New World - Amazon Gaming Studio's MMO

Dannar26

Senior member
Mar 13, 2012
754
142
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Evidently, I was wrong. I searched for New World and missed the old thread since it had already been sufficiently buried. I guess we don't want to talk about this game =(
existing topic: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/new-world-amazons-mmo-releasing-8-25.2582604/

My take/guide for noobs:

I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised. This MMO is more along the lines of an open world sandbox like early Star Wars Galaxies, but with some story elements to it. The setting is a refreshing breath of fresh air, even though my character presently looks like a pilgrim off the mayflower. I'm still a bit new myself, but I've been doing a lot of research during my journey thus far. If you're considering this game, or are brand new to it, take a look at the points below:

  • There aren't discreet classes such as they are in traditional MMOs like WoW. That being said your "class" is a combination of what weapon you're using, your chosen skills, your stats, and how you've configured your gear. You can switch between two weapons at a time, but there's no limit to the amount of weapon skills you can develop. You can have every weapon though, and even carry them with you. But you only can hot swap in combat between 2 at a time.

  • This is much more an action RPG than other MMOs like WoW. Your aim matters for ranged attacks, and your timing matters for blocks and dodges. I imagine this becomes all the more crucial for PvP. I think it's fun, but you'll want to play with a solid connection to have the best results.

  • Each weapon has two skill trees, which are diablo 2-esque. You wont be able to max everything as the max weapon skill doesn't grant enough points to flesh out both trees.

  • You can gather anything that you have the skill to gather.

  • You can craft anything that you have the skill and resources to make.

  • Gear can drop from enemies, can be purchased from your PvP faction with enough rep currency, or can be crafted.

  • You choose your stat allocations on level up.

  • You can have any kind of stats on any kind of armor. Heavier armor carries penalties in exchange for you protection. So you can be a glass cannon or a tanky healer -- it's up to you and how you build your gear.

  • Gems can allow you to use part of another stat to augment you attack output. For example, Lifestaff (healing magic) uses a stat called focus. Focus is only relevant to lifestaff, so if you also want to use sword and board, you should gem your sword to allow for the focus based nature damage. This way you can pump your focus stat so you heal alright, while not entirely gimping yourself when you fight with sword and board. S&B runs off of strength, so if you don't do this gem thing, you'll be hitting for a lot less.

  • At level 10 you choose your PvP faction. There are 3 choices. Covenant is yellow, Syndicate is purple, and the Marauders are green. I think you can only switch factions once every 120 days or something, and you'll probably lose all the progress you made with your present faction. You want to think about this decision as a permanent one, so make sure all you and all your buddies pick the same team. You can PvE with members of the other factions, but you can't PvP with them.

  • You fight to claim territory, so there's incentives to win the war scenarios. It's up to you to flag if you want to PvP. I'm not sure if it's ever foisted on you outside of war scenarios and if you want to do the PvP faction quests.

  • You can buy a house and furnish it in this game. The big advantages here are the storage and fast travel abilities it gives you. Your first house is half off, so it's generally recommended to buy the biggest one as your first one. You can own more than one house, but buying subsequent houses probably helps mostly in terms of fast travel. So have your main home be the big one with all your storage and trophies, and then get a smaller house far far away so you can fast travel to it when needed.

  • There are no mounts presently, so fast traveling is essential. Fast traveling costs a resource called Azoth, so use it sparingly. There are other uses for Azoth as well. You can recall to the inn your bound to for free once every hour I believe.

This game had a bit of a troubled beginning due to lack of servers and the resultant queue times. They panic created some new servers, so there may be server mergers in the future. This seems to be standard operating procedure for new MMOs however. This could be worrying with regard to longevity due to the needed balance of three warring factions per server. Also, crafting requires low-tier resources even at the high end. Once the population matures, it could be annoying to not have lots of fresh players flooding the market with low tier resources. Crafting is a major part of this game, so without a steady influx of resources it could get really "grindy" at the high end.

The other issue comes from the "lack of content" crowd who no-lifed the game to max level, probably with knowledge they picked up in beta. Keep in mind there are quite a few weapons to specialize in, and tons and tons of things to craft. I think those game play loops will be valid for many hours of play time, even if you're already max level. If you rush 60 focusing one or two weapons while ignoring crafting, you're really missing out on what this game can offer.

