[Megathread] Amazon's New World MMO

[meckeard]

Nobody is comparing it to that, we're comparing it to the more recent WoW classic launch.

There are references to wow's launch, hence my comment. That aside, I still don't worry much about any comparison as these companies are not the same. The games are not the same. Tech is not the same.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not taking either side here as I have not played the game but do think the queue times are too high and should be addressed. Thankfully I'm not the one dealing with that.

[Bugg]

I see pages upon pages of talks on the servers/queue topic; how's the gameplay, lag, dungeons, crafting, bugs, pvp, trading, etc?
The few that played, are you happy with the investment (price -value)

[Edge-]

The few that played, are you happy with the investment (price -value)

So far, yes. It's very pretty, runs well, and slowly walking through the forest cutting down trees, mining ore, and picking flowers is fun. Combat's not bad either, and I still dig the setting. Shooting things in the face with a musket is kinda cool.

[xmirrors]

The general consensus among my group is that it needed more time in the oven. The combat is serviceable but not really a highlight. The servers seem stable once you can get in. A lot of pretty standard MMO systems are in place but I don't feel like there is going to be much to do after the first few weeks/first month. I think it's going to have a successful honeymoon phase, riding on the streamer hype, but then slowly start to fade away unless they introduce or at least announce a huge content patch.

[kaminaris]

In this case, exploration is a big part of content. You gather resources and advance your crafts so you can actually craft very good armours, weapons, jewellery, consumables etc, so you don't have to run dungeons or group content if you don't want to; not to mention that you get XP out of gathering and crafting. By doing this, you can be self-sufficient (because you are not limited to how many crafts you can have), make potentially loads of money at the trading post, buy yourself a nice house, furnish it... etc, if that's what you're into. It's supposed to be a player driven economy but we'll have to wait and see how that turns out.

Also housing is done a bit different than in FF for example. Here you don't have to wait for a house to become available, you only need to have the money to buy it. The player housing is instanced but the nicest house in that particular town will be the one being displayed and everyone can see it.

"The only thing in NW that actually has some value is furniture." - this is your point of view, ofc course.

FFXIV does many things right, I don't think anyone can argue against that but you can't really compare it with NW, they are very different games.

From my POV, if you replace all the characters in FFXIV with western-type ones, rename everything in game to something non-ridiculous like most of it is, it's an amazing game!
I grew up with a different mentality, in a society where catgirls, bunny-boys and lallafel were/are a definite no-no. But again, that's just me and I'm sure millions of other people, especially the younger generation don't feel the same way... and that's completely fine.

Except its really not. Vast majority of that is just running straight. The "exploration" in NW is simply super boring.

I also grew in similar environment but other people tastes and opinions have zero influence over me.

[Lex Icon]

oh and since i'm bored.. why is the loading screen making my pc work harder than the actual game?
if it's because it has my dumbass character standing there looking like a goofball with some animated background? then fucking remove that shit i do not need it. no one does.

[Soimu]

Fuck my life, leveled to 15 last night only to find out Asmondgold is on my server

well he made that obscure Boba something server famous now )

[PACOX]

i enjoyed what i've played but if the plan is to just have players give up before they got a chance to even try it(after having paid for it).. then they're entering scam territory.
sure the servers run smooth. they only allow 2k people(while an inifinite amount can sign up to join them). and they don't even have enough servers available to house half of their paying customers.

If the game is only designed for 2K on a map at a time then it is a another case that they should have allowed people/communities to host/rent their own server's.

A bunch of communities would be all over having to option to run 3 - 4 week long 'matches' in this game.

[Hollycakes]

I see pages upon pages of talks on the servers/queue topic; how's the gameplay, lag, dungeons, crafting, bugs, pvp, trading, etc?
The few that played, are you happy with the investment (price -value)

Oyus.
Well worth the 40$.
People spend that all the time on worse games with less longevity.
Do it.
Go have fun like the rest of us not interested in bitching on a forum about something we don't like.
There is no sub too.
Never listen to critics or me for that matter.
Take GoT.
It's absolute garbage.
GARBAGE.
That's my take but apparently no one else's.
Rando people on the web can't tell you what you'll like.
Try as they might to convince others!

