For me, New World is a game full of missed opportunities. When it was released in 2021, the game was beautiful and the combat system was excellent. But the execution was just plain bad. The game’s performance was abysmal even on high-end hardware, the netcode threw several wrenches into the works for the combat system and other game systems, and the content was rather sparse.
Amazon Game Studios, or AGS for short, has addressed some of this over the last three years. The new player experience was made easier and the netcode was improved. The latter still has its weaknesses, as does the performance. Content-wise, there was one expansion, and that was it. The focus was clearly on reworking the game systems. Some of these changes, in my opinion, were for the worse, like the significant increase in fast travel points or the local markets and storage. I’ve already described this in detail in an older post.
New World: So Much Wasted Potential
Since the expansion, it’s been quiet around the game again, and accordingly, the player numbers have dropped sharply. The game is currently a long way from its peak of almost a million players, with around 4,000 players at the moment. For an MMO, this is of course bad, especially when the players are spread across multiple servers in different regions of the world. But AGS hasn’t been idle; they’ve reworked the game once again. The starting experience is supposed to have been adjusted, and the game will be released on current-gen consoles on October 15th. The controller support has been expanded for this, and the interface has been adapted. For solo players, there are new endgame challenges, plus a 10-man raid. But is that enough to save New World?
To be honest, I’m afraid not. The re-re-re-release (launch, fresh start, Rise of the Angry Earth expansion) will surely attract new players, especially on consoles. I’ll definitely check it out again and maybe even level a character to 65 this time. But the fundamental problems haven’t been addressed. There’s still a lack of long-term motivation. You play through the story, you do the dungeons a few times, and that’s it. Faction wars are still designed in a way that only a small number of players can actually participate, and open-world PvP remains optional, except for one zone. Crafting is still barely useful, and trade or even an economy still doesn’t seriously exist. Why should I painstakingly level up a craft if I can hardly do anything with it?
What a player does has no impact on the world or on other players. So it’s more of an MMORPG-lite, or as AGS themselves call it: an RPG with multiplayer elements. The problem is, they have an MMORPG foundation for it and have to maintain it. If that’s no longer profitable, then New World Aeternum will simply no longer be playable. Presumably, no one will want to play it then anyway, because without new content, you get to know the game pretty quickly.
Oh, and thanks to the consoles, New World Aeternum will introduce a target lock. Aiming is no longer a necessity; you automatically target the enemy. This applies to both PvE and PvP. Early voices are already speculating that this will completely throw the balancing out of whack. Some weapons like the rapier or the musket were strong, but only if you could land your rotation correctly. Aim-lock now takes care of the placement for the players. One streamer was able to win duels this way while blindfolded. Another simplification, of which the game already has too many.
Furthermore, on October 1st, Throne and Liberty, a true-blue MMORPG from the same company, will be released as competition, also on PC and consoles. The combat system there doesn’t seem quite as action-packed, but it already offers a lot of content at launch. After all, the game has been out in Korea for over a year. New World Aeternum is certainly worth a look when it’s on sale or if you already own it. But I don’t think it will save the game in the long run. With the new direction towards being an RPG, I wonder if that’s even the plan anymore.