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Build A Deeper World
Fans of the MMORPG genre have made it clear: New World needs to beef up its worldbuilding, its storytelling, and its variety. If these updates truly do what they promise, New World just might be on the path to redemption for players that were let down by the unimpressive world.
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Improve New World’s Leveling Pace
Some players were shocked when they started the game and realized just how grindy the leveling in New World is. This has been a massive complaint, with leveling skills taking days and weeks of playtime to be able to access higher-level content. Because of this barrier, many players likely dropped the game before they’d even begun. Another common pain point has been the lack of mounts in the game, causing players to run on foot between widely-spaced landmarks. While there is a fast-travel system, it’s only available when a player is within a fast-travel waypoint like a shrine or settlement. Players can also warp back to a designated inn once per real-world hour. Still, the constant requirement to be trekking across the map has caused a lot of frustration, with a big portion of the community demanding mounts for higher-level players.
The new test server update doesn’t appear to address any of players’ concerns with the pace of leveling New World skills like logging, engineering, or combat (which is arguably the more pressing concern for players). It does, however, seem to have introduced a sprint mechanic. Players’ sprint speed is increased by 10% when traveling on roads in the test server, which may alleviate some of the irritation being caused by the lack of mounts.
Repairs To New World’s Endgame
For New World players that were able to overlook some of the early difficulties with leveling and get their characters in the high-level range of 50–60, their efforts were not rewarded with excellent endgame content. Instead, its almost exclusively PvP content where progress is dependant on the player faction’s success against other real-world players.
While the idea of competing against other gamers is nothing new or shocking, New World’s faction system has become extremely unbalanced, especially with the mass exodus of half the player base. Many servers have every single area on the map controlled by one faction with the two competing groups not standing a fighting chance. It varies from server to server, and for a player who made an “incorrect” faction choice for their server, they just might find themselves unable to progress due to the overwhelming opposing force. The test server has announced some minor changes to PvP, but there was no mention of endgame. If the faction system doesn’t get some rebalancing and the endgame doesn’t see some flexibility, New World may lose its most loyal players as soon as they hit level 60.
While the Public Test Realm may indicate a step in the right direction, it also may not be enough. As a standalone application that doesn’t allow players to use their existing characters, the extra effort might be too much to ask of gamers that already have one foot out the door. The base game needs improvements in order to bring back lapsed players, and the changes need to be soon if New World wants to keep players that are already questioning their commitment.
New World is available now on PC.
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