New World - Amazon's flagship MMO

I wanted to wait a month after launch before I did this post, because my (limited) experience with MMO launches is that it's always a mess at the beginning, and New World was no different. It's been just over three weeks now and I can't wait any longer.

I played this in the Preview last year and in the Open Beta this year.

After the Preview I was skeptical of the entire game, but the trailer looked soooo good, I couldn't quite give up hope yet. After Open Beta I was hopeful and positive to the game. Granted, it had some issues, but I figured those would just be growing pains like any MMO has just after launch (even WoW and FF14 had those, and let's not even mention the mess that was ESO).

The first week was a mess. The servers were capped at 2000 people each and they had millions wanting to play. It wasn't feasible, and thus New World became Queue World. 

Playing on EU my queues were in the 1500-3000 people bracket, unlike the US servers which were in the 10k bracket, so I guess I lucked out on queueing just by being where I am xD But by the next week the queues were gone. It was so weird to be able to log in during prime time and just get straight into the game. 

To get rid of the queues they locked servers for new characters, rigorously kicked/banned people who were afk-running against walls, added more servers, and also upped the limit from 2k to 2,2k people in each server. But it worked. In the second week the queues were gone and so were the afk-runners.

Apart from the queueing and some small things I very much enjoyed the game in the beginning and I encountered very few bugs and glitches. For the first 2½ weeks I was in love with the game and couldn't wait until the next time I'd get to play. Unfortunately, as I levelled up and moved from the newbie zones to the more endgame zones I started to notice more and more small things that all added up to make my continued experience miserable. If it wasn't for the Company and my guild mates (both new and oldies from my ESO days) I don't think I would've continues to play for as long as I did.

The game is stunningly beautiful. Graphics and lighting are both amazing. But the skybox sucks. Stars and moon are static. There's a full moon every night. There's no gradual darkening or brightening as the sun goes up and down. It's just boom now it's dark, or boom now it's day. Morrowind in frickin 2002 could handle a proper day/night cycle. 

There are no NPC vendors. There's only the auction house and the economies in several servers tanked completely within the first three weeks. Basic mats are needed to craft high level stuff with high level mats so basic mats are sold at outrageous prices while literally everything else isn't worth squat. The crafting system seemed interesting and innovative and unique to start, but it has now become obvious that the pyramid style crafting doesn't really work. There's no use selling any of the useless gear you pick up. Instead you get to salvage them to get repair parts that you nees to be able to repair the gear you habe equipped, and trust me, you'll need it. To be able to fast travel you need a resource called Azoth which you can get as either loot or reward. And you'll want to fast travel because there are no mounts. Everything is taxed. Selling, buying, owning a house, fast travelling... Repairing your gear with repair parts from salvaged gear costs gold.

Questing was fun in the starter zones and the mid-tier zones, but once you got to the endgame zones the fun ended pretty abruptly. The enemies' respawn rates are ridiculous and players rarely manage to kill the mobs in and around an area to safely be able to loot it before the first few mobs have respawned again. And because they respawn so quickly it isn't unusual to get overwhelmed as the group you literally just fought joins the fray with the group you're currently fighting. Even with a high gear score and being several levels higher than the enemies they can still easily overwhelm and kill you. Because in endgame zones, even at 5 levels lower than you the enemies hit like trucks. It forces you to use your precious resources that aren't so easy to come by at the endgame because money is probably the rarest commodity in the game. Unless you're a tank you'll probably dodge a lot, but in the endgame zones the enemies are placed so close together that if you dodge out of reach for one enemy you'll accidentally aggro another. Ad infinitum.

All the questing in the game is still fetch and kill quests, but they're more baked into story so they feel better. That said, after you leave the newbie zones very little is voice acted, and you don't really form a relationship with any of the NPCs. You remember maybe one or two from the starter zones and after that it's just an endless blur of voiceless characters without personality.

The dungeons are stupid. There's no grouping tool so to get a group together you basically just stand around for an hour shouting in the chat. *Flashback to when ESO's dungeon finder didn't work* The first dungeon (Amrine) is very basic without much tactics needed. Don't be an idiot is basically all you need. The second dungeon (Starstone) requires a bit more. But not really tactics. If you focus the boss and just let the adds get caught in any AoE, you're golden. The third dungeon (Depths) is where things get tricky. But the middle boss is harder than the end boss and the only tactic you need for the end boss is to keep an eye out for when to dodge. The dungeons has one annoying mechanic. If you die once your team can revive you. If you die twice you can't be revived and have to respawn at the closest respawn point. Which effectively locks you out of any ongoing boss battle, which will prevent you from updating any quest objective involving defeating that boss. Which means you'll have to go through the dungeon again to finish any quests. Oh and you can't access the dungeon without a key. That you either get when you get a quest for said dungeon, or you have to craft it. 

In the endgame there's one world boss that requires a 20 people group to defeat, but you can only access the boss if you have the quest related to the boss. So you can't ask for help from anyone who isn't currently on that quest. And the quest isn't repeatable. 

I'm a INT build so logically/traditionally I should be running light armour. Not so in New World, because if you don't run heavy or at least medium you'll be too squishy for PvE. Even healers run medium... 

I haven't even talked about the PvP yet, but that's because I haven't done much of it. I've been too busy getting beat up in basic PvE to want to get beat up in PvP. Every time I play nowadays I feel like either the enemies are badly optimised or I just suck. But I've talked to several people who feel the same way about the endgame so maybe it's not me :P 

The game starts out so good and I had so much fun that I could easily overlook all the little things. But the little things add up and by the time I was approaching the endgame I couldn't ignore them anymore. The starter zones have recieved so much love and care from the devs, obviously much more than the endgame zones, that you (or at least I) couldn't help but get pulled in. The magic weakens after level 30 and by level 45 you're completely disillusioned. There's no incentive for people to keep playing after level 60. Other MMOs struggle with endgame too, but in New Worls there's basically nothing. There's the PvP wars, I guess. But unless you know someone in the warring company you're unlikely to get a spot in the war. 

I want to love this game. I wanted it to be the new game that took the place of ESO. Something new I could play for years. But the way things are now I don't know for how much longer I'll play. The guildies keep me going at the moment.