First Impressions

[Gortex]

I am interested to see what the many people who tired the game out over the final beta thought of the game with some playing a good deal more than myself so probably can give a better insight.

My first impression was wow this looks amazing and excited to try it out and eager to get through the usual tutorial about how to jump attack and use wasd keys. I had some pros and cons about the game as expected and am hopeful they can improve on the cons and make this a great game. I did not get around to trying out any of the PVP, Dungeons or much group quest or faction stuff so a lot I have yet to come across.

Pros:
Graphics - I thought were really nice and several times I stopped to go wow this is cool.
Sound and music - this was also really well put together and added to the ambiance of the whole experience.
Quests - straight forward and a good learning and levelling progress as you advanced your character. I also especially liked the quest tracker and working with the map so I could find out where to go. Unlike good old wow early days where you spent ages trying to find out where to go or what to.
Map - I found the map was very detailed and easy to use, once I got my head around a few of the options, and really liked the ability to properly zoom in on it to check on locations and details like roads etc.
Crafting - Probably the best part of the game in my opinion and there is so many different areas and depth to it in which to explore with no real restriction on trying everything out. I felt like I only scratched the surface of it and am looking forward to investigating further. I also like how they interlock with each other, like the Metal working and in order to make armour you need linin so it encourages you to work on multiple skills not just 1.
Combat - Simple, straight forward and good for a beginner and as I played it I found it to become more complex, you needed to mix it up with dodging, blocking and striking with having to time all these things in order to minimise the amount of damage I took and maximise my attack. I tried out tank / defence class (which I plan to play in main game) and it took some getting used to and felt much more involved than say other mmos I have tried.
Gear/Items - I really like how your not limited to just one type of class as it were and how the class system is linked to the weapons and not the character. This is good as you can do some tanking one minute and the switch weapon and go do some dps. Sure if you want to specialise in one area to max it out then you can and probably should at some point, which will then dictate what type of gear you need to have or focus on. But it does not mean you have to. If you want to be a magic user in heavy armour then sure why not, it may not be the best way to play the class but it does not stop you.
Freedom of choice - As already mentioned in the gear section and crafting, I like how your not restricted to just one or two things and that the game tells you how you should play it. I just like how you can go and do what you want, when and where. There is no restriction on me going exploring the map, wearing what gear I want and doing what ever quest I want. Sure my choices might end up me getting killed quickly but then that is my choice and not the games strict paths that you get in so many games. I also like how if you do make a bad choice the game does not overly punish you for it.
community play - Really good to play with lots of members of the community again and how easy this game makes it to do so.


