The dev team was developing a hardcore always-on PvP MMO, which is fine but not for everyone
Playtest rolls around and the devs get back player numbers you would expect for a hardcore PvP MMO
Speculation: the higher ups really don't like the projected return on their investment given the abysmal (for their ideas) player numbers and force the Studio to pivot to PvE content
At this point the entire game has been designed around PvP and the devs now have only ~1 year to somehow shove PvE content in there
Launch comes and since the devs had to spend all available time on forcing in PvE content what is present is buggy and doesn't fit the game mechanics
Ensue several months of panicked back and forth patching of the game by the devs, making the entire mess worse because everyone is pissed by one change or another

[–] Zikeji@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago

To be fair, a lot of the game breaking launch bugs that hurt the game for me were with PVP (specifically, the instanced wars). I do know there were others but those PVP bugs are what I'll always remember. The lag, the broken healing, the hatchet exploit, and a few others.