Octopus Overlords

This is a tiny, tiny fraction of AWS computing power.

Anybody in the world can spin up 20 EC2 instances in a single region on demand. You can request for caps in far greater magnitude.

So far today I've been able to log in to the game multiple times (morning, afternoon and evening) with no queues at all.

Update 1.0.1 Patch Notes

Last week we shared that our top priority was ensuring that everyone could login and play quickly, without having to wait for queues. To accomplish that, we more than doubled the number of available servers, increased server capacity on existing servers, and are continuing to work on a feature to allow players to transfer their characters to different servers, which will be available soon. While members of our team are working tirelessly on ensuring players can find a server to call their long-term home with the character transfer feature, other members have worked on a few additional quality of life updates and bug fixes to ensure that once players have entered Aeternum they’re able to play and progress as intended.

4 hour server maint. Over at noon EST.

Still be careful guys.

Pfft... If Folding@home wasn't able to fry my GPU (and lord knows, it tried), nothing is going to do it.

It's only been a week but I think the pull of this game is fading for me.

There are some aspects of the game that are great. The combat is far more interesting than typical MMO combat. I enjoy the gathering system and the crafting is fun. I like the variety of town projects and the ability to complete a lot of them by gathering and crafting. I like the ease with which you can change your character - if I want to change to a plate wielding tank or a flamethrowing Mage it's just a matter of respeccing my stats and using a different set of gear.

But I feel like the end-game zone war is something that impacts my character even though I have no control over it. Wars are fought between 50 players on a side chosen by the dominant guilds. With that system I will never get to participate in one even though territory control has an impact on my gameplay. I really hate that the main quest is gated by a dungeon around level 25 or so. You can definitely tell that PvE was added to what started as a PvP game because it's already feeling samey at level 30. The faction missions seem to be the same few repeated over and over and there's not enough variety in opponents.

I'm sure I'll check in from time to time and I'll anxious to see if they can build on what is the framework of a great game but I worry that two months from now most players will hit the end game (or lack of it) and move on leaving a lot of empty servers.

Not a direct reply to Exodor, but my own thoughts on some of these matters:


- It's certainly not the first MMORPG to encourage you to stick with one character because you can switch to any profession/role with minimal penalty. Outside of the fun of re-rolling in some games, this saves so much wasted time replaying the initial content multiple times. The reality is that even if you like creating new characters for roleplay reasons, you can only have one main. I can rarely commit to a class until I've experienced all the mechanics in a new game, so this is great. I've already changed builds three times as of level 35 from hybrid healer to tank to hybrid DPS, and I'm about to switch to full caster DPS.

However, "cheap" to switch builds doesn't mean "free", and the seemingly arbitrary cutoff of level 20 and weapon level 10 for free respecs stings. I like having my active abilities limited in games like this, Guild Wars 2, Diablo 3, etc. Managing a huge toolbar is intimidating. However, it also means things can get stale and you'll want to switch it up often. Though the "classes" (i.e. your combination of two of eleven weapon types with more in the pipe I hear) are so freeform I often don't know which weapon abilities/talents I should be picking unless I defer to an online guide. That may be a negative for some: research will be required to perfect your loadout. (All MMORPGs are like that in the late game though.) And since it's a new game, online resources are limited.


- I too think it's going to be hard to experience everything the game has to offer on the war/territory control front unless you're very active in a very large guild. That said, a Wanderer was able to slip into a 50 vs. 50 war for which there weren't a lot of candidates this evening I think. And The Wanderers are allied with a major guild that started out holding territory, and intends to continue competing for it long term. But if you plan to run with a medium or smaller guild or none at all, yeah, you're going to be cut out of some stuff. (Compare with high-level raiding in a PvE game.) I believe there are other territory-related modes that are less restrictive though. And it's also of course a good thing that the instanced war events are limited to 50 vs. 50, because it ensures a somewhat fair fight.

