Penny Arcade - Comic - New-ish World

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Penny Arcade - Comic - New-ish World

Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.

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V1m

I don't recall 2009 MMOs melting GPUs

Djiem

"Completed" is generous.

Lucascraft

Why does Mike say the game feels like a 2009 MMO?

I haven't played every MMO in existence, but it feels quite a bit different from the ones that I have played. Namely, it feels different than: EQ, WoW, FFXIV, CoH/CoV, SWTOR, GW2, SWG, Champions, WAR, DCUO, and LOTRO.

V1m

Most of those predate 2009 though?

Zobiris

The worker's expression in panel 1 tells me he was one of the people who buried it there.

Hevach

V1m wrote: »

Most of those predate 2009 though?

To be fair there's not a lot of big name MMOs that don't, the industry has been both stagnant and saturated for a long time, long before 2009 it was a difficult industry for a new game to survive in. Heck, even the list we're discussing, several are gone, a couple more on life support, and only FFXIV can be said to be anywhere near it's prime.

MarcinMN

I'll just stick with FFXIV for now. And I haven't even had much time to play that in the last couple months due to other stuff going on in life.

swaylow

Maybe the insinuation is no one is developing ambitious MMO projects in the '20s so it must be from that earlier generation?

(I assume New World is ambitious not because I've played it, just based on the news I've seen in random places like NPR)

dennis

swaylow wrote: »

Maybe the insinuation is no one is developing ambitious MMO projects in the '20s so it must be from that earlier generation?

(I assume New World is ambitious not because I've played it, just based on the news I've seen in random places like NPR)

No, Mike has been pretty clear (outside the comics) on it looking and feeling old, and not in a good way.

Darkewolfe

There has been some discussion that New World feels a bit like a fancy graphics Runescape and I can get that. There are some very old mechanics shined up to a 2020 polish, but it's also very thin on new shit.

itsblakeithink

Could it be that the Amazon people have an Apple TV+ subscription, watched Mythic Quest Season 2, and said "that seems like a thing to do"?

taliosfalcon

V1m wrote: »

I don't recall 2009 MMOs melting GPUs

honestly that was doing consumers as a whole a favor by exposing evga's shitty build quality and corner cutting

Nightslyr

From what I’ve seen of New World, the bulk of the buzz is artificial. A game developed and produced by Amazon being streamed on a platform owned by Amazon by streamers with a contract with said platform.

The game itself looks pretty, but everything I’ve seen (from closed beta until now) points to an incredibly tedious and hollow game. There’s almost zero story, the quest structure is archaic, and the enemy variety severely lacking. The combat is ‘interesting’ in that it’s more like a 3rd person action game than a traditional MMO with hotbars, but there doesn’t appear to be much skill needed.

It’ll be interesting to see where the game is in a month or so. I’m not confident that it’s anything more than a flash in the pan.

Hevach

I think Josh Stryfe Hayes put it best in his video: on every point he brought it down to, "Nothing bad, nothing ground breaking, but it doesn't feel like a trillion dollar company made this."

Kallwren

It is exactly what you would expect from an mmo produced by a corporation and run through design by committee and focus groups until rendered smooth and featureless.
You can do things and gain skills! Next to other people! And they too are gaining skills!
Also MAGIC
But not too much magic
AND FIGHTING
Against monsters or people!
DO you like playing as a team? We have FACTIONS
Do you like weapons? We have MANY
Points? Factions? Items? We have all of these!
Delivery in two days with prime.

But there is nothing especially compelling or noteworthy.

T-Danger

"Also discovered were several discontinued action figures from the late 90's era, which were used as the basis for the cast of Crucible."

zepherin

When I was working for the government we found a time capsule from 1898. That was actually pretty dope. We curated it and updated it with modern stuff and buried it.

Bropocalypse

It takes a lot for people to switch MMORPGs. There's a profoundly heavy communal aspect involve, as well as investment of time and progress- An MMORPG is like a house, you fill it with personal affectations, come to know your neighbors, and pay the rent. It's tough to draw people away from one of these things into another, since that investment of time and capital is large for even a single one- And "trying" an MMO doesn't reflect the long-term experience that these games offer. That's why trial periods for them are often Freemium now.
If this thing didn't exist in the same reality as FFXIV, which is already well in the process of scooping up refugees from WoW, then it might have had a chance... But even that's assuming the game is good in the first place.

Platy

New World is Darkfall (2009)

Enigmedic

I've watched streams of people playing it and I think it looks awful. It has nothing unique to it. Like lifebars and party health are literally mono colored rectangles. The bottom right just has two rows of abilities and whatever hotkeys you have assigned to them. The icons don't look interesting. Animations are mostly boring. Gathering is just watching a white circle fill up. The questing looks repetitive af (and my irl friend who has tried the game said it is repetitive). There's just no soul to the game. The environments look nice I guess, but it seems like that's all they focused on. There's nothing there to make me want to invest any of my time into the game.

Sterica

V1m wrote: »

I don't recall 2009 MMOs melting GPUs

Poorly optimized MMOs were the trend of 2009, with people desiring a true alternative to WoW praying that launch day patch will definitely fix the frame rate issues

Johnny17

You know you're old when people find time capsules from when you were already old.

Aldo

Johnny17 wrote: »

You know you're old when people find time capsules from when you were already old.

Here I was thinking you were 17

Anon von Zilch

Aldo wrote: »

Johnny17 wrote: »

You know you're old when people find time capsules from when you were already old.

Here I was thinking you were 17

That's a common mistake, Johnny was actually born in 1917.

H3Knuckles

Or he roleplays a SPARTAN-II from Halo. No, not that John. An earlier one.

RatherDashing89

H3Knuckles wrote: »

Or he roleplays a SPARTAN-II from Halo. No, not that John. An earlier one.

It's actually short for Johnny1701, no bloody A, B, C, or D.

Or he's a descendant of Johnny-5 from Short Circuit.