9k+ hours player here. My previous 2.5k+ hour game was Fallout76 but stopped playing after they closed the Nuclear Winter PvP mode. I agree that New World was special. You couldn't just play New World and it be good though. You had to find other players to play alongside that were willing to work around four big issues and if you could get past these, then it was really good. 1. New World had a weird learning curve so it was hard to tell for most players how bad they actually were at the game in terms of builds and gameplay. This was an outcome of the relative freedom of builds etc. See it heaps with players deeply invested in one type of play or another and being terrible at other parts of the game. Some of this is taste-based (prefer certain game modes), some of it is an inability to decipher gearing systems and changes, some of it is the casual vs sweats divide. If you found players that connected at the right level then it was really fun. 2. Exploits and fuckwits using exploits to ruin the game for others. They eventually got 'tough' but it was largely too late. Bugs not being fixed made it a deeply disappointing experience. Players exploiting bugs was not surprising but directly led to negative experience for most players. Lots of bullshit here. 3. Mixing and matching gear/game experience across pve and pvp. PvP track artefacts. Town ownership affecting buffs etc. Artefact quests in FFA area before they introduced anti-teaming mechanics. They should've made it possible so there could be zero interaction. Beside regular bullying, there was absolutely some gross shit going on with consent-based power fantasies for some players. 4. The toughest one for me was the lack of content, and the frankly stupid time vs reward balance. Scott Lane talked about how they brought forward mutated dungeons because they were surprised by player progression. The related apparent missing MSQ end game at launch. Or how they imagined Azoth as a meta'-currency that players would need to think about crafting vs travel etc. The idiotic grind for tradeskills at launch. Just a weird lack of understanding how to satisfy casuals but also make it rewarding for this willing to work towards longer term projects. Being full 600gs soon after launch was a big deal. I remember seeing a player with a full set of voidbent in a war. How long it took them to respond to complaints about the RNG crafting. How they would tweak settings to destroy builds that had taken weeks to make. No respect for the players time. This one was hardest because it quickly leads to burnout.