[PC] New World

Hamlet3145 · Post by **Hamlet3145** » Tue Sep 28, 2021 4:54 pm

Yeah, the queue is looking pretty bad for tonight. I got done what I wanted to today so I think I might just take a break until morning when people go to work. That said, the 491 queue I'm logged into right now is nothing compared to to the wait on the Eden & Valhalla servers (I'm seeing some posts on Reddit that they are in the 20,000 range). Good thing we picked a server that is so non-descript that I can't even remember what it is without looking.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Tue Sep 28, 2021 5:18 pm

Well, I buckled and bought this. Looks like I would have to wait for 780 people to move to get into the game. Hopefully, after a the launch day, they will open up more slots so this is less of an issue.

I created Baelthazar on USE Falias. Would love to join the Wanderers.... when I finally get to play.

Hamlet3145 · Post by **Hamlet3145** » Tue Sep 28, 2021 5:40 pm

baelthazar wrote: Tue Sep 28, 2021 5:18 pm I created Baelthazar on USE Falias. Would love to join the Wanderers.... when I finally get to play.

Absolutely. Just PM'd you a link to the discord server.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Tue Sep 28, 2021 5:52 pm

Looks interesting. I tried to play in the beta weekend but it would never connect to a server so I couldn't create a character. Dont know if its my 10 year old hardware or Win 7 x64 or just the servers were not up.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Tue Sep 28, 2021 6:35 pm

While it doesn’t really seem like my cup o tea, I’m always a sucker for a new MMO. Will likely give it a shot, sometime after the initial Zerg rush levels out.

Sudy · Post by **Sudy** » Thu Sep 30, 2021 2:46 am

Some unedited thoughts, having hit level 20:

- Queues continue to be a big issue on the high population servers. A couple members of the guild keep getting dropped from the queue or encounter other login errors, as well. My experience has been that it's fine if you're logging in after east coast bedtime and before midday. When trying to get on at 6:00 or 7:00pm eastern, I'm sitting in a queue for 2-3 hours. They're working on server transfers in the next couple weeks, though if it takes them that long I question whether there will still be an issue. I don't know that this is a failure on the part of the game; it's the impossible MMORPG launch scenario. You do this and merge servers later, or you design the game to be heavily instanced. But I don't know how the latter would work in a game with elements of territory control.

- The game runs beautifully for most once you can get online, and the gameplay is crack, at least for now. I do find myself approaching some walls in terms of not knowing what I should be doing. You can look up guides and ask around, sure. But while the game explains most things decently, it doesn't provide you with a lot of hard guidance.

There's certainly tons of stuff to do... in your Objectives (AKA quest journal), it's possible to have six different kinds of quests. Location, Main Story, Side Stories, Faction Mission, Town Project, and Recipes. I don't have any experience with Location or Recipes yet; I'm not sure how they function. But you'll often have one main story quest, an unknown number of possible side stories (I have five quests right now), three PvE faction missions and up to three PvP ones, and up to twelve town project quests. The latter are randomly generated filler (remember Anarchy Online where that was the whole game? lol), but of course play the important role of contributing to town upgrades.

Obviously, main story moves things along and a lot is gated behind these quests--but you have to do faction quests to advance as well. I'll leave town with more than I can display in the quest tracker, and it's overwhelming. At least you always feel like you're making progress though because there's so much to gather along the way. But my main storage unit in our main town is already 70% full and I don't look forward to having the problem of "what do I have to craft, sell, or move to keep playing".

- I don't fully understand how everything works yet, but I'm rather disappointed you can't join multiple guilds like in Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls Online. Just because that seems to be such an advancement, along with the non-guild channel implementations of games like WoW and Diablo 3.

- The NPCs, dialogue, and story are on the bland side, but the visuals and art style are gorgeous for an MMORPG. When there's spoke dialogue it's not bad to listen to, but I still have trouble getting invested. That said, there aren't a lot of MMORPGs that have done story/dialogue well outside of what, SWTOR? New World is about the gameplay, and that's where it shines. Both in the quality, and the variety. Every trip out of town really does feel like an expedition. I'm sure that feeling will wear away once I'm familiar with the world, but for now I never know where I'm going to wind up, very much like in a single-player open-world game.

