Can you respec stats easily? I'm not really sure I like the stats tied to weapons because it seems like an artificial barrier to "just trying this cool weapon out."
Up to level 20 you can respec for free, after that it costs gold. So yeah, pretty easy to respec.
And eventually there'll also be gems that change the stat a weapon scales off. I don't think it ends up AS good as if you pumped a ton into its main stat, but if you went focus for healing and wanted a sword to scale somewhat off focus as well? That's a thing.
I'm coming around on something Ironzerg said earlier. There's no particularly good conversation anywhere about what's good in this game. The subreddit is toxic as fuck. Even here we don't have much good stuff to talk about. The toxic community is something that signals to me whether a game is likely to be any good I think.
I'm coming around on something Ironzerg said earlier. There's no particularly good conversation anywhere about what's good in this game. The subreddit is toxic as fuck. Even here we don't have much good stuff to talk about. The toxic community is something that signals to me whether a game is likely to be any good I think.
I definitely noticed right off the bat that the chat was super toxic.
Game is fun.
Game has a handful of enemy types.
Game has almost no content.
Maybe if they had another couple of years it would be an impressive game. I stopped playing in the previous betas and won't play open beta because I don't want to be tired of the game and it's limited stuff before it's even released.
Still planning on playing it, I'm just pretty sure I'll only play for a month or so.
Edit: PVP fanbases are toxic as fuck. Always have been. This game is even worse because even though the game shifted focus, they're all still playing and being angry basement shitheads and disagreeing with every change that doesn't cater to them.
Yeah. The thing that makes me sad is that the game has some core, really well executed things which would have made for a good game maybe. It really does seem like the game direction/design is the problem. They just never decided what game they're making, even though they had talented people making all sorts of clever systems.
I haven't gotten a chance to do a dungeon (I will today hopefully), but the content has been very fun so far. The crafting and gathering systems are great, combat is responsive and fun with a lot of flexibility in player builds.
Global chat was both toxic and helpful. If you had a question, there would be multiple people rushing to answer you (truthfully). Otherwise global was full of people being idiots. I would suggest turning global off as soon as you join a faction; faction chat wasn't toxic at all.
There may be a lack of content, but I have never played a launch MMO that didn't have a lack of content. I will say that it seems like there are enough systems in the crafting and town management side of things to keep me engaged for awhile, and hopefully they get some additional content drops in the meantime.
I haven't gotten a chance to do a dungeon (I will today hopefully), but the content has been very fun so far. The crafting and gathering systems are great, combat is responsive and fun with a lot of flexibility in player builds.
Global chat was both toxic and helpful. If you had a question, there would be multiple people rushing to answer you (truthfully). Otherwise global was full of people being idiots. I would suggest turning global off as soon as you join a faction; faction chat wasn't toxic at all.
There may be a lack of content, but I have never played a launch MMO that didn't have a lack of content. I will say that it seems like there are enough systems in the crafting and town management side of things to keep me engaged for awhile, and hopefully they get some additional content drops in the meantime.
I do think I need to find a guild for sure. There's a lot going on there.
I managed to get my friends up high enough that we were able to do the first dungeon. It was a LOT of fun. It did primarily re-use open world monster models, but it has a system similar to Diablo where they can attach affixes to 'champion' monsters that can give them extra abilities, like a frost aura or spinning damage lines (arcane from diablo 3), among others. The last boss ended up being a real challenge, with two of my friends needing to be healers while the other two were using tank builds to manage both the boss and his summoned adds. Also, I made it into the next 'tier' of zone, which had much more monster variety than I expected, with several new monster types (including a nifty undead monster that carries a coffin on his back as a shield).
I did not engage with the pvp content at all, and I entertained myself fully while mainlining the game for the last 3 days. If you are unsure about the game because of the pvp focus, I think it's still worth the price of admission (doubly so if you like crafting/gathering). I do think the PVP content will end up being interesting though (at least if done as a group).
The game does have bugs, but nothing that actually impacted my enjoyment of the game.
My friends and I will be starting a guild at launch. I don't know for sure what server or faction, but it will be east coast. If anyone here is looking for a group to play with, I'd like to extend an invite to join up. PA rules will be applied strictly (don't be a dick).
LD50s definitive* guide to having a good time in the New World:
*LD50 has only played the game during the open beta, wherein he binged the game for 3 days straight and his experience and choices were tinted by the fact that the character would cease to exist in 72 hours. He also did not engage much with pvp content, which is supposed to be a bit of a cornerstone of the game.
Graphics settings:
Run the game with vsync off and gsync or freesync on if you can.
Set shadows to high quality or lower, highest quality destroys frame rates even on my 3090. With everything set to highest except shadows which I set to high, I was getting ~150 fps out in the wilds, and ~80 fps in tows, and the game is beautiful.
Take that vertical fov slider and pull it all the way up to the max.
Control tips:
You can move the camera back using the scroll wheel.
Rebind autorun to something you can hit really easily.
Rebind the 'F' skill to something else (I used one of my extra mouse buttons). I found myself hitting 'G' with the side of my finger which pulls up the full screen guild menu, which is not very helpful in combat.
You will learn how to make a camp as a part of the main story. Setting a camp (use the 'Y' key) and then resting at it allows you to use it as a respawn point if you die, as long as you die close enough to it.
You can revive fallen players by getting close to them and holding 'E'. You can revive people who are not in your party, and you can even revive people of opposing factions.
If other people are around you when you die, wait a moment before respawning to see if someone will pick you up. People in the beta were pretty universally friendly and helped each other out a lot.
You can interact with other players (IE trade) by holding H when looking at them.
General tips:
Your character does not despawn from the world immediately after logging out, so make sure you are logging out somewhere safe.
You can fast travel between settlements and other fast travel obelisks, but fast travel costs a resource called 'Azoth'
Early on, Azoth is pretty limited, but you will quickly find yourself brushing up against the azoth cap constantly after you start doing faction missions.
You can only fast travel to a location you have already visited, and you can only initiate a fast travel when you are already in a fast travel area such as a town or obelisk.
