As we noted in our Vitae Aeternum column this morning, New World drama has been mounting over the past few weeks. Amazon had delayed Season of the Guardian and not said a peep about it for two weeks while players panicked, then finally announced that it’s coming in April, only to create more panic with a casual off-hand remark that there’s no expansion coming in 2024 (players already assumed the big reveal coming in June is a console launch, but we have no confirmation on that).
So this week’s Forged in Aeternum is doing some much-needed heavy lifting from GDC 2024, where studio leads have been giving – wait for it – a panel on community communication. New World game director Scot Lane, live lead Katy Kaszynski, and senior gameplay engineer Scott Geiser address the major concerns.
“First, nobody is giving up on the game from the developer standpoint,” Scot Lane says while Kaszynski and Geiser nod emphatically.
“We are working long hours and really hard toward a big goal this year, which we can’t wait to share with you in June. It destroys us that we can’t give you the information that you want. We’d love to talk about this, but sometimes you have to look at what’s best for the long-term health of the game against some of the short-term gains. And it’s awful, and I know it’s not what you want to hear. That said, we’re not allowed to give any real details about what’s coming out or what we’re going to announce in June. But we’re trying to figure clever ways we can give you some information and at least let you have kind of an idea on what’s coming.”
As far as delays, Lane says that the studio has “not had a great history of releases being clean,” so the delay is the studio “taking the time to get it right.” The devs simply found problems and exploits with Slayer Script on the PTR, and they need to get it fixed to make season five a clean release.
In response to PvP players asking Amazon to prioritize PvP, Kaszynski reiterates what Amazon has been saying for months now – that most players play PvE and that there are PvP modes for PvP players already: “Moving forward, it’s definitely something that we want to invest in.” In fact, the team says PvP is a big part of the spring announcements. It is not an OPR map. Cross-server 3v3 is on deck for 2024. Balance will continue.
Yes, you can expect more expansions in the future.
The team is not working on daggers.
The whole team plays the game. Apart from a new hire, everyone is over 1000 hours in; one dev is over 3000 hours. Lane says it’s critically important for everyone to play the game.
Purchasing town buffs is not in the works.
Lane is not a fan of the perfect salvage pop-up but loves the updates to the MSQ. Kaszynski loves the art in Elysian Wilds but dislikes how Secrets of the Spores was implemented. Geiser is a huge arenas fan; he wants to revamp darkness portals. No promises on anything, of course.
Merges are happening this week as players know. There’s no Asian server on deck.
Wombat mounts are not happening, stoppit.
Lane responds to yet another deeply insulting question about management by saying he’s aware players do leave the game and have reasons, but he notes that Reddit and Discord fans are not the majority of players, and the team simply has more information about how the game is run than players do – and it’s working with a budget, not all features cost the same, and the team has to consider the return on every investment. Geiser elaborates on that by discussing metrics on what players actually do in the game, telemetry on playstyles, and surveys to former players, all in addition to social media and personal experience.
Amazon believes it has a bug fix for the title notifications bug coming in season five.
Regarding what Amazon learned from Rise of the Angry Earth, Kaszynski says they got a few things wrong, like world tours and elite chest areas and influence wars. Lane adds that the leveling curve and perks went well.
And finally, in response to a player request for “reassurances about the continuation of New World for those of us who would like to see it live a long and prosperous life,” Lane says he’s “pretty sure we want it to live as long as you all want it to live.”
“We’re putting our heart and soul and life into this,” he says, “and on top of playing it all those hours, we’re working on it all those hours, and it’s really, really important to us. So we’re going to do everything in our power to keep it here as long as we can. And that’s our intention.”
Lane tells players to stay tuned for next week, as the community manager will be discussing the state of the community itself.