Another criticism I see is the lack of lore/story. Keep in mind that a game like this isn't a theme park. You're not here to see famous cities/characters/magical items like in a game such as WoW. Much like the colonial art style suggests, you are a settler in a mysterious land. There's a small opening video that ties into your introductory quests in order to set the stage. There's little notes lying around that give more back story that you can collect -- you even get some XP for doing so. You have to *gasp* read these things if you want more flavor from the lore. A decent amount of quest NPCs are fully voiced, and the voice acting seems pretty good.

I've enjoyed the music so far, but I usually listen to other things or Discord while I play.

There are dungeons, but I don't have much experience with it. First one is at level 25 as I understand it, and I haven't gotten there yet.

I can't really comment on the PvP, as I'm staying away from it until I get to be a much higher level. There is some kind of balancing between low and high levels, but you'd still be at a disadvantage by having fewer skill points.

I hope this has been informative! If you wanna play come visit on Nepethene and join Covenant when you ding level 10! My toon's name is a Ajaxsom.
 
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shortylickens

No Lifer
Jul 15, 2003
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akenbennu

Senior member
Jul 24, 2005
675
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Graphics and sound are very nice. The PvE is a bit shallow. Still some bugs being worked out and the end game is a little light right now, but I'm enjoying the leveling process.
 

Dannar26

Senior member
Mar 13, 2012
754
142
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I'm perhaps the wrong person to ask about graphics as the games I've been playing the most have been Classic WoW, Valheim, and Minecraft. But I rather like the graphics. I think running looks a bit awkward on the player characters, but most animations and enemies actions are very fluid.

I'm traveling right now, and as such only have access to less-than-stellar internet. But my friends back home all attest that hit detection is very tight. Because of my internet I have to factor in some excess time to dodge and block incoming attacks.
 

Rhezuss

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2006
4,120
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Would an RX 6600 run this at 1080P60 Ultra, or 1440P75 Med/High?
I run the game on my 6600 XT at High/Very High (with shadows and terrain on medium) in 1440p and I get 60-100 FPS. It dips in the low 50s when i'm some city but overall runs smooth on high settings.

See image for the settings I use.
 

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Linflas

Lifer
Jan 30, 2001
15,395
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The class system seems very similar to the old UO system where you weren't locked into any specific armor and weapon type.
 

Rhezuss

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2006
4,120
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The class system seems very similar to the old UO system where you weren't locked into any specific armor and weapon type.
Indeed. Each weapon has it's own 2 skill trees and each gain XP when you use them. Each weapon can reach level 20 and each level you gain 1 skill point to allocate in one of the 2 skill trees.

And you can use any armor you want. There's benefits in each of the three armor weight: Light, Medium and Heavy. So you can mix armors to get to the type you want.

It's pretty simple and does the job.
 

Dannar26

Senior member
Mar 13, 2012
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The code base for this game is client side authoritative. So, as you can well imagine, there have been exploits galore. Lots of duping items, gold, and other PvP exploits. The auction house was down all night last night to try to stop the bleeding.

I really like this game, but I'm not sure now that it's going to survive its bugs and mismanagement. I'm no coder, but it sounds like it's too late to fix the underlying client side issues here. Given that, these sorts of bugs will keep popping up. Right now the META is to utilize whatever exploits exist to capture territory. Going to play honestly? You'll get rolled by exploiters. Not to mention the same people are likely to have all the best gold and gear through duping.

After they figure out the bugs, they need to wipe all gear/gold across all servers. Leave the trade skills and levels maybe. This has basically been a beta experience...start it all over.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,224
9,987
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The code base for this game is client side authoritative.
You've GOT to be kidding me. When I worked on Asheron's Call (in a past life), everything inventory-related, was all server-side, to my knowledge, because you just can't really trust that the client-side is "secure".
 
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aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 28, 2005
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The game is a train wreck.
every possibly exploit in the game has been exploited.
Now there is a gold dupe / item dupe .
They have froze every form of trading.
Auction house has been frozen.
I can't think of any fix which wont piss off the user base.
Short of wiping everything and restarting the servers, which will again cause a large user base to just flee, the game is almost at the point of being unsalvageable.

I do not know how they will salvage the game. nor do i think they care.
They collected all the front fee's by charring for the game, if they closed it tomorrow, they would still be ahead, unless they issued refunds.