- I don't care much for the "collect the books" mechanic.... Yeah, they're optional. And yeah, someone took the time to write this stuff. But we don't want to stop and read, we want to kill stuff and gather stuff and craft stuff! At least make them audio logs. (The recording sessions would be expensive, but Amazon can afford it. What, that would be stupid? Well, collectible books is a stupid mechanic.)

- I like that fishing is a bit more interactive than in WoW, but I'm sure other games do even more with it. But it's also annoying because it means you have to be more attentive. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if you're on voice comms to pass the time, but I wouldn't try typing or alt-tabbing to your second screen.

- I'm annoyed that you can open the map while you gather, but you can't open your inventory. When gathering some of the big stuff with poor tools, it can literally take what, 20+ seconds? There's nothing to do other than scan for mobs (or other players, I suppose, if you're flagged for PvP. These moments are boring.

- Despite my gripes, I haven't been this drawn in by a game in a long time. Will I be playing it in a month? Three months? It probably depends on whether I get roped in to PvP with the guild. But the nice thing is that there's no subscription fee, so re-entry is much more palatable. I just hope they can deliver ambitious content updates without subscription money. Wasn't that everyone's complaint about GW2? Anyway, if you're on the fence you'll get your money's worth if any of the gameplay elements appeal to you. Even if you don't want to PvP, I think you could get mileage out of the game. I like that it refines and simplifies a lot of the genre standards without dumbing them down. It's still full of conventions, but some are initially well masked and its systems are complex without being impenetrable.

- On that note the UI is just gorgeous, but there are times I wish I had a little more control over it.

- The trading post (i.e. auction house) uses the buy/sell order model and is certainly a breath of fresh air coming from playing WoW earlier this year. I'm delighted that the interface mostly works as you'd expect any application to. But, there are a number of elements that just don't seem as convenient as they could be. E.g. knowing how much to post an item for. It looks like it's supposed to display active listings of similar items, but it's always blank for me. The final screen does seem to display some active listings, but it doesn't appear to be all of them. So you're still stuck having to do an active listings search and research if you want to sell smart.

- Of course, I'm constantly dropping things from my pack to avoid being encumbered. The game desperately needs a faster way to split stacks and go directly to the quantity that will get you under the weight limit. But perhaps these features are already there and I just haven't learned how to use them yet.

- There's a lot of chatter on The Wanderers Discord if you want to know more; I'd imagine the other reason there's not a lot of posts here is because everyone's busy playing.

Drazzil · Post by **Drazzil** » Thu Sep 30, 2021 3:39 am

Sudy wrote: Thu Sep 30, 2021 2:46 am Some unedited thoughts, having hit level 20:

- Queues continue to be a big issue on the high population servers. A couple members of the guild keep getting dropped from the queue or encounter other login errors, as well. My experience has been that it's fine if you're logging in after east coast bedtime and before midday. When trying to get on at 6:00 or 7:00pm eastern, I'm sitting in a queue for 2-3 hours. They're working on server transfers in the next couple weeks, though if it takes them that long I question whether there will still be an issue. I don't know that this is a failure on the part of the game; it's the impossible MMORPG launch scenario. You do this and merge servers later, or you design the game to be heavily instanced. But I don't know how the latter would work in a game with elements of territory control.

- The game runs beautifully for most once you can get online, and the gameplay is crack, at least for now. I do find myself approaching some walls in terms of not knowing what I should be doing. You can look up guides and ask around, sure. But while the game explains most things decently, it doesn't provide you with a lot of hard guidance.

There's certainly tons of stuff to do... in your Objectives (AKA quest journal), it's possible to have six different kinds of quests. Location, Main Story, Side Stories, Faction Mission, Town Project, and Recipes. I don't have any experience with Location or Recipes yet; I'm not sure how they function. But you'll often have one main story quest, an unknown number of possible side stories (I have five quests right now), three PvE faction missions and up to three PvP ones, and up to twelve town project quests. The latter are randomly generated filler (remember Anarchy Online where that was the whole game? lol), but of course play the important role of contributing to town upgrades.

