In this article/video I want to talk about my New World Closed Beta impressions so far this is the new MMO by Amazon I’ve played about 25 or 30 hours I’ve done some dungeons I’ve done some PvE I’ve done some PvP, so I have a pretty good idea how this game is going to play. I’m obviously not an end game yet so I don’t have a good sense on that, but for the most part I have a general idea of how the game is.
New World Preview: Closed Beta Impressions
People have been asking me what’s the gameplay like, what do I like about it and what I don’t like about it. Is it better than other MMOs out there? So in this article, I’m going to try and answer those questions as best as I can.
New World Gameplay
First off what’s the New World gameplay like to me the game plays sort of like a combination of maybe something like the Elder Scrolls Online and a combination of Albion Online. In Albion online you don’t really have a class which is the same as New World. You simply have Weapons that you can choose or the Armor that you choose and that sort of dictates your playstyle.
New World Gameplay Comparisons (The Elder Scrolls Online, Albion Online and More)
You also have Core Attribute points in New World such as Strength, Constitution, and Dexterity. You’re going to make your build from the points you put into attributes, as well as the skills you select with those Weapons, along with the Armor that you get that has bonuses and stat bonuses on it. This is what is going to comprise your build and of course you can swap these around you can respec so you can play around with different builds, not unlike Albion Online.
The reason I make the comparison to The Elder Scrolls Online, as well as Albion Online, is that I feel like maybe the combat is most similar to that in terms of the way you fight. Or maybe something like Black Desert Online as you don’t have a lock-on system, there’s no tab targeting as everything is manually aimed including ranged attacks. It’s not exactly like that but combat plays a little bit more towards that side of MMOs than maybe some other ones like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy 14 or something like this.
Strong Emphasis on Crafting
Another big emphasis to the game is Crafting the crafting system is extremely in-depth and there’s a lot of things you can do with it you spend a lot of time gathering crafting almost like a survival game without survival elements there’s so much crafting in this game. It reminds me a lot of Albion Online as crafting such a huge part of that game having a lot to do with the loot in the game, so you’re gonna see similarities here between those games.
New World’s Strong Points
Some of the things I like about the game first up is its visuals. The game is visually stunning for an MMO, the graphics are really really strong and in some ways, it reminds me of what the Elder Scrolls Online looked like you know or at least what I remember it looking like when it came out. The graphics on Elder Scrolls Online when it came out were really really strong they’ve since dated. But this game has really strong graphic visual appeal and style for an MMO. The sound and design is also very good the music is relaxing.
New World Crafting
Crafting again is one of the strongest parts of the game. If you are a player who loves to craft, an Albion player or an Elder Scrolls Online player or maybe even some other MMOs and you love crafting uh that is such a huge part of this game you should really like that in this as well.
New World PvP
I like the general concept of the PvP in the game as an idea. The fact that you have open-world PvP meaning you can flag up and run around in PvP not unlike Albion, except instead of having regions where you can PvP it’s you know you can flag up anywhere and go anywhere basically and do it. Also these large-scale battles are are really interesting as a concept. I’m not sure how it came off in execution but in terms of concept I like the idea a lot.
New World Expeditions
The small number of dungeons I’ve done so far have been kind of fun, but they’ve not been overly involved so far. I would imagine they’re going to get more and more complicated in terms of mechanics as I get deeper into the dungeons, so I haven’t done them all or anything like that. But it sort of reminds me of what I was hoping Dark Alliance would play like.
It’s very hack and slashy but there is Tank, Healer, and DPS roles. You get loot after bosses there are hidden chests and you know it’s more of what you would expect from an MMO than Dark Alliance but it almost is what I would expect the new Dark Alliance game to play like.
New World Weak Points
Moving along to the things I don’t like I would say that the questing is extremely repetitive in some cases like you you have a lot of the same sort of quests. A lot of quests are just grab quests from a board, go out and harvest some resource, then come back. Or kill some enemies and come back. So you just do this over and over and over, or go collect some stuff from chests. You start to see these all over the map it’s almost like there’s like 10 or 15 quests that are just repeated maybe you know 50 times or so.
