I understand that you're saying "housing was already said to not make it before beta", but housing ABSOLUTELY needs to be beta tested prior to the game launching. The game doesn't have to launch with housing, but the system needs to be excruciatingly beta tested by players (not in house) prior to game launch. If there is a run at this game and 10,000 players sign up, and there are any issues with housing (bugs exploits), you will see a massive loss of player retention. Housing is the only thing in game that can destroy the world, bc it's semi-permanent, if there are issues when it launches. It's also the one thing that would lead to an early wipe.
Personally, I believe that the development team has a choice to make. They can go the route of MO 1 and keep the game "hardcore for hardcore's sake", or as I like to call it "hard on hard on hard." Or if they want to make the minor changes that will assist new player retention. If they want to keep it hard on hard, they can just continue on the path and let the 500 players white-knight defend everyone who has a legitimate gripe about the game. I will outline below a few of the things that new players will have issues with and could be fixed very easily.
The main thing they need to do is decrease the time that it takes to accomplish anything. The world has been made far too large for how fast our characters move. Horses should be in every major town that can be tamed. Having to travel 30 minutes to tame a horse (in all cities except Meduli) is a bad system, and you will find that most new players who aren't hooked on the idea of it being "hard on hard" quit due to the time commitment to do the most basic things. This isn't saying that everything should be easy, before you jump in and defend it. It's just a matter of time commitment just to do things like get a horse. Additionally, there should be specific mounts who lose basically no stamina but have very little health. It is NOT exciting gameplay to have to trout on a horse, or even stand still, while their stamina increases slowly because the world has been made so massive.
I personally believe there should be a global chat. It's not something I would debate, but you have to understand that there is now a global help chat, and a global guild chat. Because these two things exist, it is absurd to say that global chat can no longer exist due to 'realism". You have thrown the realism portion of the game out of the window because global guild and global help exist. Global chat would not break the game whatsoever. What it does, is give un-guilded players a communication method without having to use Discord.
Cartography should be a PASSIVE ability and all characters should have a completely empty world map (at the very least, art with the major guarded towns.) This map should be able to add all of your own markers. Again, we have to understand that Mortal Online map exists, and 90% of the userbase will use it. The idea of 'no map is hard' does not effect most players, it only effects new players who don't know to look at a third party map. It's absurd. If we want cartography to be an active ability, that's also fine, but it needs to have the exact same functionality as mortal online map.The better system is everyone has a custom map and it doesn't require skills. Again, EVERYONE has a map, it's called Mortal Online Map, not giving everyone in game a map is just 'hard for the sake of hard". If the mortal online map did not exist, I would have a different opinion on this, and I like the overall theory of cartography being in game, but the existance of the third party map just makes it annoying having to alt tab, and give a bonus to anyone with a third party set up.
A marker should pop up on compass to show your last death location. Most people will waste hours looking for their last death. This is not a fun game mechanic. Just the fact that the game is full loot /loot drop and you have to run back for your loot is enough difficulty. This is called a quality of life change that does not make the game any easier. Less frustrating is not the same as making the game easier. Difficulty grows players, frustration sheds players.
In order to move the game population out of Fab/Meduli, the games basic resources (up to steel, for example), need to be spread more closely to all cities (both red & guarded). You have to understand that, as a crafter, it takes hours to farm enough materials from nothing to steel. Having to travel 30 minutes from GK to get Calx to make steel is not fun. You are already spending hours busting the rocks alone. Alot of the issue here has to do with the map changes, but there is also a very skewed material allowance to the west side of map. i'm not saying this is a finished system, just that it needs to be looked at.
Finally, I will make my last suspension of disbelief argument. If we can teleport to home priest, we should be able to teleport to any priest (at least those that we have unlocked). Again, we have to understand that teleportation already exists in game, through the teleport to home priest option. We can also ghost run to any priest in the game, it is just a massive amount of time spent to do these runs. When we arrive in those locations, we still have to build up our bank there: teleporting changes NOTHING other than SAVING THE PLAYERS TIME. The preference here would be the ability to teleport, with no inventory weight, via portals that mages could make in a city. This would also allow guilds to rally easily. I understand that this will never happen. I am just telling you that the suspension of disbelief is totally gone when teleport to home priest exists but I have to suicide + ghost run to get anywhere within any meaningful amount of time.
If we are saying that this is not MO 1, this is a new game, and MO 2 wants a substantially larger player bases, changes like this have to be made for player retention. Otherwise you will have the same player base from the first one, but paying for 4x accounts each, which might be the ultimate goal here anyway.