[Megathread] Amazon's New World MMO

[Fencers]

Blunderbuss, a new dungeon, and balance changes incoming!

https://www.newworld.com/en-us/news/...madness-reveal

[Edge-]

https://forums.newworld.com/t/notice...=commander_aze

And another dupe bug discovered, all wealth transfers disabled.

[Gorsameth]

Has there been a patch without a dupe bug yet?

[ResentfulUK]

I've not played the game, but have kept somewhat up-to-date with the "drama" around the game because I find it rather fascinating.

That list of changes, fixes and improvements is hefty. That's a double edge sword right there because with that scale of change you're showing how committed you are to improving the game but also showing - as is all too common with game launches - that clearly this was not ready, tested or developed well enough.

I just can't fathom the levels of stress and anxiety they must have right now. Look at games like No Man Sky. Possibly the worst received game I can remember and yet given time, found it's feet and built a community. But that wasn't easy, it took a ton of work, and the people over at AGS must know that's what is coming their way.

The duplication bugs though, they're pretty pathetic. That's someone trying to put a plaster of a gaping, festering wound rather than addressing the issue.

Just surrender to the idea you need to entirely overhaul your item management API and get on with it. If these things keep happening you're going to piss off everyone who wants to play the game and ban everyone else anyway...

[schwank05]

The fast travel changes are great that was one of my main issues with the game is that you cannot travel decently and had to have so many hubs to keep all your crap. But the invincibility bugs killed it for me.

[Nzx]

Where were you when New World killed WoW? A truly historic moment in gaming that was.

[Edge-]

Where were you when New World killed WoW? A truly historic moment in gaming that was.

I mean, the only people who talk about "wow killers" are largely WoW fans shitting on other games, and a tiny hyperminority of hardcore fanboys of whatever game it is.

It's a deadbrained concept.

[schwarzkopf]

Blunderbuss, a new dungeon, and balance changes incoming!

The biggest driver on how the game failed - zero solo content for level 60s, still not fixed.

My server (after merges) maxes out at 80 people online.

That's depressingly low.

Even patch 9.2 has stuff for me to do, even though there aren't enough people for me to raid or do M+ this season.

[Nzx]

I mean, the only people who talk about "wow killers" are largely WoW fans shitting on other games, and a tiny hyperminority of hardcore fanboys of whatever game it is.

It's a deadbrained concept.

Dude, what? Don't be obtuse. You can't just shout down criticism by saying "only a tiny minority said that and if it wasn't a tiny minority then they were wow fanboys anyway". This game was hyped to the absolute hilt, dropped when WoW's playerbase goodwill was at an all time low, and was being heralded as a "wow killer" for literal years before it released. There was thread after thread on this very forum talking about how Amazon's money was just too much for Blizzard, how Amazon had done so much "listening" that they pushed back the release, that they were removing any concept of pay to win elements, that they were focusing on "community" which is apparently the reason WoW is "dead" anyway and therefore it was going to be the final nail in the coffin, etc etc etc. In this literal thread there are likely hundreds of posts talking about how it's going to "kill WoW".

Everyone who posted that shit has to, again, take the L. Amazon have to take the L. All the devs who worked on New World have to take the L. I suspect New World's ultimate fate will be (at best) a No Man's Sky-esque semi-cult following post years of future development work.

I'm not even posting this as a positive - I would love for WoW to have some competition to light a fire underneath Blizzard and hopefully spur some change so that I can go back to playing the game, but even this thread.. Top of page 180, 21/12/2021. Bottom of page 180, 30/01/2022. That's over a month to get a page worth of posts, and we're only on page 182 now another month later. The game's dead, WoW's very much still alive, and once again the "wow killer" label is a joke.

[Edge-]

This game was hyped to the absolute hilt

Yes, Amazon wanted to make a big splash with the game after the failure of Crucible.

dropped when WoW's playerbase goodwill was at an all time low

Coincidental, and the playerbase being at a low was the result of Blizzard's decisions and not anything that Amazon could have planned around. The MMO world doesn't revolve around WoW.

and was being heralded as a "wow killer" for literal years before it released.

By who? Where?

[Fencers]

This game was hyped to the absolute hilt

By whom? Amazon, that is there purpose to create interest and excitement for the product.

I would be very doubtful Amazon promoted New World to the Word of Warcraft player base directly or adjacent as a "killer" of the former.

It would seem reasonable a small number of players, if any, had any impact in drumming up excitement for New World by claiming it was an end to World of Warcraft.

Do you think it is rational for a significant number of players excited for New World to promote it as a "WoW Killer" such that New World would have the sales it did during launch?

Or that 100s of thousands of New World players bought and played NW happened to do so because they were paying attention to what a individual person on Reddit or a forum was saying about the death of WoW at the hands of a different type of MMO?

Really? You think 100s of thousands of players bought and played New World with the thought, "Billy, in the comments section of Reddit said this is gonna kill Wow! I better get in on this!"

Assuming that NW player even knows about, plays or gave a flying fuck about World of Warcraft.

