Forge your destiny in a new adventure in the New World, the new Amazon Game Studios’ ambitious MMORPG that includes a variety of civilizations. Amazon welcomes you to Aeternum, an eternal island of legends.
The well-known company has been investing a lot in the video game industry. They released Crucible (the first Amazon game fail), and Prime Gaming later in 2020, a subscription service included with Amazon Prime (a kind of remake of Twitch Prime) that offers free content and games to subscribers. Now they have given the next big step into the industry with their long-awaited title ‘New World‘.
New World is here
Amazon Game Studios has created an ambitious world and engaging lore for the players. Lore pages will be spread throughout Aeternum, they will glow with a blue frame until read. What you will find there is the story of Aeternum, landmarks, enemies, and more, rewarding you with an amazing story and 40 XP when read, plus XP increased by 10 for every 10 notes you discover.
New World brings us an adventure with lots of danger at the mysterious Aeternum island, a source of unimaginable fantastic legends, where you will be shipwrecked, without allies or supplies, where you will need to make some friends or be ready to die alone. There are certainly many game guides out there but the title itself also introduces new players in its tutorial.
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You will immerse in a magical yet obscure world, full of magical flora and creatures, where you can come back from the dead, have miraculous weapons and healing, where you will be also facing the most terrible corrupted souls, and where the darkness will try to take you. You are the owner of your destiny at Aeternum.
Aeternum holds a powerful source known as the Azoth, a magical resource that gives the power of immortality in Aeternum, in which different factions will fight and cause trouble related to this powerful element. The Lost, immortal beings without a soul haunt the lands; among the Angry Earth, which represents the power of nature, ready to fight against anything who tries to harm it.
The Ancients, who in ancient times managed the power of Azoth, but as time goes by something strange happened to them, yet an unsolved mystery. And there’s the Corrupted, a class of enemies that will be haunting players forever, they will show through transportation portals, that will appear near communities. The game promises us an open-world MMORPG with quest missions, item crafting, PvE, and PvP options.
The awaited title has been postponed three times (due to some COVID-related issues), but, you know, they say three’s a charm, the third and final delay occurred after the closed beta in August, delaying the launch to September 28, 2021, Amazon said we can expect a more stable game in all ways thanks to this new release date.
New World closed and open beta review
Some players that acquired the game earlier had the chance to play the closed alfa on June 2021, while others played the closed beta that was opened on July 20, 2021. To those who couldn’t play the game or for those of us who were missing the game, Gamescom 2021 brought good news, they announced the open beta, from September 9 to September 12 which could be requested through Steam as it utilized Steam’s new Playtest feature.
As well as the other alpha and beta tests, servers were available in North America, South America, Europe, and Australia, and each server can hold thousands of players simultaneously. Just like Aeternum, a place full of legends, servers’ names were carefully chosen, as they use the names of legendary realms from mythology.
Although the game didn’t start quite well, with the issue of lots of RTX 3090 literally being fried, and the closed beta had way more players than expected, causing a lot of server issues, developers wanted to test out the servers with the open beta, before the game launch. From July 20, 2021, till August 3, more than one million players from all across the world played the closed beta, including myself. Since the alpha progress was wiped, just like the beta one, all players started from scratch.
Along with the number of people that played the beta, which made the servers to be full, long waiting times to access, and servers crashing, the game was very well received by the community. The first impression is that this game has compiled the best things from different MMORPGs, which is pretty amazing, mostly from modern MMOs like Elder Scroll Online, even Black Desert Online when talking about combat mechanics.
Judging on the apparel appearance, the game is set in a colonial era, around the 17th century. From scratch, you will notice a difference between this game and most MMORPGs, as you don’t have to choose a class per se when creating your character, but rather the class will be determined by the abilities of the weapons, to choose a particular class you will need to choose a weapon and train it to acquire points to level it up.
This will create a lot of versatility in the characters. Amazon Game Studio is betting on a character evolution system based on points instead of defined classes. You can play as a tank and if you get bored, for a certain amount of gold you can reset your attributes, level up another weapon, and change your build without the need of creating a new character. Getting New World gold isn’t for everyone but it’s certainly a good option.
Male or female customizations are the same, which is pretty funny, besides, some of the best apparel you will find at first are dresses, so you will see more than one male character running through Aeternum in a lovely dress.
