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New World is Amazon’s foray into the MMORPG genre and I got to grips with an early version of its opening hours, which allowed me to create a character, fight in a tutorial area, and move on to a nearby town filled with vendors and plenty of quest markers. So only a small portion of what is undoubtedly a game designed for hundreds of hours of playtime, but enough to know if I had that itch to come back out there and time an hour or two more. towards the first hundred of his world. That’s what matters when it comes to MMOs, isn’t it? And I must say yes. Yes, the itch could use a good scratch.
But let’s forget about my itchy body and take a closer look at the New World, starting with its heart. As you might expect, it has those familiar MMO beats: an XP bar at the bottom of the screen that fills up as you complete quests, and an open world populated by other players. This is conveniently presented on a clean slate that says you are an adventurer who was shipwrecked on the island of Aeternum, a place teeming with mysterious magic that does beautiful magical things and bad magical things. And you, dear explorer, must choose a faction and “come in among them,” as TV chief Jamie Oliver would say if he prepared a non-combat marinade.
However, hardly any of the factions or fights for the Ground PVP were available in my preview session, which was a bummer considering that’s probably a big part of what separates New World from other MMORPGs. However, I got a very small glimpse of how this might work, as the houses in the first town I visited could actually be purchased by players if they had a high enough level of standing – don’t just don’t ask me how the standing itself works. But things like foundries and tanning racks in the city center are shared between players, so they would level up and unlock bonuses for everyone. And I noticed that I was also taxed a small amount when I was making stuff. Presumably, the faction controlling the territory could be real bastards and set very high taxes to line their pockets. Something I would never do. Not me.
Still, my experience of New World territories was almost nonexistent, so while I wish I could tell you more about how land fights or player-led economies will work, I can’t . As someone who traditionally cares only about how good my new epaulets are and whether they match my cape, I’m curious to see if I will actually care about these aspects. Will the tax rate increase in Scunthorpe make me reach the nearest Fork and Rebel? Only time will tell.
That aside, so far I’d say New World shares as much of its DNA with the survival game Valheim as it does with an MMO. Unlike, say, World Of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV, crafting isn’t something you can totally get around if you don’t like picking flowers or chopping wood. From the start of the New World, you’ll be rustling bushes for sticks and pocketing flint to make yourself a skinning knife. And it won’t be long before you gut a boar for its meat and watch it crackle over a fire. Health bars don’t just fill up around here, son.
By the end of my brief session with New World, I had continued to smelt ore, tan leather, and fish. God damn it, it was a lot of manual labor, but it never looked like it. Mining, for example, lets you press a button and watch a circle gradually fill up. But the sounds your tools make when they crash into a rock or hit wood is so, so satisfying. The fishing was also more complex than I expected. You have to reel the fish well so as not to break the line, and later I found out that there are different baits for both freshwater and saltwater fishing. By no means revolutionary, but these little details added to my immersion.
These skills don’t feel compartmentalized like other MMOs I’ve played, where you can just focus on one or two trades that are totally divergent from each other. Here, all kinds of raw materials will flood your bags, just as much as quest items or shiny rewards, so the tools seem just as important as the swords you swing or the arrows you throw.
Combat in New World also makes it look like it’s feeding off that cowardly goose, “you can be anything you think maaaan!” thing happening. Instead of picking a class that dictates what gear you can and can’t use, here it’s pick up and play, baby. Swords, shields, spears, hammers, or even magical gauntlets are available to you if you’re feeling prickly. And the more you use them, the better you will use them, just like Elder Scrolls. Freedom is liberating, especially coming from other MMOs where I desperately want to try out material that is not in the class I have chosen.
The real shock of steel in New World isn’t bad either, with a more bare-bones feel, so I didn’t drown in the hotbars. I know everything reminds me of Dark Souls, but this time it really is! You have to time your swings, blocks, and dodges to survive the fights, instead of standing still and going through a myriad of abilities like you do in many other MMOs.
Each weapon has two skill trees. For example, with the sword and shield you can focus on damage or tanking. The branch in which you place the most points determines your specialization. I went for the damage one, which boosted my spinning blade attack, one of the three abilities to unlock and use in combat. Yes, that’s it: three. I enjoyed their weighty feel and simplicity – but I’m afraid that might make it harder for your character to stand out from the crowd.
The same simplicity goes for building your character, which has five attributes: strength, dexterity, intelligence, focus, and build. Every time you level up you hit a point or two in one of these branches and that will determine the type of role you take on. It’s as close as the game gets to defining classes, basically. I wouldn’t say it was as rewarding as something like FFXIV, where you unlock crazy new spells at a fairly frequent rate. Still, I liked that it was easy to see what I would have access to every few levels thanks to a dedicated menu screen telling me so. It’s something other MMOs could learn from, I think, because often times I’ll miss milestones like the ability to mount a mount because no one told me I passed it.
Don’t expect to choose a slender elf or a large towering orc to play like in New World. That could change, of course, but for now the only option is to play as a human. Just something to keep in mind if you’re a fan of role-playing as something with an edge, and another potential reason we could all blend into one once we play.
But what about the New World itself? Is this, in fact, new? Does he have an advantage? From the very small part of the game I played, I would say it was pretty standard, albeit enjoyable, medieval-style stuff. Serene music, beautiful trees, dirt roads. Perhaps the tutorial area was a sign of otherworldly things to come, with a dark beach and wrecks crawling with blue zombies, so there is potential for surprise, but I would need to spend more time in the world to see if it’ll stick. Others have pointed out its colonial undertones, but having only played a very small part of the game, I can’t appeal that score anyway. Something to keep in mind, for sure.
However, New World has done enough to interest me. I liked its mix of survival and MMO elements, as well as this concept of a world controlled and fought by players. This in particular is what I’m looking forward to exploring further, as I feel like this is where the real meat of the experience is and what might set it apart from other heavyweights in the genre. When the closed beta of New World arrives on July 20, I’ll be there, hopefully it delivers on that front. Part of me worries that if it doesn’t, the shores of Aethernum could sink into darkness very quickly.
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