New World Enemy Variety
Another complaint of mine is the enemy variety it does get better and more and more variety as you get further and further into the zones. But I feel as a whole they could have done a lot more with the enemy variety in the game.
There also is also a huge problem with the way questing works in enemies like some enemies you know everyone has to kill for their quest and there’s just tons of people waiting around them this is a problem that’s existed since time and memoriam in MMOs.
Another thing that really makes this problem worse is the fact that there’s a lot of quests where you have to kill animals and then skin them, well only one player can skin that animal. So if 10 people kill it and you need to skin three of them, then you have to fight all those 10 people to skin three animals. Even if you kill it they can run over and skin it, so this can be a problem and really frustrating for some of those quests.
New World Story & Narrative
Talking about the story narrative it’s kind of weak. Admittedly I’ve been skipping through a lot of dialogue because I’ve been trying to like level pretty quickly so I haven’t been focusing on it as much as you probably would. But there is you know not a huge story to this game. If you’re somebody who like really loves narratives you’re probably not going find them in a New World.
New World Combat Issue
Another issue I have with the game is the combat. I like the combat for the most part but it’s rather simplistic. I find myself light attacking and heavy attacking and a lot more than you probably would in any other MMO you’ve ever played. It’s almost akin I hate to use this comparison but to a souls game in some regards, because you spend a lot of time like dodging blocking and attacking rather than using your abilities, because you only have three abilities.
Sometimes abilities are very very situational like one might be a stun well if you’re fighting one enemy you might not need to stun it. Another one’s a gap closer well you don’t need to use a gap closer if you’re right on top of the enemy so you find yourself like block, attack, block, attack. This is fine but when you have to wade through 30 enemies in a row to get to the elite enemy to kill for a quest and you’re fighting them all pseudo-soul style, it takes a really long time just to get to that one enemy. So I do wish there was more skill variety or ability variety for the players. I’m hoping this is something they can add over time with feedback, but it could be a little bit better.
Is New World the WoW Killer? How does it compare to other MMOs?
Probably the last question I get asked is you know is this game a World of Warcraft killer? Is it better than Final Fantasy 14? Is it better than the Elder Scrolls Online? Will this game have legs? Will it carry itself, is it going to last? And I think the answer to this right now is that this game New World is not better than most modern MMOs out there at the moment. It’s probably not a fair comparison as you’re taking a game in beta. Admittedly it’s got a month left in beta, so it’s probably going to be similar to what we played during the beta, maybe with less bugs and server issues hopefully.
But it’s probably unfair to compare a game that just launched to games that have had 7 to 10 to 15 years of patches and content updates, and I would say that it’s not as good as those games. Hands down those games have had way more time to develop their systems and improve on their systems so no it is not as good as those games.
That said Elder Scrolls Online was a disaster when it launched. Final Fantasy 14 was not particularly successful when it launched, those games have made revivals over time and gotten better and better and I fully expect New World to do the same. In my opinion, New World is at a better place at launch barring a couple of glaring bugs (that hopefully they get fixed before launch) than the Elder Scrolls Online was at launch. I feel like it as long as they keep developing the way Elder Scrolls Online did, maybe use that sort of business model of constant content updates and constant patches, I feel like they could be as successful as something like that.
If they don’t do that and they don’t patch out the bugs then obviously that’s another story. You know pending a couple major bugs, I do feel like they really could get there in a year or two.
Should You Play New World at Launch?
So where does that leave you in terms of okay well should I play this game at launch? Should I wait? I would say this, we’re going put up a video at launch. When we play at launch we’ll have a “what’s changed”, “what did they fix?” and “is it any better?” kind of video. I would say wait for that video and find out if they’ve done anything to that effect. If they have then maybe make a decision at that point.
But I can tell you if you don’t get the game at launch I would say you’re probably going to want to you know or at least peek your head back in, in about six months to a year and see what the game looks like, because I can almost guarantee you this game is going to be even better then.
So what do you guys think looking at the gameplay watching the streams? Or maybe you’re in the closed beta, what do you think of it so far? What do you like and what don’t you like about the game? What do you hope they fix and what do you hope they leave the same? Let us know in the comment below.
If you’re just starting your New World adventure be sure to drop by our New World wiki.
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