[Megathread] Amazon's New World MMO

[Beazy]

Remember when the developers of Black Desert said "Were going to charge 50 dollars a game so we dont have to bring our cash shop to the west"?

"We have a saying in Texas, maybe in TN too, but fool me once, shame on. . . shame on you, fool me. . . . . fool me again, cant get fooled again."

[starstationprofm]

Lmao who do you think? The developer, the company that continues to operate the servers and create content for the game. It's better from a business perspective to have less total people sucking up server resources but spending more money than it is to have more people spending less.

It's really fucking weird to me that people get so barred up about how much more "prestige" they have because they spent 24 hours of their time grinding through irrelevant mind-numbing "content" (e.g leveling) compared to someone who went and worked at an actual job for that time and spent some pittance on boosting through leveling so they can play the actual game. I guess when your employment is 3 shifts a week at a McDonalds and you still have 16 hours a day to play video games that makes you feel better about yourself or something, idk.

e: oh and by the way, "pretty big as far as MMO streamers go" is like saying "pretty big as far as cult leaders go". They've convinced a middling throng of idiots that they're important, why should anyone else care about their opinions? You yourself said that WoW has 10m+ player launches, Asmongold gets like 60k viewers on a good day.... ????

You sound pretty upset. Imma say that taking pride in spending $$$ on a game so you don't have to play the game is pretty weird.

Also making fun of minimum wage workers is not a good look.

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Wait how? It sparks interest and the reason it doesn't keep it is likely because it doesn't have much content for people who don't do group stuff. Microtransactions only really matter to people interested in making a statement, as they don't negatively affect the experience for most people.

Where'd you get that from? Anything you can buy with $$$ automatically makes it less prestigious ingame

[Dilbon]

No its not. If that was the case then no games would be P2W

No game is P2W.

[Cracked]

No game is P2W.

Why do so many people here want to change what P2W has meant for a decade? Do you want to call it P2BC "pay to be competitive" now or something?

[Dilbon]

Pay to win would require you to pay real money to finish the game or a quest in WoW for example.

[Fencers]

You must be joking. That is nowhere near what would be considered a success for a game this large. 2k customers would only be a success for small indie games made by a company with maybe 3-4 employees.

Well, maybe not exactly 2k. But they don't need millions, a few thousand will do to sustain New World for a decade or more. Which is successful development.

I am not joking at all. A game once launched only needs a relatively small number of customers to sustain itself and be profitable over the long haul.

I worked for SOE and Frogster. At one point, Frogster only had about 500 or so customers that spent regularly out of about ~30k US players in 3 servers. Quite sustainable. I quit before the second expansion which drew in more players and revenue.

It really doesn't take that much. Amazon could eat the dev cost, likely already have, and once a pipeline is built you don't need that much development staff. Open world, Survival/resource driven gameplay and heavy PVP emphasis are perfectly suited to such a model.

Unless something catastrophic happens, they could keep New World going for a long time with a few thousand customers. Actually about 2k does seem right now that I think about it.

The average EQ player had spent about $340-370 a year in EQ and EQ merchandise in 2011-ish bucks. So about 680,000 per 2k players directly. It's not like customer dollars are 1:1 to developers and publishers; brand licensing, platform publishing, merchandise and so on genrate revenue as well.

Yea, they won't need that many players. And this game, New World ain't that big or system heavy. I played hundreds of hours already. It's not at that level.

[StillMcfuu]

Pay to win would require you to pay real money to finish the game or a quest in WoW for example.

By that definition every game is p2w because you have to pay to actual play them.

[Fencers]

Why do so many people here want to change what P2W has meant for a decade? Do you want to call it P2BC "pay to be competitive" now or something?

P2W has always been subject to personal feelings. There is no definition that exists outside of some bias or personal feeling as to what is and isn't pay-2-win.

It's just more fantasy on the part of customers who use the term imagining an object perfect outline of paying to win.

It's bullshit and no one ought to ever care about it at all.

Games are only about gameplay. Nothing else. Nothing.

[Biomega]

P2W has always been subject to personal feelings. There is no definition that exists outside of some bias or personal feeling as to what is and isn't pay-2-win.

It's just more fantasy on the part of customers who use the term imagining an object perfect outline of paying to win.

It's bullshit and no one ought to ever care about it at all.

Games are only about gameplay. Nothing else. Nothing.

While I agree that a lot of P2W is highly subjective, I wouldn't go so far as to say it's "bullshit" or that "no one ought to ever care about it at all". It's a very real issue, even if it's far less prominent (in its stricter sense) than many people make it out to be; and, on top of that, it isn't more prominent precisely BECAUSE people care about it. The only reason companies don't milk their players by selling them the best gear is that they fear it'll end up costing them in the long run because people wouldn't like that - that is, as soon as people STOP being outraged about the concept, you can be sure it'll come down on the market like a hammer.