Obviously, main story moves things along and a lot is gated behind these quests--but you have to do faction quests to advance as well. I'll leave town with more than I can display in the quest tracker, and it's overwhelming. At least you always feel like you're making progress though because there's so much to gather along the way. But my main storage unit in our main town is already 70% full and I don't look forward to having the problem of "what do I have to craft, sell, or move to keep playing".

- I don't fully understand how everything works yet, but I'm rather disappointed you can't join multiple guilds like in Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls Online. Just because that seems to be such an advancement, along with the non-guild channel implementations of games like WoW and Diablo 3.

- The NPCs, dialogue, and story are on the bland side, but the visuals and art style are gorgeous for an MMORPG. When there's spoke dialogue it's not bad to listen to, but I still have trouble getting invested. That said, there aren't a lot of MMORPGs that have done story/dialogue well outside of what, SWTOR? New World is about the gameplay, and that's where it shines. Both in the quality, and the variety. Every trip out of town really does feel like an expedition. I'm sure that feeling will wear away once I'm familiar with the world, but for now I never know where I'm going to wind up, very much like in a single-player open-world game.

- I don't care much for the "collect the books" mechanic.... Yeah, they're optional. And yeah, someone took the time to write this stuff. But we don't want to stop and read, we want to kill stuff and gather stuff and craft stuff! At least make them audio logs. (The recording sessions would be expensive, but Amazon can afford it. What, that would be stupid? Well, collectible books is a stupid mechanic.)

- I like that fishing is a bit more interactive than in WoW, but I'm sure other games do even more with it. But it's also annoying because it means you have to be more attentive. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if you're on voice comms to pass the time, but I wouldn't try typing or alt-tabbing to your second screen.

- I'm annoyed that you can open the map while you gather, but you can't open your inventory. When gathering some of the big stuff with poor tools, it can literally take what, 20+ seconds? There's nothing to do other than scan for mobs (or other players, I suppose, if you're flagged for PvP. These moments are boring.

- Despite my gripes, I haven't been this drawn in by a game in a long time. Will I be playing it in a month? Three months? It probably depends on whether I get roped in to PvP with the guild. But the nice thing is that there's no subscription fee, so re-entry is much more palatable. I just hope they can deliver ambitious content updates without subscription money. Wasn't that everyone's complaint about GW2? Anyway, if you're on the fence you'll get your money's worth if any of the gameplay elements appeal to you. Even if you don't want to PvP, I think you could get mileage out of the game. I like that it refines and simplifies a lot of the genre standards without dumbing them down. It's still full of conventions, but some are initially well masked and its systems are complex without being impenetrable.

- On that note the UI is just gorgeous, but there are times I wish I had a little more control over it.

- The trading post (i.e. auction house) uses the buy/sell order model and is certainly a breath of fresh air coming from playing WoW earlier this year. I'm delighted that the interface mostly works as you'd expect any application to. But, there are a number of elements that just don't seem as convenient as they could be. E.g. knowing how much to post an item for. It looks like it's supposed to display active listings of similar items, but it's always blank for me. The final screen does seem to display some active listings, but it doesn't appear to be all of them. So you're still stuck having to do an active listings search and research if you want to sell smart.

- Of course, I'm constantly dropping things from my pack to avoid being encumbered. The game desperately needs a faster way to split stacks and go directly to the quantity that will get you under the weight limit. But perhaps these features are already there and I just haven't learned how to use them yet.

- There's a lot of chatter on The Wanderers Discord if you want to know more; I'd imagine the other reason there's not a lot of posts here is because everyone's busy playing.

So someone just seems to have dropped a steam code on me. One of my ESO guilds REALLY wants to see me in this game. I dragged my feet and told em no but they still gifted it to me. So, assuming the code is valid you will see me in a few days.

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Thu Sep 30, 2021 8:33 am

I pretty much agree with everything Sudy said.

On paper, there's nothing here that's going to blow you out of the water that you haven't seen before. On the other hand, it does have something intangible that has me looking forward to playing every day.

