New World hosted a preview event at the end of August, where many players could try out the new MMO. MeinMMO editors Alexander Leitsch and Leya Jankowski also entered the world of Aeternum and summarize their experiences here for you.
What makes New World special? Originally, New World was developed as a sandbox survival MMO with a full focus on PvP. However, the PvE content is now more in focus, while PvP in the open world is now optional and mainly plays a role in instanced fort battles.
Whether the shift towards more PvE content would really benefit the game was long uncertain. After all, New World was in an alpha state, where players had to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
The current preview event offered the chance to take a closer look at the game and finally talk about the experiences. And despite some quirks, New World was able to convince us, at least for now.
The first steps, the PvE, and the quests in New World
A friendly introduction: In New World, you begin your adventure with character creation. This is, especially compared to other MMOs, rather weak. You have the choice between a male and a female character, as well as some options for appearance such as hairstyles, skin color, or facial hair.
The editor does not go deep into detail. There are no detail adjustments to body shapes and proportions as in Black Desert.
With your freshly created character, you land on a beach in Aeternum, the game world of New World after an intro sequence. There you will immediately be attacked by one of the Corrupted. This is the hostile NPC faction that has been corrupted by the mineral Azoth on the island and will encounter you throughout the game.
In the first few minutes, you will learn the combat system. Step by step, you need to attack, block, dodge, or swing harder.
New World does not have classes, but lets your equipment determine the playstyle. Each weapon has a skill tree that you can level up and unlock new abilities. We will dive deeper into the combat system later.
Quests and monotony: In the first period, you spend time completing quests, killing Corrupted, and getting familiar with the gathering system. The game gives you the task to craft a weapon and scout certain locations.
However, already in the first levels, a certain monotony sets in with the quests, which, the longer you play, becomes worse. While at the beginning you still experience a bit of variation, from level 8 onwards, the quests mainly consist of killing X enemies and opening X chests. Only the location and the numbers differ.
The worst experience we had was with the Azoth staff. This item is important for the later PvE events in the open world and can be obtained either by purchase or through a quest line. And this quest line was really painful.
Over more than 3 hours of gameplay, you repeatedly complete exactly the same task: kill enemies, open chests. However, the locations for this are extremely far apart and not in logical order. Therefore, you run from north to south, back to north, and then again to south.
The awkward part is that crafting the Azoth staff could actually bring some variation into the boring quests:
- You could collect materials and craft the staff through crafting. Crafting is an important element in the game, but it is not considered in quests at all.
- You could charge the staff after crafting at special locations, for which some lore could have been added, and despite the walking distances, this quest would have felt different from the rest.
Instead, the game tells the story this way: We assemble the staff from things we found in the chests of enemies. Just like we find almost everything in these chests.
The strengths lie in cooperation: Although the quests in New World are very monotonous, the developers ensured that players can cooperate well even without groups.
Every chest appears for every player, so you cannot take anything away from anyone. Additionally, one hit on the enemy is enough to get loot and progress for the quest. Here too, it does not matter who attacked the enemy first.
Moreover, the breaches, events in the open world, provide a good variation. Suddenly Corrupted appear that you must defeat. These events are usually designed for groups and are a lot of fun, at least in the first rounds. You can easily join other players there and complete one breach after another. Some even use these events to quickly grind to max level.
The combat system has so much potential, but…
How do the battles in New World work? The MMO relies on a combat system reminiscent of Dark Souls. You must actively aim at your target, strike, block, and dodge. You can only use 3 abilities per weapon.
There are a total of 3 weapon sets in New World, which you can freely switch between. This offers a lot of dynamism in combat.
Through the weight system in the equipment, you can determine how much defense you want. The heavier the equipment, the weaker your dodges or climbing abilities become.
Why is this so good? The combat system is very tactical. Due to the sometimes long animations, you must decide carefully when to strike and when to block or dodge. Timing and experience play an important role. The few abilities also ensure that they must be used wisely.
While fighting is initially very slow and exhausting, we have increasingly fallen in love with the combat system over time. Especially in PvP, duels 1-on-1 are a lot of fun.
However, fighting is by no means polished.
Where are the problems? New World frequently experiences slight “desync”, meaning one has the feeling of hitting the opponent, while they are apparently at a different location and the attack misses.
In addition, the game has a major issue with “stun-lock”. Whenever you are hit, your character staggers slightly and cannot perform any action. If you are then hit by many enemies, they keep you in this state permanently. This can be frustrating in PvP, especially when fighting against a superior number of enemies.