Cons:
Character creation - Odd one to start with, but only the choice of human to play and nothing else. Which I get because they did not want all the fantasy races in there, but then the problem is everyone looks pretty much the same. Like with everyone one running around at the start in a version or brown clothing and a flat hat on. As I progressed levels to the mid teens I was hoping for big differences and there were some, but this was mainly due to the faction you joined or the type or armour you had on. I did several quests with say 3x other players and all casters with staffs running around and I could not tell the difference between them except a name tag.
Game sound - This worked fine until I got into combat with 2 or more enemies and at which point the combat sound complete disappeared which was most annoying when tanking and trying to time my blocks etc. Sure this is probably just a bug, but quite a big one I feel. I had the same issue when mining some iron node and some guy came up also to mine the same thing. As soon as he started hitting it sound effects stopped.
Quests - All the quests for PVE stuff were pretty much the same, go collect 5 of these or go kill 10 of these. Sure this is an mmo, and there is grind in every mmo along with theses types of quests, but they seem to be the same type for all different versions like the main story line, daily faction or location quests. It feels like there is very little variety here, and almost as if the devs put this as a much less priority part of the game and rushed it out as something we need to add. Hopefully in time this gets better and as we progress in levels or more likely have to wait for an expansion to add some depth and variety to it.
PVE Main story line - For me this felt pretty weak and rather unengaging with very little of it being covered or explained with what was actually going on. Hopefully as I get higher level this will get better but from what I found this area and indeed the lore of the game was lacking. It almost feels like they wanted to create a set type of mmo based for PVP and faction control, and then when they found after a questionnaire was done that players would want more PVE they just hired some guy to come up with something and put little effort into it. Now I use wow here as an example which I personally think is one of the best mmo games in terms of lore and story telling, sure some expansions are lacking considerably more than others, but on the whole you can get lost in the whole world along with the plots, twists and detail of the game. New World feels a long way behind this and as I have said a long way second priority to the game and I think this shows in many sections of the game.
Gathering - Now I have mentioned the good things about the crafting in the game which is excellent, but the gathering and farming of materials is tricky and in some cases dame right annoying. I personally do not mind the grind of having to go get stuff like minerals, gems etc, and I don't really mind the challenge to go find them. However I found that depending where your starting area was you had good access to some resource and not to others. Sure I get this and encourages us to explore more, however when it comes to making basic starter level things that need different skills to make (like my example of armour in metal making needing linin to do it) then make it at least possible to get the resource in the area you start in. Instead I had to cross zones to go find hemp for fibre in order to make linin which meant going through an area which was way higher than my level and more likely to get killed and have to respawn back at the town and start the run again. Drunken Zombie had the same issue with the area he was in and not having much access to ore. Now I get making it hard to find high end stuff but simple starting level items should be easier to get to make the very basic gear.
Combat - I mentioned the pros but the cons are also there for this, every weapon class has basically a soft attack, a hard attack, a block with then 3 special attacks and that is it. Very little variety or thought for each class. Even the character actions and stance for each attack seemed to be the same to me.

Am sure there are lots of other things I could mention but lets here what you all think. I will still be playing the game on release so bring it on.

[Chaosphere]

Great write up, I think you've pretty much nailed it.

I'm looking forward to more crafting and exploration, and yes hoping to get involved in some of the PvP stuff, which seemed pretty cool from first glance.
The combat seemed decent enough to me, and I'm hoping the different build options lead to enough variety to stop it getting stale too soon.

What is of course key is how much content there is towards the higher end, and how the game is supported after launch. Time will tell!

[albert]

Indeed, great write up and from a seasoned MMO player it helps folks like me who quite frankly have never even logged onto an MMO like this before, what I should expect.

The problems, concerns I faced during the beta were:
1) Horrible weapon change fluidity and respoonse.
2) Out of sync sounds.
3) Unclear effects of the support powers my healer build was actually achieving. By that I mean did I actually buff my team mates, or indeed perhaps the enemy.
4) From 3) magic weapn use was pretty difficult to guage.
5) PvP, I did it once, I got targeted, I died. It felt like mob rule. Or perhaps there were players who actually knew what they were doing.
6) Story started promising, then the never ending hermit thing seems to dominate, which I hope leads to more immersive lore, but I fear it just leads to the unlock of corruption nodes and that'll be it.

20 hours down the line, I'm still prepared to be patient and hope that the picture on Steam where there are some really nasty badass looking characters on the left side, are actaully in game and can be interacted with.

[Gunda]

agreed great write up, but there is something about this game that goes beyond the standard quests and gathering etc, there is a feel of faction pride when you start to get involved in the forts and wars and going some pvp quests (which yes Sith they do tell you its turning your pvp flag on when you except them).  I don't know what it is but again this game just keeps making me want to log back in as soon as i can.

The out of sync sounds was not there in closed beta so i'm hoping that being a new bug they will quash it before launch.

The gathering of resources is slow to get started with as the flint tools are horrid and I would always recommend getting iron tools made ASAP... and the ingame map does a fairly decent job if you look at the map closely it has an index which tells you what resources you are likely to find.. or you can use a nice map like : https://www.newworld-map.com/#/ and you go into filters turn everything off except the resource you are looking for.  Each starting zone has hemp(fibers) and Iron, there should be no need to go through higher level zones.. though i will say "first light" is not so good for hemp...