- I don't have a big problem with the main (i.e. mandatory) quest line being gated behind a dungeon at 25 (and I presume later) as it's also meant as somewhat of a territory mode, but how the dungeon entry mechanic works isn't explained well (if at all), and if you're not used to this kind of content you're definitely going to need to look/ask for help. I liked the first dungeon, though instanced small-party content is some of my favourite part of MMORPGs. I've heard complaints that it's basic and generic, and that's probably true. But it's challenging fun to run at least a couple of times if it's your thing. Drops on the other hand are kind of anticlimactic because the market's flooded with cheap gear.

- In terms of quests feeling generic and repetitive, it's true. These things obviously aren't the focal part of the game. They're still how you gain the most of your experience though, and due to the fun feeling combat, the beautiful visuals, and the fact that there's always something to be gathering for crafting while you quest, I think it gets the job done. By the mid-game most quest givers' lines aren't voiced. The quest text is kept brief. Though while it may be generic, I do find myself drawn in by some of the brief stories told. Rotating "dailies" are a big part of earning faction and town experience. I'm not bored by this yet, but I imagine I will be eventually. I'd think of this aspect of the game as more akin to Diablo 3's adventure mode etc. in which the quests are the delivery mechanism of unlocking further content and not the destination of themselves.

- What I do have a big problem with is the crappy quest log. Rather than allowing you to review the full quest notes, it just has a summary. Usually that's enough because the quests are basic, but occasionally you'll find yourself wondering exactly what to do and where to do it. You get a waypoint on your map, but if you're searching for an item the area it's located in can be quite a bit broader. You learn that "landmark" areas (where you can't build a camp) that the game alerts you to are often the boundaries of one or more quests.

The quest log runs down the right of your screen like in WoW and many other games... it's clean and works fine. But it only lets you track six quests at a time! Even though at least a couple more would usually fit on the screen (especially if you could lower the font size). The problem? You can have up to 50 of the generic town board quests active at one time, if you want to. (12 max from one town.) Now usually, I don't think most people would do this--you're not usually trying to raise rep in multiple towns at once. But for efficiency's sake, it kind of makes sense. For kill quests, the game puts a symbol by the mobs' names in the game world--this is appreciated. But the problem isn't forgetting I need to kill 15 rabbits once I've encountered them--it's remembering that I need to go to the place with rabbits to begin with.

And those are just the unimportant town quests. Right now I've got my one main story quest, 17 side story quests that are all close to level appropriate, and three PvE faction quests for each zone I'm active in. Now, I keep getting distracted gathering and exploring, so I haven't been too efficient with my main and side story quests. But you can't sort them by region or level, so I can never easily find anything! And I don't want to drop anything that I think I'm going to complete, because a lot of the quest givers are spread across the zones rather than centralized in town. (And when you do drop a quest, the quest-giver reappears with an icon on the map, but there's no indication of whether it's within your level range. Though from what I've seen you never completely out-level content--it just gets very easy. And there are valid reasons for doing old quests, like raising town rep.) The interface is beautiful, but it's often streamlined to the level of uselessness.


- The sandbox elements of the gathering and crafting are delightful, but there's almost too much to do. If you try to do it all, you wind up maxing out your storage space with raw or partially refined mats that you don't know what to do with. There's storage available in each town, and you can view it remotely, but there's no way to search your inventory across all towns. So if you're trying to remember if you have any gold ingots you've got to open each town's inventory screen separately. Some planning and organization might help with this; e.g. deciding to store all your ore-related mats in the town that has the highest level smelter and weapon-crafting station, etc. But that's not really convenient when you're off questing on the other side of island unless you want to turn the game into a logistics simulation.


Verdict at level 35, around 100 hours: Well, you won't get bored. But you have to loosen your grip and try not to do everything the game has to offer at this point. You don't have to be PvP focused to get enjoyment out of the game, but if you're not interested in at least dabbling you'll probably lose interest eventually. You're not going to experience everything the game has to offer (at least not first, or often) unless you're in a large, active guild, and to do so you'll need to be comfortable getting on voice comms, most likely externally in Discord (but again, that's typical of this genre). Overall, the game has some design issues and bugs, but it's still the freshest title with widespread appeal to hit the market in a long time. I dunno when I'm going to hit my limit... I already overdid it during launch week. But $49.99 CAD for 100 hours of addicting, mostly enjoyable entertainment is a bargain (as long as you can moderate the addictive qualities).

