For almost 10 days, Crowfall has been in beta. MeinMMO editor Alexander Leitsch has spent several hours in the MMORPG since then and has been pleasantly surprised. Much of it reminds him of the original version of New World.
New World has been a significant part of my life since Gamescom 2018, where I was able to try out the MMO for the first time and report on it. Back then, the game had a much stronger focus on PvP, freely designable fortresses, and small survival elements in the form of hunger and thirst, which, while not leading to death, limited regeneration.
Since then, I have participated in playtest events, devoured all blog posts, and closely followed the revision announced in December 2019.
Crowfall and I, on the other hand, do not have such an intense history. Only with the start of the beta have I engaged deeply with the gameplay and content. And although the MMORPG has many flaws, I am glad that I gave it a chance.
Because this confirms my statement from January, that Crowfall will already be successful this year. But let’s take it step by step.
Different Scenarios and a Huge Selection of Classes
What is Crowfall? Crowfall differs from classic games in the genre because it follows its own and fresh approach:
- Instead of a large open world, Crowfall focuses on different scenarios, which are divided into different islands.
- Campaigns, except for the Eternal Kingdoms, have an expiration date. At the end awaits the Hunger, which consumes the world and ends the scenario. Thus you can “win” campaigns and the developers have the chance to change the rules and structure of campaigns at any time.
- The focus of the MMORPG is on PvP, even though there are PvE and social worlds.
What sounds quite complicated at first becomes easily understandable once you have tried the game yourself:
- The Eternal Kingdoms are a social world that you can create according to your wishes. They can be adjusted in size, appearance, and also content such as a private fortress and merchants. You can make your Eternal Kingdoms public so that anyone can visit them, or keep them private just for you and invited friends.
- In God’s Reach, you start in a PvE scenario. There you learn the basics of the game and level up your first character.
- In the Campaign, it’s all about PvP, and for that, you first need to reach level 15 or level 20 for the Dregs.
By playing each character, you unlock special passive skills such as additional damage, crit chance, or bonuses when gathering resources, which apply to the entire account. This is an advantage if you like to switch between different classes.
Character Creation: Before you engage with the game’s campaigns, you first need a character. And here, Crowfall offers a huge selection.
You can choose one of 12 races and have access to 11 different classes that split into a total of 33 subclasses over the course of the game. However, not every race has access to every class.
In addition, there is a male gender lock for Minotaurs (for which there are Elken as a comparable female race) and the Guinecean, small hamster-like beings for which there is no counterpart.
The character editor offers options for hairstyles, facial adjustments, and various color settings. However, you will not find a deep editor like in Black Desert.
Generally, Crowfall is not a highlight for graphics enthusiasts. The colorful graphics are timeless, but personally, I am a big fan of “more realistic” graphics like in Guild Wars 2 or New World.
Is this actually New World?
What were my first steps in the game? After creating my character, I immediately jumped into the PvE scenario. Initially, I received several running and explanatory quests that provided me with a rough overview of the contents of Crowfall before I was tasked to face the first 5 wolves.
Interestingly, you start without a weapon, and being clever as I was, I directly began to indulge in gathering and crafting. So, I initially hit giant trees with my hands, which surprisingly worked quite well. From the wood I gathered, I crafted an axe to chop down trees faster, and later created more tools to mine stones or skin wolves and ultimately craft weapons.
The crafting system is quite simple and also offers additional disciplines for creating food, armor, or runes.
The First Fight: Before I tackled the wolves, I first crafted a bow and some initial arrows. A good adventurer must be equipped after all. Crowfall’s combat system offers a lot of dynamics:
- You need to actively target your enemies
- Some attacks with the bow or skills require you to hold the respective key to charge up maximum damage
- There is a dodge roll and many red telegraphs that you should urgently avoid.
- Enemies can stun you, but you can actively free yourself from this.
- However, there are many teleports, and you do not have to aim 100% accurately to hit your enemies. Although the combat feels dynamic, it is sometimes inaccurate and feels a bit frustrating.
Another interesting aspect is that weapons lose durability over time and you regularly need to craft new arrows for your bow. Crafting never loses its significance in Crowfall.
The first parallels to New World: After some gameplay time and the first fights, I became aware of Crowfall’s “Hunger System”.
Like in a survival game, you need to eat food in Crowfall. Similar to the original New World, the hunger doesn’t simply kill you if you don’t carry food. Instead, you lose your natural health regeneration, as was planned in New World.
And from that point on, I noticed more and more parallels to Amazon’s MMO.
What else reminds me of New World? The old New World had a strong focus on PvP and battles for fortresses. The same applies in Crowfall for the campaign
