Preparing for New World

Well folks it is time to talk about New World because next Tuesday it officially launches. I know I have not spoken about this in a really long time but there are several reasons for that. Firstly most of the time I have been playing New World has been under NDA. On my blog, I do my level best to abide by the non-disclosure agreements that are associated with closed Alpha and Beta testing. The negative about this however is it means that I largely just avoid talking about the game. In August of 2020, I wrote a few pieces on the game, because I was participating in a “preview” event that allowed public discussion. however, before that and for a long time after that event I was in private testing and simply could not talk about the game. Apart from that, I have remained fairly radio silent about the game other than occasionally mentioning that it was my intent to play it when it was released.

New World has been this interesting experiment because as games go it desperately needs to succeed. Amazon Game Studios has had a sequence of flops, and there is very much this feeling that New World has become this make-or-break scenario for the studio as a whole. As a result, this game has changed more than probably any Alpha/Beta test that I have been a part of. I greatly enjoyed the state of the game last August, and over time it has only gotten better and grown into more of a fleshed-out PVE experience. This has been somewhat to the chagrin of the PVP crowd, but time and time again they have proved not to be enough to make an MMORPG thrive. The game that exists today is this really enjoyable open-world sandbox of a game that lets you build your own class and more or less choose how you want to engage with it. I call it a sandbox, but it absolutely has theme park inspiration but seems to split the balance between the two constructs.

Why Are We Talking about this Now?

This game has been delayed so many times… enough that I legitimately cannot remember how many actual times the date has moved. It was supposed to launch last year, and then that date kept sliding into 2021 with August being another tentative date. When September was set, we were uncertain if it really would finally launch. However, based on this tweet on September 21st and the fact that they released the final list of official servers… I am assuming that all systems are go for launch. Now finally after all this time… I feel like I can reasonably work up some modicum of hype over it. This has been a bit of a hard game to love because traditionally you have a fixed point in time when you can expect it to be in your hands. With this game I legitimately halfway expected Amazon Game Studios to pull another launch date slip and tell us we were going to be getting it in October or November. Please note… I would have happily played the version we played back in August, but what they have added to the game since then is significant.

Amazon is taking this game launch seriously. If my math is correct there are 177 servers for the launch with 54 taking up NA East, 22 NA West, 64 Central Europe, 11 Australia, and 26 South America. That seems like a lot, but apparently the way the game is designed the servers align to specific themes which allows them to easily collapse them if need be to keep them feeling active. I mean this is a company that has the full support of AWS at their disposal, so I would hope they would figure out a way to quickly grow and shrink capacity. A good number of the names have been used before, which means they are likely going to have a baked-in player base that spent time on that server during alpha and beta tests. Other names are just going to be popular because of the name itself… like Valhalla is probably going to be a mess.

My friend Nimgimli raised an interesting point yesterday morning. He surmised that this is the first major Western MMORPG release since the impact of Streamers and their fanbases was a major disruptive force. He commented that in the past we would simply avoid whatever server that the GoonSquad was rolling on, and could feel relatively fine about that. I would also note that I used to track where the broad groups of noted Everquest Assholes like Fires of Heaven were rolling, but the concept is still valid. Instead of one large army that you have to avoid, you have a significant number of smaller pools of potentially awful experiences to avoid. That said Asmongold chose to roll on the FFXIV server I have played on since the launch of A Realm Reborn and the impact has been negligible other than general server congestion. However, if such things concern you greatly some excellent soul has created a tracker to keep tabs on which Streamers are rolling on which servers, credit to Scopique for pointing this out.

Where Are You Going?

After some thought, I have decided to saddle my horse to a group that Grakulen is involved with. A number of other Twitter-folk are there like Namaslay, Broximar, Accomp, and a whole slew of others that I am just not thinking of at this very moment. By a vote of the community, we are going to Minda which is a NA East server, and choosing to go with the Syndicate aka Team Purple aka The Illuminati. Marauders would be my first personal choice, largely because my favorite color is green and I think their custom gearsets look badass, but I am also fine with Purple which is my second favorite color. Basically, I was fine with being anything but Covenant… aka the religious zealots and that faction that more or less represents the Inquisition.

This isn’t my community and as such, I am hesitant to directly link the details in a public blog post. However given that I have already drafted several friends to the cause and they have been on board with this, I have a feeling that all are going to be welcome within reason. If you are interested in this expedition to the new world, hit me up in private and I can share the details of how to join the social infrastructure of this group. So to recap in boldface:

• Server: Minda – NA East
• Faction: Syndicate – Team Purple

Why Not Stalwart/Greysky?

One of the things that I have become known for over the years is leading a bunch of groups as we venture forth into new games. Generally speaking these either have fallen under the banner of House Stalwart, the guild I formed in World of Warcraft, or have been associated with Greysky Armada the Free Company I helped found in Final Fantasy XIV. When folks see me aligning with a game, they expect there to be a guild I am recruiting for associated with it. That is still more or less the same thing here, and I am always going to be more than happy to recruit my friends along for the journey. The key difference being I am just a visitor in the New World community and am in no way associated with its leadership. I figure at some point I am going to get asked the question by my loyal friends who will follow me to hell and back… why I didn’t just start my own thing.

New World has a lot of systems that benefit greatly from a large assemblage of players all pulling in the same direction. There is a territory control mechanic that comes with a significant number of benefits for the players associated with the company that controls said territory. Additionally, there are just a number of perks associated with being in a large guild in the first place. Everything in New World is player-driven, which means there are no vendors and everything is going to come from the labor of some player out in the world providing it. In this scenario, it is extremely beneficial to be part of a larger community that can pool resources and my hope is that by joining an existing initiative everyone is going to benefit from having a larger pool of potential supporters.

Lastly and this one is extremely key… I go into New World knowing it is going to be a secondary game for me. I enjoy it greatly, but I also enjoy it when I am playing it in a very low-key manner. Wherever I ended up, I did not want my activity… or potential lack thereof to make or break the guild as a whole. I know I have a large number of goals still looming in Final Fantasy XIV and I also know Endwalker launches in November which is going to consume my focus and attention. Joining with a large group of other players means I don’t have to feel guilty when I flit in and out of this game as my schedule allows. The game that I enjoy the most is casually roaming around doing PVE content and trade skills, and I feel like I can lend my hand as a seasoned MMO tank while also maybe helping out on large crafting initiatives.

When Does This Happen?

I’ve stated this a few times but New World launches next Tuesday, September 28th. We don’t know for certain when exactly the official launch time is but based on past experience with the Alpha and Beta processes… the servers oftentimes actually come online a little bit early. When I hear an official start time I am sure I will share it publicly. You can purchase the game from most of the usual suspects, and I start out as having my preorder through Amazon directly, but being completely honest… they don’t handle digital preorders in the best manner. I ultimately refunded and purchased through Steam where it has been a seamless process of getting into the more public testing events. Obviously as a result I would suggest going with Steam, but your mileage may vary. From what I am hearing we should be able to start the preload process at some time on the 27th.

I am going, to be honest, the experience is not going to be for everyone. However, if you find yourself enjoying games like Valheim, then I think you will probably dig New World. My goal is to get in and work on crafting because I want to largely be self-sufficient when it comes to armor and weapons. I am going to be playing a Sword and Board tank wearing full heavy armor, which means I am going to heavily focus on weapon and armor crafting. I am not entirely decided, but more than likely my secondary weapon is going to be the Two-handed Axe that they recently added to the game. However, it is equally likely that I might go Two-handed Hammer for the stun capabilities, which would allow me to also be somewhat of a PVP tank. I’ve refined this playstyle over the course of several tests and have honed in on exactly how I want to play the character.

Like I said above, if you are interested in coming along for this journey hit me up on the side and I will share the community information with you. Now that we have a confirmation of the date I am really starting to get excited. I’ve not really participated much in the last few tests because I did not want to wear that new shine off the gameplay experience. Hope to see you all on Aeternum.