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It hardly seems like a lot time has handed between now and final October after I dropped over 170 hours of my life into a brand new pirate-themed MMORPG with a suspiciously colonial-inspired backdrop. When it was nonetheless comparatively new (pun meant), Amazon Games Studios’ New World promised to be a complete bunch of issues {that a} “modern” MMORPG like Final Fantasy 14 or World of Warcraft normally isn’t. It mixed gameplay loops usually seen in survival sandboxes — for instance, foraging herbs and crafting your personal potions — with a perpetual PVP battleground that decided the standard of life for all gamers on a server. It additionally promised many “old school” sensibilities like minimal quick journey and punishing fight the place easy journeys throughout the map had been each costly and treacherous.
Granted, New World actually struggled to make any of those particular person methods work effectively, and little or no of the sport was that a lot enjoyable to play. Its fight system was completely restricted and repetitive, with little or no altering between ranges one by 60. What made the expertise satisfying was additionally usually what made it really feel so disjointed — specifically, the player-vs.-player contest for the map, which influenced parts as fundamental as how a lot it will price to restore gear after a battle. Some individuals actually love that type of bare-bones, down-to-the-wire expertise, however frankly, I couldn’t get previous how unintuitive it felt. I walked away from New World feeling prefer it was largely simply OK — an honest experiment with some fairly cool concepts that finally succumbed to its personal emphasis on grind.
When it was first launched in late September 2021, New World peaked at about 913,027 consecutive gamers earlier than steadily dropping to a constant vary between 20,000 and 40,000 energetic gamers at any given time. Curious about what’s saved so many devoted gamers hooked since launch, I made a decision to redownload it and take a look at what’s been added within the first full 12 months of patches. It’s presently going by an anniversary occasion, however for those who’re anticipating to return dwelling to a totally totally different recreation, you could be displeased (or excited!) to find it’s nonetheless extra of the identical. It is definitely higher in quite a lot of methods, however it’s not about to show any heads.
Old guidelines
One 12 months later, New World goes by one thing of an id disaster. It has since dropped lots of the challenges that made it really feel inconceivable to play at launch: quick journey prices are negligible, storage is shared throughout zones, and it supposedly prices a lot much less XP to stage up. At least on my server, the inhabitants appeared fairly energetic over this previous weekend. And that’s most likely nice for the closely player-intensive financial system that ties every of the crafting, gathering, and PVP methods collectively right into a cohesive entire.
Amazon has clearly carried out lots to enhance and broaden upon its current content material. I recall being fairly turned off by the shortage of a celebration finder for its dungeon-like expeditions, and now that appears to be remedied. Expeditions themselves could be mutated for elevated problem and higher rewards, and it does appear to be there are a few new development tracks to maintain you occupied previous stage 60,0 such because the Expertise system that may proceed pushing your numbers up.
These are all nice additions on paper, however my core situation with New World is absolutely tied to its format as a recreation. It is, basically, a recreation about making numbers go up. There’s nothing to pad this out. Quests, for instance, solely serve to ship you throughout the map to kill one thing or fetch one thing, which is regular within the MMORPG style, however there’s actually nothing attention-grabbing inside New World’s setting to buffer it. Its fantasy is finally very dry.
By comparability, Final Fantasy 14 masks its fetch quests with loads of drama and ethical quandaries, resulting in some genuinely surprising and shifting scenes — particularly within the latter expansions. New World by no means manages to succeed in something near that stage of gravity in its story supply, and in some methods, its extra lax method to gameplay turns down the strain that when dominated its interlocking PVP and survival sandbox methods.
Don’t get me unsuitable; New World is completely effective. But it has but to show that it may be far more than that.
In October 2021, Digital Trends author Andrew Zucosky known as New World a “gorgeous mountain with nothing on top.” Nowadays, there’s extra to search out on prime of that mountain — the brand new Tempest’s Heart expedition is actually positioned on prime of the Shattered Mountain endgame zone, and there are new Blunderbuss and Void Gauntlet weapons to play with, the beforehand talked about development methods, and a half-decent 3v3 enviornment mode in addition. It’s nonetheless slightly slim general, however the high quality of life adjustments could make this the perfect time to come back again to the never-changing island of Aeternum. Or, it could be time to make peace with its true nature … and put your pirating days behind you for good.
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