The developers at Amazon answered some questions about New World, regarding the development of the MMO. Read here about the lessons learned from the Alpha, plans for the future, and Amazon’s influence. The questions were answered by Studio Head Patrick Gilmore.
With Amazon behind the upcoming sandbox MMO “New World”, a giant stands behind it. We at MeinMMO wondered what impact that could have on the development. Studio Head Patrick Gilmore provided us with an answer. Additionally, there is also insight into the evaluation of the first Alpha test.
New World can plan 10 years ahead thanks to Amazon
MeinMMO: Players expect that New World has significant advantages over other MMOs in development because Amazon invests a lot of money in it. Many also expect a larger game. But is it really true that we are talking about a AAA budget just because Amazon is involved?
Patrick Gilmore: This is a great question, but it is difficult to answer. Amazon is strongly committed to New World. We want it to be great, and we tend to engage deeply with the expectations of our fans.
On the other hand, we have seen many blockbusters fail under the weight of too many effects and an inflated budget. This often happens when a creative company tries to please all players.
The truth is that we are a relatively small team within Amazon. As an independent team, we must stay focused and make difficult decisions independently to gather the best experience.
I think the advantage where Amazon’s resources play a significant role is that we can think long-term, not just in terms of team size or the scale of the game. Many of our decisions are based on where we see our game or entertainment in general – in 10 years.
Internally, people were inspired by the high ambitions we have with New World. The prevailing question was: “How do we start?” At that moment, we all felt constrained and had to make some cuts, but we are all grateful for the opportunity to plan so long-term.
MeinMMO: How many people are currently working on New World?
Patrick Gilmore: We usually don’t talk about exact numbers, but many would be surprised how small our team is compared to many other MMOs.
What Alpha testers like about New World and what they miss
MeinMMO: What were the most important things you learned from the first Alpha tests? What did players like the most, and what do you need to revise?
Patrick Gilmore: Oh man. How much time do you have?
I think the most important [feedback] comes from the area of actually keeping a game live. Builds, quality assurance, and staffing for releasing new content, listening to player feedback, explaining content, and generally developing […]. Even though we have many experienced developers on the team, one quickly forgets that we are doing all of this for the first time within Amazon.
The first positive thing we learned was that players like our concept and the focus of the game. PvP, direct combat system, equipment-based play styles, and a huge world with a special mystery received a lot of positive feedback.
Our biggest risk was our commitment to the sandbox aspect of the game, knowing that we can only engage a high number of players if we provide many interconnected systems. While we have already made changes to drop tables, experience points, item costs, damage numbers, and many other contents, and will continue to do so, it is still nice to see that our sandbox system works well.
With what we learned, we have also made changes to New World. As with many Alphas, there were also players this time who broke the game in ways we did not expect.
There will be no twinks in New World
This includes accelerated experience gathering or breaking systems that were supposed to make wars and fights fair. We saw players using twinks to infiltrate enemy fortresses or exploit other loopholes. So we removed the creation of additional characters.
We also learned that New World attracts players outside the traditional sandbox genre. They therefore did not have the experience we had anticipated. They asked for systems that support a learning curve, and we are currently working on solutions for that.
In the first part of our interview, we discussed gameplay. This included quests, survival aspects, guilds, and special events:
