New World: Fun, but does it live up to the hype?

I’m not one to jump on bandwagons, but with approximately 150% of the people I follow on Twitter jumping into the New World, I really just had to find out what all the fuss was about.

I was very much impressed with New World’s character creation. While the look of your character doesn’t have the fine tuning one has come to expect from triple-A titles, the large number of classes (called “Backgrounds” in New World) available is fairly impressive. Combined with the significant number of “Starsigns” that grant additional abilities or boost those of your class, there’s 108 different background/starsign combinations available. You will likely never meet someone with an identical build to your own.

I’m sure the streamers are already min-maxing the best builds, but I have tried out a few, and they all are very viable in the dangerous world.

With your character made, you find yourself waking up alone on a skiff, being shoved toward land by the relentless tides. It’s clear from the violence of the waves that once you beach, you will not soon be leaving again.

Now that we’re in the game, the graphics are simple, but functional. Until you actually land the skiff, you are free to sail wherever you like. Once you make landfall, though, leaving again will cost you — if there were anywhere to go. Thankfully, the sea is relatively free of monsters.

I washed up near the small village of Asterwell. The town by night was quiet, with few up and about. The one place with any life or light at all was the tavern, from which scattered tunes, sung drunkenly, escaped the unshuttered windows. The town lord held court inside, and a merchant hawked his wares along the wall across from the roaring fire.

I entered. The room fell silent; everyone stared.

“I have just washed ashore to your island,” I asked, in the silence. “I was told someone would be giving me starting armor and explaining my mission and about the PvP and stuff?”

Sensing my confusion — almost terror, to be honest — a retired sea captain beckoned me over and lays out the land for me. Talk to people. Do their quests. Gain their trust. And the land — and I — will prosper.

Okay. I could do that.

The world was beautiful, but deadly. And though I saw no other players, and did not engage in PvP (having apparently chosen a low population server), I still had my fill of adventure. As my skills grew, so did the challenge. From clearing a house of rats to clearing a large dungeon filled with fiery bats, undead harpoonists, enraged skeletons and the occasional bandit — it was a wonder I survived it all.

I nearly didn’t — survive, that is. I was wounded, bleeding, infected, growing insane from the horrors I’d seen, out of arrows, out of potions, with only carrots and deer meat to give me enough health for one more turn, surrounded by enemies but the dungeon exit in sight… If you die in New World, you are dead and must start a new character from scratch.

Like any roguelike, enemies only move when you move. Drinking potions or eating food doesn’t take any time at all. You have time to decide whether to attempt to run away, shoot a frost or fire barrel, or try to channel enemies into a narrow corridor so you face them only one at a time. You have as much time as you need. They won’t attack until you do something.

Potions are plentiful and cheap. One potion turns you into a bear, and now that pack of enemies doesn’t seem so bad. One potion makes your arrows deadly. Potions can make a tricky boss fight trivial.

Moving about drains food and stamina. Stamina, at least, tends to come back rapidly once you stop moving, but health and food require a friendly tavern or a dangerous camp. If you truly want to become self-sufficient, rank up the Wilderness skill, and you’ll be able to camp and hunt with ease, while avoiding fights you would rather not fight.

The sheer number of skills make leveling up a choice between a number of good choices. Bravery directly increases survival. Meditation, resistances. I’ve chosen to focus on Thievery and Swiftness, but that is leaving me vulnerable and low on health. The difficulty of finding arrows means it’s hard to stay safely out of range — but even though I buy every town’s complete supply, they will be gone quickly.

I haven’t yet seen any of New Worlds’ vaunted crafting, but the Alchemist’s Tower is a good place to sell junk and get special potions on the cheap. Potions are key.

So, quick reaction: great graphics, great class selection, washing up on an island is an opening I have seen before, but I’ll go along with it. I did enjoy the nautical theme quite a bit.

Cons: not really much of an MMO. Was not able to try the PvP. The map seems small, much smaller than I’d read.

Still, it really is good to see a new MMO launch to such large acclaim. I am very happy to see players focusing on the gameplay rather than meaningless tech stats like resolution or frames per second. I expect Amazon’s New World to do quite well, if my experiences tonight were any guide.

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If you want me to know this was NOT AMAZON’S NEW WORLD, yes, I know that. This game is actually an excellent new rogue-like in early access on Steam called TERRA RANDOMA, and is currently on sale. I streamed my time with the game tonight on Twitch, if you want to see how it plays. I hope the actual New World game does well, but between FFXIV and DCUO, I have quite enough MMOs to play and don’t need another one. I apologize to the makers of TERRA RANDOMA, who probably think this post was stupid. Yeah, it was.