For New World Aeternum, the season of conquerors has begun. Instead of enjoying the new leveling experience, the heavy focus on PvP is killing the fun of many heroes.
What does the season offer? Since January 21, 2025, you can dive into the season of conquerors focused on PvP with a new character. Starting from level 15, every hero is automatically marked for PvP. Collected resources and loot can be lost upon dying virtually. Events, battle pass, and new loot accompany the experience.
While you could already master the leveling phase of New World Aeternum quite quickly, the hunt for experience points noticeably speeds up during the season: In the seasonal worlds, you receive 25 percent more experience and weapon mastery. From level 15, you can automatically ride. You will receive your first mount at a campsite.
The gameplay trailer for the launch of New World Aeternum:
Frustration with Warning
Where is the problem? MMORPGs from past decades have brought many insights to light. These include:
- The clear majority of genre fans prefer PvE over PvP. Many players have no desire for constant PvP compulsion.
- If there is a PvP compulsion in the open world, dominant groups quickly develop that enjoy terrorizing other, weaker communities.
The latter can be seen, for example, a few years ago on various PvP servers of WoW Classic, when the respective overpopulated factions made it their fun to drive the opposing side out of the game or at least to other servers for months.
Similarly frustrating have been the experiences so far in the season of conquerors for some players.
- Interesting-Copy-657 writes on Reddit: “My experience on the PvP server so far has been that 1 to 3 people, who are 10 to 20 levels higher, roam around and kill people just to brag as if they had some sort of skill. It’s all very toxic.”
- Accomplished_Fig8776 complains on Reddit: “For everyone who was disappointed that Amazon Games pivoted from hardcore PvP to more PvE with some PvP in it: this is the reason. The sheer amount of griefing that happened on the first day on the PvP servers is exactly the reason. Imagine if the game had gone live like that; the game would have been dead in 2 weeks.”
- Super-Ad-1934 adds on Reddit: “The current culture in gaming is characterized by players who are more than happy to ruin the entire server… and to achieve the goal… they use every exploit, every possible advantage, no matter how harmful it is for the game.”
- Crusader6972 adds on Reddit: “It’s toxic, but nobody cares. A large part of any PvP community constantly complains that the game is dying and there is no one to play with, while they spend all their time running away from fair fights to kill disadvantaged people for easy kills.”
It’s almost a good thing that the first season of New World Aeternum has probably already deterred many genre fans due to the previously announced PvP focus. And that the executives at Amazon Games decided to shift the focus from sandbox-survival-PvP to more theme park-PvE during the development of the MMORPG.
It’s just a shame that this realization came so late that many of the PvE content have ended up quite generic and mixed on the live servers. You can find more details about the season here: New World presents the season of conquerors and the first seasonal world – community debates whether it will be great