Additionally, while "games are only about gameplay" is a very laudable sentiment (certainly it would be the preferred state of things for me) it's not quite as simple as that because factors extraneous to gameplay can absolutely play a role, and influence gameplay as a result. It's especially egregious in multiplayer games - nobody cares if you spent $1,000 on the extra premium super pack in a single-player game, but if you are playing in a way that competes against other people, and their $1,000 investment results in a detrimental game experience for you (not having made that investment) we absolutely have a problem.

Are most MMOs in that egregious space? No. But it's not all made up, either.

[kenn9530]

Clearly a ton of people disagree considering the backlash.

And paying dollars for ingame bonuses is, has always been, and will always be pay to win.

players who think a xp boost or whatever are P2W are just idiots, an MMO without a sub these shops are essential or the game will eventually die from lack of updates, do you expect game sales alone to cover costs of running an MMO, xp boosts are just available later so new players have an option to catch up.

If your unable to buy player power directly then the cash shop is not P2W, there is always going to be a player no matter what game you play that has an advantage over you.

[Berndorf]

Ashes of Creation looks much better to me after doing a bit of reading up on both.

[Edge-]

Ashes of Creation looks much better to me after doing a bit of reading up on both.

Sherif is a wildcard, and honestly his bagging on the monetization of the game was both unprofessional and kinda silly when he's running a crowdfunding program that's been compared to a pyramid scheme and sells $500 packs with alpha access. His "professional" response was equally as dumb and referenced games being killed by monetization without specifying what games.

He's got a good team, but considering his P2W history in games like ArcheAge his criticisms ring kinda hollow here.

[Cracked]

players who think a xp boost or whatever are P2W are just idiots, an MMO without a sub these shops are essential or the game will eventually die from lack of updates, do you expect game sales alone to cover costs of running an MMO, xp boosts are just available later so new players have an option to catch up.

If your unable to buy player power directly then the cash shop is not P2W, there is always going to be a player no matter what game you play that has an advantage over you.

This stance is so obnoxious, I see why Star Citizen appeals to you so much. I bet you would spend $100+ on auto-loot pets in BDO and see absolutely no issue with it whatsoever.

[kenn9530]

For... who exactly? Certainly not for the players.

All blizzard cares about money, once the game gets to a point where it doesnt make as much then they might care about players more.

New World is something different and should retain a decent sized playerbase at least.

[Edge-]

All blizzard cares about money, once the game gets to a point where it doesnt make as much then they might care about players more.

New World is something different and should retain a decent sized playerbase at least.

Why is New World any different? Both are for-profit publicly traded companies and both are absolutely interested in money.

[Redroniksre]

Where'd you get that from? Anything you can buy with $$$ automatically makes it less prestigious ingame

You mean the mounts that you can't get ingame (outside of token conversion) and pets? That makes them less prestigious somehow when they were never meant to be?

[kenn9530]

Why is New World any different? Both are for-profit publicly traded companies and both are absolutely interested in money.

Was mostly saying New World is a different type of gameplay, but since its not got a sub it does need a way to generate income, the new world team is actively doing everything they can to give the players as much to do as possible, where as blizzard gives us the bare minimum in content.

You mean the mounts that you can't get ingame (outside of token conversion) and pets? That makes them less prestigious somehow when they were never meant to be?

A player with money can always find a way around things and use thier money to get what they want, so everything that can be earnt in a game is available to anyone with enough money.

[Cracked]

A player with money can always find a way around things and use thier money to get what they want, so everything that can be earnt in a game is available to anyone with enough money.

The difference is one way is cheating and the other way is playing through your wallet.

[starstationprofm]

You mean the mounts that you can't get ingame (outside of token conversion) and pets? That makes them less prestigious somehow when they were never meant to be?

The Longboy sure is less prestigious when you can buy it with tokens, yes.

The WoW Token is a very useful tool but it's also made anything you can buy with gold - Longboy, Gladiator, Cutting Edge - less prestigious.

[Edge-]

Was mostly saying New World is a different type of gameplay, but since its not got a sub it does need a way to generate income, the new world team is actively doing everything they can to give the players as much to do as possible, where as blizzard gives us the bare minimum in content.

While I'll clown on Blizzard for the post-Shadowlands content, but that's not an intentional strategy on their part and is likely due to management issues.

Subscription games have just as vested an interest in keeping folks active and playing, delivering new content as a result. FFXIV is a good example of a game that's hit this target consistently, and while it's B2P with an optional sub ESO is as well. Both have pretty much quarterly updates, with FFXIV doing bi-annual expansions and ESO doing annual expansions.

Blizzard and Amazon both have the same interest in keeping people busy in their game, and if anything sub games are more reliant on it for their business model as active players = revenue, whereas with something like New World - if they have RNG lockboxes that have depressingly become pretty standard - they can get away with a far smaller playerbase where a small number of whales generating the majority of their revenue.