You can set an inn at a city as your home inn, and you can fast travel to that inn for free once per hour.
You earn experience from almost all activities, including crafting and gathering. It pays out early to dabble in everything.
If someone who is not in your group helps you kill something, you will get less exp and weapon mastery, but it's still better/faster to get help from strangers than to go without.
If someone who is in your group helps you kill something, you both get full exp and weapon mastery. You even tend to get exp and weapon mastery for things you didn't attack at all just because your friend killed it. This makes leveling in a group more efficient.
You can equip two weapons.
You can switch between both weapons using 1 and 2, even in the middle of combat (especially in the middle of combat).
Abilities on cooldown continue to come off cooldown when you are using your other weapon.
You can use two of the same weapon, but they will have the same skill loadouts and the same cooldowns, so it doesn't make sense to do this.
You gain stat bonuses from both weapons regardless of what weapon you have equipped.
You have a shield slot for equipment, but swords are the ONLY weapon type that uses them (other one handed weapons like hatchets and rapiers will not use the shield).
Shields DO NOT give stat bonuses if you are not using a sword, but they DO add equipment weight, so you should unequip your shield entirely if you are not using a sword.
Every weapon has two skill trees, but you are not forced to only choose one. You can mix and match abilities and passives from both trees.
You can change what ability is assigned to what key by clicking the icon for your ability loadout on the left side of the screen when looking at the weapon tree.
You do not have to take an active ability as your first ability in a tree; you can start a tree by picking a passive.
Early on respecs are free, so experiment and find out what you like.
Inventory tips:
Weight can be a real burden.
You can salvage equipment you don't want by pressing 's' and clicking the equipment.
Savaging equipment gets you gold and repair parts. Gold and repair parts have no weight, and equipment is heavy. If you find yourself overburdened out in the wild, check to see if you have anything you can salvage before you resort to dropping your hard earned loot.
Keep an eye out for things you can sell on the marketboard rather than salvage. Weapons that only have one stat, and the stat matches up with the prime req for the weapon are good choices (IE a hammer with only bonus strength, or a rapier with only bonus dex; you can see what weapons use what from the character attributes screen).
There is a storage locker in every settlement that can hold boatloads of stuff, but it is a separate inventory per settlement.
You can view what you have in a settlement's storage without having to visit the town itself by clicking on the settlement from the map screen.
Your inventory weight increases your azoth fast travel cost.
If you need to move resources between towns, refine all the raw resources first, as the refined versions take up much less weight.
Same goes for storing resources, as the storage lockers have a max capacity.
You can make bags! You are given a bag from a main story quest, but it isn't very good. If you spend a bit of time doing clothcraft stuff you will unlock a recipe to make a bag that adds twice as much carry weight as the quest reward.
That bag requires a 'rune of holding'. You can buy this from your faction vendor for a moderate amount of faction currency (very much worth it).
Crafting tips:
There are two 'types' of crafting. "crafting", which makes new usable items, and "refining" which makes refined higher tier resources from the resources you gather directly. Nearly all 'raw' resources need to be refined before use.
Higher tier refined resources commonly need refined resources from the previous tier, so the 'old' materials will still be valuable (e.g. gold ingots are made from gold ore AND silver ingots).
Note that the above example uses silver ingots and not silver ore; you always want to refine all of your raw resource (ore, fiber, wood) into it's first tier of refined resource, even if you are planning on using it to make tier 2 materials.
The stonecutting table is only useful for town board quests at first, but you unlock gemcutting as you get stonecutting skill.
Each crafting station supports more than one actual crafting skill. EG Armorsmithing and weaponsmithing are separate skills. The skills, their ranks, and their associated icons are displayed at the top of the crafting interface. Recipes are marked to the right side with an icon that tells you what skill they are based on.
Equipment crafting is pretty expensive resource-wise, which can make it challenging to skill up. Keep an eye out for recipes associated with a given skill that have low/easy resource costs that you can make a lot of (wooden weapons are easy to craft as wood is easier to find than iron early on, for example).
Each station (both crafting and refining) has a level that determines what recipes are available. The station levels have to be increased by the town mayor investing in them (which requires the town to be owned by a faction).
You can spend azoth to improve your chances at making good equipment, just click the dropdown arrow next to the azoth ingredient slot and choose an amount to spend. You are limited in how much you can spend at once (I think this is limited by the crafting station's tier).
The pvp meta is currently leaning towards ranged and great axe. I made a lot of money in the beta selling arrows and cartridge ammunition.
Gathering tips:
If you zoom in on the map, you will see that different terrain types are colored differently (light green for grasslands, darker green for forest, a more tannish color for mountainous regions). There is a 'resources' button on the left side of the map that will tell you what resource types are common in what areas.
Not all gatherable materials have an associated skill (bushes and saltpeter for example). You can see what skill a particular resource uses by looking at what gathering tool icon shows up when you move your crosshairs over to gather it.
Better gathering tools help a LOT with faster gathering (steel equipment give something like 300% faster gathering speed baseline). Better gathering tools was one of my first priorities when crafting and I don't regret that choice.
'Gathering', aka gathering plants, can be quickly skilled up by gathering hemp, which grows very commonly in grasslands and gives a lot of experience.
Woodcutting: Trees trees and more trees. Excess wood can be turned into charcoal which can be used to make steel and gunpowder.
Mining: stone early on, and then you should mine every iron node you see. You'll want that iron and then some so make sure to grab it when you see it.
Quest tips:
When looking at your faction rep guy in town, the top 3 quests are pve quests, and the bottom 3 quests are pvp quests. The pvp quests are a lot like pve quests but they just force pvp on while you do them.
The pvp quests are worth more, and are worth doing even if you don't really like pvp because they're pretty easy. I recommend doing them with a group of friends).
When you are level 20+ and hit the first faction reputation cap, you will be given a quest to 'undertake a trial' and rank up to the next rank. You cannot actually take on the quest to complete the trial until level 25 and there was no indication that this was the case in the Beta.
