Although I’m not the person whom you’ve quoted, I’d like to share my side of the feedback on my VW experience.
I drive a Passat as well for the past 6 years, and I do encounter most of the issues mentioned above like piston crack, mechatronic issue x3, speed sensor issues, water pump, engine oil leakage… etc. these are all costly fixes!
And I think one of the main issues, highlighted by my mechanic was that I’m not driving it like a “Sports Car” that it is supposed to be. So to quote driving like a race car, yes, optimally we should be fueling up minimum Ron 97, Rev-up the engine every once in a month at least (maybe up Genting?), make sure we never get stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic and so on, instead of fueling the economical Ron 95, and used as a day-to-day stuck in city traffic car.

We are definitely not the bad luck people, its just in the perspective. Saying we are minority because there are 2 or 3 forumers saying that their passat doesn't have any major issues is just genaralizing to the public base on 3 observations. Take a look at VW FB page, VW Malaysia Forums, have a talk with various Tow Truck guys (I've been "privilleged" to have been towed 6 times in the past 6 years), you'd find perhaps more truth in terms of the statistics around the faults and issues on VW cars. So on that, I think we are the average or even majority of the group, while the 2-3 people are outliers, super lucky people.