In a nut shell, New World is TERRIBLE (IMO). Character customization is just bad (limited customization for one but also really terrible looking face designs to boot). Character movement, skill animations and combat are also terrible (it doesn’t even feel impactful)… notice the key operative word? TERRIBLE.
The UI in this client is also one of the worst around (no right-click to equip items), no standard mini map (they decided a linear directional compass type of setup at the top is a good idea), the chat “window” is an abomination. They keybind “E” as the default action to interact with NPC and drops? Tab for Inventory? Yes, I know the keybinds are configurable; this is about muscle memory and deviating (by default), to something different for no real apparent reasoning. The game world looks alright but that’s about it.
And this costs $39.99? And you have all of these jokers turning all of the delays by other games (like Elyon and Lost Ark), as being due to wanting to avoid launching at the same time as this steaming pile of crap? Sure, Kakao sort of alluded to the crowded schedule of launches as being one reason for the delay (though the bulk of the reasoning is due to a change in the business model, and having to revert all of the tuning changes in the game including those nefarious QoL and convenience ones so that they can later up sell those items in the cash shop).
I’m no fan of how Elyon turned out, but it’s a far more refined game (just not worth the $30 they had planned to originally charge for the base game). By comparison, Lost Ark would’ve been easily worth $30 if they had decided to go with a buy to play business model. I’m not a fan of their decision to go with an isometric camera since it really eliminated the full exploration potential, but it’s a far more fleshed out game compared to Elyon or New World.
Open betas nowadays is more or less a PR and marketing stunt; an all out effort to sell potential players on the game. The early game play is supposed to be a hook (anything, whether it be story, impactful combat, some interesting mechanic, a combination of them or all). New World had none of that. I played until I hit the first town, and logged out (I didn’t even get far enough to encounter the pleasure of being ganked by higher level players camping those areas), and uninstalled.
It’s just “unbelievable” (yes, I am being sarcastic by including the word in quotes) that this is Amazon Games own internal effort; a subsidiary game development studio of a company with the resources to make something much better than this piece of hot trash that has been delayed several times, and is now slated to launch in a few weeks (September 28th).