Conversely, the combat system is not designed for catching up to a fleeing player due to the long animations. Those who react quickly can sprint away or teleport with the life staff. This is one of the weapons in New World that has a powerful teleport skill. This teleportation poses a significant problem for open-world PvP, as one can never catch up to opponents with a life staff.
Another personal issue we see is the global cooldowns for abilities. For example, if you use the attack on the “Q” key with the sword, the “Q” attack is also on cooldown after switching weapons. This can sometimes lead to very strange situations.
Some abilities have a cooldown of a few seconds, others even of minutes. So, when you use the long cooldown, the ability with a short cooldown is also disabled for that long. This does not fit the game at all and also reduces the incentive to switch weapons during combat.
Moreover, the individual skill trees for weapons offer little variation. The number of different weapons is also limited. There are:
- Sword and shield
- An axe, which can be used in melee or ranged combat depending on the skill tree
- Hammer
- Bow
- Musket
- Life staff for healing
- Fire staff for damage
There is certainly room for more variety by the time of release.
Crafting and the game world are two great strengths of New World
How does crafting work? Another plus point in New World is the crafting system. It is divided into three areas:
- Gathering – For example, wood or ore
- Refining – Processing the logs into planks
- Crafting – Creating furniture for housing or grips for swords from the planks
A player can learn and master each discipline. The system is intuitive and easy to understand, but it takes a lot of time.
However, crafting is an important component of the game. After all, the best equipment is crafted through this. Anyone who does not want to master crafting must buy what other players have crafted in the trading post – and at significantly higher prices.
In crafting, especially gathering is a lot of fun. This is due to the really well-designed sound effects and also the beautiful game world you explore while doing it.
What makes the game world so good? Graphically, New World is among the best MMOs ever. The world is colorful, rich in plants, and offers many beautiful animations, such as the trees swaying in the wind, or the campfires burning everywhere.
In addition, there is a very well-executed transition between day and night, where the position of the sun constantly changes and casts new shadows around the world.
All accompanied by a beautiful soundtrack and many sound effects. Especially when gathering, the chopping of trees or hitting with the pickaxe feels really good. Hearing the sounds of other gatherers in the distance is also a small detail that makes the world cohesive.
Aeternum invites exploration and discovery. Unfortunately, however, the game world has too few contents to truly explore this.
What is annoying about the game world? As beautiful as the world is, it somehow feels empty and monotonous over time. Many places, especially the settlements in the game look nearly identical. The creatures you fight are almost the same everywhere. Either they are animals, where there seem to be very few different species in Aeternum, or they are the Corrupted.
Moreover, there is simply not much exciting to discover. While there are various “landmarks” to uncover, there are no incentives such as lore, achievements, or simply a mist that would otherwise lie over the map and then disappear.
Even with a beautiful open world, it feels like it is not being fully utilized, also regarding the lore. This is only told in small diary pages, of which some were not even filled during the test. Here Amazon could take a page from Fallout 76, which wonderfully tells its story in the open world.
The movement: In New World, you can sprint and climb, but not swim and jump. The latter is often frustrating during movement in the game world, as it necessitates long detours in some places. Although the character swings over many obstacles, so that you don’t get stuck on rocks or fences, there are still times when you need to circumvent objects that are not that large.
Moreover, the MMO currently has no mounts, even though they would be helpful for the very long travel distances:
PvP and the endgame
What is PvP actually about? To experience PvP in New World, you must decide on one of the 3 factions. The quests for this are available around level 11.
After joining a faction, you currently have two options to experience PvP:
- You can either activate it in the open world. Then all players who also have PvP active can attack you.
- Or you participate in a war for a fort. If you have not yet reached level 60, you will be leveled up for this event, but depending on your level, you will not have access to all weapon skills or all 3 weapon sets.
However, both systems currently have their issues:
- In the open world, usually only high-level characters or players who are in groups have PvP active. As a low-level character, there is always the danger of being killed immediately.
- The PvP wars only occur at certain times. If you can’t make it then, you are out of luck. Additionally, usually more players wanted to participate in a siege than there were spots available.
Nevertheless, the sieges of forts are really fun. We already noticed this during the preview event in August when we participated in a war with a level 60 character along with developers.
The problem with the factions: While you must join a faction in New World, you hardly notice the rivalry. This is because New World has moved further away from the PvP idea.