And yes, I don't know who I expect to read all this either.

I read it all, but then again I'm up at 5:00am for a work call so I have nothing better to do.

I can definitely see both sides of the argument, but I'm still enjoying it. I've mostly stopped worrying about what I'm going to do and just pick something to focus on each play session. Whether that's running faction quests, running side quests, focusing on a trade skill, or whatever. The draw for me in this game is the constant character progression. Whereas in most games your only meter of progression is level, in this game you've got character level, weapon level, harvesting skills, crafting skills, town faction, etc. I never leave a session without feeling I got something accomplished.

I think the lack of monthly fee also takes a bit of the pressure off of me feeling like I *have* to get my money's worth every play session. I've already put in over 50 hours, which is more than what I've put in for many $60 games in my collection. So I've already come out ahead. Any enjoyment I get out of it from here on out is just gravy.

Still enjoying it. Will ride it to 60 and see how I feel. My biggest issue is storage and travel. Having the ability to use linked banks controlled by Faction pvp is rough for me as a mostly solo player. It adds a ton of travel time and costs. If I feel a game is not being fair with my time that will usually kill it for me. I don't mind a grind, but I do have issues if they artificially inflate tasks. I don't feel that way ... yet. At our age, time is the most valuable thing we have left and we aren't getting any more of it.

YellowKing wrote: Thu Oct 07, 2021 5:23 am I think the lack of monthly fee also takes a bit of the pressure off of me feeling like I *have* to get my money's worth every play session.

Same. And it wasn't even a $60 game to purchase.

On the quest tracking limitations and the overwhelming quantity of available quests, I've found a solution that works very well for me.

I turn off all Auto-pins and 98% of time I pin quests from the map rather than the journal. I look at the vast array of quest markers on the map, visualize an efficient path through a good portion of them, pin the first one or two and head out. When I knock those out, I pin the next one, again using the map to see what's next. I've bene using this method for the last 5 or 6 levels and it has significantly improved my experience.

Nice! I never thought of managing the pinned quests through the map.

You can also manage pinned quests from the main screen. Just hit Enter for chat and you can click right on those pinned quests.

Yeah, using the map to update the pins is the only thing that keeps me from losing my mind completely. Town board quests still need to be managed manually though.

Sudy wrote: Thu Oct 07, 2021 4:48 pm Yeah, using the map to update the pins is the only thing that keeps me from losing my mind completely. Town board quests still need to be managed manually though.

The ones that have map related goals are on the map. For any of the other goals, yeah, you are on your own. I don't really manage them. Just kill the stuff if I come across them and check the crafting stuff when I am town, using the board itself, not the journal.

Good point, yeah, I forgot about those ones.

This game makes me feel like I need to open a Todoist account. But it's also kind of cool that you can just pick a direction to run off in, and you'll accomplish something worthwhile. It can just be frustrating if you like being ultra efficient.

I agree with many/most of the points from both Exo and Sudy. This is the most amount of hours I've put into an MMO in a long long time, and in spite of some poor choices I think were made, the general experience is really addictive and fun. A lot of it has to come from you internally, though, and I think that's where the playerbase will diverge. If you are the type that wants a gripping story or lore to motivate you, chances are this game will lose you fairly quickly. It's more rewarding from a very micro point of view, as every action you get something, whether it's a material or some xp or phat lewt. That drives you (me I mean) to do more actions, and more and more and more. I can intend to do a single quest to kill a named mob, but end up spending an hour because I got diverted into harvesting so that I can get enough skill ups to harvest the material to upgrade a gem so that I can insert that gem into my weapon. None of this is particularly difficult (though obviously as in any MMO to get to the higher echelons you have to "grind") and you can do it at whatever pace you like. But depending on your personality, the game finds way to poke you into constantly wanting just a little bit more of everything. Trying to stay focused may be the most difficult part of the game, lol, and that says a lot. I like to call it ADHD World.

