Nope…not garbage. Take for example, a very old MMO called Anarchy Online, produced by Funcom, GMBH.
Rocky start, lots of bugs, bad Director (Gaute Godager) to boot. Bugs were fixed, viable content was released alongside bugfixes, but the reputation for the game was pretty bad after the first 6 months.
What does Funcom do? They are intent on AO being their flagship MMO, so they hire a OUTSIDE PR and development team to help fix bugs, recode chunks of the engine, fix bugs and produce content. The PR team was consistent in keeping up with feedback with the community and maintaining a healthy dialogue.
Is AGS doing this? Nope, not even remotely.
The problem is this. Amazon is famous as a retail giant. And a game by Amazon, should reflect that kind of glitz and shimmer. New World did not, by a far stretch. That means, when someone saw that Amazon was releasing a game, they expected real content, not blind chest runs to get gear. They expected healthy dialogue, not funeral home silence. They expected a lot, LOT more than what AGS has even remotely delivered.
AGS trivialized crafting, nerfed multiple weapons into near antiquity, and introduced this ridiculous gypsum system as “content”. Bugs everywhere, and squandered opportunities on all sides.
When AGS realizes that NW = Titanic and takes steps like Funcom did to save their product then they might actually be trying to save it. However a majority of the population for NW has left, and the hit on NW’s reputation is quite extensive. PR, and a lot of it, positive PR is going to be needed if NW has a chance whatsoever.
Real content, not stuff like the Gypsum system is going to be necessary, and a lot of it as well. The Gypsum system was just a bad design choice, along with the ridiculous idea of tuning orbs and mutator dungeons.
Sure we can make excuses like Covid and so forth, but if the game wasn’t ready, and it most definitely wasn’t, then they could have postponed it. They didn’t, and you see the results.
Finally, I’m not really a person who’s into the whole hate thing. That’s just too much work. But I can be adamant about not liking the bugs, negligence, poor design choices and so forth.
People need to remember, that when the comment about a game shutting down comes up in discussion, it’s not when a game’s population reaches zero. It’s when the population that’s left simply isn’t enough to warrant the overhead for the servers. As in, financially non viable.
At present, due to all of the aforementioned, NW is hurtling towards that point at warp speed.