There are effectively 4 kinds of quests, they are main story quests (marked by a lighter yellow diamond that is clear in the center), zone sidequests (which are marked by a filled in darker yellow diamond), town board quests (which are randomly generated and primarily gathering and crafting turn ins), and faction quests (marked with blue circles, and are also randomly generated).
The main story quest is a traditional 'quest chain' where you do quest A to unlock quest B.
The zone sidequests are also 'chains', but there are usually multiple quests available at once, and it seems like each zone's quests converge on a single major quest to finish out the zone.
I recommend questing with friends, especially if you are doing quests where you just meet or are under the recommended level.
This is easy for the zone quests and main story, which are the same for everyone, but is much more difficult for the faction quests, as the pool of quests it is pulling from is random and influenced by your level (you will basically never get the same faction quests if your levels are not the same when you pick them up).
My friends and I found it more fun to just help each other out with our faction quests regardless of if we all had them or not. There is still a lot of benefit in clearing out the areas those quests take place in (some classes of resources are only found in provision/supply chests, of which there tend to be many in every questing zone).
If you are looking for a guy to murder named 'Ambrose', he is underground and not on the upper levels of the dock/fort.
If you are looking for wine at a shipwreck and can't find the final box to loot, look at the wooden hull of the inside of the ship (specifically on the wooden 'steps' you use to get out of the ship's broken hold), there is a box that is miss-placed underneath the boat geometry (it is still lootable).
Bugs:
Hopefully these things are fixed at launch, but if they are not here are somethings to look out for and potential fixes.
Sound bug - there is a bug where it seems like the sound system gets overwhelmed and sounds stop playing. This can quickly be fixed by pressing 'tab' to open your inventory and then closing it again.
Stamina bug - this is more serious. This did not happen to me, but apparently you can get stuck in a state where you can't do any stamina consuming actions. This can be fixed by signing out long enough for your character to despawn and logging back in, or by dying. This only affected my friends while they were using light armor, so if this bug ends up impacting you at launch it might be good to swap to medium armor until it is fixed.
I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but this list is getting pretty long.
Oh, one last tip:
I think it's best to approach the game with the "it's about the journey and not the destination" mindset. What I mean by that is this:
You spend a lot of time traveling in this game. Traveling between cities, between quest turn-ins, between quest locations. When you are doing that traveling, take the road less traveled. Keep an eye out for gatherable resources, rare plants, ore nodes, etc. Hunt animals as you come across them, etc. Quest items don't take up weight, and you should never be returning to a city without a bag full of resources. The game is more fun when you're engaging with all of its systems at the same time, and while it seems at the time like it is a slower pace, you will actually level much faster, as every step of the hunting/gathering/crafting loop grants exp.
Hm, I might pick up this game on sale, but it's not an immediate buy for me. Impressions in the spoiler.
In summary:
Overall it was okay, although only getting to level 23 and not participating in any dungeon or PvP content means that it wasn't a full experience. For me, the group PvP is a main draw, so not participating in that is definitely a major gap in my experience over the open beta. The gathering/crafting/solo PvE content was chill enough that I could put on a podcast or something while playing the game and turn my brain off, which is fine for a game like this. On the other hand, I could just go play Minecraft or Outward or another survival crafting game and get the same result, so... Meh.
In more detail:
Combat is simple and a little clunky. I always felt like animations were taking just a little too long to finish before bringing up block or dodging. The most fun I had was with the musket and spear, kiting mobs while disrupting them with the musket trapper and spear Zoner skills. It's probably a build oriented more toward dueling, but whatever, I could kill mobs without taking much damage. I also enjoy first person shooter games so making it into a shooting game was a plus for me. When I tried melee, it just seemed kind of anemic - yeah, there's some spacing and timing tricks to it, but mostly it's just mashing your DPS abilities on cooldown and occasionally using interrupts to avoid some damage and making sure to block/dodge any of the big hits.
I only played solo, so again, that's another gap in my beta experience that might improve how the game plays, but I'm not sure by how much playing in a group would change the melee dynamic.
I used the bow and that was reasonably fun, but it was also a lot slower than the musket. Also, with the drop and the way third-person aiming works, sometimes I would go for long shots and the arrow would not go where I wanted, or there would be melee shots that would veer off into the distance despite my bow being inside the enemy.
Some ability activation styles were inconsistent, especially with regard to ranged abilities. Like, on the bow, the piercing shot readies an arrow that you can aim and shoot, while the splitting arrow ability would just do an animation and fire. It's easy to learn how these abilities function since there aren't many but the inconsistency is annoying.
Gathering and crafting was pretty chill. I put on some podcasts/videos on my second screen while I grinded away gathering and stuff. It took a couple hours to learn where to look for ingredients, though (stupid saltpeter only existing in one cave in Everfall sucks, especially when it's a mid-level part for that zone).
Worst experience was trying to kill an open world boss guy for a quest and not getting credit 3 times (with about 10-15 minute spawn intervals) because too many players were camping the boss's spawn point. After the third time, I just left.
Best experience was...didn't really have a best experience, it all felt pretty same-y. Oh, I guess the best experience was seeing one player crawling through a city and hopping down onto the ground behind him, helping start a spontaneous crawling train of a couple dozen players. That has very little to do with the game itself, though, and more to do with players being silly.
I still really, really dislike how stupidly big the hammer and greataxes are.
Hm, I might pick up this game on sale, but it's not an immediate buy for me. Impressions in the spoiler.
In summary:
Overall it was okay, although only getting to level 23 and not participating in any dungeon or PvP content means that it wasn't a full experience. For me, the group PvP is a main draw, so not participating in that is definitely a major gap in my experience over the open beta. The gathering/crafting/solo PvE content was chill enough that I could put on a podcast or something while playing the game and turn my brain off, which is fine for a game like this. On the other hand, I could just go play Minecraft or Outward or another survival crafting game and get the same result, so... Meh.
In more detail:
Combat is simple and a little clunky. I always felt like animations were taking just a little too long to finish before bringing up block or dodging. The most fun I had was with the musket and spear, kiting mobs while disrupting them with the musket trapper and spear Zoner skills. It's probably a build oriented more toward dueling, but whatever, I could kill mobs without taking much damage. I also enjoy first person shooter games so making it into a shooting game was a plus for me. When I tried melee, it just seemed kind of anemic - yeah, there's some spacing and timing tricks to it, but mostly it's just mashing your DPS abilities on cooldown and occasionally using interrupts to avoid some damage and making sure to block/dodge any of the big hits.
