you get to try the game?
Is there a buy-in-beta?
No, there is no buy-in-beta. Me and a handful of my colleagues got to try out the game.