Amazon's New World MMO is a Pretty Disaster, That's Still a Disaster Though
First impressions are essential when it comes to MMOs, and while you might return to them after a few months or years if they don’t impress you… well, it’s better if they do. Let’s read its own description and then go over my less than 2-hour experience. (Because that’s how long Steam gives you to try a game out.)
For those who aren’t familiar with New World, here’s a snippet from its website. It might be a bit over-hyped, but it’s pretty accurate.
Explore a thrilling, open-world MMO filled with danger and opportunity where you’ll forge a new destiny for yourself as an adventurer shipwrecked on the supernatural island of Aeternum. Endless opportunities to fight, forage, and forge await you among the island’s wilderness and ruins. Channel supernatural forces or wield deadly weapons in a classless, real-time combat system, and fight alone, with a small team, or in massed armies for PvE and PvP battles—the choices are all yours.1
Pause, Issue Number One
Question - do you think Amazon, a company with $113B revenue, can afford servers to host all players? I don’t know, and we sure as hell won’t find out. There are queues in place to ensure a smooth experience… I guess. I was 3rd in my queue, but today, the day after release, some players are waiting for 20 000 people to leave the game.
Funnily enough, there are some 200 servers, give or take a few dozen. With each server having up to 2 000 players and the current player number is a little over 700 0002, the server capacity or quantity needs to be doubled, or many players need to be refunded.
What’s even funnier is that Amazon offers servers as a service. Meaning - they literally sell a variant of the thing required to allow the players to play their own game.
Let’s Create a Character
There are some customization options, but nowhere near the level of other high-end games. Think Runescape rather than Skyrim. You can choose a face shape, but you can’t mold your face. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because many other MMOs get away with it. Star Wars the Old Republic comes to mind as one of the best MMOs with somewhat limited customization. Besides, you can always compensate a face with a helmet.
Later I saw the character’s face in a cutscene. Points added. That’s always neat for cinematic screenshots.
First Impressions Would Have Been Nice…
You see, I was genuinely impressed with the tutorial. During combat, it utilized freeze frames. It didn’t feel long and tedious, and it was just the right amount of time spent per action. It taught me the basics of combat and movement, nothing more, nothing less. The graphics were still quite impressive for an MMO.
But then, the thing I was afraid of happened. The game tries to convince you that you’re a survivor of a shipwreck, putting down survivors turned zombies, etc. Extremely immersive… This immersion is immediately broken, though.
I thought, “Remind me again, why am I the one doing your fetch quest if there are a few dozen people next to us? Why don’t you ask the conjoined twins over there?” Okay, understandable, launch day, and they … didn’t plan on this many people joining? Well, still. A few dozen people are standing next to me doing the same quests, attempting to kill the enemies who were vastly outnumbered by us, chopping down all trees in sight, and picking up all flint. Good thing those resources have a relatively short respawn timer.
The Graphics Were Still Nice Enough
Okay, I continued through the questline, attempting to ignore the band that followed me everywhere. Although, it was a bit annoying when I was sent into a cave to fight a boss, and there were more players than enemies there. Essentially the way was cleared, and I scored just enough hits to complete the quest. I calmly picked up the loot and left through the already cleared entrance.
I figured that many of these people would stop playing, and thus this problem wouldn’t continue… Maybe. I decided to give it another chance.
I leveled up a few times and, along with my fellow survivors, hunted the boar to extinction (or at least we would have if they didn’t respawn faster than we managed to kill them.) Unfortunately, to quote the Internet Historian, “the Artificial Intelligence felt far more A than I.” The boar charged me a few times, but I quickly dispatched it.
I was bidden to leave for a nearby settlement because my patience was running low. I wanted to explore. I followed the road, did a side-quest along with a few dozen other players (this time I didn’t actually manage to kill an enemy around there though, there were far too many people farming those big boars), and finally… campfires all over the road leading to the town.
A final thought
Good thing I didn’t spend hours in a queue like many other people. That’d rack up the playtime past the point of no-refund.