You can tell how mature the devs are... they are in a sense worse then hello games and no man's sky.
They were not ready, the team was not ready, the team should honestly be replaced or given to a more mature team of mmo developers, but at this point, i do not think anyone wants to touch it with a 50 foot pole.

I do not predict this game to last past xmas.
 

KMFJD

Lifer
Aug 11, 2005
29,037
41,718
136
They will need to do what ff14 did, a complete redo the game, that will be it's second attempt at a complete rework
 

Dannar26

Senior member
Mar 13, 2012
754
142
106
You've GOT to be kidding me. When I worked on Asheron's Call (in a past life), everything inventory-related, was all server-side, to my knowledge, because you just can't really trust that the client-side is "secure".

I'm not sure if this is 100% verified, but it makes sense. This is what I read:


The game is a train wreck.
every possibly exploit in the game has been exploited.
Now there is a gold dupe / item dupe .
They have froze every form of trading.
Auction house has been frozen.
I can't think of any fix which wont piss off the user base.
Short of wiping everything and restarting the servers, which will again cause a large user base to just flee, the game is almost at the point of being unsalvageable.

I freely admit that I am much more on the casual end of the spectrum. So when I advocate for a server wipe, you can take into account that I have far less to lose than somebody who is far more hardcore than I. I think it sucks for the person that got to end game, and got gold and gear legitimately. But you really have to ask, how much of this insanity has touched even the most law-abiding moral player? How much gold that they amassed came from dupers? Did they buy duped gear on the AH (is that even possible?)?

A reset will hurt. But I feel like it's the best solution. They just need to figure out what the compensation will be for the players who put in legitimate efforts.

I do not know how they will salvage the game. nor do i think they care.
They collected all the front fee's by charring for the game, if they closed it tomorrow, they would still be ahead, unless they issued refunds.

You can tell how mature the devs are... they are in a sense worse then hello games and no man's sky.
They were not ready, the team was not ready, the team should honestly be replaced or given to a more mature team of mmo developers, but at this point, i do not think anyone wants to touch it with a 50 foot pole.

I do not predict this game to last past xmas.

If you read the above link about the development history, then I don't think this is on the devs. I think this is squarely on the business planners who took a garbage engine and assumed that the programmers can just fix all the shortcomings. How many of us here work in technology? I'm pretty sure a good number of us have seen this sort of thing play out.

Managers be like: "I don't know, just fix it you nerds!" resumes pumping fake metrics to get a fatter bonus

There was a good quote I saw the other day:

"Why do we never have the money to do things correctly the first time, but we always have money to do it twice?"


They will need to do what ff14 did, a complete redo the game, that will be it's second attempt at a complete rework

This is the real answer, but it may as well be a fairy tale at this point. I don't know what happened with Square Enix that they actually allowed people who cared about the game to do it right. Maybe it has to do with Japanese company culture? I highly doubt we'll see an american company do this when they can just milk this thing for free until it dies.
 

KMFJD

Lifer
Aug 11, 2005
29,037
41,718
136
Everyone in our group that had played a lot of the closed beta/alpha mentioned that it would be a train wreck, it was fun for the month and i didn't expect much after the first month
 

Dannar26

Senior member
Mar 13, 2012
754
142
106
Good news everyone!

The new patch seems to have fixed a lot of the issues with the bugs. There still aren't any content updates, but at least the game isn't horridly broken from a coding standpoint.
 
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KMFJD

Lifer
Aug 11, 2005
29,037
41,718
136
I log in just to mine a few Orichalum nodes and then i log out again....made it to 60 a while ago , max gathering except for mining, have no desire to do much else now
 

A Casual Fitz

Diamond Member
May 16, 2005
4,654
1,018
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I've played through level 48 and it's just a boring mess of pointlessness right now. The servers are diluted due to Amazon's knee-jerk doubling of servers on launch day. Now that the population is naturally decreasing, it's a ghost town in a lot of servers. The game depends on the user base completing invasions so that the stations for crafting, etc don't get de-leveled. There's a great foundation for a really fun MMO in there, so I hope there's something to save before too many people leave for good.
 

akenbennu

Senior member
Jul 24, 2005
675
259
136
I've hit 60 and still working on skillups, but I'm on a dying server. Hoping server merges will come.soon, but agree that there's a lot of potential, but the duping bugs are problematic.
 

nisryus

Senior member
Sep 11, 2007
730
133
106
Wow. with all of their redundancy on data, thats strange that they would lost data.