The new MMORPG New World has its share of problems. One of the bigger issues lies within the community, as players sometimes heavily insult each other. Amazon is now responding with new rules.
What is the problem in New World? In New World, there are three factions fighting for the island of Aeternum. Players are forced to join one of the factions and fight for the Syndicate, the Marauders, or the Covenant.
This game mechanic alone creates a healthy foundation for conflicts between fans of the different factions. It’s easy to become frustrated when killed in the open world because you forgot to deactivate PvP. Or when your faction just lost an important area to another.
This leads to intense verbal conflicts in the chat and other forms of disrespectful behavior. Unlike many other MMORPGs, there are no chat restrictions between factions. Anyone can talk to anyone, and that has its downsides.
Amazon wants to crack down harder
How is Amazon responding? With the first major update after release on October 6, New World also introduced a new message that must be acknowledged before you can play.
These new rules can be summarized as “Don’t be a jerk” rules and deal with the interaction between players in New World. Additionally, Amazon threatens with temporary and even permanent bans if these rules are not followed.
The developers describe these as guidelines to create a safe, positive, and fun environment for everyone within the community.
The exact wording of these guidelines is divided into three categories and can be translated as follows:
- Protect the community: We will not tolerate hate, insults, bullying, threats, hate speech, or abusive language. This also includes prejudices and condescending comments about race, gender, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, religion, age, and disability.
- Play fair: The use of cheats, hacks, bots, or any software that interferes with the game is not tolerated. Exploiting bugs that provide unfair advantages is also not allowed. Trading real money for in-game items is also forbidden under any circumstances.
- Respect each other: Griefing, trolling, boosting, and wrongly reporting players, as well as cheating players in trading or pretending to be someone else reduce the experience for others.
Are the rules sensible?
Will this help? Time will tell. Since this message appears before you can even log in, every player has at least seen it briefly. However, whether these guidelines will change player behavior is questionable.
Ultimately, it is assumed that these basic rules of interaction should be known to everyone. People who have not followed these rules before will probably not do so now.
It remains to be seen how Amazon will enforce the threat of bans for violations of the guidelines. If insulting players are rigorously banned, this could indeed lead to a change in behavior, even if only out of fear of losing their accounts.
What do you think of the new rules? Do you find this box sensible or do you think it won’t help? Have you experienced unfair play yourself, or have you completely turned off the chat? Let us know in the comments.
A particularly bizarre case of unfair behavior occurred on the server Heracleion, where a guild leader shamefully loses a war over a fortress, robs his guild, and changes factions.
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