That seems out of touch with reality unless you have some voluminous data indicating the promotion of New World created by Amazon made such claims or any significant segment of players had an impact on convincing hundreds of thousands of people worldwide to buy a game because it was going to supersede another game they may or may not have ever been interested in the first place.

This is the kind of posting that ought to be strongly discouraged on the forum.There is no thought to it and is so outlandish in the premise as to be delusional comedy at best.

New World is like any other- FF14, ESO, BDO, Destiny, Lost Ark, etc. All games have initial wave of interest when launched and settle to their respective interest player base until their next update or expansion. Just like WoW and all the aforementioned games. It's a business.

[Biomega]

All games have initial wave of interest when launched and settle to their respective interest player base until their next update or expansion.

While this is a true statement, it does somewhat obscure the fact that "respective interest player base" is an incredibly varied and volatile term. Yes there'll always be SOMEONE who plays a game, but whether that's 1,000 people or 10,000 or 100,000 is a BIG difference, and usually a measure of a game's "success". To just do away with New World's gushing hemorrhage of players as "that's just the usual, player numbers naturally fall off after launch" is grossly misrepresenting the undeniable flop that the game's many problems caused.

Would it have been a "WoW killer" otherwise? Doubtful. And I agree that's silly rhetoric from the start. But NW was by pretty much any metric an unmitigated disaster. The fact that all games experience interest loss over time doesn't change that.

[Fencers]

The biggest driver on how the game failed - zero solo content for level 60s, still not fixed.

Dubious claim. Not sure how it failed either. It's still going.

I would say the massive game erros/bugs that caused multiple shutdowns were a larger source of player attirition. The devs have said this as well. Most players never even got to endgame.

My server (after merges) maxes out at 80 people online.

I completed what I was interested in NW. But still jump on for new patches or PTR occasionally and haven't seen my server devoid of people.

Player pop has definitely gone down. But I doubt this ever be at the numbers it was at during launch and the following weeks just after.

It is likely they will use expansion to feature step the game and get fresh sale ala ESO and GW2. A common B2P model.

Even patch 9.2 has stuff for me to do, even though there aren't enough people for me to raid or do M+ this season.

Uh, the what? Are you talking about the new dungeon and mutations? I'm confused here. So you have new content but wanted it to be solo content?

- - - Updated - - -

While this is a true statement, it does somewhat obscure the fact that "respective interest player base" is an incredibly varied and volatile term. Yes there'll always be SOMEONE who plays a game, but whether that's 1,000 people or 10,000 or 100,000 is a BIG difference, and usually a measure of a game's "success". To just do away with New World's gushing hemorrhage of players as "that's just the usual, player numbers naturally fall off after launch" is grossly misrepresenting the undeniable flop that the game's many problems caused.

Would it have been a "WoW killer" otherwise? Doubtful. And I agree that's silly rhetoric from the start. But NW was by pretty much any metric an unmitigated disaster. The fact that all games experience interest loss over time doesn't change that.

Oh no, they shit the bed for sure. Lost tons of players they could have retained had the game not suffered so many issues in all likelihood.

However, the game was a success. They sold a lot of copies. They do have a revenue stream and deliverables strategy.

Pointing at any newly released game that doesn't meet the player base of X or Y decades old franchise is blindly stupid though. "So this killed WoW, huh?" Is just the dumbest post you could ever make regarding MMOs and usually total bullshit that exists in the mind of a narcissist.

[Biomega]

However, the game was a success. They sold a lot of copies.

Those two are not the same thing.

The second part is true. The first one is not. We don't have all the internal information, but it seems almost certain that the loss of players and the reputation damage alone were WAY off projections - and that's really what makes a "success": how well you do against how well you thought you would do. There's no absolute magic benchmark of "this sold over X copies, therefore = success" because those are all relative values.

[Fencers]

Those two are not the same thing.

No. That is the only measure of success that matters.

[Biomega]

No. That is the only measure of success that matters.

I'm sorry, but that's just incredibly wrong. Doubly so for a product with a revenue stream outside of box sales.

[schwarzkopf]

Dubious claim. Not sure how it failed either. It's still going.

Not claim, fact. The highest number of people on my server (after merges) is around 80.
Also not a claim but a fact. The total number of active users of New World - 28,000 WORLD wide.

That's failed in anyone's books.

[Edge-]

The total number of active users of New World - 28,000 WORLD wide..

Concurrent users*

Active daily uses are easily multiple times that, with weekly and monthly active users orders of magnitude larger each.

[schwarzkopf]

Concurrent users*

Yes... apologies, however the point is the fall in numbers...

October : 913k
November : 357k
December : 145k
January : 101k
February : 65k
March : 28k

My 100 man company is now a 0 man company.

And it is so sad because the primary issue was so easy to fix.

[Caerrona]

Can't believe people are still out here shilling this train wreck. Like MOST games i can understand, but holy hell losing 97% of your player base in 2 months, jesus. Probably the second biggest scam in recent gaming (with star citizen topping those charts).

The entire games foundation is absolute trash. There is no way they can fix anything until they shut it down, remake it, relaunch it.