If you deactivate PvP in the open world, you collaborate with all players. The faction does not matter here. Also in settlements, you always get quests, regardless of whether the settlement belongs to you or not. Even housing can be continued in “hostile settlements”.
This makes the factions currently seem pointless. Only in the battles for the forts do they play a role, although even here one could allow the fight between all companies, and the system could then work without factions.
What does the endgame in New World look like? We could not reach the endgame of New World during the preview, but we did talk to some players who were already level 60.
In the current version of New World, the following endgame content is available:
- Optionally, you can participate in battles for forts. This can be done in PvP or in a PvE version starting from level 50.
- There are further breach events for high levels.
- You can defeat the Spriggan, a boss in an instanced arena. This is a type of mini-raid for 5 players.
- Furthermore, crafting plays a role that needs to be leveled up to access T5 equipment, the best in the game.
However, once you have obtained the best equipment, you reach a dead end. The PvP and PvE battles for the forts only occur at certain times. Outside of these times, New World currently offers no worthwhile content.
While you can continue beating bosses in the arena or mobs in the open world, this only costs durability of the equipment in the end. On reddit, players report how frustrated they are to get gray equipment in the endgame that they can do nothing with.
However, mid and endgame content is one of the main reasons why the release of New World was postponed to 2021.
What kind of game does New World actually want to be?
Is New World now a game for PvE or PvP fans? At present, it feels like New World does not yet truly know where it belongs. The PvE content forms a solid foundation, but there is currently little to discover based on that:
- The beautiful game world is indeed there, but it is not utilized.
- Quests are there, but they are too monotonous.
- The world events provide variation but always run exactly the same.
- The crafting is good, but it does not feel like it is appropriately linked with the other content.
The same problems also confront the PvP players:
- There is optional PvP in the open world, but it is hardly used. The incentives currently are too small to take the risk.
- The wars in the endgame are exciting, but they occur too irregularly to focus solely on them.
- There is little rivalry between the factions.
Currently, New World wants to serve many players at once, but does not have a clear focus on a player group. The foundations for all areas are laid, and the game felt like a really good alpha. Now it must become a good MMO by 2021.
New World is an MMO gem, but it needs more polish
New World particularly shone in this preview with its beautiful and atmospheric graphics, an interesting combat system, good crafting, and the social aspect. Thus, the foundations for a really good MMO are laid.
However, many of these contents lack the final polish to really implement them well. Some other aspects, such as quests or endgame, still need a lot of work.
The more I play, the more fun it becomes
During the preview event, I played over 40 hours of New World, and the longer I was in the game, the more I learned to appreciate the combat system, despite all its flaws. In this aspect, and in the appearance and design of the game world, I find New World currently very strong.
However, I sometimes struggled through the quests until I finally switched to farming world events. If New World wants to appeal to many PvE fans, there is an urgent need for improvement here. I could very well imagine a system similar to the hearts in Guild Wars 2, which function almost like quests, but are embedded in the open world with flexible tasks. That would fit well into the design of New World.
But no matter what happens by 2021 and what changes Amazon makes, New World won’t become a classic theme park MMORPG. But it doesn’t have to be either. I am certainly much more positive after the preview event and will actually miss the MMO when the preview is over. I am already looking forward to the beta in 2021.
Alexander Leitsch
MMORPG expert at MeinMMO
New World has helped me to slow down every day
Throughout the entire event, I looked forward to wandering through the world every day and gathering my resources. In doing so, I thought about what beautiful things I would create from them. Because the crafting system is one of the greatest strengths in New World. The dreamy atmosphere in the surreal game world has turned this into a little meditative ritual.
I hardly cared about the PvP and the large power struggles of the factions. I contributed my part by diligently completing the city projects that help the settlement grow. I diligently brought items to the chairman of my faction, the Syndicate, and slaughtered monsters for him.
I played the preview event solo and clearly felt that New World is definitely designed for a group experience. Solo leveling was quite tedious and making real progress was difficult. However, I found it all the more beautiful when other players helped me by chance along the roadside when I was once again surrounded by 4 monsters and had to take flight. It is rewarding to help others, and so I often jumped into battle or provided healing when I saw someone in trouble.
Overall, I hope that Amazon now catches up in filling the truly beautiful world and brings it to life. Environmental storytelling only works if the imagination is stimulated. Simply distributing written pieces is not enough. It is also uncertain how long the game can motivate in the endgame, as there are hardly any reward systems here.
Leya Jankowski
Brand manager | part of the editorial team at MeinMMO