Anyway, I have a lot more to say on features I think they could use and complaints I have, but I'm anxious to get back into the game instead of typing this!!

I will be streaming a war tonight at 6:30 EST on twitch www.twitch.tv/harkonis . I'm also doing a fundraiser with Extra-life for children's hospitals. My Extra-life page

The war will be muted for the beginning to avoid giving away tactics and callouts

Damnit...forum effect is strong with this one.

We're not even posting here because we're so busy playing.

Most of the chatter is happening on The Wanderers Discord, for those who are playing with us. Anyone just starting out, please post here if you'd like an invitation!

Sudy wrote: Mon Oct 18, 2021 2:53 pm We're not even posting here because we're so busy playing.

Most of the chatter is happening on The Wanderers Discord, for those who are playing with us. Anyone just starting out, please post here if you'd like an invitation!

I will most likely pick this up tonight. Is there a way to send a message in-game, or should I just come back on here once I've purchased it?

Hyena wrote: Mon Oct 18, 2021 3:07 pm

Sudy wrote: Mon Oct 18, 2021 2:53 pm We're not even posting here because we're so busy playing.

Most of the chatter is happening on The Wanderers Discord, for those who are playing with us. Anyone just starting out, please post here if you'd like an invitation!

I will most likely pick this up tonight. Is there a way to send a message in-game, or should I just come back on here once I've purchased it?

You can post here, send a direct message in game, or go to Discord. Also be sure to join up on the guild forum:

www-the-wanderers-guild.com

You won't be able to join the in game guild until after you've completed the introductory quests and chosen the Marauders faction (around lvl 8). If you have any issues Discord is probably the fastest way to get a response.

We're on the NA East Falias server if you didn't already catch that.

Ok, I'm in-game

I ran out of non-elite quests to do last night so I started working on town faction in hopes of buying a house. But to do that I had to craft some health potions, which got me interested in messing around with the alchemy profession. But for that I needed more fresh water, so I took off down south to find some and came across a group that was working on the elite quest I was on. So I jumped in with them and helped them take down the big bad which allowed me to complete another quest. Running to turn that in I ran across a ton of harvesting nodes so I got hooked on leveling my harvesting, which led me to remembering I had a bunch of rare mats in storage. So I spent the next twenty minutes on the marketplace hawking my wares and getting ever closer to having the money I needed for my house. But to get my house I have to start working on town faction...

This is "If You Give A Mouse a Cookie: The Game."

YK just described what I tried to post about earlier with perfect detail lol! I think this game is most similar to Runescape (not 100% sure since I didn't play RS for that long) in terms of the skill up system, but obviously the graphics and engine are a completely different generation. The combat is also much more action oriented, more so than your traditional WoW-like tab target game. You do have to aim and position yourself (I am not), and if you are good at timing blocks and dodges you will be even better. Surprisingly they used a really simple skill system (only 3 actives aside from regular combat skill) but it just works really well. You can swap between two weapons so effectively you have a pool of 6 special skills. This means I can be both a healer and a mage or tank or whatever at almost the same time (obviously there are some compromises that you have to make in terms of stats). A lot of games have done similar things but I don't think as fluid as this. I recently made a change for my own playstyle to make right click my weapon swap (default is block) and it changed the gameplay for me completely as it made weapon swaps feel completely seamless even mid-battle. Different weapons seem to have different load times, though, and it's less effective since I changed my secondary weapon to a GIANT HAMMER, but I still like it. A lot of these kinds of details are well done, and I think that bodes well for the future.

Another thing I really like is the loot system. I'm not gonna go bonkers and say the loot system is on the level of a Diablo-ish ARPG, but this is the first MMORPG in a long time where I felt like item drops were really interesting, and almost from the getgo. Somehow with only a limited amount of stat modifiers, it feels complex and like the stats really matter. Many MMOs I've played, even to an extent Diablo 3, I barely care about the modifiers. Here the stat mods feel like the matter more, maybe because different weapons scale with different stats, and of course there is a CON stat to worry about for health. But keep in mind you have 2 weapon slots and the second weapons stats are added regardless of which you are wielding. So that means my healer actually benefits from a Great Hammer with +Focus on it. There's a slot-able gem that helps the damage scale with what is traditionally a Healer stat, so I get multiple benefits this way. The specials are also interesting, ranging from crafting/luck mods to special effects linked to specific skills. The way the loot is done, and tied into crafting as well, is really excellent.