I only played solo, so again, that's another gap in my beta experience that might improve how the game plays, but I'm not sure by how much playing in a group would change the melee dynamic.
I used the bow and that was reasonably fun, but it was also a lot slower than the musket. Also, with the drop and the way third-person aiming works, sometimes I would go for long shots and the arrow would not go where I wanted, or there would be melee shots that would veer off into the distance despite my bow being inside the enemy.
Some ability activation styles were inconsistent, especially with regard to ranged abilities. Like, on the bow, the piercing shot readies an arrow that you can aim and shoot, while the splitting arrow ability would just do an animation and fire. It's easy to learn how these abilities function since there aren't many but the inconsistency is annoying.
Gathering and crafting was pretty chill. I put on some podcasts/videos on my second screen while I grinded away gathering and stuff. It took a couple hours to learn where to look for ingredients, though (stupid saltpeter only existing in one cave in Everfall sucks, especially when it's a mid-level part for that zone).
Worst experience was trying to kill an open world boss guy for a quest and not getting credit 3 times (with about 10-15 minute spawn intervals) because too many players were camping the boss's spawn point. After the third time, I just left.
Best experience was...didn't really have a best experience, it all felt pretty same-y. Oh, I guess the best experience was seeing one player crawling through a city and hopping down onto the ground behind him, helping start a spontaneous crawling train of a couple dozen players. That has very little to do with the game itself, though, and more to do with players being silly.
I still really, really dislike how stupidly big the hammer and greataxes are.
If you pick up the game, I'd recommend you try the rapier. It is the opposite of "mash all your dps abilities" since you need to build up stacks of bleed and then consume them. I found it to be lots of fun.
Hm, I might pick up this game on sale, but it's not an immediate buy for me. Impressions in the spoiler.
In summary:
Overall it was okay, although only getting to level 23 and not participating in any dungeon or PvP content means that it wasn't a full experience. For me, the group PvP is a main draw, so not participating in that is definitely a major gap in my experience over the open beta. The gathering/crafting/solo PvE content was chill enough that I could put on a podcast or something while playing the game and turn my brain off, which is fine for a game like this. On the other hand, I could just go play Minecraft or Outward or another survival crafting game and get the same result, so... Meh.
In more detail:
Combat is simple and a little clunky. I always felt like animations were taking just a little too long to finish before bringing up block or dodging. The most fun I had was with the musket and spear, kiting mobs while disrupting them with the musket trapper and spear Zoner skills. It's probably a build oriented more toward dueling, but whatever, I could kill mobs without taking much damage. I also enjoy first person shooter games so making it into a shooting game was a plus for me. When I tried melee, it just seemed kind of anemic - yeah, there's some spacing and timing tricks to it, but mostly it's just mashing your DPS abilities on cooldown and occasionally using interrupts to avoid some damage and making sure to block/dodge any of the big hits.
I only played solo, so again, that's another gap in my beta experience that might improve how the game plays, but I'm not sure by how much playing in a group would change the melee dynamic.
I used the bow and that was reasonably fun, but it was also a lot slower than the musket. Also, with the drop and the way third-person aiming works, sometimes I would go for long shots and the arrow would not go where I wanted, or there would be melee shots that would veer off into the distance despite my bow being inside the enemy.
Some ability activation styles were inconsistent, especially with regard to ranged abilities. Like, on the bow, the piercing shot readies an arrow that you can aim and shoot, while the splitting arrow ability would just do an animation and fire. It's easy to learn how these abilities function since there aren't many but the inconsistency is annoying.
Gathering and crafting was pretty chill. I put on some podcasts/videos on my second screen while I grinded away gathering and stuff. It took a couple hours to learn where to look for ingredients, though (stupid saltpeter only existing in one cave in Everfall sucks, especially when it's a mid-level part for that zone).
Worst experience was trying to kill an open world boss guy for a quest and not getting credit 3 times (with about 10-15 minute spawn intervals) because too many players were camping the boss's spawn point. After the third time, I just left.
Best experience was...didn't really have a best experience, it all felt pretty same-y. Oh, I guess the best experience was seeing one player crawling through a city and hopping down onto the ground behind him, helping start a spontaneous crawling train of a couple dozen players. That has very little to do with the game itself, though, and more to do with players being silly.
I still really, really dislike how stupidly big the hammer and greataxes are.
This sums up a lot of my thoughts. I'm 10 years removed from accepting a lower quality experience "because it's an MMO". The game has to be as good (if not better) than what I can get from another non-MMO game. Otherwise, it feels like a waste of time. Graphically, the game is beautiful. Mechanically, it's subpar. If this was a single player game, it'd be an immediate pass. And we know most of us are going to spend a majority of our time playing solo, because that just tends to be the cadence between interactions, even with MMOs that have fantastic group content (and lots of it). Which New World does not.
Ultimately, the problem with New World is that they went into this years ago thinking they could built the next great PvP-MMO, without realizing there has never been a truly "great" PvP-MMO. Midstream they discovered just how shitty a game is if the only end game is PvP, and tried to pivot dramatically to more PvE stuff. And now it's not really good at anything.
The minds at Amazon should've been smart enough to realize there's a reason why PvP only serves to kill MMOs, not grow them. And unless they were innovative enough to come up with a completely different way to do that (they weren't), the game is dead on arrival.
Which is a shame, because with the creativity of the setting (and the environments are absolutely beautiful), and the resources of Amazon, this could've been something amazing had they started from scratch to build a truly next generation PvE MMO.
A lot of things in New World harkened back to earlier MMO's, and I appreciated seeing them again. Enjoyed the lack of a class, and the focus on skilling up weapon types instead. I liked the localness of the world, plenty of opportunity to interact with other players without instanced zones or quest magic like they have implemented in WoW for PVE. Also, the focus on foot travel was great. The targeted combat felt pretty good 'for an mmo', but my tank friends complained about how generic combat became for them.
