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New World (video game)

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For other uses, see New World (disambiguation).

New World
New World Cover art.jpg
Developer(s)Amazon Games Orange County[a]
Publisher(s)Amazon Games
Composer(s)
EngineAmazon Lumberyard
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows
ReleaseSeptember 28, 2021[1][2]
Genre(s)MMORPG
Mode(s)Multiplayer

New World is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Amazon Games Orange County and published by Amazon Games released on September 28, 2021.[1][3][2] The game was previously scheduled to release in May 2020 and subsequently August 2021, but was delayed to its current date.[4][5] Set in the mid-seventeenth century, players colonize a fictional land modeled after the Americas.[6]

Originally planned as a Free-to-play game, New World employs the standard business model of a paid game, compared to other MMORPGs that use a subscription model.[7][8] The game offers microtransactions in the form of skins.[9]

Gameplay

The players may form groups of up to five members, join one of three factions (Marauders, Syndicate, or Covenant), use node resources[clarification needed], craft items, gain control over settlements, quest, explore the world, or fight other players or monsters.[10]

The gameplay involves no auto-locked targeting attacks and, therefore, a steady hand at aiming is required. With each level, the hostile mobs are programmed with increasingly complex and strong sequences of attacking behavior skill sets that will require the player to counter using their mana, stamina, and health with timed attacks, dodges, weapon blocks, retreats, or crawling stealth. The weapon skill tree choices are currently for bow, hammer, hatchet, fire staff, life staff, musket, spear,[11] sword/shield, and ice gauntlet.

The character levels up personal attribute skills. Diminishing returns scale as an attribute's skill level increases.[11] The player's character also levels up weapon and trade skills. The trade skills are divided into the three categories of "crafting" (weapon smithing, armoring, engineering, jewel crafting, arcana, cooking, and furnishing), "refining" (smelting, woodworking, leather working, weaving, and stone cutting), and "gathering" (logging, mining, harvesting, and tracking and skinning). There is also a "camping" skill (wilderness survival).

Three quick travel methods exist and, although no fast speed mounts are available, there is a set of skills for intermittent forward speed boosts. The player may dodge or climb most environmental objects or use the fire staff to cross large aerial spaces.

The economy centers around gold coins. The player can dispose of unwanted items through a trader between players in exchange for gold coins, they can "salvage" (dismantle) the items for resources, they can discard the item on to the unsecured ground, or they can make a direct transfer to another player. Characters that die do not drop items, but with each combat encounter, use, or death, the player's items undergo damage. This damage can be repaired with repair items and gold coins.

The player may purchase personal housing and erect furnishings to achieve aesthetic and utility bonuses, as well as obtain a means for fast traveling to the settlement site.[12]

The game mechanics offer PvP combat with and without questing. Before leaving a safe-zone settlement, players have the option whether to set the "flagged-state", which activates after leaving the settlement and then a cooldown period.

Synopsis

Setting

The game is set on a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean known as Aeternum Island.[13]

Development

New World was first revealed in September 2016 at TwitchCon. Amazon Game Studios announced they would be working on their first three PC games: Breakaway, Crucible and New World.[14] In March 2018, Breakaway was cancelled, leaving the teams to focus on the other two titles,[15] and on October 9, 2020, Relentless Studios announced the cancellation of Crucible, citing the inability to see a sustained future as the reason for cancellation.[16] The studio shifted to aid development of New World instead.[17] On February 16, 2021, it was announced that the game is set to release on August 31, 2021.[2]

The game was originally planned to be a Free-to-play game, however in 2019 prior to its release, the business model has changed into the standard business model of paid games. Players who signed up for the game prior to that change received the game for free. [8]

