Chewing into spongey opponents as a pack with the glaring lack of feedback from weaponry is almost comical, and your options in combat feel extremely limited and lacking.Įnemies, locations, and activities can become a big bowl of mush without breaking it up with some PvP pursuits. This problem is exacerbated in group experiences, both PvP and PvE, but more pronounced in the latter. Even if you’re just spelunking for saltpeter, you’re going to have to fight a ton of various zombie-like creatures, wolves, or bears, and it simply does not feel good. I found it hard to determine if the other aspects of the game that seem enjoyable can carry this particular aspect either, as combat is the core of almost every other pursuit. While I enjoy systems that attempt to break the genre out of the tab-targeting standard that’s been grandfathered into MMOs for ages, it misses the mark here. Now, there’s something to be said about popping an opposing faction member from a great distance before you engage in a 3v3 skirmish that gets real greasy, but that’s more about the player-to-player interaction than the combat, which can often feel wooden and wonky. With limited skill options, awkward animations, and very little excitement, New World’s combat is decidedly dull. It’s probably the biggest portion of the entire gameplay experience. In almost every MMORPG, you’re going to be doing a ton of combat. The combat is New World’s biggest weakness On the flip side, if you’re not really interested in territory wars or PvP, other existing MMORPGs might be a better choice. The issue here is how interesting and meaningful are these faction wars going to be in the endgame? While I don’t have the answer to that yet, the prospect of really engaging with other players in a meaningful way in a MMORPG gives me a powerful nostalgia bump and some serious differentiation from many other genre offerings today. If you still just want to solo and bring back a load of furs to trade in town, you can – but the real fun is to be had by grouping up, interacting with others, and eventually taking over some territory as your chosen faction.Īt the solo, guild, and greater level, having game flow dictated by players instead of the “theme park” experience is a bold choice and more than a bit refreshing. By funneling players into three different factions, you have an investment in your tribe regardless of how deep you want to take it. However, it also successfully adds shared social stakes to the experience, even if you choose not to interact at the verbal level with any other players. That means yes, you are going to see a player named PoopyPants (Yes, this was a real player I saw) cutting down trees and screaming outside of town about the price of silver ore, and your chat feed is going to be inundated with comments that make the infamous Barrens chat look downright erudite. Territory control and faction-based opt-in PVP not only bring back a bit of realm-vs-realm feel from the glory days of Dark Age of Camelot, but they inject something that many online experiences have moved away from in the last decade – social interaction.
It feels gritty, it feels raw, and it feels fresh.
do I really want to spend my time in the endgame gathering resources just so I can play the game, but for now, there’s plenty of magic in creating my own food, ammunition, and supplies before I trek out into the wild. I can see potential problems with these aspects later down the line, i.e. Coming back to your town in the middle of the wilderness to trade feed and talk with your fellow explorers has all the allure of bustling about Disney’s Frontierland, and I’ve rarely had so much investment into crafting and trading systems in MMOs. Banging together your first batch of gathering tools is actually freaking awesome.ĭigging up carrots and potatoes feels meaningful. Being able to skill up in everything to your liking is a classic system à la Runescape, and its nice to know you can work up every single crafting and gathering skill if you wish, right down to doing some fishing. Hunting down elusive saltpeter deposits in mines and crafting your own shells for your old-timey rifles feels fun. Hunting turkey on the borders of your established safe zones to raise your cooking skill and create rations is far more engaging than it has any right to be. If you’re familiar with survival games that have you punching wood to get a house going, New World delivers on this front initially by giving the player myriad survival pursuits. It successfully lands a powerful frontier survival vibe