That's just nonsense and you know it.
AGS pulled no stops advertising New World, they have the $$ for it and heck they own Twitch to boot. And the insinuations that people knew XYZ are just silly - it's a new game with army of streamers praising it to high heaven as 2nd coming of JC.
It wasn't advertised as PvP only game and was hyped to high heaven as "finally a new big high profile MMO" from Amazon no less. The brand alone carried a lot.
So again, how is it players' fault that AGS fucked it up and fell short?
As usual - the problem is not the players, it's the studio/publisher. Imagine that, when you change directions every other year and don't know what you even want to make you end up with players leaving because the game is neither fish nor meat.
---
Now, I personally would not mind the whole discussion, but the whole "it's players' fault" crap really triggered me. It's same old shitty denial I seen in Wildstar or heck even current WoW state. And here we go again, as if we did not learn that lesson already 500 times.