The starter zones began to blend together a lot after visiting them all. One farm looks like any other. I actually laughed at having the same slouching quest giver at the center of multiple towns, just swap the name / gender.
I didn't get to explore the town ownership mechanics, but I'm curious about the meta game around taxation of goods etc. The idea sounds difficult to execute in a way that balances between meaningfulness and overbearing.
We had some minor ticky tacky bugs, but overall the beta was stable and frustration free. They need some work on animations around going down stairs though .
A lot of things in New World harkened back to earlier MMO's, and I appreciated seeing them again. Enjoyed the lack of a class, and the focus on skilling up weapon types instead. I liked the localness of the world, plenty of opportunity to interact with other players without instanced zones or quest magic like they have implemented in WoW for PVE. Also, the focus on foot travel was great. The targeted combat felt pretty good 'for an mmo', but my tank friends complained about how generic combat became for them.
The starter zones began to blend together a lot after visiting them all. One farm looks like any other. I actually laughed at having the same slouching quest giver at the center of multiple towns, just swap the name / gender.
I didn't get to explore the town ownership mechanics, but I'm curious about the meta game around taxation of goods etc. The idea sounds difficult to execute in a way that balances between meaningfulness and overbearing.
We had some minor ticky tacky bugs, but overall the beta was stable and frustration free. They need some work on animations around going down stairs though .
The later zones have more variety. I think that the starting zones are serving a specific purpose, which is keeping them samey:
They want to avoid funneling all new players into the same starting zone to prevent the starting zones and their associated quests from getting overburdened by players (which is a really smart thing to do; WoW did it for every expansion they made post Burning Crusade and it lent a lot to server stability and playability at launch). At the same time though, they don't want different players having drastically different starting experiences. The first 4 zones are really just one really big zone, and then the variety comes in in the next set of zones (which are different from both the starting zone and each other).
This also serves to make sure that there is a plethora of all the starting gathering materials and that they are distributed in a balanced way.
Crafting has no reason for existing - BiS gear from just grinding faction missions for a few hours
Low level gatherables are the most valuable in the game since they are required in MASSIVE amounts for end-game crafting, but...
Competitive gathering! Don't expect me to gather 1000 Iron Ore when every other player is trying to loot them out from under me!!
As a primarily "tank" player, the combat is boring and uninteresting - no need to manage cooldowns or "weave" abilities
The complete and utter lack of quest variety
The entire faction system seems to have no point whatsoever
There is no urgency or weight to any task in the game at all - it feels like just going through the motions
Too much running around looking at scenery and not enough "gameplay"
You don't get to pick your starting location which makes playing with friends/family difficult at first
It sure is pretty! (But not worth $50 to me.)
I agree that the equipment crafting needs work. You will earn enough experience just leveling up the required skills to make equipment relevant to your level that you will have outleveled it by the time you make it. This could change at higher level, but I couldn't say.
It is possible to make better equipment than what the faction vendors sell though, especially weapons. (you can put more perks on crafted equipment and have both more flexibility and more control than the faction store).
What crafting is very useful though is consumables. Food, potions, gems, higher tier ammunition. Also bags and improved gathering tools.
For the resource nodes and competition for them: there are more than enough, but you need to know where to look for them and remember where there are good gathering areas for the ones you need. Respawn is high enough that it wasn't really an issue for me and I got up to 80-100 skill in all of the refining skills. There are also resource boosting tonics you can craft that give you percentage increase in gathering yeilds, and gathering tool perks with similar percentage based effects.
dungeons have recipe drops (allegedly, I haven't seen one I don't think) so crafting might be more interesting and interactive with the world than it seems
food / potions are a big deal, crafting them will always be useful imo
fishing is actually very rewarding, you can find all sorts of things and it's pretty chill
pvp has a point, but it's a long term point. in beta a few guilds took outposts and jacked the taxes and fees way up - this rallied everyone against them during the following 'war' for that territory.
to the above, general chat was hilarious and not toxic for a brief period when there was something worth talking about in the region. help has actually been generally pretty helpful. this isn't something I expect to continue.
dungeons have recipe drops (allegedly, I haven't seen one I don't think) so crafting might be more interesting and interactive with the world than it seems
food / potions are a big deal, crafting them will always be useful imo
fishing is actually very rewarding, you can find all sorts of things and it's pretty chill
pvp has a point, but it's a long term point. in beta a few guilds took outposts and jacked the taxes and fees way up - this rallied everyone against them during the following 'war' for that territory.
to the above, general chat was hilarious and not toxic for a brief period when there was something worth talking about in the region. help has actually been generally pretty helpful. this isn't something I expect to continue.
I turned off general chat but left the help chat and the faction chat on, and there was basically no toxicity in those channels. I imagine that global chat would be more bearable in the real release as well.
Game very strongly reminds me of Asherons Call. This is an excellent thing. I just also can't help but see certain flaws and while I'm accepting of them, it's dishonest to pretend the game is perfect.
Man that seems like a lot of servers, what's the population cap on those?
I don't think they've given an official count but I've heard the number 2500 tossed around as what they were testing in beta, which doesn't sound too crazy. They specifically want to avoid the "all servers are full!" launch day scenario, they intend to merge servers together once things slow down. In fact, they're all in different world sets:
Assume that any servers in the same set are likely going to be one server eventually. Servers like Olympus are already in their own set, most likely based on beta numbers where they were EXTREMELY popular so they're pretty confident it'll stay high pop for awhile.
Game very strongly reminds me of Asherons Call. This is an excellent thing. I just also can't help but see certain flaws and while I'm accepting of them, it's dishonest to pretend the game is perfect.
This is a very interesting claim. What about it strikes that chord with you? I'm genuinely curious, I have a passing interest with this one, and AC is my long lost love.
Game very strongly reminds me of Asherons Call. This is an excellent thing. I just also can't help but see certain flaws and while I'm accepting of them, it's dishonest to pretend the game is perfect.
