To me it feels the most like Guild Wars 2 but without as much emphasis on the 'groupies'
I'd concur with that, it feels the most like GW2 but without the depth, content, variety of GW2. I found New World in the beta to be very shallow indeed and very limited. Even its PvP made no sense, you could be out in the jungle fighting people from another faction and then 5 minutes later you would be doing a dungeon grouped with people from that "opposing" faction. Made no sense. Thats something which DAOC got right, the 3 factions in Daoc were seperate, with their own lands, their own dungeons etc, which makes far more sense to me. Even in WoW you wouldnt run to the Barrens fight a whole load of Alliance players and then go group up with them to do Scarlet Monastery.
Theres a foundation there to be a good MMO but it needs a lot more fleshing out, a lot more mechanics added, more variety etc. Really imo, it needed another year of developing rather than coming out now. As I say though, thats based upon my beta time not release, perhaps in release its been more fleshed out with more added , compared to beta but it doesnt appear so from what I've read and seen so far, which is why I am adopting a wait and see. My hopes (as I love MMOs) is that it will, my fears are that it wont and that people will quickly be bored and by the end of the year it will be leaking player numbers like crazy.