For years now, Blizzard Entertainment has dominated the MMO playing field with its popular MMO, World of Warcraft.
But consumer giants, Amazon have created its first gaming studio to create New World, an MMO worthy of taking on WoW.
Starting your journey in new world
The first thing I will say about starting New World is to take the character creation seriously. I assumed I would be able to change my appearance later in the game, but now I’m stuck with the love child of Ed Sheeran and Mickey Mouse.
Like many other MMO’s, New World starts you out in a single-player instance. This acts as a small tutorial walking you through the basics of the mechanics of the game.
It’s large enough that you feel like you know what you’re doing but not too long that it becomes annoying.
Once you have passed the game’s tutorial, you suddenly realize just how large the world is. With more than one starting town that new players are spread out among, it can, at times, feel overwhelming for new players.
Fighting for your faction
New World is broken up into three factions, each of them fighting for their own cause. Each with their own separate text channels for war planning and private faction chats.
Having these separate factions is what sets New World apart from many of the other MMO games out there.
Before long, you will be tasked with speaking to each of the faction representatives in the town you start in. You’ll be given a choice to join any one of the three factions.
Once you have joined a faction, the whole game opens up to you, allowing you to join a company, which are essentially guilds, tied to the faction that you choose.
Skills and classes in New world
New World doesn’t feature set classes that you get to choose from the start of the game like many other MMO’s out there. Instead, your class is built up based on the weapons you choose and the skills that you bundle with those weapons.
Slide for weapon skills
Slide for weapon abilities
The more you use a weapon, the more it levels up and then offers the opportunity to unlock new abilities, which can be mixed from both ability types.
New World’s Environment and Gameplay
While I have seen better-looking games, I must admit, for an MMO, New World does look stunning. I often find myself atop a waterfall, looking over at the lush scenery.
The map is spread out into regions. Many of them can be conquered by your faction and then taxed by the controlling company (guild) that took over the region.
This makes for some extremely interesting gameplay, as each faction gets perks for owning each settlement. But the company in charge get even more perks, making everyone fight for dominance.
The game also adds some other interesting dynamics with its unique crafting perks. Each town will need to be upgraded and maintained by the owning faction, which includes upgrading the crafting stations there.
So while you can quickly get your gathering skills up by going out and farming herbs or mining iron, you are restricted on what you can create based on the level of the crafting station that has been set up in the town.
New World Review Summary
For one of their first games, Amazon Games have done a fantastic job of creating an MMO filled with life and activities.
Almost everything you do in-game levels up a skill somewhere. Every skill and profession can be worked towards mastering, making it very easy to shift your focus at any given time.
While I understand why some games might restrict profession for solo players, or players with a smaller company or group of friends, it makes sense to be able to work towards all professions equally.
Although there have been issues with servers, lag, and server transfers it’s easy to look past these by immersing yourself in a truly awesome game.
The developers seem to have struck a perfect balance of PVP and PVE, meaning that players of either preference have equal amounts of activities to enjoy.
While I have no doubt that there will be more issues to endure, if you’re happy to hold out for the fix, New World is absolutely an MMO worth playing.
Microtransactions seem to be becoming a frequent part of modern games these days, and Amazon isn’t known to shy away from making extra cash. Thankfully in New World, these just come in the form of skins, which are in no way game-changing.
Players are able to purchase new emotes, weapon and armor skins, home decorations, and much more. This includes seasonal and limited edition items from the store.
While I have personally been very addicted to New World these past couple of weeks, it’s undeniable that some of the bugs that came out with the game’s release should have been QA tested better and avoided.Â
A great example of these bugs is the fact that you cannot write a company message of the day. Well, you can, as long as you unbind all your keys in the settings, as pressing certain keys will trigger an action removing you from the MOD screen.
Hopefully, the launch bugs will get fixed soon and will make way for a truly great game, with the potential to develop into something special over the years.
While New World does feature most of the game mechanics that you would expect from a modern MMO, there are also some that are missing, which I would have preferred to see in New World.
A good example of this is the guild bank from WoW, at the moment, companies need more ways to help each other and interact, adding a place to deposit items, for anyone in the company to collect, would be a start towards this.
Bugs or not, I will be returning to New World time and time again, and cannot wait to see what’s next for the game, and Amazon Game’s upcoming second title too.
