In theory, New World should finally be unveiling their Big Mysterious Announcement at the Summer Game Fest today. Before that, I have some musings on my recent adventures in the game.
Full disclosure first, though: I wrote this post about a month ago. I’m currently working on a new TTRPG project (for another company, not my own work), and I pre-wrote my blog and Massively posts for several weeks so I could focus on that. So it’s possible that some or all of what I say in this post is now wildly out of date, but you can at least consider it a time capsule of my experiences in New World a month ago.
My focus lately has mainly been on playing my Covenant alt, who as I’ve probably said before is now more of a co-main, as often happens with me.
While I still love her traditional bow/spear light armour build, I’ve also been spending a lot of time with a heavy armour set that stacks strength and wields a sword and shield alongside a greatsword. Whereas her original build is all about not being hit, this one is all about being able to take whatever enemies can throw at me and just keep fighting. I even tanked my first dungeon recently, although it was a story mode, so that hardly counts.
The greatsword is a weapon I always wanted to like in theory, but struggled to enjoy in practice, despite its incredible (arguably excessive) power level. I still wish its attack speed wasn’t quite so slow, but I do think I’ve finally found a set-up I enjoy with it.
After going back and forth between the two skill trees and their associated stances, I’ve settled on a build that allows me to weave both stances. I’m mostly using the Defiance tree, but I added Crosscut from the Onslaught tree. The idea is to open with Crosscut for a big burst of damage, then my options diverge depending on the situation.
On harder fights, I immediately follow up with Calamity Counter to activate Defiant Stance, then throw in a Steadfast Strike and stay in Defiant Stance for the extra survivability, repeating the rotation as necessary once my abilities are off-cooldown. When facing weaker foes, I can stay in Onslaught Stance after using Crosscut and swiftly finish them off with the faster heavy attacks.
I love the versatility and decision-making, and I regret not going this route sooner. The idea of weaving between greatsword’s two stances always seemed so intimidating, but in hindsight this combination of active skills feels obvious, and I feel dumb for not figuring it out sooner.
I’ve also been working towards buying her second house, which will be in Brimstone Sands. I waffled for a long time, as I don’t like desert zones much, but New Corsica is a gorgeous town and its houses are arguably the best in the game, being both beautiful and spacious. It’s also still the zone with the most challenging and fun open world solo content.
I’m still deciding how to decorate the house, but I was thinking of setting it up less as a private home and as more of a chapterhouse or mission for the Covenant. I see this character as a real true believer in their cause; she could use a place to preach to the converts. It’s a shame there isn’t much in the way of faction-themed furniture, but I’m sure I can come up with something.
Now is an odd time to play New World. Even as a die-hard cheerleader for the game, there’s a definite storm cloud hanging over it. I think the chatter about “no content” on social media is pretty out of touch with reality — I’ve got more to do in-game than there are hours in the day — but the developers also seem to be running scared, and that does have me worried.
Aside from the strange radio silence punctuated by the mantra of “wait for the June announcement,” they seem to have all but raised the white flag when it comes to bugs. The Slayer Script update that was supposed to make the game more stable only added more problems, which could be explained as growing pains, but it’s taking what seems like forever for anything to get fixed. Probably it will all be fixed by the time you’re reading this, but it’s already taken longer than it should have. There’s a definite sense that the live game has been abandoned in favour of whatever today’s announcement will be.
It’s all so strange because a few short months ago I would have said the game was in a great place. Aside from the bugs it still is. It always had the best moment to moment gameplay of any MMORPG on the market, and mounts and the cross realm group finder really were the secret sauce New World was missing to take it to the next level.
I had already started the draft of a Vitae Aeternum column about how New World had finally found its footing and was entering its golden age. Then season five got delayed, and it’s kind of all been downhill from there.
I do still hope to finish that column at some point, but it doesn’t quite feel appropriate in the current climate. I’ve now also got outlines for a column in the event the game goes free to play, and in the event it shutters, though I certainly I hope I won’t need the latter any time soon.
I suspect what happened is that Rise of the Angry Earth didn’t bring back as many players as they hoped, and that sent them scrambling on a hail Mary plan to do something else to boost player numbers. I wonder if the current population is truly unsustainable, or if they’re just still chasing the probably unrealistic idea of getting back to their lofty launch numbers? Even the latter could still threaten the game’s future if Amazon’s upper level management are sufficiently heartless and greedy.
(And if any of y’all come into the comments talking about how the game only has seven thousand players, please go look up the definition of “concurrent” before I forcefeed you my boot, because I spend way too much time lurking New World social media and I can’t take that nonsense anymore.)
I don’t know what to predict at this point. At the start of 2024 I would have said New World’s future looked bright, but things went off the rails real fast.
And even then, it does need to be said that the game still kicks ass in so many ways. I’m still playing almost every day and enjoying the hell out of it. Even with the bugs, I think this is the best MMORPG still in active development by a pretty commanding margin. Which is both very high praise of all New World does well and a bit of an indictment of the rest of the genre.
I hope whatever gets announced today proves to be the win the game needs. Stay tuned to my column at Massively Overpowered for coverage of that in the near future. I’d be perfectly happy with some bug fixes and for the content cadence to continue as it has, but something needs to be done to improve the game’s reputation. I think a lot of its bad press is underserved (not all, but a lot), but regardless the negative image exists, and it needs to change.
Because regardless of what you’ve heard, there’s a great game here, and it’ll be even better once the bugs get fixed.