Once you have finished creating your character and the tutorial, before embracing any adventure you will need to choose one of three factions: Syndicate, Marauders, or Covenant. Beware while choosing as you are going to face off with the other two in open-world PvP. While you definitely can’t join PvP parties with members from other factions, this won’t affect the PvE parties.
Factions are powerful organizations whose purpose is the control of Aetenum. Each faction has unique principles and motivations for wanting control of the island. The Syndicate is a secret organization that considers cunning and intelligence its most precious asset, and its goal is to find the forbidden knowledge that will give birth to a new era of enlightenment.
The Marauders are a military force known for their ferocity. Their goal is to establish a free nation so those with the strength to achieve the goal can prosper and benefit from it. And the Covenant is a group of fanatics whose major goal is to clean the land of heretics and impure beings so their sacred nature can be reborn and justice restored.
By choosing a faction, even if you are a solitary player, you will encounter tons of allies and enemies as you adventure on the island, people who will try to help you, and those who will try to fight you.
One of the best things this game has to offer is the battle systems. All attacks can be missed and avoided, it’s not a point-and-click system. Amazon wants to emphasize the position, aim, and moment, in which the players execute an action. As you progress, your weapon skills will level up and you will unlock powerful ones.
Each weapon scales with a primal and a secondary attribute, for example, the musket scales with dexterity and intelligence, so you can choose a secondary weapon that scales either with dexterity or intelligence. Meaning you have many combinations you can make with your favorite weapons. You can check here every skill per weapon and how they scale, this may help you check out different builds.
In the alpha, the cooldown system was as dual weapon, but they changed that as the community spoke, now each weapon has separate cooldowns so you can swipe between weapons faster. Besides, there are mobs that are very strong. These will definitely kill you, unlike other games where you can eliminate hundreds of enemies by yourself without getting almost any health drained. Beware that every single enemy in the game can potentially kill you.
Although they are strong, you can definitely battle with mobs a few levels above you but it will be hard, and if you decide to run you’ll notice enemies appear to follow you till the end.
Even though the closed beta had server issues, and the open beta had even worst server issues with a lot of lag, I believe that it was due to the number of people that were playing it, the game is very well optimized, movements are smooth and the graphics are just beautiful, I was playing it in full HD high quality and it was just delighting.
The visual art and sound design are incredible, not to mention the OST, a masterpiece created by German score composer Ramin Djawadi known for composing the OST of Iron Man, GOT, and Westworld along with many more, and American music composer Brandon Campbell, also known for its contributions in TV shows like GOT.
The game presents different environments, with different structures, from modest villages to ancient temples and almost impenetrable forts. The design of nature is wonderful, if you are running through the forest it is unlikely that you will not stop when you see a dazzling plant and when you approach the fairy sounds that will emerge from it will immerse yourself in a magical world.
New World PvP & PvE content
Although you have PvP faction missions to do in the open world, the main PvP mode is called War, where 50 players are divided into two teams, each from a different faction will attack and defend a territory to see which faction will get to manage it, this will give each side benefits based on their locations.
The Outpost Rush is another mode in which two teams of 20 players confront each other to obtain different resources, secure guard posts, etc. Those who have finished the basic tutorial content will be enabled to play this game mode.
In addition to these game modes, you will find forts throughout the island that can be controlled by any of the three factions, to get into controlling these, you will need to battle along with other members from the same faction. You can definitely get involved in these battles without much planning.
The other two game modes are PvE, the Expeditions, where you will explore dungeons with a party of up to 5 players, to discover island mysteries with their own stories, and to be rewarded with unique equipment and weapons that can only be obtained through the dungeons. They were only two expeditions in the beta but they will surely add more.
Invasions is the remaining PvE mode, where 50 players will have to defend a territory controlled by their faction against hordes of monsters. If they lose, some of the items within the territory will lose some of their power. Be prepared to protect your territory with your mates as in the beta the invasions occurred every four days.
A look from the inside – New World professions
All of your equipment, weapons, food, etc, can be crafted, and for this, you will need to gather materials that will be divided into these gathering professions: harvesting, skinning, mining, logging, and fishing. To be able to gather the materials you will need the required tools that can be crafted at a workshop.
Some of the gathered materials will need to be refined in order to craft items, the refining professions are the following: stonecutting, smelting (both professions to refine mining materials), leatherworking (to refine leather taken from skinning), woodworking (process the logged wood) and weaving (to process harvested materials).
