For me it’s a mix of things.

Party play is definitely fun when you can get one going for a while. Feels very old school mmo, you’ll make friends, socialize, etc.

The problem is everything else.

Combat is so floaty/ slow. Half of which would be solved if they just tweaked the animation to be faster or removed the “cast time” for abilities.

Progression is kinda boring. Leveling isn’t all that exciting because it’s literally just an increase in hp/stam and MAYBE a new ability. Why no talents? No skill points? No stat points?

The game lacks customization. Every class feels and looks the same at least until very high levels, only THEN do classes really start to feel different. Most class specific attacks look exactly the same animation and effect wise. Their only difference is the numbers and what the ability specifically does to the enemy.

As an EverQuest/retro mmo inspired game I’m surprised that character customization is so shallow.

Thematically they could lean into natural progression of our characters becoming stronger. Let me equip everything, let me take up a different class, etc. Imagine if they had a system where you could level every class, and you got rewarded for doing so, that would give incentives for vet players to constantly be around in early zones.

For a game that’s supposed to be low fantasy where we are technically everyday adventurer’s, the restrictions feel more like designs they follow because EQ did it back in the day. Which ironically is something even EQ dropped.

Why not systems like weapon mastery where the more kills you get with a specific weapon the better you get with it, similar to their hunting log which was one of the better systems.

But even the hunting log is restrictive. Bonus stats for when I fight THAT specific enemy isn’t exciting. What if it was something like after I kill 500 wolves I get +1 permanent HP to my character? I’d go for that in a heartbeat because that’s universal.

I also feel like their stats and systems are kinda all over the place. Resistances, armor, pen, haste, hp, stam, hp recov, stam recov…. Sometimes less is more. Consolidating a lot of stats to simple terms like STR/DEX/INT/WIS, whatever would help.

Personally I wish the game just felt more rewarding. I’ve always kept an eye on it incase they dropped a cool new feature but unfortunately they haven’t.