This is a very interesting claim. What about it strikes that chord with you? I'm genuinely curious, I have a passing interest with this one, and AC is my long lost love.
The world design is less 'location' shunted and you can roam around if you feel like it and still find challenging areas with chests and interesting terrain.
The stats to skills are pretty close, though simplified. Which is somewhat compensated for by the differing play styles of the weapons. Range, Melee and Spells all feel very different from one another.
There is a fast travel system that doesn't really feel like it shrinks the world, and you might have a favored spot that is very isolated (Hello my private Olthoi cave and/or tricky jumping spot to kill Lugians)
The equipment selection has a kind of randomized stats thing going on.
Every player is some variety of human. It's not high fantasy, even though it's a very fantastic world.
Combat has a bit of rolling, jumping around and climbing. While AC combat wasn't perfect, it made some good use of movement. Similarly, New World is a bit janky but they've made an effort.
New World isn't as revolutionary and doesn't have the scope of lore or content of an entire continent full of random dungeons. It doesn't have the novelty of a crafting style magic system where you guess candle colors and swear at fizzirps.
There's every possibility I get bored with New World in a month, but there's something about seeing a tower or mountain that makes me wonder what's up at the top and even if the answer is 'nothing much' not many games have made me want to go check just in case because of the chance there's something.
I remember more things about my time in AC and original EQ than WOW and I get the same feeling in New World. I definitely remember Obsidian Plains and Arwic and the West Commons Griffen more than anything since.
Game very strongly reminds me of Asherons Call. This is an excellent thing. I just also can't help but see certain flaws and while I'm accepting of them, it's dishonest to pretend the game is perfect.
This is a very interesting claim. What about it strikes that chord with you? I'm genuinely curious, I have a passing interest with this one, and AC is my long lost love.
The world design is less 'location' shunted and you can roam around if you feel like it and still find challenging areas with chests and interesting terrain.
The stats to skills are pretty close, though simplified. Which is somewhat compensated for by the differing play styles of the weapons. Range, Melee and Spells all feel very different from one another.
There is a fast travel system that doesn't really feel like it shrinks the world, and you might have a favored spot that is very isolated (Hello my private Olthoi cave and/or tricky jumping spot to kill Lugians)
The equipment selection has a kind of randomized stats thing going on.
Every player is some variety of human. It's not high fantasy, even though it's a very fantastic world.
Combat has a bit of rolling, jumping around and climbing. While AC combat wasn't perfect, it made some good use of movement. Similarly, New World is a bit janky but they've made an effort.
New World isn't as revolutionary and doesn't have the scope of lore or content of an entire continent full of random dungeons. It doesn't have the novelty of a crafting style magic system where you guess candle colors and swear at fizzirps.
There's every possibility I get bored with New World in a month, but there's something about seeing a tower or mountain that makes me wonder what's up at the top and even if the answer is 'nothing much' not many games have made me want to go check just in case because of the chance there's something.
I remember more things about my time in AC and original EQ than WOW and I get the same feeling in New World. I definitely remember Obsidian Plains and Arwic and the West Commons Griffen more than anything since.
Might just be because I'm old. Dunno.
Ore. That is what is at the top of the mountain. It is also why I am already up there hitting rocks.
Game very strongly reminds me of Asherons Call. This is an excellent thing. I just also can't help but see certain flaws and while I'm accepting of them, it's dishonest to pretend the game is perfect.
This is a very interesting claim. What about it strikes that chord with you? I'm genuinely curious, I have a passing interest with this one, and AC is my long lost love.
The world design is less 'location' shunted and you can roam around if you feel like it and still find challenging areas with chests and interesting terrain.
The stats to skills are pretty close, though simplified. Which is somewhat compensated for by the differing play styles of the weapons. Range, Melee and Spells all feel very different from one another.
There is a fast travel system that doesn't really feel like it shrinks the world, and you might have a favored spot that is very isolated (Hello my private Olthoi cave and/or tricky jumping spot to kill Lugians)
The equipment selection has a kind of randomized stats thing going on.
Every player is some variety of human. It's not high fantasy, even though it's a very fantastic world.
Combat has a bit of rolling, jumping around and climbing. While AC combat wasn't perfect, it made some good use of movement. Similarly, New World is a bit janky but they've made an effort.
New World isn't as revolutionary and doesn't have the scope of lore or content of an entire continent full of random dungeons. It doesn't have the novelty of a crafting style magic system where you guess candle colors and swear at fizzirps.
There's every possibility I get bored with New World in a month, but there's something about seeing a tower or mountain that makes me wonder what's up at the top and even if the answer is 'nothing much' not many games have made me want to go check just in case because of the chance there's something.
I remember more things about my time in AC and original EQ than WOW and I get the same feeling in New World. I definitely remember Obsidian Plains and Arwic and the West Commons Griffen more than anything since.
Might just be because I'm old. Dunno.
Ore. That is what is at the top of the mountain. It is also why I am already up there hitting rocks.
Or a named bear in a weird cave with a bunch of saltpeter and herbs. Or a chest for no reason. Or a pvp objective/vantage point. Really it could be anything!
Gonna be rolling on Dominora (US East) with an acquaintance that streams (very small community, though, not really going to be noticeable). Going Team Green, if you're interested.
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Up to level 20 you can respec for free, after that it costs gold. So yeah, pretty easy to respec.
And eventually there'll also be gems that change the stat a weapon scales off. I don't think it ends up AS good as if you pumped a ton into its main stat, but if you went focus for healing and wanted a sword to scale somewhat off focus as well? That's a thing.
I definitely noticed right off the bat that the chat was super toxic.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
pleasepaypreacher.net
Game has a handful of enemy types.
Game has almost no content.
Maybe if they had another couple of years it would be an impressive game. I stopped playing in the previous betas and won't play open beta because I don't want to be tired of the game and it's limited stuff before it's even released.
Still planning on playing it, I'm just pretty sure I'll only play for a month or so.
Edit: PVP fanbases are toxic as fuck. Always have been. This game is even worse because even though the game shifted focus, they're all still playing and being angry basement shitheads and disagreeing with every change that doesn't cater to them.
