We can agree to disagree on what constitutes as a failure and what does not. Fair is fair, I did not play MO1, but I did watch gameplay analysis videos of it, and I find it difficult to see the success of it, or if there was any I doubt it was due to excellent game design choices, more just the lack of options at the time. I get there were hard limits on the tech side of it too, but that does not excuse the lack of basic design knowledge. I think the idea sounds nice on paper, but with real people clearly does not work, even if well implemented. Wasn't MO1 plagued with the same kind of zerg problem that this game has? I don't believe a game can survive if you can't do anything meaningful without a large group, as then the largest group will do what they want. I read they even built walls to zone off most places from others in MO1, and I fail to see how that could ever become a great new player experience, which leads to the game dying even if everything else works perfectly, which it really does not. Also not teaching the new players the game mechanics does not make a great experience, it is just lazy design with lack of general direction, a game should not rely on outside forums etc. to be playable for the average target player. There is a stark contrast between "hand-holding" and "throwing the player blindfolded into a 50m deep swamp". Kinda similar how MO2 doesn't mention all of its stats even anywhere, like weakspot chance, why do the weapons not read it? Why is it not visible when viewing player screen? These are basic stats. Similarly it is awful design to have no accessible information on material creation and upgrading in the game itself, this kind of guesswork serves nothing but gatekeepers of information who have spent ages randomly mix and matching everything (see alchemy).
Additionally, letting players build the map and control territory sounds like a cool idea for the players who get to first take control of the best areas, but afterwards it turns to a really sour experience for everyone else. I've played some browser-based games where people start a new server with a city on a grid-based large map and try to conquer the place and other people, and if you don't get started when everyone else does, a new player has zero chance to ever become powerful in those games without joining the already established guilds, which might or might not accept you, and if they do you will become a non-player anyway as you won't get to make any decisions for the rest of the server's existence. The same principle goes here somewhat. And those servers also could last for years.
I came to this game because the idea sounded amazing on paper, as most MMOs are very restrictive on the PvP side, making interaction with other players completely unnecessary in most cases, and also they have zero real exploration, are filled with boring filler quests etc., but after experiencing it, I think even if the mechanics would work really well, the core issues would not go away. I think removing the filler quests and giving players more freedom is great, but you can't just do that without taking into account the issues that decision brings, some serious design work is needed to address the remaining game (like dungeon access). Although, it would be nice to have the mechanics work well and be interesting and then see if the premise would feel any different. As of now, it is like you are writing here, it is more enjoyable to play the game wandering solo, even though there is barely anything to do but battle the godawful "supreme" bandit AI, than take part in the multiplayer mess portion of it. Now, this would be fine to someone like me who enjoys exploration, if the world was populated and had near endless exploration options, and most things were achievable, plus the combat would be drastically improved. (And you wouldn't be zerged down randomly for no consequences). Although then it might as well be a single player game.
The design concept that most things should not be possible alone is not really the best approach either imo, maybe just let it be less efficient instead of totally impossible? You see many people with many characters, as people actually don't want to rely on others to get the stuff they need, like crafting etc. even, which breaks the core philosophy of the game. This quite well indicates that the philosophy is flawed (and also that people want to try more than one build lol). Of course it would help if the process of skill levelling up would be actually interesting and rewarding (and challenging), instead of a drag, and I did read that some things were more interesting in MO1 (like scribing), hard to see why they would be changed to, whatever this spamclick is supposed to be.
The process of everything needs to be way more fun, travelling needs to be fun or then it needs to be less necessary and time-consuming (I guess MO1 was smaller but I bet not completely avoiding the problem), farming should have a lot of variety and options and possibility to master the mechanics, PvE should become less of a choice between horse riding in a circle or dying, the journey needs to be the reason to do things, not the destiny (aka farming rewards only). Less downtime on death and instead consequences which matter ingame to make the choice of randomly fighting people less binary (or less just yes), etc. etc...
So all in all, bugs aside (which is a huge issue don't get me wrong), the multiplayer elements do not have a solid design foundation in my opinion, and that is the same case in MO1 unless I'm totally mistaken somehow. They haven't designed a functional system to make PvP meaningful and have interesting consequences (both negative and positive), which is part of the core in their game, the PvE is boring and repetitive (or impossible), and the combat is clunky or unusable altogether in most situations (with better graphics and less lag now than in MO1). The territory control system is a player-repellent rather than an engagement tool for most. There is a reason why most MMOs only allow for non-impactful territory control, it is because of the gatekeeping issue, so there needs to be a solution for that before this mechanic can be enjoyed, and tbh I don't see them coming up with a solution. I guess trying to make it really hard to just trash random solo players' houses is one, but that's a rather lame one.
