I played this all during beta and when it was first released for a few months. Was OK, but terribly buggy. They made some questionable decisions that drove me away too. For example, they released the game with a really simple dupe exploit that I and others had reported during the beta. They fixed it fairly quick, but not before it was abused, and nothing was done about the abuse. Plus at the very start all the skill books were the same super cheap price, and soon after they upped the prices really high to the point that you had to farm a long time to get the high end ones. Yet some guilds had mysteriously stockpiled a bunch of those high end ones when they were dirt cheap, despite claiming they had no idea it was coming. I remember people selling those books that they paid a pittance for to people for 80-90% of the new price, making them big piles of money.
They also did nothing to stop people abusing bugs to scam people, like a bug that allowed you to wait until the other guy agreed to the trade then take out your side of the trade and the other guy was still locked in so once they hit accept the other guy got nothing. I can't remember if they ever fixed that one before I quit, but I remember reporting people who were doing it and the GMs said it was working as intended. It got to where I had trouble selling people steel weapons because they'd be all "You click trade first!" and I'd be "No, you!" and they'd back out on buying it because they thought I was going to scam them (or they were trying to scam me and I refused to fall for it? who knows, haha) and I'd be stuck with a customized steel weapon that they had special ordered. I eventually made people pay me in advance and put their trust in me just to buy from me when doing deals on the custom weapons, but that ran some people away.
The rampant unpunished exploit abuse is what eventually ran me away. I'd go out pvping and me and my friends would kill some guys who were all decked out in apparently high end metal armor and weapons and they'd drop nothing and immediately respawn and rush at us again still in full gear and we'd wind up either dead or running away because they just kept coming. And they would be zooming around like they were naked even though they'd take hits like they were heavily armored. Did they ever fix all that?
Even with all the buggyness and exploiting I had a decent time playing it. In addition to pvp, I enjoyed just being a merchant. I had a few repeat customers that liked me. I remember one guy who was a murderer that I would meet outside town (the back path that few people traveled on, out by a bridge, by the big town on the east side of the map - I forget the name) and deliver him weapons, he'd always be worried about being killed during the trade but it never happened, and I was the only weapon smith who would sell to him so he tipped me well for delivering them outside town. Had a couple murderers I did that with actually. Running a naked crafting char outside of town with a bunch of expensive steel weapons on him to meet a murderer was apparently something most crafters refused to do. Surprisingly, nobody ever killed me - and most of them tipped me some money for the trouble and wound up becoming repeat customers.