If I had to guess, based on my experience with other MMOs, that intangible probably has something to do with the wide number of ways you can progress: leveling, crafting, storyline, faction, town projects, weapon skills, etc. The first day in was getting through the starting area and establishing my home base. Second day was mostly storyline stuff. Yesterday I worked on mostly crafting and fishing. Today I plan on doing mostly faction leveling.

Whatever you choose, you feel like you've made some progress. Kill something with a bow, your bow skill goes up. Mine a boulder, your mining skill goes up. And they made that progression very visible - it's not just a number in a chat window - you see a graphical representation of your skill increasing. It's very addictive.

The other thing I just enjoy is the theme. It's nice to not be in another traditional fantasy or sci-fi world. While the game's plot is heavy on supernatural elements, the general world feels more grounded in reality which somehow makes it feel like a slightly more mature MMO. To clarify, the game feels more mature, not the player population unfortunately.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Thu Sep 30, 2021 9:22 am

I have played only a few hours (haven't even gotten to where I can join the Wanderers yet, since I think I am level 7 or 8) but I agree with Sudy as well. There is a great visceral feel of seeing the skill bars go up for tools, weapons, and crafting. It also feels cool when you get a new weapon skill. I have no idea about the "Meta" here on weapon skills, but I tend to pick things that look and sound cool. There seems to be a generous respec system, so I am not too worried.

Visuals, as said, are great. The voice acting is fine, but tends to be the "everything is dramatic" style you see in something like Outriders. You know "vague corruption... all doomed... end of the world," stuff. But at least the setting of Spanish colony is neat and new.

The closest analog to gameplay in my mind is Tabula Rasa. It was ill-fated and relatively short lived, but I LOVED Tabula Rasa when it first came out. That said, New World has these layers of trade and crafting similar to a light version of Eve Online (maybe closer to Anarchy Online) that were not present in Tabula Rasa. And, I haven't gotten into PVP or a faction yet, but that really looks inspired by Dark Age of Camelot. If it is half as good as that, then it will be epic.

The biggest bar to entry are these queue times. I logged in at midnight last night after some Zoom-based D&D with friends, just to check the times and I waited about 30 minutes even though I was 19th in line. They really need to prioritize the servers, but I suspect the global supply chain issues are making this harder. That said, this is Amazon which has its OWN DAMN CLOUD SERVICE - so any level of queue times seems to be just bad planning on their part.

Hamlet3145 · Post by **Hamlet3145** » Thu Sep 30, 2021 9:52 am

Yeah, the queues are definitely an issue for evening play. I'm fortunate in that I'm able to play in the mornings so I'll just do that for now.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Thu Sep 30, 2021 11:46 am

I play my Falias character morning and lunch time and then a character on one of the 28 servers they added (Omeyocan) in the evening. My son has had the busiest week of his life (Marching band with a showcase, football game and band contest all in the same week) so he *might* get to play on Sunday, I'm already starting to get a bit bored. Playing two diff characters, and harvesting everything on both of them, probably isn't helping.

Sudy · Post by **Sudy** » Thu Sep 30, 2021 12:00 pm

I definitely find that I get distracted harvesting while I'm on my way to quests, and then before I know it my pack is full.

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Thu Sep 30, 2021 3:23 pm

I just discovered the Trading Post (as in...ooh instead of working my ass off to craft better gear, I could just pay somebody to do it for me!).

I had a ton of gold from questing, so I was able to really deck myself out with some sweet stuff for cheap today. Of course, I don't expect that to last - I have a feeling once the economy settles down and people learn what stuff is really worth, a bit more effort will be required.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Thu Sep 30, 2021 5:01 pm

I'm playing on Loloi. It's been fun so far, but I just realized today that Far Cry 6 is out next week, which means that New World probably has a half-life of one week for me. Thank the Great Maker that it doesn't have a subscription, so at least I can continue to dabble with it off and on going forward even if it does get pushed to the back burner.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Thu Sep 30, 2021 6:03 pm

I saw somewhere that your first three quest turn-ins of each day give a bonus so it might be worth doing your "dailies" to maximize progress while you are playing other things.

Sudy · Post by **Sudy** » Fri Oct 01, 2021 2:29 am

YellowKing wrote: Thu Sep 30, 2021 3:23 pm I had a ton of gold from questing, so I was able to really deck myself out with some sweet stuff for cheap today.

