It’s a new world, but not a new player base.
I bought New World, and on launch night I tried to join the server that some ex wow guildies had designated to be our server. It turned out so did everyone else in Asia Pacific because the queue was 21.5k long. As I stared into the queue abyss I decided I really wanted a chance to play that night so was pleasantly surprised when all the other available oceanic servers were only 2k deep. So I picked one and about 40 min later I was in.
Anything new and shiny is always exciting, and I enthusiastically dived in. Since launch I had not played WOW. The server issues were fixed ( at least for us ) ques were smaller, but there’s still a lot of lag especially in the cities. I’ve only logged in briefly tonight to WOW because New World Servers were going down at 9pm for several hours upsetting all the people in general chat at having to log out.
I had been trying to rush my first dungeon for a couple of quests and we had to disband before killing all the required mobs, but I got at least one important quest done while we were in there. The bones to get my pet will have to wait.
I’ve been spoiled with wow, New world has less buttons to press, but targeting feels a little clunky and even though I’m playing a Tank Spec in heavy armor with a 2 hander. I have had to level up a range weapon so I can chase down those pesky Does, Elks, and Buffalo for settlement quests. As it is your often competing to get the skin because while your target has been leading you around the map, other players have whipped out their ranged weapons and are trying to kill it too.
I have done SO MUCH running. Even with hearth points and fast travel my legs have been churning up the roads. No mounts in the game, and the only speed boost I had was when I spec’d into a charge with one of my weapons so I could move forward on cooldown.
I’ve not tried PVP – feeling a little better about my gear and at Level 30 and there’s active wars between factions territory’s which will be fun as long as the servers can maintain their player bases and there isn’t a dominating faction..
I’ve been having a lot of fun, it’s great timing given the negative sentiment around WOW right now, it’s familiar enough of a game to be comfortable but different enough that it’s different to WOW, and the grind! We all love a good grind, Chopping, gathering, mining, crafting, cooking, milking cows, getting honey from bee hives, and killing a lot of zombies.
My first dungeon was a little chaotic – we had at least 1 healer but I’m pretty sure there were at least 3 tank/dps and we were all doing our own smashing.
Player housing is going to be what I thought Shroud of the Avatar was going to be, but no real world money. You buy your house at the town of your choosing if you have the gold and the standing, and you then need to pay a property tax. You can outfit your house with crafting recipes, and drops. 2.5k Gold is the cheapest house, but I have my eye on a larger one with at least a front grass area. Your house ‘overlays’ other peoples, you always see your house, and if you invite someone in they will also see your house. Benefits of a house include another hearth cool down, and more storage. You do need to pay property taxes to make full use of it though, and for now- it’s a little steep to justify just yet.
Speaking of storage and grinding and crafting. You need a lot of space for all your bits , every settlement has independent storage volumes, you can transfer between banks for a fee if the settlement locations are controlled by the same faction.
I’m not too keen on the chat. It takes up too much of the screen, too many channels and way too much spam. I didn’t know what a discord kitty was. I knew, but I didn’t know the lingo ( age is showing ) I learned because of the chats and the requests for discord kitties, in game girlfriends, sugar daddies etc… people were already boasting about coming back from bans in game already, the usual name choices you see when people are pushing inappropriate naming conventions, but in the last few days it feels like it’s been cleaned up. For a new game, they have a lot of adverse media to read about from Blizzard and learn from.
The patch tonight is going to prevent whats being referred to as an AFK running into the wall hack – players run themselves into wall so they don’t get logged out. When queues are long for some people to get in trying to prevent logging. The patch will also bring in the groundwork for server transferring so the orphaned people on launch don’t need to re-roll and can pick a server and play with friends.
I’m having fun, turning into a hoarder, gathering all my crafting material and looking like a tanking bad ass. Server populations need to be kept high enough for all the aspects of the game to function – so once the initial frenzy is over the test for Amazon will be how to sustain peoples interest.
Almost level 31 at the moment which is a fair crack – fast travel and killing anything with a quest icon above it to keep completing the quest boards in the settlement which help the settlememt raise the tiers of their crafting stations. Kill 25 rabbits, bring water, craft a potion, fund some buckles. It’s been adding up.
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