More thoughts later... (don't worry I also have negative things to nitpick at some point)

Ok, I got to level 9 and joined the Marauders...name is Darkbowe. If anyone is available to send an invite?

Anybody else having an issue logging in? Says there is a connection error, but steam and other games are working fine...

**Nevermind...it's up now. Weird.

Glad it's back up... I crash probably about twice a week, and have had errors a few times that seem to be very common on Google. A couple times I had to follow the instructions and was able to resolve the issue pretty easily. No idea why random things are breaking after I've logged so many hours.

Some one-month impressions:

- New World has the potential to be classic-MMO addictive. Perhaps it won't hit everyone that way, but there are so many things to be levelling and accomplishing at any one time--more than in any MMOG I can recall. The client tells me I've played for 288 hours so far--almost 10 hours a day. (My OO posts and Last.fm listens have dwindled to almost nothing this past month.) Some of that has been idling in town etc., but it's true. While I've been on leave from work, this game has sucked up almost all my waking moments (at least until going away this past weekend).

I got to max level (60) about a week ago, but there are many who did it faster or have accomplished much more. Mind you, in this game core levels have less bearing than in some. Very little is gated behind level. A WoW veteran will understand how to begin to play New World, but may quickly become lost without tips and modest research. There are four "newbie" zones labelled 1-25, but beyond somewhat subtle leader quests the game will never tell you you need to move on. In fact, I've heard tales of new players unknowingly levelling to 60 in these early zones. This may sound unbelievable but the game gives you enough to do that this is possible. Combat would get easy/boring eventually, but you get full experience credit from mobs up to ten levels below you. I'd say you probably have to be 40+ levels above a mob before you can one-shot it with a basic attack. So this means the game still functionally "plays" in terms of combat for levels beyond a zone's intention.

And combat is only one way to accrue experience. Many games let you level multiple ways--quests, exploration, crafting, combat, etc., but quests and/or combat still feel like the main game. Many sandbox MMOs are obviously an exception, but New World seems to straddle the sand box and them park MMO worlds, and in that sense it somewhat reminds me of Archage (even though the implementation is quite different). It's a running joke that people reach levelling milestones while chopping wood or gathering blueberries, but it's true. While you absolutely could not play this game as a pacifist due to the vast majority of progression and side quests requiring fighting, you could probably gain 95% of your experience crafting and gathering, if you wanted to. You're guaranteed to encounter hostile mobs while doing so however, and the combat can be so fun in this game that I often forward to it.


- In terms of the interface and certain mechanics, this often seems like an extended beta. There are some moderately serious issues, and it's testament to the game's core strengths that we continue to play it in the meantime. Some examples: There's a wide variety of perks and bonuses that can show up on a piece of gear as random rolls. You can guarantee many of them by using a special crafting component when crafting an item. Allegedly, there are quite a few of these that are bugged and currently have no effect, or an incorrect effect. I only heard about this today and it hasn't been verified, but apparently some companies (i.e. guilds) and groups of players have been exploiting a gear multiplier to dominate in multiplayer. Supposedly this was reported during the actual beta and hasn't been fixed.