Yeah, after I figured out you could sort by if you can equip/afford it, and then by gear score and scan for price, I was able to outfit myself with a few cheap tier 3 blues in my level range (25).

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Fri Oct 01, 2021 1:34 pm

My alt character on the low pop server is now 19, same as my "main" on Falias. I decided it was a waste to keep splitting time and with the weekend coming, I can't imagine the queues Falias will see if Amazon can't increase the player caps.

I played around with maining Fire Staff for a bit, it was good but I am just not a magic guy I guess. I'm trying hatchet now after respeccing from INT to STR.

I haven't bought anything on the trading post yet. I looked but nothing really jumped out at me. For the most part I can make whatever I need myself. I've done way more gathering and crafting than questing so far.

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Fri Oct 01, 2021 1:45 pm

I guess they addressed that video card issue they were having over the summer? I actually hadn't been following the game at all until that happened and now that y'all are playing it, I do appreciate hearing impressions, so, uh...thanks.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Fri Oct 01, 2021 1:50 pm

Smoove_B wrote: Fri Oct 01, 2021 1:45 pm I guess they addressed that video card issue they were having over the summer? I actually hadn't been following the game at all until that happened and now that y'all are playing it, I do appreciate hearing impressions, so, uh...thanks.

Well...
https://www.pcgamer.com/new-world-makin ... ell-again/

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Fri Oct 01, 2021 1:52 pm

Yikes. Not a good time to have your high-end card melt into slag.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Fri Oct 01, 2021 8:36 pm

IIRC, the problem GPUs were failing due to shoddy soldering. New World may be pushing GPUs hard, but I don't think we can blame the game devs for defective hardware. That's on the video card manufacturer.

Hrothgar · Post by **Hrothgar** » Fri Oct 01, 2021 11:34 pm

As you might expect Prime gaming is offering bonus packs for New World. The first is the Pirate Pack.

Pirate Pack #1 includes:

Swashbuckler skin
Pirate Stance emote
5,000 Marks of Fortune

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Sat Oct 02, 2021 12:31 am

Read that the queue times were not longer an issue, so I grabbed this today. Impression of the first couple hours (just hit level 10) are that it's...fine, I guess.

It looks nice, but otherwise nothing really stands out about it at all. The whole package feels incredibly generic. I get that story isn't the main focus here, but I literally couldn't tell you a single thing about what I'm doing in this world, why I'm doing it, or anything about it that's unique or interesting. There's a general lack of any sort of personality whatsoever, and it mostly just feels like a mish-mash of graphics and systems from other MMOs.

Hoping it gets more interesting, because that was about the most dull opening I've ever seen in an MMO.

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Sat Oct 02, 2021 11:41 am

Max Peck wrote: Fri Oct 01, 2021 8:36 pm IIRC, the problem GPUs were failing due to shoddy soldering. New World may be pushing GPUs hard, but I don't think we can blame the game devs for defective hardware. That's on the video card manufacturer.

Yes, in reading up about it more that seems to be the case - these cards were ticking time-bombs and all New World did was expose the problem.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Sat Oct 02, 2021 1:14 pm

Skinypupy wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 12:31 am Hoping it gets more interesting, because that was about the most dull opening I've ever seen in an MMO.

I couldn't tell you a single thing about the story. But, to be fair, I spent around 3k hours in Everquest and couldn't tell you anything about the story there. Same with World of Warcraft with over a thousand hours.

I find the gathering and crafting interesting and the combat tolerable. I guess that's enough for me. I won't be playing this when I actually have something else I want to play, but it's something for the in between times.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Sat Oct 02, 2021 9:32 pm

I think most of the generic feel stems from the fact that in 6 hours, I’ve only really seen four enemies (zombies, wolves, boars, and corruption demons). There’s a couple different varieties like ranged and melee zombies, but it’s otherwise the exact same enemy types. Very boring.

