New World

Game has a solid foundation and with several more months in the oven, this could very well be the first "good" game for several years. Definitely needs some tuning and some end game stuff needs to be balanced and figured out, but it has better bones than most beta launches I've seen.

75% of companies would've launched this game as is. It's pretty good Amazon said "nah, let's wait." Respect to them for that.

My feelings were New World >AoC until delay then AoC>New World with all the fucking chatter and AMAs with Sorcerer, but now that I've played New World I think it could definitely be more fun than a classic style MMO that AoC may in fact be.

Who knows, I'm sure AoC will have some awesome shit and I'll flip my opinion again in like two months!

Yeah the bones are definitely there. There is quite a lot of stuff that is well done, but the character abilities / progression is gonna be a deal breaker for a lot of people unless they toss it in the garbage and start anew.

Argarth said:

How on earth did they go from Beta > Planned Release date >>>>>>> back to ALPHA and ~ 1 year delay? Surely, it must be destined for the scrapheap.

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Or they have unlimited money...

TJT said:

If anyone can play the, "until it's ready strategy" in 2020 it's Amazon.

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Infinite money does not make a good game. Look at Star Citizen or Diablo 3.

The issue is that it's very hard to make compelling PVE content that is original in the MMO genre. After they bagged the whole PVP sandbox idea, they went back and said 'how do we do compelling PVE?'. No one in the industry has the answer.

WoW will always do theme parks best if that's what you're after but even they have taken to time gated content. It's nearly impossible to keep people entertained on PVE after the first month.

Path of Exile is the only modern game that stays popular with MMO-like PVE outside of theme parks. They clean slate every 4 months and add new content at the same time. This is their biggest innovation and the reason for their continued success.

Other genres, like survival games, have some bits and pieces that might make up the next successful MMO.

Conan Exiles solved, at least in part, the discoverability issue that EQ has with a modern playerbase without use of themepark style quests by guiding the player through sort of achievement style progression. If you don't know what to do, you can look your unique-things-to-do-list that will slightly increase your power. Along the way, you can create your own goals needed to achieve the bigger goals. This feels less like a job.

Breath of the Wild has those temples that provide meaningful but slow non-grindy content towards gradual power increase that is obvious to the player what to do next without being on rails.

These are the pieces that a fresh MMO would need to take.

New World will not take a third stab at it. It'd be a bad move for the group involved at Amazon. This is a theme park game.

Corruption test happening atm. You spawn in level 35 with gear

All systems in New World are nothing-new. They certainly aren't reinventing the wheel so to speak.

TJT said:

If anyone can play the, "until it's ready strategy" in 2020 it's Amazon.

Amazon just pulled $18B in EBIT alone this week boys.

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If this is all that infinite money can buy, then MMOs are dead.

Isnt this all a test for the LotR mmo?

bytes said:

If this is all that infinite money can buy, then MMOs are dead.

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Infinite money means jack if you have no clear goal or endpoint. Whoever is/was running this game has changed it so much and so often and yet there is still no clearly defined game. This game is a management issue, much like SC.

Brikker said:

Isnt this all a test for the LotR mmo?

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That's what I believe it to be. A test run for the new studio. Get their warts out now so that their LOTR MMO has as little hiccups as humanly possible.

i still cant believe how much money SC pissed away

Sigh, why cant they have had money like this on EQ3 - such a shame.

Details of next week's Preview as it's being called: