Amazon’s Scot Lane, David Verfaillie, and Katy Kaszynski are back with a new video for New World, its 50th Forged in Aeternum, and because it’s a Q&A video, there’s plenty to sum up.
Notably, there are no preorders for the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion; it’ll be on sale the day-of on October 3rd, and it won’t be bundled with a season pass. There will be no fresh start servers with the expansion as the devs are confident in the current economy and don’t think it needs a refresh.
PvP gearing has apparently been one of the points of contention with the expansion too. For Outpost Rush and arenas, Amazon is raising item level to 675 to go along with the new level ranges, but in War and open-world PvP, there’s no OPR-like scaling, so folks who buy the expansion are naturally going to have a gearing advantage over folks who don’t. This has led to “pay-to-win” complaining from PvP players, but this is admittedly fairly standard for themepark MMOs. There are actually multiple questions about this; the devs say it’s merely “pay-to-continue” and “pay-to-grow.”
A few more notes from the video:
- Expansion PTR instability has been fixed and won’t recur at launch. (This is the point of the PTR.)
- Gearing goals include allowing people to gear up faster and easier, but the devs think there’s still a nice “runway” for progression with Artifacts.
- Existing invasion portals won’t be swapped to Angry Earth theme, but Lane teases, “If we were to do another race in the future, I think that would be an interesting callout, and it’s something that we are talking about.”
- The PTR influence windows for PvP are highly likely to transfer to live; the point is to get players funneled together in prime time.
- Gypsum will still be used for gypsum orbs and for midgame gearing.
- Territory standing won’t be resettable.
- Lane counters the idea that PvPers aren’t getting anything with the expansion, but he promises there’s even more coming beyond the expansion too. Likewise, there are “major plans to improve” both the PvE and PvP experience, but it’s separate from the expansion content.
- The devs are considering reducing some high-end crafting material requirements and might boost node respawns for other desirable mats.
- Nobody is losing any storage with the expansion; players can still access their First Light storage through the banking system, though of course expansion players will be able to use the new Elysian Wilds storage too.
- In response to a question about how the devs “stole” First Light cheevos, Lane diplomatically points out that players can do the new Edengrove standing instead. From a design standpoint, almost no one played in First Light, so the devs wanted to revitalize it rather than just slap on a new zone somewhere else and exacerbate the problem.
- The devs recommend playing with a drive that’s at least 2000MB/s (probably an SSD, not a hard drive).
- Ahead of the expansion, players might consider stopping the main story quest at the end of Weavers Fen so you can experience the new content with the expansion. Likewise, Brimstone Sands will help boost your gear going into the new expansion.
