I think it became a PvP game only when they introduced this dueling change in beta. My pure trader got dueled just 2h after the update, I got KOd, and you won't believe it, but in the next 72h I was forced to duel. that's it. it was only a PvP game for me from that point on for 3 days straight. I tried hard, I was looking all over for something else to do, but all jobs, fort battles, quests.. it was all inactive! I only had one big duel button to press and that was it... damn you Inno! and after that, I haven't been dueled at all. that's in beta, the world that's twice as populated as many of the .net worlds.
And now that this change was introduced to regular worlds, I got attacked in AZ and CO only - the worlds where my characters are skilled for duels. everywhere else, my non-duel characters are left alone. my quester, my crafter, nobody cares about them. what is it now, 3rd day after the update? I got attacked 0 times. zero. not even once. yeah, I know, this could be treated as an invite to do so, but who cares? one of the aspects of this game is the PvP concept of duels. and someone will attack me sooner or later, take my money, maybe KO me and all my energy will go to waste. from that point on, I am out of the PvP game for a while and I can do whatever I want... I will use some of the free energy buffs Inno provided me in the travelling fair and tombolas, or use the items I can craft, and I will be back to my full energy and I will do whatever I had planned. or maybe I'll just sleep in a fort or a hotel to get the energy back.
to put it in simple words - this update is good. not the best possible, but good.
too many people are overreacting. learn to play with the risk of being dueled, just like we did 5 years ago, when The West was actually a challenging game - when we had worlds with 10 or 20 times more players. I wonder why?