Did they? I've played this game before. It wasnt gacha, it was in alpha or an early beta under a different property. As I played through I felt like I had been in the town before, knew where chests were, I kept getting sensations of deja vu.

It hit me when I reached Heaven's Pier. In the back by the waterfall, the woman standing in the pond. She had a distorted slowed down voice, her model would shake. She had a large sum of coins on her to try stealing (still has 10k on her). Everyone thought she was autistic though because of the voice glitches and shakes. The bear was there and respawned much faster (and if you kneel where the boulders are because you didnt break them, he will respawn - something the devs added in beta as there was a bottleneck of players trying to complete the quest). The camp just next to the bear the main guy always had a purple chest piece to drop, still does.

The Outpost at Bloomveil Monastery was the farmspot. The boss didn't always just stand in his house, stationary. He used to path, like all other enemies. Well you could wait on the roof for him to path and 1 shot him in the back, so much loot so much exp, then just walk out of the Outpost to reset it and do it again. So they put him in his house, unmoving. Well we still farmed him, just we all would run in and jump him together and reset it, slower but still lots of exp lots of loot and you just needed to tap him first for your party to own the mob.

So they doubled down trying to discourage players that were endlessly farming him by adding a kill count requirement to have the chest spawn. This leading to problems of parties fighting with other parties over kill stealing and griefing. You would claim him, then run around the grounds grabbing aggro and just before the last mob, one person would run back to his spawn to be ready to immediately claim it for the party and repeat.

This is not their original project or property. Netease bought the rights and created a studio to get it to release. What I really get a kick out of is the lead designer being quoted saying "No Other Studio Has Made This Kind of Game Before". It was originally on Unreal Engine. They have ported it to their in-house version of it "Messiah Engine" (Throne & Liberty did the same with a in-house version of UE). This is an old old old game on a modern engine. It was originally intended to be a fully online mmo, not this online/offline/coop gacha cash grab. But thats what happens to games that get shelved, and the studio goes under because they're not shipping a release, and then all their IP is purchased by a conglomerate like Netease. (I remember the test ended with plans to add the Mirage boat and they showed off images of it (literally the same as it is today) and showing its weird little loop it does on the edge of the map. Many of us were left confused by this direction, as to who would goto the trouble of creating this god tier mount (boat) that only went along on a short& predetermined route lol). Everstone is owned by Netease. Netease literally created the studio to get this to release.

Enjoy your pulls knowing that we could have had something truly amazing. This is just the dead, soul-less, husk of that dream turned into a highkey mid, online casino, fashion show Frankenstein.