You heard me.
GoT blows!
Life is a gamble.
/roll for fun

[Proskill]

my LMB with melee weapons (spear, rapier) stopped working. can block with RMB just fine, can even use LMB with my musket, and use all the skills of the melee weapons. wat do???

[Necomis]

my LMB with melee weapons (spear, rapier) stopped working. can block with RMB just fine, can even use LMB with my musket, and use all the skills of the melee weapons. wat do???

Go into your Key Bindings. Melee and Range Combat bindings are separate. Make sure that LMB is still bound for Basic Attacks under Melee Combat and didn't somehow get unbound.

[Proskill]

Go into your Key Bindings. Melee and Range Combat bindings are separate. Make sure that LMB is still bound for Basic Attacks under Melee Combat and didn't somehow get unbound.

ok, i just relogged and it worked somehow.

havent got the answer so ill ask this question again. do u get RESTED XP only logging off in towns or anywhere even in the wilds?

[Shakadam]

How many times do you have to be told that throwing massive resources at temporary problem, especially when the "solution" of throwing more servers at launch (which they're doing) causes more problems later, is a terrible solution for literally everyone except players in the very short term?

It's like the first time people have played a MMO at launch for petes sake. Ain't nobody got patience and shit no more.

The solution is temporary overflow server instances which can be spun up as needed. Something Arenanet managed to do almost 10 years ago with the launch of GW2.

It's astonishing to me that an MMO launches in 2021 with this archaic kind of "population hard cap" server structure.

[Edge-]

The solution is temporary overflow server instances which can be spun up as needed. Something Arenanet managed to do almost 10 years ago with the launch of GW2.

Again, doesn't jive with the game design being around territorial control and player driven economies. The game is designed around limited server shards, something a game like GW2 isn't as closely designed around even with the WvWvW content. Out in the open world servers are functionally meaningless and have no real impact on gameplay and system functionality. In New World they do, as your experience in part is dictated by which factions control which territories and how they're upgrading them.

It's astonishing to me that an MMO launches in 2021 with this archaic kind of "population hard cap" server structure.

Different design goals. If they used tech similar to what WoW uses for phasing/dynamic server loads, or what GW2 uses for their servers (though real, nobody uses that tech because it's sorta janky magic that's resulted in the game having only having HOURS of total downtime in a decade, not hours every week/month) they'd have to radically redesign the core game (factional wars over territory and a purely player driven economy) to fit.

[Frozenbeef]

The solution is temporary overflow server instances which can be spun up as needed. Something Arenanet managed to do almost 10 years ago with the launch of GW2.

It's astonishing to me that an MMO launches in 2021 with this archaic kind of "population hard cap" server structure.

Looking at the game it seems lots of things are rather archaic, like even the character creation/ intro looks pretty much straight copied from age of Conan.

I'm still waiting for some element of the game that sets it apart from every other mmo in the past 15 years

[Edge-]

I'm still waiting for some element of the game that sets it apart from every other mmo in the past 15 years

The setting, and a much bigger focus on crafting sorta. Everything else has been done in one way or another. But everything New World does, it doesn't competently IMO. Other games excel in some areas and really struggle in others, so far NW seems to do well across the board in terms of design.

It's not breaking boundaries, but it's doing what it does well. Beyond that, it's designed with a bit more oldschool mindset seemingly (your reference to "archaic" is a bit accurate) where things like traveling is supposed to matter and inventory management is a thing. I didn't think I'd be as into it, but I'm kinda digging the slower/slightly more oldschool approach they're taking with a lot of the game, even if combat itself is designed to be more fast paced compared to MMO's of old.

[Shakadam]

Again, doesn't jive with the game design being around territorial control and player driven economies. The game is designed around limited server shards, something a game like GW2 isn't as closely designed around even with the WvWvW content. Out in the open world servers are functionally meaningless and have no real impact on gameplay and system functionality. In New World they do, as your experience in part is dictated by which factions control which territories and how they're upgrading them.



