New World
New World feels like (I could be wrong) one of the only big budget MMOs to come out since the big MMO clone era of 2005-2012, so it was worth a shot. I played several of the betas and wasn't impressed, but heard that they'd added more PvE content and changed the focus of the game around in the year prior to release, so decided to give it a go. In one way that's a good thing, but equally I think it shows the key issue; Amazon have no experience making games and they don't know what they want this to be. Aside from all the other pros and cons, it basically comes down to "Even though Amazon can make a functioning game, they don't know how to give it a direction or balance it"
Pros
- No tab targeting
- Nice sound effects, weapons feel good
- Very pretty
- Huge number of crafting professions and skills
- You can own up to 3 houses (but they're taxed every week based on who owns the town they're in)
- Your equipment weight affects your ability to dodge, and how long effects apply to you
- Combat is fun. Weapon types have individual talent trees and abilities
- No classes. Abilities are based on your weapons
Cons
- Fairly simplistic character creator
- You can only cap the FPS at 30 or 60, not 120 or 144
- Can't change appearance after starting (not even hair colour)
- You can't use modifier keys for key bindings
- Really low framerate in towns, even with only a dozen people around (2080Ti)
- No borderless window mode
- From what I can tell, the very limited end game is about PvP. It's a faction war, and there's no mechanic to stop one faction from controlling the entire world. There are 6 dungeons.
- Everything is taxed by the player-owned government of each town. Crafting, refining, trading and owning property
- You can't swim - your character just walks under the surface of the water
- No subscription, so there's a cash shop that's going to have more than cosmetics in it later on
So while I actually am enjoying the levelling experience so far, I feel like I don't want to put any more time into it simply because I know that when I hit max level, the game falls apart. The economy is reportedly broken - with people having so many surplus rare resources that nothing high-end sells, and the only thing that does sell is tier 1 resources from the starting zones.
If the game is still running in 6 months, maybe come back and give it a go then - but I'd say be wary for now.
Bugs
- No audio in the first cutscene
- Moving about can be clunky. Stopping to pick up a herb might push your character past it before he stops to bend down
- In the first town I came to, the town goal to "Improve Lifestyle" was 100.6% complete