The real question is: why do you want a PvE world?
You do realize that, for the vast majority of PvP players in GW2, the "persistent PvE world" is, at best, a Lion Arch-shaped lobby where they log in because you're kicked from the WvW map when you disconnect. The only advantage of mixing a PvE and a PvP world is for the PvE players, not the PvPers. It means the PvE crowd can dip its toes into some PvP from time to time. The PvP-oriented players don't engage in the PvE experience.
So, yea, since it's a PvP game, not a PvE with PvP tacked, there's no large PvE world.
The result is simple: you get UO, pre-trammel. You get a game which is designed to attract sheep for wolves to slaughter. Except the sheeps know better after 20 years, and they're not going to touch it.
The problem of having permanent consequences (worth fighting over) is that, by now, if you lose, you uninstall the game, and move on. There's dozens of games to play. Make losing sting too much and the game loses. That's what doomed the ancestor of Crowall: once you'd lost, it was over, and you most likely canceled your account. Maybe a few would toughen it out, but that didn't make a game viable.
That's what they learned, and why they move to a campaign-based format. Losing doesn't set you back, it means you've not progressed.
You better hope their are advantages of mixing PvE and PvP, because according to the KS page that's how it's going to be in Crowfall!
But that's the problem. Instead of just being presented with a complex, meaningful world, we may see yet another game that over-designs their game by trying to segment and control every aspect of it. This has been the greater problem for years in MMOs. They separate high level players from low, questers from explorers, raid from group from solo, and most egregiously they separate PvP from PvE as if they aren't and shouldn't be intrinsically intertwined to make both more rewarding.
People move on when games suck, not because they died in PvP. That's a bullshit misconception, just like everyone doesn't ragequit from Darksouls or their first raid wipe. You leave when a game isn't worth continuing to play, whether it's because you're dying and have no motivation to fight back or it's so fucking boring because the game is holding your hand or you're sick of queueing up for PvP because it's also boring because the game is holding your hand.
Full, open-world FFA may be a niche, but it's not instant fail if you don't hold people's hands or apologize that they loaded a game. Crowfall is also going to be a niche. So why not embrace the niche and try to be the best of it, instead of making the same mistakes they seem to be making at times by adding in too many 'buts' and holding people's hands. We'll have
More bullshit semantics about how losing doesn't set you back, it means you've not progressed. What the fuck does that even mean?
And why do I keep seeing the argument various places that Crowfall is doing something we haven't seen, filling a niche that is sorely lacking at the moment, but then people defend their decisions by saying there are tons of other games people will leave to play so they have to -insert hand holding or nut cupping mechanic- or people will leave! Be the best you can be by fully embracing the niche, doing it half assed may blow up in their face, like how many people are going to like EK, but many will also ignore it and many others will just wonder how cool it would be to have it in the 'actual' game.
The most detrimental aspect of the KS hype is all the people championing this notion that Crowfall is a PvP game, and thus won't have PvE, when if you read the nuts and bolts of the game it sounds like it'll have a hell of a lot of PvE to me (which actually is one thing I'm excited about). What it may or may not be lacking is a large, open-world for that PvE. Like I've said, other games put PvP in it's own instances when they could have easily enough just turned it on in the open world. Now, Crowfall is putting some PvE protected in the EK, and may not have maps that feel all that large or open, but it's the same concept of segregating content and protecting players instead of just letting players protect themselves and decide what content they value.
