By some miracle, I was able to download New World and have it complete on release day (even with my 5mb/s speeds) – but because of the nature of the extra long queues, I didn’t make my character until the second day of release. Not really a big deal, but the guild / company I had signed up for filled up and had no more room for me because I couldn’t rush and get into game. I took that as a sign that perhaps it was not a good fit (the guild, that is) and joined up with some friends who are playing casually.
I haven’t seen much of the game yet, but I already have thoughts that this game simply isn’t going to work for me. First of all, combat is pretty rough on my hands. It’s a game where I need to mouse click a lot (where as with BDO combat, I can just hold down the mouse buttons and then ping my combo buttons while I’m holding them down). I think it might be easier with a controller, but for now after an hour or so my hands hurt. Crafting is neat and pretty intuitive, you go out harvesting, process those harvests, and craft items from that. As you get higher skills you can craft and harvest more items. Towns contain craft machines and they have tiers, so I assume the top tier stuff is going to be in dangerous lands that you might not initially have access to.
Everyone keeps telling me that the game is beautiful – but honestly, coming from Black Desert Online, the graphics are not really something that pull to me. There’s a lot of the main faction colours (purple, green, yellow), the name tags are distracting, and because it’s an MMO of course there are some.. unique people out there. I’ve seen more offensive names than I care to admit. I understand that this is a mostly pvp-centric game (granted the pvp is opt-in) which tends to suggest a certain type of gamer playing, but it surprised me none the less.
The game is not bad but I was already happily playing an MMO (or two, if you want to count FFXIV) when it released, so in order to pull me away from those games where I was perfectly content, it has to REALLY be something special – and sad to say, I’m just not finding that yet. I do plan to continue to play and give it a fair shot, after all two sessions is hardly enough time to really decide when it comes to a game like this, but as of right now I’m not really seeing the staying power – and it has nothing to do with the queues, that’s just a part of a new game release, and waiting to log in doesn’t actually bother me since I am lucky enough to simply be able to plan ahead.
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!
I find the combat more comfortable than BDO. It’s closer to Valheim, which I rate as the best action combat I’ve ever played. The graphics were absolutely superb in alpha – the best I have ever seen in terms of creating a totaly convincing natural environment. It was significantly more impressive than BDO at that point, on my machine at least. With all the people running around, though, I can’t have the quality at higher settings which means it looks just okay. If I had a better machine, I think it would look similar to how it did in alpha but I’d need to go into the wilds away from people to be sure.
You can turn the names down until you see very few of them but I haven’t found a way to turn them off altogether. The legacy of the original conception as as a PvP game is evident in things like that. I would expect they would add more toggles over time to make things more suitable for the primarily- PvE game I would bet it ends up becoming.
Have you played BDO with remastered graphics? There’s just no comparison at all IMO, and the character models (especially female) in New World are … significantly lacking.
The combat is difficult for me because of my multiple sclerosis, in BDO I can hold down the right or left mouse button and tap the keys I need for combos, but in New World I have to constantly hit the mouse buttons, putting more strain on my fingers / muscles. It’s painful after a short time. This is probably very specific to me, in BDO it flows, and you feel godlike as you move from circle to circle of mob encounters.
I was in one of the NDA’d alphas (long enough ago that having 100 players online in it was a lot…) and while I’m fully aware the game is completely different now, I still just can’t bring myself to even want to play it again. It wasn’t bad back then, but there just wasn’t anything about it that made me want to log in to it rather than my other games. From what people are saying about it from the beta and preview, that opinion hasn’t changed, so I don’t think it’s likely I’ll be trying this one out as a result.
Yeah, I’m really not a fan of the Company logo on top of everyone’s head.
I’m mostly enjoying the game, but as a casual person that’s not going to get into the whole territory control thing I wonder how much of the game is really meant for me.
It will also be my second (or third) MMO and I don’t know if it’ll hold me enough to keep me from just playing those other games.