The long wait is almost over. In just a few weeks, New World‘s soft relaunch as New World: Aeternum will be live. With so many new players about to dive in, I thought I’d help set some expectations as someone who’s been a fan since late alpha.
You can consider this a companion piece to my earlier post on new player tips (all of which are still valid as of this posting), but whereas that was about specific gameplay tips, this is more about how one should approach the game in terms of broad philosophy.
It is a casual PvE game
In the earliest days of its development, New World was envisioned as a cutthroat PvP sandbox, and even though Amazon abandoned that direction long ago, the reputation of being a PvP game has followed it ever since. So let me be clear: This is a PvE game first and foremost.
PvP still exists in the game, but it is very much a side feature. World PvP is opt-in. Player companies can still fight over and control territory, but they no longer control tax rates, so the impact of who owns territory is negligible. One of the major features of the Aeternum update is a new PvP area, but it’s also coming with a revamp of Cutlass Keys’ PvE experience and a raid, and overall the large majority of development resources post-launch have gone to shoring up the game’s PvE.
So if you’re worried that you won’t be able to participate in the game if you don’t PvP, don’t. Like most themeparks, New World is now about PvE first, with PvP as an optional side feature. Conversely if PvP is what you’re interested in, you may still find some fun with New World, but if you don’t want to do PvE at all, this probably isn’t the game for you, especially since most PvP isn’t accessible until endgame.
It’s also worth emphasizing that New World‘s approach to even PvE is quite casual. Early on, it had a pretty hardcore, old school sensibility as a holdover from its PvP sandbox days, but those days are long gone. Fast travel is cheap, town storages are linked, gearing up is easy for players of all stripes, and more development resources are given to soloable story content than things like raids or dungeons.
My advice to new players is to take a laid-back approach to the game. Don’t rush to endgame or feel you need to catch up to existing players. You’ll get there in time. Instead, stop and smell the roses. Listen to dialogue, read lore notes, explore, decorate your houses, soak up the ambiance. That’s the best way to enjoy New World.
Combat is reactive, not proactive
A few weeks back I was asking myself what makes New World‘s combat feel so much better than even other action combat MMOs, and I realized that New World‘s combat was built with a fundamentally different philosophy.
In every other MMO I’ve played, combat is primarily proactive. You have a set rotation or priority system that you drill through in each fight. You may occasionally interrupt this flow to dodge or block a big enemy ability, but this is the exception.
New World was built with the opposite approach in mind. Blocking and dodging are meant to be the default, and then you weave your attacks into the gaps in enemy attack patterns. It is fundamentally reactive instead of proactive. To me this makes for a much more engaging experience, as your “rotation” has to be tailored to each individual fight instead of becoming a rote habit.
Now, it is true that the game’s difficulty has been nerfed significantly since launch, so it’s now possible to ignore these principles a lot of the time, especially early on. With most mob attacks no longer staggering, it’s not essential to block and dodge every hit. But it may still be worth playing the old way of studying enemy attack patterns and planning your hits around them. Eventually you will run into harder content, and then the muscle memory of regular blocks and dodges will be life-saving.
The negativity both is and isn’t deserved
If you’re a new player, you may notice a lot of negativity around New World from long-time PC players. It’s important to understand where this comes from because some of it is justified – but some of it very much isn’t.
Firstly, the handling of the Aeternum rebrand has been pretty terrible. For months, loyal PC players have been left to languish without content updates or even bug fixes, and the messaging has also created problems. The initial announcement was confusing, and many people were left wondering if this was a whole new game or if existing players would need to start over from scratch (it isn’t and we don’t). People are rightfully resentful of how poorly all this has been handled.
But even before then, there was a lot of hate directed toward the game, and that wasn’t always as reasonable. A lot of people were sold on the original PvP sandbox vision of the game and still haven’t accepted that the direction changed even after all these years. They’d rather burn down New World‘s community than move on to another game that better caters to their tastes.
Similarly, others don’t appreciate New World‘s casual focus. Although great strides have been made since launch, it’s fair to say its endgame is still a bit thin for a triple-A MMORPG, but some people really exaggerate the issue by dismissing things like seasonal stories that don’t fit their narrow definition of what qualifies as “content.”
If you’re interested in New World, I encourage you to give it a chance and form your own opinion, without listening to the chatter of the community at large. Like every game, it has its failings, but there’s a reason it’s been my main game for the last several years.
It may be best approached as a seasonal game
As implied above, New World doesn’t really have the endgame content to be the sort of game you sink hours into every day for months or years without pause. It still has a lot of content, and you can easily get hundreds of hours out of it before you start reaching the end of what is currently available, but it’s not quite a forever game the way some MMOs try to be.
We don’t know exactly what the post-launch support for Aeternum will be, but it’s probably safe to assume it will follow the same pattern as it did before the rebrand was announced, with mid-size seasonal patches every three months and occasional paid DLC.
Therefore I think it may be best to think of New World more as a seasonal game akin to ARPG like Diablo IV or Path of Exile. When a new season launches, you spend a few weeks playing through the new content and completing your season pass, then move on until the next season.
It may not be for everyone, but I honestly prefer this to the “needy romantic partner” school of game design that tries to keep a hold of you at any cost. It leaves me free time to play other games in the gaps between patches, while still bringing me back to the comforting familiarity of the Eternal Isle every couple weeks.
New World’s Aeternum is a land of many secrets. In MassivelyOP’s Vitae Aeternum, our writers delve those secrets to provide you with in-depth coverage of all things New World through launch and beyond.