Mob respawns in some areas (especially later zones) are out of control. Content that was obviously meant to be solo is made extremely difficult for some builds. Your compass (think Skyrim) will occasionally stop tracking resources and it can seemingly only be fixed by a relog or reload. The weapon interface area of the screen that includes your hotkeys will occasionally vanish. It can easily be fixed by opening the menu, but it sometimes occurs during combat and not knowing which skills are on cooldown can lead to a death if you're in a tough battle. (Note: You can open the menu during battle, but it's obviously not convenient.) The worst of all: Chat allows you to combine multiple channels into your main "feed". So I can e.g. display all channels together (global, area, company, direct message, etc.), or just the ones most important to me and flip to the others when desired. However, whenever there's a global alert (like a company has declared war), the feed breaks and will display some messages on heavy delay or not at all. There's a fix for this: relog. And when there were queues after launch, that wouldn't be an option. The workaround is to select an individual chat channel. So many of us usually leave it on company. But what do you do if you join a group, and want to read both channels? You have to open the menu and toggle them. Or switch feed back on and hope you don't miss anything important.

The first two patches haven't mentioned any of these serious issues. I get it; the developers have likely just gone through crunch and are still playing catch up with implementing server transfers. No one's slept for months. But the game really shouldn't have launched with these issues. I know the devs probably knew about many issues and were screaming for more time--so don't blame them (necessarily). But Amazon's really lucky the rest of the game is so good.


- In-game voice chat doesn't always work due to some kind of port issue. When it does, you might want to globally turn it off anyway due to the people who abuse it. Or simply because you don't want to randomly listen in on someone else's conversation when you're standing at the trading post in town.

- To experience all that the game has to offer at it's highest level, you have no choice but to be in a very large guild. Informal alliances may be the work around to this in some cases, but only one company reaps full benefits of owning a territory. Further more, factional wars for territory are only 50 vs. 50 and the governing/attacking companies have full control over the roster. Invasions are late-game PvE siege defense events that contain 50 players of all factions. The governing company is only supposed to be able to pick 10 (the last 40 invitations are randomized among those who signed up). But the governing faction can kick players until their own faction/friends get in. Amazon hasn't clarified whether this mechanic is intentional. There are valid reasons for giving the governing faction granular control of the roster, but it wastes people's time. Like war, invasions only last a maximum of 30 minutes with a 15-minute planning period. Today, I got invited to the invasion but after 10 minutes I was kicked. I got no rewards. It was a waste of my time.

- Following from the above, getting invites to some events will require networking and schmoozing. In game possibly, but much more importantly on the faction Discord servers that people independently create. Real-world politics and power struggles will occur. On one hand, I think that's incredibly cool. But if you're in the thick of it, it can be extremely exhausting. I'm sure every server's communities are different, but ours has a stereotypical "college bro" contingent that can be very unpleasable to deal with. Getting things done can be a legitimate second job. Of course, participating at that level is voluntary. And there are many opportunities for leaders to step in if that's your thing. But remember a lot of this is happening outside game, and some people didn't sign up to "play" Discord.

- On that note, Discord is close to a requirement here, even for casual guild play. The mandatory instanced dungeons can be tough, even when you know what's coming. Ideally you're going to want to do them with a group you know. Can you use a pick-up-group? Absolutely. But unless the other players know what they're doing and are willing to explain it to any who don't, you may be in for a frustrating experience. As well, the game is so broken and its secrets unsolved that the regular chat format of Discord is indispensable for information sharing. Can you play without Discord or voice? Absolutely. But I just wouldn't recommend it. If you're anxious or shy, I'd find a community of likeminded individuals who will let you do listen-in-only when doing an event where voice is ideal. Technically you can even play without a company or even a faction, but these are huge elements of the game.

I think the biggest flaw I see in the game right now is that the way end-game PvP is designed, there is a barrier to entry for most players that they're probably not going to be willing to overcome. The need to be in a big guild, the need to sign up for wars and be online at a certain time, the need to be on a Discord channel to coordinate and fight in that war. For those that are willing to do that, I'm sure it's going to be a phenomenal experience. For the what I'm presuming to be vast majority that are not willing to do that, I'm guessing they might get bored and drop out.

On the other hand, there's still a lot to do after you hit max player level. You can pursue any tradeskill, so if you wanted to focus on that you could. Corruption portals spawn all over the map, so you can take those down for loot. There are also non-war activities such as invasions to participate in that are a little less high stakes than all out war. And you still have town factions to level, weapons to level, etc. if you really wanted to be a completionist.