Sudy · Post by **Sudy** » Sat Oct 02, 2021 11:59 pm

It's a different design aesthetic but it doesn't really bother me. But it's definitely a game in which engaging with the guild and regional PvP mechanics will carry you further. I mean, I think I could just play it solo and enjoy it for a while--I find the combat fun and impactful. Gathering is like crack to me. I find some of the NPCs like Yonas are interesting due to the voice work. But it's definitely not story focused in the traditional sense. I think the emergent storytelling is going to be fantastic though, much like in a game like Civilization. You won't remember the PvE questlines, but you'll remember PvP conflicts with your allied guilds, etc. Broadly, it really does remind of ArchAge in tone. (But I didn't play that one very long.)

Guild play brings stresses of its own though. Not referring to The Wanderers who are very laid back, but it's evident there's going to be frequent faction PvP activity and I suspect sometimes I'm just going to want to have a relaxing play session and will feel guilty for not joining in. Again, not that PvP is by any means mandatory, but if you're not interested in even dabbling in it (not referring to you specifically Sp), you're probably missing out on the overall experience.

I can tell you that being allied with the guild holding our territory has changed how I would otherwise be viewing the game. I feel "safe" and "proud" when I'm in an allied region or have participated in the events to maintain their control. Even though one could be willfully oblivious to this element of the game, it adds so much to the experience. I feel a distrust for the other factions that I've not experienced in most other games, even with clear divisions like WoW or SWTOR. There, most meaningful interaction is isolated and it doesn't impact where you choose to log out etc. Of course, I know there are/have been others games with these elements, but I haven't played most of them deeply.

The low fantasy, Age of Discovery setting is delicious though.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Sun Oct 03, 2021 2:43 pm

I'm level 28, my main story progress is gated at Amrine Excavation, a forced group expedition. I watched a video of it just to get an idea... I am not excited.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Sun Oct 03, 2021 4:51 pm

While they seem to have opened up other servers where the queues are now 0, the one with my character (and the other wanderers) is still up in the 600s. This is super frustrating. My issue is that I am such low level that I could jump into another server (largely because the only times I can play are high queue times), but I bought this to play with the Wanderers.

It may get to the point that, if I want to play at all, I am going to have to roll on another server and start over. That is infuriating.

Tao · Post by **Tao** » Sun Oct 03, 2021 5:41 pm

I've been playing on Falias with the Wandereres as well but I think I may be done because of the queues. It has been nearly a week and it's great that Amazon opened more servers but it has done nothing to alleviate the issue on the already full servers. They need to either allow more players per server or start allowing server transfers, which to be honest, I am not convinced will fix anything either. I've been playing MMO's long enough to know its quite difficult to get players to move servers, once they have settled in, particularly in a PvP game where guilds are paramount. Was planning to play with a friend today, we both logged in at the same time and spent 1.5 hours sitting in the queue. Ten minutes in to playing my wife complains something is wrong with cable TV, I yell over to her to pull the plug on the box for a minute, meaning the STB but of course she pulls the router plug. To be fair that is something she has seen me do to fix issues. Back in to the queue 200 places further down than I was when I tried getting in earlier so now its a 2 to 2.5 hour wait. Apologized to my friend and told him I am pretty much done.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Sun Oct 03, 2021 6:09 pm

Im still hearing of video card deaths. Now Gigabyte cards too.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Sun Oct 03, 2021 7:25 pm

I was pretty sure from initial feedback that this was made for MMOers that aren’t me (PvP and crafters), but got caught in the launch hype anyways. Whoops.

I mostly just find the whole thing incredibly dull and uninteresting, but am glad that others are enjoying it.

Sudy · Post by **Sudy** » Mon Oct 04, 2021 12:04 am

Tao wrote: Sun Oct 03, 2021 5:41 pm I've been playing on Falias with the Wandereres as well but I think I may be done because of the queues. It has been nearly a week and it's great that Amazon opened more servers but it has done nothing to alleviate the issue on the already full servers. They need to either allow more players per server or start allowing server transfers, which to be honest, I am not convinced will fix anything either. I've been playing MMO's long enough to know its quite difficult to get players to move servers, once they have settled in, particularly in a PvP game where guilds are paramount.

