New World Review in Progress

NEW WORLD REVIEW DRAFT IN PROGRESS

A game with enormous potential released before it was ready.

RUIN have been enthusiastic supports of New World since early Alpha. The Lumberyard engine is extremely impressive, used in the development of Star Citizen and has enormous potential for future games development.

The intent of this review is to provide a quick briefing on the RUIN communities experiences in New World and to shed some light on why the vast majority of the community has returned to World of WarcraftSWTORFFXIV and The Elder Scrolls Online.

The addition of end game content. specifically in open world and instanced is required to compete with established MMORPGS.

The general consensus regarding New World is that despite the obvious graphical and structural advantages of the Lumberyard engine, the lack of compelling end game content and casual PVP environments makes it difficult for New World to compete with more established MMORPGS. It is difficult to convince people to abandon their primary characters and time investment in their traditional games.

World PVP Feedback

One of RUIN‘s major issues has been the sparse and unimaginative open world PVP systems in New World. Compared to the Eternal Battlegrounds and Cirodiil in Guild Wars 2 and The Elder Scrolls: Online.

Our area of expertise resides primarily in large scale open world pvp battles:

Throughout our campaign on the YS campaign we have only had a few large scale battles. Compared to the near constant fighting in ESO, GW2 and other purpose built PVP zones hosting players from multiple servers the single server environment of New World struggles to compete to populate the world.

New World simply does not offer the depth and variety of content in the open world PVP environment that Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2 and even World of Warcraft provide. Recently even Star Wars the Old Republic has hosted open world battles of significant size.

New World has at best preliminary placeholder PVP quests and fortresses lacking functioning siege equipment in the open world and having only rudimentary capture mechanics. RUIN insists that more time and resources invested into studying PVP systems in Warhammer, Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls Online offer a strong starting point for future updates to New World.

Until those changes are implemented we expect the decline in popularity of New World PVP.

Cirodiil

Cirodiil, The Eternal Battlegrounds and other similar purpose built large scale PVP environments sport a significant spectrum of World PVP objectives such as keeps, towers and logistical hubs. All capturable and generally utilizing functioning siege and counter siege equipment. Systems of rewards for taking and holding territory, fighting enemy players etc all exist to encourage self sustaining PVP.

Failure to provide compelling rewards and reward systems for open world PVP must be addressed! Most MMORPGS offer a variety of systems to provide gear, currencies and the full spectrum of cosmetics.

Server Population Decline

Our New World server has been steadily loosing players over the last few months, now only hosting a few hundred players total during prime time. This makes it very difficult to compete with other PVP focused campaigns in purpose build campaign spaces like Cirodiil and the Eternal Battlegrounds of Guild Wars 2.

Eternal Battlegrounds

Lack of compelling open world locations, limited pvp objectives as well as only allowing small numbers of players to enter New World forts significantly erodes New World’s capacity for self sustaining battles.

INITIAL INTENTIONS: SURVIAL GAME – ROANOAKE

New World is at its core still the Hardcore Survival game initially intended to compete in the same space as Conan Exiles and other single server sandbox games.

The origins of New World as a hardcore colonial survival game with an abrupt about face to become a three faction fantasy MMORPG in its later stages of development. Initially, there were no factions and the structure and logic of New World much more closely resembled Conan Exiles.

No significant MMORPG content was initially available:

  • No battlegrounds (initially)
  • No raids.
  • No cross server support.

Limited end game, fundamental issues with the game engine and security, glitches, duping, economic issues, rampant exploits etc.

To New World’s credit reasonable rate of fixes. Tendency deploy major game changing balance fixes in a live environment.

In closing RUIN will continue to maintain a limited presence in New World on the YS server while keeping up to date on relevant expansions and content