[albert]

I spawned in first light and quickly ventured out and found hemp. I think the resource gathering is acceptable. The only things that are a challenge in terms of progression are the specialist crafts like Alchemy and Jewelcraft. They require level 50 to craft the parts to make cut gems to put into rings and ammulets and get a real buff and the levelling is super slow for both. I had plenty of all items when the beta ended including lots of quality gems and even some purple rare bait for fishing which get you level 4 chests as they are super high chance bait.

[SithAfrikaan]

I spent enough time with this previous beta to reach level 14 playing VERY casually. I played in a previous beta, as well as the original Alpha.
TL:DR - I don't recommend buying the game in its current state.
Now the long version...

Gortex's post covers everything about THE GAME, so this is my completely subjective view based only on the fact that I am like a runaway freight train when it comes to trying new games, but of the myriad I have played, my main stays are always MMOs with a LONG history in WoW, Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls Online.
I'm not going to draw any comparisons to those other games because the post would be endless, instead I would summarise that NEW WORLD feels unlike most of those MMO's and I think this is a great thing.
The action combat comes closest to Guild Wars / Elder Scrolls but it feels a LOT more snappy, and like actual combat rather than a tab target wait for mob to die so typical of this genre.

Onto my experience with it!


For me the bugs were plentiful and recurring and sometimes very funny, like in the example above, mid-animation for some attack (possibly blocking?) Myopics well timed invite to trade froze my character in time unable to do anything until I had accepted or declined the offer, literally frozen in place as if I had come to clash with Myopic.
A small bug but jarring and weird to say the least!

The next 3 images are just to echo with some pics that the game really is graphically beautiful. I was able to get 89fps consistently running the game at "HIGH" detail level on my worn out 1080ti.




Moonlight to water reflections to misty valleys and everything in between, it doesn't feel dated at all, especially not for an MMO, and with only games like the CPU and GFX Killer Black Desert Online as a modern comparison for graphically high end MMO New World looks great at all times.

The part of the game I enjoyed the most was entirely by accident. It prompted me on a story quest to pick up a fishing rod and to fish, and after that WHENEVER passing almost anything akin to a puddle it would prompt me on screen that if I happened to hit F3 I could fish right now, and just like the rest of the distractingly good features mentioned in other posts like harvesting and hunting in general, I found myself distractedly venturing across the map on a wild fishing jaunt I'd never really got into in other mmo's for various reasons. Here, fishing is insanely simple, yet has a layer of complexity with various bait types, hotspots and locations that makes it an entire mini-game in its self and I began to realise early on that fishing up prizes is lucrative if you hate the mining grind.
However, fishing also comes with the most annoying bug in the game for me, that I sincerely hope is fixed before the launch since it really has no place in a late stage developed-getting-ready-to-launch MMO, that is, that whatever you catch on your line creates water ripples, which are attached to what is on the line, so when your character picks up the catch and holds it up triumphantly it is still rippling the water now in mid-air... I've never been so annoyed and so thrown out of immersion as this bug, its not sometimes, its every time, and as you will see in at least one screencap, I managed to hit infinite ripples and this smashed my frame rate from 89-90 to a whopping 20-25 fps (40fps in the screencap but it was all over the place)

And infinite ripples:

.
I've got a picture of one of the boxes of loot but my second monitor meant that subsequent pics got capped on the wrong screen because of a fullscreen bug throwing the game into a not windowed-windowed mode (UGH) so you'll have to take my word for it lol


Other items I looted were in no particular order but always averaging at "some ingots, some gems, some item, gold"
Platinum ingots x9
GEMS some blue, one purple but I cannot remember the names of these
Gold Ingots x5
Crafting material

