No rewards = no players

I have played the last 3 playtests. In my opinion, the problem with this game isn't the "hardcore"-ish aspect. It is the lack of rewarding loops.

From a new player perspecitive, here is what your first impression is:

First hour:
Quests are vague, locations unclear. Hm, seems fun, I gotta figure things out by myself.
I seem to move insanely slow, how do I upgrade my move speed?
I can barely fight two mobs my level? And I nearly die fighting a mob one level above me? How do I regenerate my health? Do I really need to run back to town and sit down at a campfire for 60 seconds to regenerate my health and mana after every other mob? Who thought this would be fun? What have you been smoking dude?
These voiceovers (all besides the Charles Bronson weloming specialist) are pretty cringe.

First 5 hours:
Are there mounts? I need one. This is starting to feel like a crawling simulator.
Why is mob density so rare? I wanna fucking fight, get my rotations down.
By the way, I only see 4 skills, where can I learn all the other ones? Wait, there are more, right? The can't expect me to put hundreds of hours into this game with only 4 skills to my character, surely...

First 10 hours:
Okay, tried getting these ores for two hours now. Found 3, need 9 of em. What is this shit? Why are gatherable nodes so rare? I need to run around for 6 full hours, just to find the mats I need to gather for the quest? This can't be real.
Combat is starting to feel pretty boring. I want build variety. How come I only have 4 abilites, which all feel boring.
I wish I knew in what order these quests are most efficient to do. I just ran 10 minutes to turn this item in and now I gotta go back? Damn, this is stupid.

Conclusion:
This game tries to be a niche game for hardcore MMO fans but it's just a tedious stress test for your tolerance for monotony and lack of direction. Where is the feeling of actually accomplishing shit in the first 12 hours of gameplay?
At this point, it feels like the slow pace of the game (fights, movement speed, gathering, etc.) is just a cheap way of covering up the massive lack of thought out content and game design. Making me run a marathon across the whole map cuz I have no idea where to find ores or rare woods? Who thought this is fun?

It is a shame, but there just isn't anything in this game that screams "Yea go deeper into this, there is much to explore and new systems to find and new ways to play".

It is just run here, run there, and have fun looking for the mats you need to complete the quest for hours.

There is not a single system in the game that makes me think about it while I'm not playing. The lack of skills is just dumbfounding at this point. In the early stages, I thought like they meant that you have 4 or 5 active skills (that you can equip at one point) but have loads that you can choose from. But this is literally less variety in a MMO than in a MOBA in which one round takes an hour max. Why would I want to spend hundreds (if not thousands) of hours with the exact same combat mechanics I unlock at level 6. And to me, none of the skills are that fun. I got tired of all the classes' combat by day one.

Let's make the experience for the players as annoying as we can and tell everyone that doesn't see the greater vision in it that the game is not for them. Yea no shit, the game isn't for me. It isn't for anyone that wants to ENJOY playing an MMO while exploring various systems of progression and getting deep into combat. This game, in its current state, is a gathering nodes scouting simulator. Or something like that.

Making something as tedious as possible doesn't make it niche, deep, complex, special or unique. It just makes it tedious.

I mean, which aspects were you guys designing and thought "damn this is fun, this will make someone hooked". There is not a single one. You know, you can be so focused on creating something different that you're making up a niche only to find out there is none. I feel sorry for all the people financially dependent on this game succeeding. There seems to be no feel for what it takes to make and keep someone hooked. And the direction you guys have taken of making the game mechanics as annoying and tedious as possible isn't exactly linked to financial success in my opinion. I hope you guys get to turn this around, but seeing how stubborn you have been during the last year while sticking to ignoring player feedback since "they just don't understand the grand vision", I have my doubts.