Global chat was both toxic and helpful. If you had a question, there would be multiple people rushing to answer you (truthfully). Otherwise global was full of people being idiots. I would suggest turning global off as soon as you join a faction; faction chat wasn't toxic at all.
There may be a lack of content, but I have never played a launch MMO that didn't have a lack of content. I will say that it seems like there are enough systems in the crafting and town management side of things to keep me engaged for awhile, and hopefully they get some additional content drops in the meantime.
I do think I need to find a guild for sure. There's a lot going on there.
I did not engage with the pvp content at all, and I entertained myself fully while mainlining the game for the last 3 days. If you are unsure about the game because of the pvp focus, I think it's still worth the price of admission (doubly so if you like crafting/gathering). I do think the PVP content will end up being interesting though (at least if done as a group).
The game does have bugs, but nothing that actually impacted my enjoyment of the game.
My friends and I will be starting a guild at launch. I don't know for sure what server or faction, but it will be east coast. If anyone here is looking for a group to play with, I'd like to extend an invite to join up. PA rules will be applied strictly (don't be a dick).
*LD50 has only played the game during the open beta, wherein he binged the game for 3 days straight and his experience and choices were tinted by the fact that the character would cease to exist in 72 hours. He also did not engage much with pvp content, which is supposed to be a bit of a cornerstone of the game.
Graphics settings:
Control tips:
General tips:
Inventory tips:
Crafting tips:
Gathering tips:
Quest tips:
Bugs:
Hopefully these things are fixed at launch, but if they are not here are somethings to look out for and potential fixes.
I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but this list is getting pretty long.
Oh, one last tip:
I think it's best to approach the game with the "it's about the journey and not the destination" mindset. What I mean by that is this:
You spend a lot of time traveling in this game. Traveling between cities, between quest turn-ins, between quest locations. When you are doing that traveling, take the road less traveled. Keep an eye out for gatherable resources, rare plants, ore nodes, etc. Hunt animals as you come across them, etc. Quest items don't take up weight, and you should never be returning to a city without a bag full of resources. The game is more fun when you're engaging with all of its systems at the same time, and while it seems at the time like it is a slower pace, you will actually level much faster, as every step of the hunting/gathering/crafting loop grants exp.
Overall it was okay, although only getting to level 23 and not participating in any dungeon or PvP content means that it wasn't a full experience. For me, the group PvP is a main draw, so not participating in that is definitely a major gap in my experience over the open beta. The gathering/crafting/solo PvE content was chill enough that I could put on a podcast or something while playing the game and turn my brain off, which is fine for a game like this. On the other hand, I could just go play Minecraft or Outward or another survival crafting game and get the same result, so... Meh.
In more detail:
Combat is simple and a little clunky. I always felt like animations were taking just a little too long to finish before bringing up block or dodging. The most fun I had was with the musket and spear, kiting mobs while disrupting them with the musket trapper and spear Zoner skills. It's probably a build oriented more toward dueling, but whatever, I could kill mobs without taking much damage. I also enjoy first person shooter games so making it into a shooting game was a plus for me. When I tried melee, it just seemed kind of anemic - yeah, there's some spacing and timing tricks to it, but mostly it's just mashing your DPS abilities on cooldown and occasionally using interrupts to avoid some damage and making sure to block/dodge any of the big hits.
I only played solo, so again, that's another gap in my beta experience that might improve how the game plays, but I'm not sure by how much playing in a group would change the melee dynamic.
I used the bow and that was reasonably fun, but it was also a lot slower than the musket. Also, with the drop and the way third-person aiming works, sometimes I would go for long shots and the arrow would not go where I wanted, or there would be melee shots that would veer off into the distance despite my bow being inside the enemy.
Some ability activation styles were inconsistent, especially with regard to ranged abilities. Like, on the bow, the piercing shot readies an arrow that you can aim and shoot, while the splitting arrow ability would just do an animation and fire. It's easy to learn how these abilities function since there aren't many but the inconsistency is annoying.
Gathering and crafting was pretty chill. I put on some podcasts/videos on my second screen while I grinded away gathering and stuff. It took a couple hours to learn where to look for ingredients, though (stupid saltpeter only existing in one cave in Everfall sucks, especially when it's a mid-level part for that zone).
Worst experience was trying to kill an open world boss guy for a quest and not getting credit 3 times (with about 10-15 minute spawn intervals) because too many players were camping the boss's spawn point. After the third time, I just left.
Best experience was...didn't really have a best experience, it all felt pretty same-y. Oh, I guess the best experience was seeing one player crawling through a city and hopping down onto the ground behind him, helping start a spontaneous crawling train of a couple dozen players. That has very little to do with the game itself, though, and more to do with players being silly.
I still really, really dislike how stupidly big the hammer and greataxes are.
If you pick up the game, I'd recommend you try the rapier. It is the opposite of "mash all your dps abilities" since you need to build up stacks of bleed and then consume them. I found it to be lots of fun.
This sums up a lot of my thoughts. I'm 10 years removed from accepting a lower quality experience "because it's an MMO". The game has to be as good (if not better) than what I can get from another non-MMO game. Otherwise, it feels like a waste of time. Graphically, the game is beautiful. Mechanically, it's subpar. If this was a single player game, it'd be an immediate pass. And we know most of us are going to spend a majority of our time playing solo, because that just tends to be the cadence between interactions, even with MMOs that have fantastic group content (and lots of it). Which New World does not.
Ultimately, the problem with New World is that they went into this years ago thinking they could built the next great PvP-MMO, without realizing there has never been a truly "great" PvP-MMO. Midstream they discovered just how shitty a game is if the only end game is PvP, and tried to pivot dramatically to more PvE stuff. And now it's not really good at anything.
The minds at Amazon should've been smart enough to realize there's a reason why PvP only serves to kill MMOs, not grow them. And unless they were innovative enough to come up with a completely different way to do that (they weren't), the game is dead on arrival.
Which is a shame, because with the creativity of the setting (and the environments are absolutely beautiful), and the resources of Amazon, this could've been something amazing had they started from scratch to build a truly next generation PvE MMO.
