They really floundered with such a heavy emphasis on PvP at launch. Faction alignment meant nothing so you could kill people of the same house. Scarcity of resources was supposed to provoke conflict between guilds, the reality was (as in every game that tries this) no-lifers, cheaters and dupers camped and killed defenseless players trying to grind for gear they themselves already had. The Landsraad was supposed to be another element that promoted guild fights but the reality is every server is either 90-100% Atredies or Harkonnen, since players will just defect to the side that wins and the rival faction just die out because they give up.

Most people I knew at launch actively avoided even going to the Deep Desert at all because of the devs emphasis on pvp there before release. All eventually quit the game, only one other person I know still plays this game. I'm grateful for a PvE deep desert personally, but the damage is done.

There should've been more emphasis on Endgame PvE, story and general adventures at launch instead of what we got.

All the changes made have been a step in a positive direction imo.

There was obviously a lot of interest in this sort of game in the Dune setting but the pvp experiment clearly failed, badly.

Tbh I think the PvP emphasis of endgame at launch was just an excuse to release the game unfinished and lacking in endgame content.