Different design goals. If they used tech similar to what WoW uses for phasing/dynamic server loads, or what GW2 uses for their servers (though real, nobody uses that tech because it's sorta janky magic that's resulted in the game having only having HOURS of total downtime in a decade, not hours every week/month) they'd have to radically redesign the core game (factional wars over territory and a purely player driven economy) to fit.

Then I would say disable such systems on the overflow instances or shards or whatever you wanna call them.
I guarantee people would rather play a barebones version of the game where they could maybe work on questing, leveling, crafting etc while waiting in the queue for the real server. Rather than spend hours looking at a login screen.

[Hollycakes]

Have to agree with Edge.
It does what it does well and is fun for it.
I'm not comparing it to other things though, just whether or not it's fun.
It's setting is what got me in really.
Fucking pirates, conquistadors and robin hoods.
Hell Trkslyrs guy looks straight out of Braveheart and is all Scottish with kilt.
Plus lots of us are bored of wow after this long so it's something different.
One thing being fun doesn't take away from another's.
I had fun in SWTOR too though.
Consulars kick ass.
Play what you love.
Fun is like marmite.

[Edge-]

Then I would say disable such systems on the overflow instances or shards or whatever you wanna call them.

That doesn't really work though, because now you've detached people from the rest of their factions, detached them from the way their unique world is operating (factional control over zones matters and impacts things like access to higher level crafting stations, reduced crafting fees etc.), and potentially allowed them access to a markets from other servers due to people being shunted to overflows. There's no way to make something like the AH system work unless they somehow manage to tie each persons AH to their respective servers to boot, which would likely be a technical nightmare.

I guarantee people would rather play a barebones version of the game where they could maybe work on questing, leveling, crafting etc while waiting in the queue for the real server. Rather than spend hours looking at a login screen.

People, yes. But again, people want them to open 500 new servers just so there aren't queues, and they also probably want to eat pizza and ice cream every day and that's probably not a good idea either. Again, staring at queues at the login screen is lame, but it's not worth investing huge sums of money into solving what is a very temporary problem.

[Ophenia]

Again, staring at queues at the login screen is lame, but it's not worth investing huge sums of money into solving what is a very temporary problem.

... that's a temporary problem because the casual crowd, after having spent one week trying to connect, will give up and refund. I just can't see how that's a good business plan imo.
I mean, a game launch has always been the most important part of the success (of failure) of a game, because that's when all spotlights are turned toward your game.

Here that's simple :
- New World has 47% of positive reviews (35k total) on Steam
- Tweets (yeah, I know, terrible metric, but that's still a top social network trend) about #NewWorldMMO are 90% "hehe, nice queues mate"

That's terrible press for a game released by one of the richest company on earth.

Also other points to consider. You keep saying that plenty of solutions used elsewhere cannot be used because of "faction war" and "player driven economy", so server merges wouldn't work. At which point is it better, on a faction-war- and player-driven-economy-oriented game, to only let the hardcore fanbase play while the casual will have maybe one, two, four weeks of delay ? Casuals hitting the queue everyday for one month straight, if they're still willing to play by then, will basically start playing the game on servers where the vast majority of territories are claimed, the economy controlled by probably the same group of people, and they'll have the option to either suffer on their side or join them.

That seems the typical problem here. Only catering for hardcore audiences, who will roflstomp the game, control everything, but if they're alone on their servers, there is no point - so Amazon might have to merge anyway to provide them with some content.

Also I keep seeing comparisons with WoW vanilla & classic, but honestly, let's consider two things
- People who bought Classic, in maybe 80% of the cases, knew what the game was about. So their interest in the game cannot dwingle on a piss-poor "first impression" on the first days launch. I could even say, those people were likely Blizzard-enthusiasts already, so they knew how shit Blizzard manages launch days, lol.
- Even if Activision is a huge company, let's not compare a company which has a net worth of 72 billion $, and one which has a net worth of 1.7 trillion $, even more when the second one owns the biggest server infrastructure in the world. They definitely could have done better...