It just shows an incredible lack of foresight and/or indifference. As we've been discussing here and elsewhere, these are launch challenges that major, non-instanced/phased MMOGs often have. Within a few weeks it will be over and they're trusting we'll forget. (Even if we remember, what are we going to do? Skip the next interesting launch?) They seem to have put some planning into it by having servers grouped into broader sets so they can be merged in the future, but that does little to offset the initial queue issues. Especially when, as you say, this is a title that depends heavily on guilds and coordination. Sure, maybe it sold better than imagined. But I agree it's still inexcusable. It punishes early adopters and guilds that plan in advance. The smartest things players could do is wait a day or two to start until the relief servers inevitably pop up, but what's the fun in that? Especially when there's extra incentive not to fall behind in a game like this.

It's reasonable to have to wait for a transfer solution if they didn't know this was a possibility. But as it stands it's extremely frustrating. Some kind of transfer system needs to be built in from the beginning. No one wants to invest 30 hours over the first few days and then have to do it all again. And if your guild doesn't want to move, then what do you do? I'm sure there are members of the development team who were raising the alarm about this possibility but they weren't given enough time to find a solution before release.

rittchard · Post by **rittchard** » Mon Oct 04, 2021 3:05 pm

I'm not going to pretend to be a technical expert by any means, but I have to say I find it fascinating that (at least what feels like) the exact same issues recur with each major MMO release. It's like nothing has been learned or improved over so many years and so many launches. Is there no way to create a stable architecture for something like this? Is there some technological boundary that simply can't be overcome? It's hard to imagine and I admit I don't understand what the stumbling blocks are. From a hardware standpoint, there is absolutely no comparison to what we had available to us (not to mention what a company like Amazon has available to them), and yet it feels like the same issues just keep repeating. I found an old thread in the Wanderers forums from when WoW launched SEVENTEEN years ago, and it was like deja vu all over again. People complaining about queues, then others responding with "don't worry they will increase server capacity" - it's almost hilarious.

As a time reference, that's 3 years before the iPhone released and from what I can tell the top processors were Pentium 4s. Here are the original requirements for WoW:

Operating System Windows® 2000/XP
Processor Intel Pentium® III 800 MHz or AMD Athlon 800 MHz
RAM 512MB
Video 32 MB 3D graphics card with Hardware Transform and Lighting such as a NVIDIA® GeForce 2 class card or above
Drivers DirectX 9.0c (included) and latest video drivers
Install Size 6.0 GB available Hard Disk space
Internet 56k or better Internet connection

It's just kind of mind boggling to me.

I'll comment on the game itself at a later date.

Sudy · Post by **Sudy** » Mon Oct 04, 2021 3:15 pm

If nothing else there should be a fairer and smarter queuing system. Do it from a smartphone app, send notifications, etc.

But I imagine they have little to gain by investing the resources. It would buy them some good will now, but do they need it? The people complaining have already paid. (I'm not sure how easy it would be to get a refund out of Steam after the two-hour threshold has been crossed.) And once queues are no longer an issue, everyone will be playing happily and this won't be an issue until a the presumed expansions and content updates.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Mon Oct 04, 2021 3:22 pm

They planned for a certain number of concurrent players and had contingency plans around their estimates and pre-sale numbers. They didn't want to spend a whole lot of money on capacity for what was probably going to be a failure like every other Amazon game ever. They were completely surprised by the actual number of day one players. They added a bunch more servers on opening day. Most people didn't reroll so queues persisted. More people came, they expanded server capacity within a few days and added even more servers. People continued to create character on and queue for the overcrowded servers and many were cheating the AFK detection to stay on making the queues worse. About the only other thing I would have done would be to reduce the AFK timer MUCH further. It was 25 minutes at release. I don't know if they have lowered it since, but that's a long ass time.

As you may know, hardware isn't that easy to come by these days and amazon hardware is hosting some pretty important stuff and they need to make sure they have capacity for my work to get done and so you can stream Netflix while you are in queue, oh yeah there is also that online bookstore thing that sells other stuff too.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Mon Oct 04, 2021 4:33 pm

coopasonic wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 3:22 pm They didn't want to spend a whole lot of money on capacity for what was probably going to be a failure like every other Amazon game ever.

