This is a review of the state of the game after the persistence launch (summer 2016)
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House deeds can’t be bought with ingame gold. Only for real money.
Zones are mostly empty.
Travel on world map is actually the worst I’ve ever seen anywhere. It serves zero purpose, wastes so much time and is gimmicky as hell.
This is not an open-world MMO. Everything is instanced. You can basically play in your own private instance the whole time and never join the MMO part.
If you choose to play with other people though be ready for not enough monsters/gatherspots for anyone, because maps are empty and seem to be balanced around solo play.
There is zero motivation for PVP and most players will never EVER have to participate in it if they don’t want.
Combat system is so astonishingly mediocre, it’s almost the same as in UO (I mean, I understand ‘spiritual successor’ but 20 years have passed. Come on)
Out of 10 towns I’ve visited: half didn’t even have any inhabittants. 3 more had basic nameless vendors and only two were decently populated.
There is no quest line to even moderately point you somewhere. All the quests are random “get 5 of these”, “kill 5 of those” and even these quests are extremely hard to come by. I’ve encountered less than 10 quests in 20ish hours of non-afk play.
When farming monsters you get encumbered after 10(!) minutes of farming and looting. Then you have to get back all the way to some shops to sell stuff and vendors might not even be around because they like to sleep or just randomly be somewhere else.

The stuff that is not that bad:
Gathering is decent. Crafting seems ok when it works.
Skill system is ok. Though I am seriously not a fan of ‘pooled experience’ and decaying, but I mean it’s workable.
The overall vibe and look of it is good.