The meat and potatoes of this game is top notch. The game engine performance overall, combat, animations and hit detection are all pretty impressive imo. If the game continues to be polished it can be something very fun. Im level 54 i bailed from Vingolf months ago and started over on Valhalla and was best choice i ever made. The server is healthy and competetive.
The key to having fun in this game is utilizing the weapon system. A lot of people pick 2 weapons and just stick to those, obsessed with being the best of the best with that specific weapon set, but that is a mistake. Trying and leveling other weapons is fun and the low cost of respec makes experimenting possible. I have lvl 20 life staff so I can just reset attributes and be a healer if needed. But also lvl 20 spear and bow, and now lvl 18 Hatchet. Im going to level great axe next. I can fill many roles and adjust my playstyle and abilities on the fly.
Vingolf was fun the first few weeks to a month, then as it faded.. ya, the game just became shitty. Everything you wanted to do needed other people and it killed off a lot of enjoyment people derived from the game when they couldnt find people. This game, like any other MMO is going to be fun just out of the social interaction of having other people. I'm happy that you found a place where you get enjoyment out of the game, though. I can log into New World on Calnogor and do just about anything I want to do, and thats great. I should have moved much earlier, and on that same note, the merges should have happened much earlier.
As for your weapon comment - most weapons are generally fun. Some weapons have a completely different playstyle in PVP and PVE. All content is able to be done with all weapons, currently. When PVE content difficulty ramps up, supposedly with the coming mutations, then power gamer tanks and healers are going to have to revert back to those specialty weapons (S&S / Life Staff) in order to complete those dungeons. Even if a player specifically designs his gear with perks that allow you to tank with Spear for example, they'll still be subpar to a tank that has his perks aligned towards S&S. If we've learned anything from WoW's Mythic dungeons - its that people favor classes that are the most efficient. Even if that margin is less than 2%.
What's coming down the pipe line doesnt address this lack of choice, and the devs have no weapons planned that will compete with the meta. The shield being the main culprit for tanking (more armor, more stats, blocks melee and spell/ranged). Life staff being the ultimate healer weapon, with the closest second option being a below subpar healing Void Gauntlet. Solution? Separate the shield from the short sword and redesign them to both have separate weapon trees. Shield having three different tree lines within it for Round, Kite, and Tower (which there is almost zero reason to not use anything other than Tower shield when tanking in PVE as it stands now). Each tree affecting the accompanying weapon in specific ways with defensive or offensive options. For healer, they could keep it simple and just add perks to the Void gauntlet that substantially increase its healing effects - or, plan for the future and add a third tree in for all magic based weapons. Fire Staff using strong HoTs, Ice Gauntlet using Bubbles that can over heal, etc.
Looking at the entire game, it suffers from the devs working with what they have on the table NOW and very little thought into the future. Or at least this is how I feel its being worked on. Any direction they've went so far has been reactionary, and it shows. The carrot on the stick for end game is all but impossible to reach in how its currently setup. Even if a player spent mountains of gold at the trade market, they still will not ever get every slot BIS for their build. What makes that worse is that you have multiple builds for different things. To exacerbate that issue, the mutations are going to require even more sets of gear for those unique situations that those mutations will present. As it stands now, named drops from Lazarus for example, have a drop rate of less than 1% closer to 0.3%. Compare that to a Raid Boss in classic WoW which is on average, 15%. Mythic WoW dungeons have a higher percentage. Luck doesnt apply to dungeons, so there is no avenue to improve your chances. The current model they have for this game does not respect player time in the slightest and is probably the biggest factor in crushing my desire to play the game further.
Never mind the litany of all the quality of life things that they need to improve upon, and if they dont address them soon - the trajectory the game is going will only make issues worse. With this many different armor sets and weapons with no easy function to sort, much less equip them quickly, is terrible. Yet they have shit in the wings that will increase the need for even more sets of gear. Shit is just fucking insane.
How I really feel? I was overly optimistic about this game shaping up within 6 months of release. Ive seen for myself every facet of this game with my own eyes and the systems it has in detail. The overhauls this game needs makes the change from HWM to Expertise seem like a blip on the radar and most of them are so hard coded into the game that they'll likely never be changed. Player collision in PVE, Im looking at you. It does well for anyone that has no goals within the game and just wants to casually fuck around doing mind numbing shit, and Ill be honest.. sometimes thats all I want. But ffs, this game has a longggg ways to go before player counts actually increase, rather than decrease.