I met up with SJ and we impromptu ended up traipsing through the countryside doing some fishing quests and then just fishing in general, all the while dodging skull-level mobs and seeing plenty of beautiful ruins etc on our journey.
This social aspect of the game is what I think is the single best part of the whole experience, did we progress in the game in any way? Not really, I mean we fished, and we gained fishing exp and some loot presumably worth something to someone but in terms of levelling progression I'm confident that fishing is the SLOWEST earner in this respect, by the end of my play time I had caught 31 fish I had possibly gained less than half a level and that was most likely because we were handing in the fishing starter quests. The game conveniently (inconveniently) placed our turn ins absolutely kilometres away, this meant mindless running across the map only to accidentally get killed by a skull-level mob nearby the quest return, and without a camp site placed nearby meant re-running that distance. Which honestly could have been more annoying, but why place the quest return that far away anyway?

I like how the combat feels, I love the addicting nature of the harvesting and crafting and wilderness'y feel of being a survivor in this world. Except to echo what some others have said, I feel and look just like every single other character in the game I followed some other character into a forest thinking I was with Myopic only to find out they were identical looking and I had to run the opposite direction to catch up. By the time I saw Jewels I was shocked to see a different armour.
I've said I love the combat but I mean literally just how it feels, the animations are top notch the moves feel like they have weight and the graphic effects on the healing staff and skills look great, but I cannot believe that an MMO is coming out with so few weapon choices and such clear winners for any real advantage in combat, I'm looking at you spear + hatchet! And I know you can argue here that other mmo's have exactly the same weapon choices or less even, but for whatever reason here it seemed, at least to me that it is baffling that I cannot use a hatchet and shield together but I can carry the shield on my back just to get those shoulders working + and make my characters weight higher. The frost gauntlet I spent VERY little time with, only a single skill unlocked and I think this looked and sounded and felt awesome but I felt like I was literally throwing snowballs at the enemies, doing absolutely negligible damage and just immediately switching back to my kill-stick the hatchet CHOP CHOP DEAD. The hatchet was so effective I took the first two passives and no skills and used it to buffer anything that got to close when using the healing staff.

I can't comment on the PVP gameplay, my only experience of it was not reading quest text and having it turned on automatically only to be ganked by 4 players waiting at the objective, I'm not interested in PVP AT ALL
I can't comment on the end-game gear looks, or loot experience in general, only on the exciting loot I got from fishing which was extremely more interesting to any loot I had got up to that point.
I can't believe the game has an open mic feature, I think its ridiculous and albeit possible to mute all in-game mics (which I did) I think episodes of the DJ on the well however funny are just actually an annoying immersion breaking system with huge room for horrible stuff to come over mics.
I can't comment on any actual company/faction play I did not progress far enough to feel any of it really. However I think that it would be great if it isn't dominated by Super-tribes/Super-companies with maxed out members just making it pointless for the smaller guys.


The game looks so beautiful, and I loved being in the world, and enjoyed doing stuff in it.

For me the purchase will be made, FOMO (feeling of missing out) would literally kill me to miss out joining this community in a large social crazy launch of a new MMO, but if a friend asked me if I recommended this game as a purchase? No way man. Its buggy, its a small game world, you very annoyingly need to re-roll your character to start the same place as a friend if you want to go together. The price tag is a single purchase, but if the cash shop offers stuff that I think should be in the base game like access to another weapon or access to some gated feature of the map when its already a relatively small game world with pretty limited gear and weapon looks, I think that launch price is a steep one.

PS: The helmets and hats I wore didn't delete my fabio-like hair, it pushed it down onto my shoulders and I thought this was a small detail that is DRASTICALLY missing in many games.
PPS: If you managed to read all the way to here thanks, I'm trying to be as honest as I can in a community who's running joke is that my eternal optimism for games can poorly enforce purchase decisions :lmfao:

[TeaLeaf]

Agree with most of the above from everyone and won't repeat what has already been said.

Why can't we swim?

PVP looks like it could be really fun - especially with a group of like-minded friends, careering around the world seeking honour and glory through successful battle and PVP objectives.  Got smashed very quickly at one point by not realising I had just attacked someone of a considerably higher level!

