New World’s open beta kicks off today, and the new MMO from Amazon still has me asking questions. While I enjoyed my time in New world in late July during its closed beta, going so far as to say I feel it is one of the most social MMOs to be launching to date in a previous editorial, I do wonder about its longevity, mostly due to its content.
When New World was delayed last year, the major reason cited was a desire to go back and add mid to late game content to the MMO, satisfying one of the major concerns alpha players had for the game heading into its initial launch. With every delay we’ve heard the need to add more content, tweak what’s there and more in order to get this ready by go time.
And by and large there is more content on offer. Dungeons in the form of Expeditions have been added to New World, and the ones I’ve been able to play are fun, finally making Amazon’s MMO feel like…well, an MMO.
However, the moment-to-moment quests – the ones that really bolster the meat and potatoes of New World’s PvP faction-based warfare focus have always left me wanting. Running the same quests over and over again for my faction isn’t necessarily what I deem to be fun after a while.
Sure, exploring Aeternum itself is a treat. I love the art direction that Amazon Game Studios has poured into the Eternal Isle, giving it a certain charm I’m not sure another game on the market can easily replicate. New World is beautiful. And all that exploration leaves plenty of opportunities to run off the beaten path to gather a new crafting material here or hunt a deer over there, and so on.
However, when I jump into the Open Beta, I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to last rushing to level doing the same content over and over again for the Syndicate (or whatever faction we join this time). Too many times I would get a Syndicate PvP quest that told me to do the exact same thing I did right before, leading to a lot of back and forth with little variety. My only hope is that Amazon listened to feedback from fans and creators who complained about the same thing and have injected a little variation on the theme here.
I do hope, however, that the main questline and the expeditions that branch off of that make a huge difference in breaking up the gameplay loop that got stale towards the second week of the closed beta earlier this year. New World is poised to shake up the MMO genre this year, with its interconnected economy, faction based warfare and sprawling world, it’s an MMO many players have been looking forward to among the theme parks and linear jaunts through game worlds.
For me, I’m hoping there is enough content to keep mine and my gaming group’s interest beyond launch, for more reasons than to simply cover the MMO into the future. Open beta is one more step towards hopefully answering that question for me.
