Oh, New World

New World is on the ropes but I’m here to stay – for now. If things don’t get worse than they are today, I find enough that I enjoy, to stay the course. It’s such a tremendous shame that the quality control was so poorly managed on this title. Whether they were understaffed, rushed, clueless or all of the above, we’ll never really know. What we do know is the sad outcome of this debacle and clusterfuck of game issues.

No MMO releases bug-free but this – what we’re experiencing in New World is unprecedented in my 20+ years of MMO gaming.

Broken mechanics, which are more easily detected as not operating as intended. We see them, work around them and move on. However, the endless sea of attributes on gear, weapons, talents that mean fuck-all, is a whole other variant of REALLY AGS??? For those of you not playing, it’s a slog to get gear with the attributes appropriate for your role. Weapon leveling for some, such as the Life Staff is very slow until you’re in the upper levels. Crafting while beneficial costs more than you make because the economy is busted due to a different set of issues around poor design. It makes slogging through the wreckage to craft or acquire items, skill points, etc., to only find out it’s not working and never did, is a brutal kick in the head.

By the time I hit midway through the leveling curve, the missions started to wear on me due to the overly aggressive content re-use.

You return to the same locations over and over to find a different item from the boxes or as drops from NPCs. If it’s a zone that’s not to your liking or has other inherent issues like physics problems such as getting stuck on all the themed crap littering the ground or being trapped in cramped spaces trying to fight, returning repeatedly to experience these issues gets really old.

Reading the above sounds like a dumpster fire that I should be running from post-haste but I’m not. There’s still huge promise in the game, and I really do enjoy the fundamentals. There’s no inspirational lore shining through or infamous characters you’re excited about encountering. There isn’t a single mechanic that’s innovative or outshines what’s come before it. However, for me at least, what’s compelling is the stripped-down version of, go off and live in this fantasy world.

It’s the combination of all the little things I can do, as a single character in a beautifully rendered world with stunning sound design, that keeps me engaged.

When I get tired of the copy/paste missions, I do harvesting runs. When I get bored of running around collecting items, I bum rush lowbie mobs to skill up another weapon. When my storage is getting too full I spend time in town crafting items. When I don’t want to do any of the above, I sneak my way into higher-level zones to uncover the portals and cities I’ll need next. This rotation and variety mean I can always find something to do that’s enjoyable at that moment when I have time to play.

I just hit level 39. At 35, I was a bit bored and had 9K gold which is a good amount given the broken economy and my level. I decided that I wanted a second house in a northern city to help with harvesting runs. Those are higher-level zones meant for players 50 and above. I set myself a target of getting to one and figuring out how to earn enough standing to buy a house there given that I was too low to quest there.

I decided on Morningdale and inched my way up there building camps as I went in case I died. I almost died multiple times but escaped by the skin of my teeth. Once I arrived I found several harvesting and crafting missions on the town board. I crept around the exterior of the city to do the collection quests. I did the crafting back in Everfall where my first house and primary storage is located and used the Inn portal to get back to MD.

In effect, I sacrificed having fast travel to where I was actually questing at the time, to make returning to MD easier. It took me several gaming sessions of turning in town missions to earn enough standing to buy a house. I bought the 5K gold house right near the town board. I decorated the interior since I do carpentry and put some of my spare Cash Shop Halloween decorations outside. Happy as a lamb, being level 35 walking around in MD, made me smile.

So yes, New World is a bit of a dumpster fire at the moment but I have no plans at present to jump ship. There are too many things I like doing and am hopeful they can right the ship over time. If you’re minus an MMO at the moment and enjoy the older style MMOs such as EQ2 where you can do anything/everything and level by questing, harvesting, and crafting.

I would still recommend New World. It’s only 40 bucks and I’ve long since gotten my money’s worth.

Our server is quieting down. I don’t see any world PVP and people are starting to shrug off wars. Both of which are content I’m looking forward to doing when I hit level 60. If things get too quiet on Perloma, I might transfer to a high population server AFTER transfers have been perfected.