Our author Alexander Leitsch was allowed to play the MMO New World for three hours at an event. During this time, fortresses were conquered and expanded, armor and weapons were crafted, and parts of the existing world were explored.
Amazon’s New World is currently in a closed alpha phase. Many players have not yet had the chance to take a look at the game. To help you understand where to place the game, I would like to share my experiences from three hours of alpha with you.
New World is not a new World of Warcraft
If you were looking forward to a new MMORPG in the style of World of Warcraft or Guild Wars 2, you will not enjoy New World. The sandbox MMO primarily focuses on PvP and crafting.
Additionally, we have to completely forgo other theme park content such as quests or a story line. While players are supposed to be able to assign tasks to other players through the trading post system, we find no pre-defined tasks from the game.
Instead, the creativity of the players is in demand. From building the first equipment to creating fortresses and guild wars, everything is possible. However, nothing is handed to you.
New World plays poorly alone
If you enjoy playing in a group or guild, you will feel at home in New World immediately. Lone wolves can achieve a lot, but participating in large battles or expanding fortresses will be challenging.
You need a guild even to claim areas. You could theoretically create one on your own and then establish your fortress in an available area.
However, even farming and expanding is very time-consuming alone. It becomes frustrating when other players attack the fortress. Defending it even against an entire guild will be impossible.
Fortresses are demanding but fun
If you want to build a fortress according to your wishes, you will need a huge amount of wood and stone. Unfortunately, these do not fall from the sky and must be collected yourself.
To erect a fortress, you must first bring an area under control. For this, you need an item costing 150,000 gold from the trading post of a neutral outpost.
For comparison: We earned about 35,000 gold in 90 minutes of play. However, we also sold our crafted equipment towards the end.
After that, you need wood and flint to create initial workbenches. At these, you can further process wood into timber and stones into stone blocks. These materials are then used to build walls, buildings, and first-level crafting stations.
The further you progress, the higher-quality materials you can use. There are multiple tiers for all buildings that you must first construct. In any case, a lot of farming is required for the fortress.
You can only specialize in a few skills
In New World, it is incredibly important to master skills. This includes primarily crafting skills like blacksmithing, survival in the wilderness, or alchemy. However, our points are severely limited.
During the game, you receive trade points that you can distribute in corresponding trees. However, our characters, already raised to a very high level, could only fully skill one skill.
Afterward, some points remained. However, if you want to be able to do multiple things at once, you cannot perfectly master a discipline. You have to team up with other players as well. Twinks, or additional characters, will not be available.
In addition to trade skills, there are also attributes that you level up passively and actively in the game. In the accompanying image, you can see the various attributes and the points we still had to distribute.
Deaths are tough but manageable
If you die in New World, you have several problems. On the one hand, you lose your inventory, and on the other hand, you may have to respawn at a very distant location.
In a normal death, you lose your entire inventory, but not the armor and weapons you are wearing. However, if you are marked as a criminal, you also lose the items you are wearing and start over without equipment.
How do you respawn? When you die, you can either be revived by other players or choose a location for respawn. Neutral outposts are available if you have interacted with the graveyard there, as well as your own campfire.
However, note that after respawning, you have a 25-minute cooldown at the respective location.