The starter zones began to blend together a lot after visiting them all. One farm looks like any other. I actually laughed at having the same slouching quest giver at the center of multiple towns, just swap the name / gender.
I didn't get to explore the town ownership mechanics, but I'm curious about the meta game around taxation of goods etc. The idea sounds difficult to execute in a way that balances between meaningfulness and overbearing.
We had some minor ticky tacky bugs, but overall the beta was stable and frustration free. They need some work on animations around going down stairs though
The later zones have more variety. I think that the starting zones are serving a specific purpose, which is keeping them samey:
They want to avoid funneling all new players into the same starting zone to prevent the starting zones and their associated quests from getting overburdened by players (which is a really smart thing to do; WoW did it for every expansion they made post Burning Crusade and it lent a lot to server stability and playability at launch). At the same time though, they don't want different players having drastically different starting experiences. The first 4 zones are really just one really big zone, and then the variety comes in in the next set of zones (which are different from both the starting zone and each other).
This also serves to make sure that there is a plethora of all the starting gathering materials and that they are distributed in a balanced way.
- Crafting has no reason for existing - BiS gear from just grinding faction missions for a few hours
- Low level gatherables are the most valuable in the game since they are required in MASSIVE amounts for end-game crafting, but...
- Competitive gathering! Don't expect me to gather 1000 Iron Ore when every other player is trying to loot them out from under me!!
- As a primarily "tank" player, the combat is boring and uninteresting - no need to manage cooldowns or "weave" abilities
- The complete and utter lack of quest variety
- The entire faction system seems to have no point whatsoever
- There is no urgency or weight to any task in the game at all - it feels like just going through the motions
- Too much running around looking at scenery and not enough "gameplay"
- You don't get to pick your starting location which makes playing with friends/family difficult at first
It sure is pretty! (But not worth $50 to me.)I agree that the equipment crafting needs work. You will earn enough experience just leveling up the required skills to make equipment relevant to your level that you will have outleveled it by the time you make it. This could change at higher level, but I couldn't say.
It is possible to make better equipment than what the faction vendors sell though, especially weapons. (you can put more perks on crafted equipment and have both more flexibility and more control than the faction store).
What crafting is very useful though is consumables. Food, potions, gems, higher tier ammunition. Also bags and improved gathering tools.
For the resource nodes and competition for them: there are more than enough, but you need to know where to look for them and remember where there are good gathering areas for the ones you need. Respawn is high enough that it wasn't really an issue for me and I got up to 80-100 skill in all of the refining skills. There are also resource boosting tonics you can craft that give you percentage increase in gathering yeilds, and gathering tool perks with similar percentage based effects.
dungeons have recipe drops (allegedly, I haven't seen one I don't think) so crafting might be more interesting and interactive with the world than it seems
food / potions are a big deal, crafting them will always be useful imo
fishing is actually very rewarding, you can find all sorts of things and it's pretty chill
pvp has a point, but it's a long term point. in beta a few guilds took outposts and jacked the taxes and fees way up - this rallied everyone against them during the following 'war' for that territory.
to the above, general chat was hilarious and not toxic for a brief period when there was something worth talking about in the region. help has actually been generally pretty helpful. this isn't something I expect to continue.
https://www.denofgeek.com/games/new-world-player-count-open-beta-impressions/
I turned off general chat but left the help chat and the faction chat on, and there was basically no toxicity in those channels. I imagine that global chat would be more bearable in the real release as well.
I skipped the open beta because i like to go in fresh
i'm creeping from tentative to genuinely excited
I don't think it's going to be a game for everyone, but it is a game for me and I am hella excited.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I don't think they've given an official count but I've heard the number 2500 tossed around as what they were testing in beta, which doesn't sound too crazy. They specifically want to avoid the "all servers are full!" launch day scenario, they intend to merge servers together once things slow down. In fact, they're all in different world sets:
https://forums.newworld.com/t/list-of-worlds-available-for-launch/236473
Assume that any servers in the same set are likely going to be one server eventually. Servers like Olympus are already in their own set, most likely based on beta numbers where they were EXTREMELY popular so they're pretty confident it'll stay high pop for awhile.
This is a very interesting claim. What about it strikes that chord with you? I'm genuinely curious, I have a passing interest with this one, and AC is my long lost love.
The world design is less 'location' shunted and you can roam around if you feel like it and still find challenging areas with chests and interesting terrain.
The stats to skills are pretty close, though simplified. Which is somewhat compensated for by the differing play styles of the weapons. Range, Melee and Spells all feel very different from one another.
There is a fast travel system that doesn't really feel like it shrinks the world, and you might have a favored spot that is very isolated (Hello my private Olthoi cave and/or tricky jumping spot to kill Lugians)
The equipment selection has a kind of randomized stats thing going on.
Every player is some variety of human. It's not high fantasy, even though it's a very fantastic world.
Combat has a bit of rolling, jumping around and climbing. While AC combat wasn't perfect, it made some good use of movement. Similarly, New World is a bit janky but they've made an effort.
New World isn't as revolutionary and doesn't have the scope of lore or content of an entire continent full of random dungeons. It doesn't have the novelty of a crafting style magic system where you guess candle colors and swear at fizzirps.
There's every possibility I get bored with New World in a month, but there's something about seeing a tower or mountain that makes me wonder what's up at the top and even if the answer is 'nothing much' not many games have made me want to go check just in case because of the chance there's something.
I remember more things about my time in AC and original EQ than WOW and I get the same feeling in New World. I definitely remember Obsidian Plains and Arwic and the West Commons Griffen more than anything since.
Might just be because I'm old. Dunno.
Ore. That is what is at the top of the mountain. It is also why I am already up there hitting rocks.
My friends and I are going to pick something us east and non streamer, but we haven't settled on anything specifically.
Or a named bear in a weird cave with a bunch of saltpeter and herbs. Or a chest for no reason. Or a pvp objective/vantage point. Really it could be anything!
...it's probably ore though.
Except it's not in my digital library.
Womp Womp.
=p
EDIT - it showed up a few hours later. A timing issue, clearly =p.