Name plates & ID - not sure if I missed something in the settings, but I thought nameplate detail only become apparent when you got quite close, often within aggro range.  Would have preferred a sort of mouseover ID or a greater range.

I just loved the crafting/gathering journey and the fishing complexity.  

Looking forward to release.   Now can we play Syndicate next time?

[Whitey]

Now can we play Syndicate next time?

Yes please!

Do we need a poll to see what we go with?

[RogueTaylor]

Yes please!

Do we need a poll to see what we go with?

It looks like it as some of us still want to join covenant. A vote will be needed then to see what faction people are joining but if people want to join another faction then that is fine but it will reduce the amount of things groups can do. You can still play together but not in pvp or anything to do with factions.

[Jamoe]

Great write ups, thanks for taking the effort.

Totally with you on the immersion breaking crap Sith, I quite enjoyed fishing in the closed beta and pulled out a dozen chests with some intersting loot. But that mid-air water ripple was really crap. I look forward to fishing parties in the future.

And the lack of swimming in a game where there is quite a bit of water is almost unforgivable. I did find myself walking some distance underwater in closed beta to get to a high level area, it was rather comical and I imagine I had some kind of heavy deep sea suit on. I'm going on faith that it will be addressed shortly and they will perhaps take armour weight into consideration.

Edit: Found a snippet about swimming.

[FONT="]The devs have already stated that we will be able to swim later. They did this to prevent people from entering unfinished areas. A few people were able to bug out the breath to prevent drowning and made it into those areas anyway though.[/FONT]

I was drawn to syndicate in closed beta. they felt like a lesser evil to me. All the characters are ugly and all the factions are distasteful in some way. My guess is that with no clear "good guy" they are trying to ensure a more even spread of players across factions. In the end I'll follow the crowd

[Gunda]

only reason i wanted to go Fae and Covenant was this guy i've been following for some time now https://www.theshire.bagginstv.com/ and it creates a chance there will still be 30+ people to play with after a month or so...

[TheDvEight]

well i'm hooked, not played an rpg game since elder scrolls online on the ps4 and thoroughly addicted to this one!

[smilodon]

Rats. I may have goofed up just a bit

 :doh:

Went and got my Syndicate/Covenant mixed up and joined the wrong faction on Carcosa. No problem it only took a few hours to get to level 10. I'll just quickly delete the character and start him gain, no problem. So that's what I did.
Except apparently Carcosa/Corcosa whatever is also now a full server and you won't be able to join that one, as I just found out. Last night it had no queues and was a low population server. This morning it's locked. So fair warning to anyone who is thinking about following the dMw'ers who have jumped over temporarily from Fae, you can't. So it's off to Cygnus for me and some single player fun.

Also you obviously can't join Fae either. So if you're picking up NW for the first time good luck playing solo. If you want to play with the dMwr....... you're Stuffed. Eventually we all might end up back on the same World but then again who knows. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I might have checked the server status before I deleted my character but I still think this launch is up there with the worst of them. It's no Fallout 76 but it's not far behind.

[smilodon]

Can someone confirm that this game doesn't run out of unique quests part way through due to lack of content and then just expects me to re do daily faction and territory quests over and over ad nauseam. I seem to be visiting the same places and doing endless "kill/collect ten of these things and now kill/collect ten more". Mindlessly grinding crafting is one thing but dear god not XP too?

[albert]

Certainly at level 35 I am still hopelessly wrapped up in story and quest elements. There seems to be a few hours of main line story in between main levelling up. By that I mean like every 5 or so levels you can join the main quest for a bit and then gradually use it to level and move around the world.

Each settlement has maybe 10-15 characters you meet and complete quests for to fill time in between main quests. Then you have to do the Faction and grindy stuff.

The variety of quests is probably what you already see happening, although the level of intesity rises as you move to more hardcore areas, also you might need to work with others to get past certain points, unless you just stay ages in the easy areas.