Don’t count New World’s PvP side down-and-out just yet. Amazon Game Studios made a strong case this past week for why the MMORPG’s faction system will draw in players from all walks of life and make territorial conflict a centerpiece of the game.
As explained in a new dev blog, the trio of factions in the game — the militaristic Marauders, the secretive Syndicate, and the clerical Covenant — will be locked in a three-way struggle for land throughout the game’s operation. At a certain point in the game, every player, despite PvP preferences, will have to pledge a faction and help support it through various activities.
And while some of those activities may include PvP battles — especially in declaring war upon a specific territory — PvE players in a faction can help undermine enemy areas by completing missions. The territory war sounds pretty interesting, as it involves a multi-stage approach and the selection of a random company (guild) to be a “vanguard” for the coming struggle. The vanguard gathers all interested PvPers under its banner and, if successful, will end up controlling the territory conquered.
Amazon said that it’s being mindful of factions that end up losing territory: “To avoid that feeling like a total defeat, we’ve been careful about tuning the benefits of being in a faction that controls the majority of the territories, while paying extra attention to making the factions that control fewer territories feel like underdogs, not the losing side. No matter who is winning in the moment, we’ve built the system in a way that makes strong comebacks an exhilarating part of the game.”