On July 20, 2021, the game was launched as a closed beta. The following day, it was reported that many high-end Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards manufactured by EVGA were bricked while running the game. It was theorized that the absence of an FPS limit for menu screens in the game caused the GPUs to render more than 9000 frames per second at full load (while most gaming computers run at below 240 frames per second), while fail-safes in the cards failed to prevent damage. In response, Amazon said that it would implement an FPS limit in the menu screens, while maintaining that the game itself had not damaged the cards.[18][19][20][21] Jason Langevin, a tech YouTuber (popularly known as JayzTwoCents) who first reported the issue, reported that other GPUs including the RTX 3080 Ti and various AMD GPUs were affected, and also reported that EVGA would replace all RTX 3090 GPUs bricked by the game at no cost. Langevin also investigated further by running an EVGA RTX 3090 and an MSi RTX 3090 and found that while the MSi GPU did not cross its rated power limit, the EVGA GPU went 20% above the limit.[22][23][24]

On August 4, 2021, it was announced that the game would be further delayed to September 28, 2021, to allow for additional development based on beta testing feedback.[25] The final open beta period has begun on September 9, 2021, and continued until September 12.[26]

Release

On September 28, 2021, Amazon Game Studios released and published New World globally. Five server regions were available on launch: Australia, East Coast of the United States, Europe, South America, and West Coast of the United States. The availability of these regions were staggered, with all becoming playable at 8:00 a.m. local time with the exception of Australia, which became available at 9:00 p.m. AEST to account for the large time zone difference.[27] On the day of the game's release, Steam recorded over 700,000 concurrent players. This proved difficult for the New World servers to handle,[28] with many players reporting extensive queue times, with New World's most popular servers occasionally reaching the 25,000-person limit. This was caused by the limited capacity in each server, which only allowed 2000 players to be connected simultaneously.[29] Amazon responded to this problem by introducing additional servers in all regions within two days of the game's release and explaining that they were undergoing tests to increase the cap from 2000. They also announced that players would be able to transfer their characters between servers for free, enabling people to begin playing on low populated servers without the risk of not being able to play on higher density servers, or with friends, later on. This assisted in alleviating the worst of the queue times, but players continued to express disapproval as PC Gamer described the problem as "far from solved".[30] In November 2021, it was reported that any account who played the game via Steam family sharing received the game for free, since Amazon decided to disable the family sharing functionality due to "increase of bots, gold sellers, and ban evaders". [31][32]

Reception

New World received "mixed or average" reviews according to review aggregator Metacritic.[33] It was nominated for Best Multiplayer Game at The Game Awards 2021.[38] During 2021, New World managed to position itself in the top played games of Steam. [39][40]

