The new MMO New World has many bugs and exploits. Over the weekend, exploits became known that allowed players to duplicate gold or forcefully close another player’s game. A YouTuber points out that Amazon is even requesting and publishing “how-to” guides for such cheats in their official forum.
What problems does New World have with exploits? Every MMO struggles with some exploits and bugs at release, but New World now occupies an extraordinary position, especially because it is so popular:
- There was a “Gold Dupe” exploit with server transfers, which led Amazon to temporarily remove server transfers from the game.
- There was a “invulnerability” exploit related to window resizing.
- But the peak was reached over the weekend: By exploiting chat commands, players could crash the games of others, duplicate gold indefinitely, or do other really bad things. The effects are described in detail in YouTube videos (via YouTube).
So far, Amazon has reacted relatively quickly to these issues and has tried to address the most serious problems to prevent permanent damage to the game.
New World wants players to describe exactly how the exploit works
What is a YouTuber upset about now? YouTuber “Josh Strife Hayes” points out a peculiarity in New World that he considers “the probably dumbest thing I’ve ever seen”.
In the official New World forum, players are able to report all bugs and exploits they have found. This is publicly viewable by anyone (via new-world-forum).
One of the points that players have to specify when reporting exploits is to describe exactly how the exploit can be reproduced: “What are the steps to reproduce the issue as you experienced?”
This is quite reasonable for bugs, but with an exploit, players are being asked to write detailed “how-to” guides on exploiting game mechanics.
Currently, there’s even a thread where visiting the forum is considered an “exploit” to find new exploits.
YouTuber Josh Strife Hayes points out the absurd situation:
Actually, the rule is: “Do not publish exact how-to guides”
What makes this so sensitive: Normally, in MMORPGs, it is frowned upon among players and content creators to publish a detailed “how-to” guide that explains every single step of how a cheat or exploit works.
In the current cheat incidents, where players were able to crash the clients of others, YouTubers described the effects and context of the exploits, but did not publish a “detailed” guide. They didn’t publish the exact chat commands verbatim that led to the client crashes.
However, if Amazon requests and publicly posts these guides, there is also no barrier to spreading the exact cheat instructions. In other games, exploiting mechanics and sharing such guides can lead to bans.
This seems to reflect a misjudgment by New World: A “how to reproduce” guide for bugs makes sense, but for exploits it can be dangerous. A non-public reporting system would certainly be more reasonable.
Even without exploits, some things in New World are currently imbalanced:
A build in New World makes you nearly immortal – “Huge problem for balance”
