304 people found this review helpful
6 people found this review funny
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Not Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 1,794.0 hrs on record
Posted: 3 Sep, 2024 @ 4:04pm

New World should be a case study in how to ruin an amazing game concept and fail to capitalise on a monumental launch through incompetence, hubris and a misunderstanding of how to listen to and manage an emerging community.

This should have been the game to revolutionise the MMO space, which has been long stagnant and full of WoW wannabe's - and it had that potential; the gameplay was incredible, the feeling of PVP and scope of competition was exhilarating and fresh and the graphics and setting were immersive.

On launch, the game worked, and we enjoyed a few weeks of something genuinely new and exciting. Then the patches started. I don't even know where to begin with the complete mismanagement and sheer incompetence of what followed, but the bugs were game breaking, the response to incidents were farcical, the priorities were all over the place and the communication was terrible. The community began to sour almost immediately.

People started leaving, thinking they would come back when things improved.

Things got worse.

See, New World relies on populated servers for the PVP territory wars to function. Once people started leaving and some servers fell below the critical minimum for them to function, they needed merging with other servers in order to maintain the games functionality.

But they weren't ready for server merges, they hadn't prepared for it. So we waited. And more people left.

Then, the merges happened, and were so mismanaged that they broke guilds and further damaged the community. The communication was again awful. More people left. More merges were needed. Around and around we go. All the while they kept pumping out more untested patches, allowing unfinished development code to find its way into the main game and break even more things. The cycle seemed endless.

While these technical problems were ongoing, the devs continued to pump out "balance" changes to correct issues with the PVP. They made things worse. Certain weapon combinations were so clearly overpowered, while others seemed pointless being in the game at all. It became clear that the lead developers favoured certain weapon and armour combinations because it's what THEY played. This chronic imbalance continued for nearly 8 months before any significant shift began to appear. Their response? Continue to misunderstand the issues and patch things anyway. They seemed to be listening to the most outspoken and toxic members of the community without properly testing themselves.

It was like they weren't even playing their own game.

So they were called out by the community. "Yeah, you think this works? YOU try playing it."

They did. AFTER making patches to nerf the area the community was desperately trying to tell them about.

What followed was a farcical video of the devs playing their own game, in which it became clear that they had NO idea what they were doing. They got destroyed by their own game. AFTER nerfing it to stack the odds in their favour.

The problems continued. They shut down the forums they clearly couldn't manage, shifting to Discord for community communication. More mismanagement. Less communication.

People kept leaving.

At time of writing, the average online players in this "MMO" is just over 3000. That isn't enough to populate TWO servers. There are currently 12 servers live. One of them has 11 players on it.

New World is in its death throes. It's still a fun little RPG to play co-op with friends if you don't care about the PVP or the MMO element of the game, but that's about it.

Tragic.
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5 Comments
Hordesaka 29 Sep, 2024 @ 2:06pm 
Perfect review!

I was a day one player, and I've tried to return a couple of times... Tried starting off with my character that was at end game at the time... Had absolutely no desire to continue after being in game for 30 mins.

Returned again to create a new character, just got past the tutorial and quit for the final time.

Game is boring as hell, wasted 300ish hours of my life on this game... I only check back on it every now and then cause it was special at the time. Just isn't for me anymore.
Gønzö 18 Sep, 2024 @ 4:00pm 
yeah it was pretty awful. during the first couple days it was a lot of fun. then guilds got nasty with each other and brought out the worst in people. then all the stupid bugs that broke the game. then all the stupid bots running around making crafting miserable. then they absolutely destroyed 2h axe / 2h hammer, which I get it needed some dmg numbers adjusted but like they absolutely neutered it and it was a great example of low skill ceiling but also effective in what it did. and then they just made that new spirit weapon so godly OP it was dumb. everyone just used that instead. worst devs in the history of the gaming world.
NSxProdigy16 15 Sep, 2024 @ 6:52pm 
"It became clear that the lead developers favoured certain weapon and armour combinations because it's what THEY played."

This is so accurate and highlights the developers lack of desire to balance the game and make it better. 100% agree

I spent 4000 hours and a ton more on the forums (that they never read) giving feedback before i realised the devs were making the game for themselves, not for the community. The majority of the devs were PvE players so they didn't understand PvP and didnt want to listen to the community when feedback was given (and asked for) about balance, even when it was gamebreaking like the more/less recent gear score exploit (for bonus damage reduction in wars). AGS doesnt deserve any player trust anymore especially if any of the lead NW devs are on those teams.
jchinckley 15 Sep, 2024 @ 8:58am 
The problem wasn't merely the updates. The problem was that they released the game 2 years too soon. Their graphics engine wasn't and still isn't in what can be considered a finished state. The game may improve drastically with the new expansion and this re-release thing currently happening, but getting it to be popular and successful at this point in time is an almost ridiculous endeavor because of all their disingenuous interactions (and lack thereof) with their player base and potential customers.
Sauceman 7 Sep, 2024 @ 11:05pm 
I left when I got mass reported and falsely banned and had to deal with indian support for 2 weeks before I got unbanned