Notes

  1. ^ Additional work by Relentless Studios

References

  1. ^ a b "New World Update". New World. July 10, 2020. Retrieved July 10, 2020.
  2. ^ a b c Minotti, Mike (February 16, 2021). "Amazon's New World delayed to August 31". VentureBeat.
  3. ^ A., Aries. "Amazon's New World MMO delayed into 2021". JoyFreak. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
  4. ^ McWhertor, Michael (April 9, 2020). "Amazon delays its MMO, New World, due to coronavirus lockdown". Polygon. Retrieved April 20, 2020.
  5. ^ Conditt, Jessica (December 12, 2019). "Amazon's supernatural colonialism MMO 'New World' lands in May 2020". Engadget. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  6. ^ Campbell, Colin (February 8, 2019). "Amazons questionable MMO has you colonize the new world". Polygon. Retrieved February 9, 2019.
  7. ^ Jagneaux, David (February 12, 2020). "New World: Everything We Know About Amazon's MMO". IGN. Retrieved May 10, 2020."
  8. ^ a b Webb, Kevin. "Amazon's new video game costs $40, but some players who signed up years before launch will get it for free". Business Insider. Retrieved December 28, 2021.
  9. ^ Hetfeld, Malindy (May 17, 2021). "New World addresses concerns over microtransactions" – via www.pcgamer.com.
  10. ^ O'Connor, Alice (September 30, 2016). "Amazon Game Studios Announce Three Games". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Archived from the original on October 18, 2016. Retrieved December 17, 2016.
  11. ^ a b "Alpha Testing Resumes!". New World. October 20, 2020. Retrieved February 10, 2021.
  12. ^ "Character Progression". New World. June 9, 2020. Retrieved October 16, 2020.
  13. ^ "Amazon Games' New World Reactions Are Really Mixed". ScreenRant. June 18, 2020. Retrieved October 16, 2020.
  14. ^ Furniss, Zack (October 2, 2016). "Is Breakaway Appealing To More Than Streamers?". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Archived from the original on December 23, 2016. Retrieved December 17, 2016.
  15. ^ Olivetti, Justin. "Amazon Game Studio's Breakaway is officially dead". MassivelyOP. Retrieved March 31, 2018.
  16. ^ "Final Crucible Developer Update". Crucible. October 9, 2020. Retrieved October 10, 2020.
  17. ^ Bankhurst, Adam (October 10, 2020). "Amazon's Crucible Is Shutting Down in November 2020". IGN. Retrieved October 1, 2021.
  18. ^ "Amazon's New World is brutally bricking RTX 3090 graphics cards". Windows Central. July 21, 2021. Retrieved July 22, 2021.
  19. ^ July 2021, Austin Wood 21. "Amazon Games insists New World is safe to play despite reports of the MMO bricking some 3090 GPUs". gamesradar. Retrieved July 22, 2021.
  20. ^ James, Dave (July 21, 2021). "Amazon's New World MMO is reportedly killing $1,500 Nvidia GPUs". PC Gamer. Retrieved July 22, 2021.
  21. ^ "Amazon Finds No Connection Between New World Beta and Bricked RTX 3090 Graphics Cards, Issues Fix Anyway". IGN India. July 21, 2021. Retrieved July 22, 2021.
  22. ^ July 2021, Aaron Klotz 23. "EVGA Is Immediately Replacing All RTX 3090s That Died From New World". Tom's Hardware. Retrieved July 25, 2021.
  23. ^ James, Dave (July 23, 2021). "EVGA confirms it's replacing all its RTX 3090s killed by Amazon's New World MMO". PC Gamer. Retrieved July 25, 2021.
  24. ^ "EVGA Is Replacing All RTX 3090 Cards Killed By Amazon's New World". Kotaku. Retrieved July 25, 2021.
  25. ^ Tolbert, Samuel (August 4, 2021). "Amazon Games' New World delayed to September to focus on game polish". Windows Central. Retrieved February 9, 2019.
  26. ^ "Announcing the New World Open Beta". New World. August 25, 2021. Retrieved August 31, 2021.
  27. ^ "New World release time – here are the MMORPG's server live times". PCGamesN.
  28. ^ Goslin, Austen (September 29, 2021). "New World's launch is proving too popular for its servers, but Amazon has a plan".
  29. ^ "New World Suffering From Long Queue Times". Game Rant. September 28, 2021.
  30. ^ Wilde, Tyler (September 30, 2021). "New World server status day 2: thousands are still waiting in queues, dreading errors". PC Gamer.
  31. ^ "[Notice] Family Sharing Update". New World Forums. November 4, 2021. Retrieved December 28, 2021.
  32. ^ "Amazon give out free New World accounts to keep player numbers". www.altchar.com. Retrieved December 28, 2021.
  33. ^ a b "New World for PC Reviews". Metacritic. Red Ventures. Retrieved November 13, 2021.
  34. ^ Moss, Gabriel (November 10, 2021). "New World Review". IGN. Retrieved November 13, 2021.
  35. ^ Brown, Fraser (October 20, 2021). "New World review". PC Gamer. Retrieved November 13, 2021.
  36. ^ Gardner, Elliot (October 8, 2021). "New World review – a shiny new player in the MMO game". PCGamesN. Retrieved November 13, 2021.
  37. ^ Koch, Cameron (September 28, 2021). "New World Review: (Faction) War Never Changes". GameSpot. Retrieved November 13, 2021.
  38. ^ Ankers, Adele (November 16, 2021). "The Game Awards Nominations Announced". IGN. Retrieved December 13, 2021.
  39. ^ published, Ali Jones (September 28, 2021). "New World is already the fifth most-played Steam game ever". gamesradar. Retrieved December 28, 2021.
  40. ^ "New World is Still One of the Most-Played Games on Steam". Game Rant. October 19, 2021. Retrieved December 28, 2021.

Further reading

External links

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