Isn't New World the first big release from Amazon's in-house studio? I know they had that one that got cancelled last year (Crucible), but don't remember them releasing anything else.

Or maybe I just haven't been paying attention.

rittchard · Post by **rittchard** » Mon Oct 04, 2021 5:56 pm

coopasonic wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 3:22 pm They planned for a certain number of concurrent players and had contingency plans around their estimates and pre-sale numbers. They didn't want to spend a whole lot of money on capacity for what was probably going to be a failure like every other Amazon game ever. They were completely surprised by the actual number of day one players. They added a bunch more servers on opening day. Most people didn't reroll so queues persisted. More people came, they expanded server capacity within a few days and added even more servers. People continued to create character on and queue for the overcrowded servers and many were cheating the AFK detection to stay on making the queues worse. About the only other thing I would have done would be to reduce the AFK timer MUCH further. It was 25 minutes at release. I don't know if they have lowered it since, but that's a long ass time.

As you may know, hardware isn't that easy to come by these days and amazon hardware is hosting some pretty important stuff and they need to make sure they have capacity for my work to get done and so you can stream Netflix while you are in queue, oh yeah there is also that online bookstore thing that sells other stuff too.

What I was trying to get at is these are the same old problems from almost 20 years ago repeated again and again. Being tackled with the same old solutions. I just find it hard to believe there haven't been advancements in the basic core architecture of MMORPGs to take full advantage of the improvements in hardware resources. Why can't a single "server" (and maybe that's the problem is they are still using old conventions of a single server) or cluster or whatever reliably host more than a couple thousand people after all these years? The simulation software I use (see tangentially related thread in EBG) has the capability to expand/contract depending on the size of the problem being analyzed, and take advantage of almost infinite connected "servers" when called upon. OK, so maybe asking for an infinitely scalable architecture is too demanding - how about just double what the technology was capable of 15-20 years ago for 4-5000 concurrent players? That would have quenched the vast majority of problems here. Pretty much everything in play these days is far more than twice as capable, so what is the weak link holding things back?

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Mon Oct 04, 2021 6:06 pm

The risk of spending money needlessly.

Lets imagine:

They expect 5000
They prepare for 8000
But past experience shows it will be 10,000
They should simply pay for 20,000 to be sure
But fuck that. Thats money. Lets just be ready to handle 6000 and anyone who cant get on will get on tomorrow.

If they buy 50 servers they could cover the rush...but that rush will peter down over time and they will have excess servers they will need to get rid of. Better to have some problems than worry with paying for stuff they wont need later on.

Sudy · Post by **Sudy** » Tue Oct 05, 2021 3:19 am

rittchard wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 5:56 pm ...how about just double what the technology was capable of 15-20 years ago for 4-5000 concurrent players? That would have quenched the vast majority of problems here. Pretty much everything in play these days is far more than twice as capable, so what is the weak link holding things back?

Isn't a/the problem that the game world can't support more than 2,000 players in a launch scenario though? Since nothing is instanced/phased? Unless you mean game worlds are designed to be this size because servers can't support more concurrent players. (I have no idea... EVE Online certainly exceeds that, but they're special.) But if you had 4,000 players pouring through the same starting zones at once it would have been unplayable, scaled respawn timers or no. Non-instanced content makes for the most living world and is necessary in these territory control games, but I don't know how you solve that from a design perspective. (Temporary overflow instanced zones where actions can't impact territory control maybe? But far more work than flipping a switch I'm sure, unlike what some people on the official forum think.)

The problem wasn't that the hardware can't handle it, but rather that the game was designed for a player base of a particular size, and launch numbers are a one-time tsunami that you just have to let wash over you. (Or at least, that's the attitude the shot-callers seem to have made.) They added more in-game servers (not sure how these correspond to hardware in this case), but people and guilds were already committed to existing ones. I don't think it's a hardware acquisition issue at Amazon, either. I mean they might have under-budgeted/allocated resources, sure. But I doubt New World is taking up the last available servers in the organization, and giving them more would make the automotive section of Amazon.com load slowly or something. But if I've missed an article stating otherwise on either count I apologize.