As far as the journey to endgame, however, I'm having a blast. Primarily, I think, due to combat. Once combat "clicks" and you figure out all your weapon skills, dodging, blocking, understanding enemy patterns, etc. it's just a really fun time. Even just random enemies I've bumped into have led to some really dynamic, exciting fights in which I was furiously dodging in order to guzzle a health potion while waiting for a timer so I could trigger a skill that would allow me to heal and maybe somehow pull off a victory. While just as with any MMO you'll settle into combat rotations that work for you, I've never felt bored in combat. Because you're not just mashing buttons, every fight always feels like it has the potential to go south.

Along those same lines, the action-oriented combat opens up some interesting possibilities you don't often see in other MMOs. For instance, fighting mobs that are much higher level than you. In many games, attacking a mob 5 levels above you would equal instant death. In this game, depending on your skill, you could stand a pretty good chance against it. In general, mob level is less important than how many you have on top of you - fighting multiple mobs is very difficult in this game, even at lower levels, so you really have to pick and choose your fights carefully. I've wandered into forts with enemies much lower levels than me and still almost got wiped when 3 or 4 jumped me.

It's been said before in this thread but I'll say it again. You're going to get out of this game what you put into it. If you're looking for an MMO with hundreds of story-rich quests that handhold you through your level, this is not it. Quests are fairly sparse and pretty much "go here and kill X enemies." For me, the fun is not the quest themselves, but the journey. I have three high level quests in this area. How am I going to get up there? Will I be able to take down the boss solo? What's the best way for me to get in and out of this fort to grab that chest without dying? What resources can I harvest along the way? Oh look - here's a question mark on the map - maybe I should run over and see what that is. You sort of have to build your hero's story in your head.

It's a really interesting MMO, and one I definitely understand why some people don't like it. It's challenging and does not baby you. You're handed a world, and it's up to you to figure out how to negotiate it. Some people will find that extremely rewarding and satisfying. Others will find that boring or frustrating. Either way, it's *different* and I think that's it's biggest strength. After years of WoW clones, New World is daring to try something...well, new.

Really nice writeups/summaries from Sudy and YK, I'd echo pretty much everything both of them said. It was interesting on Reddit I saw some guy complaining about all the bugs and issues and repetitive content, and I realized essentially everything he said was true. But in spite of all that I see wrong with it, I find the game endlessly addictive. Maybe I've been lucky to be part of a really good guild (it sounded like that's what the Reddit guy was missing), and at least part of my enjoyment is simply the social/nostalgia aspect, but I know that that alone wouldn't be enough. There's something inherent in the combat as YK said, even for someone like me who is bad at dodge/block mechanics. I've had fun fights where I took on a bunch of baddies consecutively, swapping in heals to keep me alive and then switching to my second weapon to finish them off. And there's also something in the simple rush of accomplishment for even something as mundane as harvesting some corn. The game does a great job of keeping you rewarded however you choose to play. As YK said, you can go out and take on the challenge of fighting higher level mobs and content for the thrill and rewards - or you can do what I often do and just hang out in the starter towns and run fetch 'em quests, one-shotting the low level mobs that used to torment you. I enjoy both styles of play, the latter more so if I just feel like relaxing and socializing.

Yeah, my thoughts above are only random musings. I highlighted some of the negatives (along with some pet peeves) because I feel they're important, but this is an amazing game to dive into even if it's still a little rough around the edges.

Thanks for the write-ups. Those were all very informative. I don't think I've ever been as simultaneously intrigued by and turned off by a game review before. ("Oh neat!" then... "Oh I'd hate that!") However, I think that combining my middling open beta play with the game design decisions that I wouldn't enjoy - I can safely hold off on this one. Which I'm glad to know!

I'm also happy that y'all are so into it. As I've gotten older, my gaming ennui / restlessness has increased. It's cool reading about games that have really grabbed you.

I'm really enjoying it so far, myself. I'm playing mostly single-player at the moment, just because I want to get my guy up to a level where I can actually play with the other Wanderers, but I don't want to burden them by being a liability or having them powerlevel me. I think there's something to the idea of knowing your skills and abilities before you jump into the fire. I learned that the hard way from City of Heroes, where people would get PL'd, but wouldn't know how to properly tank or heal. They just clicked on the most powerful skill buttons without knowing how to pace their skills/powers and use them, collect aggro, etc.

That being said, I would love to team up with them once I get a few more levels under my belt. I'm currently 19, Sudy, what level would you recommend me getting to before I start asking for team ups?

Hyena wrote: Wed Oct 27, 2021 10:49 am I'm really enjoying it so far, myself. I'm playing mostly single-player at the moment, just because I want to get my guy up to a level where I can actually play with the other Wanderers, but I don't want to burden them by being a liability or having them powerlevel me. I think there's something to the idea of knowing your skills and abilities before you jump into the fire. I learned that the hard way from City of Heroes, where people would get PL'd, but wouldn't know how to properly tank or heal. They just clicked on the most powerful skill buttons without knowing how to pace their skills/powers and use them, collect aggro, etc.

That being said, I would love to team up with them once I get a few more levels under my belt. I'm currently 19, Sudy, what level would you recommend me getting to before I start asking for team ups?

Hyena, one of the great things about this game is you can pretty much team up at any level and there will be benefits for both players (depending on the content), so don't be shy about it if you are in the mood or stuck on anything! And in The Wanderers, no one is ever considered a liability! Unless they criticize my beautiful Robin Hood outfit. Just kidding lol!

As I mentioned, I'm at lvl 54 and I continue to quest around Windsward, and it *still* benefits me. Faction quests continue to give rewards, any kind of harvesting, collecting more azoth, working on an alternate weapon, etc... there's always things to do in ANY zone, and that means there are reasons to group up regardless of level difference. The most obvious thing is when you need/want to complete a dungeon, which takes a little more coordination since you generally need a tank and a healer (or a Sudy). Other than that, though, 2 or 3 man team-ups are a great way to do any content in the game!

rittchard wrote: Wed Oct 27, 2021 12:14 pm

Hyena wrote: Wed Oct 27, 2021 10:49 am I'm really enjoying it so far, myself. I'm playing mostly single-player at the moment, just because I want to get my guy up to a level where I can actually play with the other Wanderers, but I don't want to burden them by being a liability or having them powerlevel me. I think there's something to the idea of knowing your skills and abilities before you jump into the fire. I learned that the hard way from City of Heroes, where people would get PL'd, but wouldn't know how to properly tank or heal. They just clicked on the most powerful skill buttons without knowing how to pace their skills/powers and use them, collect aggro, etc.

That being said, I would love to team up with them once I get a few more levels under my belt. I'm currently 19, Sudy, what level would you recommend me getting to before I start asking for team ups?

Hyena, one of the great things about this game is you can pretty much team up at any level and there will be benefits for both players (depending on the content), so don't be shy about it if you are in the mood or stuck on anything! And in The Wanderers, no one is ever considered a liability! Unless they criticize my beautiful Robin Hood outfit. Just kidding lol!

As I mentioned, I'm at lvl 54 and I continue to quest around Windsward, and it *still* benefits me. Faction quests continue to give rewards, any kind of harvesting, collecting more azoth, working on an alternate weapon, etc... there's always things to do in ANY zone, and that means there are reasons to group up regardless of level difference. The most obvious thing is when you need/want to complete a dungeon, which takes a little more coordination since you generally need a tank and a healer (or a Sudy). Other than that, though, 2 or 3 man team-ups are a great way to do any content in the game!

Thank you, sir! I might take you up on that in the next few days. I have a football game tonight, and I have to drive the bus back afterwards, so I won't be on, but I'll definitely be on tomorrow and the weekend.

Okay, I just picked this up as I'm a sucker for all things of that period. What world should I be playing on if I plan to eventually join and then betray everyone here?

Also, I wasn't able to find a girth or length slider. Are your genitals not customizable in this game?

Phallus, er I mean Falias is the server, choose Marauder (green) when presented the option around level 9.