Once you have refined the materials you will be able to start crafting, there are seven different crafting professions: arcana (to craft health & mana potions, also magical weapons), cooking (to create food, buffs, and dyes), jewelry (to create necklaces and rings), engineering (to craft ranged weapons, ammo, and tools), armoring (to forge armor and bags), furnishing (creates furniture for your house) and weaponsmithing (to forge weapons).
As every crafting profession requires refined or raw materials, and the refining process is made from the materials you gather, you can level up skills together. Meaning, the best way to level up professions is to start gathering in the open world and use the collected materials to refine them and or craft things.
For refining and crafting, you will use the workstations associated with each profession. The workstations have different levels as well, that need to be leveled up by each city.
You will notice that skills are related to others, for example, armoring will let you make armor and carry bags, and can be created on a forge or an outfitting station. The resources you will need to gather for it are taken from harvesting, skinning, and mining, and the refining skills would be leatherworking, weaving, and smelting.
Besides wearing armor you can also wear and craft jewelry like amulets, or rings. This will be created at an Outfitting station with resources taken from mining that you will refine by stonecutting and smelting. Weaponsmithing can also be done at a forge, to create weapons you will need materials collected from mining, skinning, and logging, and the refining process would be smelting, leatherworking, and woodworking.
Not all weapons can be done at a forge, you will need Engineering for the ranged weapons that will be crafted at a Workshop, not just that, but also for gathering tools and ammo. It will require materials taken from harvesting, skinning, mining, and logging; these materials will need to be processed at a waving, leatherworking, smelting, and woodworking.
You will also use the Workshop station to create furniture, storage chests, and more for your in-game house, for this you will need to gather materials from harvesting, mining, and logging, and make the corresponding refining process.
The magical weapons have to be created at the Arcana station along with health and mana potions, for this, you will use materials gathered from harvesting, mining and logging, and refining like smelting and woodworking.
You can also use a lot of harvested materials to cook food that heals or gives buffs, and also to craft pretty colorful dyes to dye your clothes, this can be done at a Cooking station. You will also use resources taken from skinning and fishing.
You can sell your crafted items or raw materials at trading posts, and you will find one in each city, while each city has different taxes chosen by the faction that controls it, you can lower them by gaining territory standing points. With these points, you can speed up resources farming, lower crafting taxes, and trading taxes, or speed up XP leveling.
https://twitter.com/playnewworld/status/1437886636294037512?s=20
The long-awaited title has arrived – Pre-order & release time
After several delays, the game release is finally here, and millions of players are showing their excitement on the subreddit r/newworldgame. The game will be playable on September 28, 2021, at 8 AM, no matter your time zone, although it will be ready to download on September 27. Make sure to check out the NVIDIA and AMD GPU driver update. With the high demand that was on the beta tests, I would recommend you to choose a server and be ready to have waiting times to access it.
So far the game will be available for computers only and there are currently two editions of the game for pre-purchase. The Standard Edition for $39.99, includes some pre-purchase items: Isabelle’s amulet, Unique Expedition One title, Fist Bump emote, and Guild crest set; while the Deluxe Edition for $49.99, includes the Standard Edition content plus exclusive content to use in-game, the Woodsman armor set, Woodsman hatchet skin, Mastiff house pet, rock/paper/scissors emote, and New World digital artbook.
Prime Gaming content and Twitch drops
Besides the Prime Gaming content, it will also include a variety of exclusive items through its subscription, starting with the Pirate Pack on September 28 (claim time till November 1). This first pack will include an exclusive pirate character skin and pirate stance emote, along with a certain amount of the store currency used to purchase cosmetics items in-game.
The second pirate pack will be available beginning October 12 to be claimed through Prime Gaming till November 1, including more exclusive content, a sword skin, a cutting-throat emote, and a pack of three crests. There’s a 30-day free trial for players who are interested in joining Prime Gaming.
There will also be Twitch drops beginning the release date, the Vinespun weapon skin set with 14 unique weapon skins. To earn all items in the drop you just need to watch 10 cumulative hours of New World broadcasts, from one of the 66 Battle for New World participants on Twitch between September 28 and October 11, 2021, 5 PM PST. Don’t forget to activate the Twitch drops by linking your accounts to be awarded.
Let the adventure begin and happy gaming!
YouTube: New World: Chart Your Fate Trailer
Photo credits: Some images used are screenshots I took, the rest are owned by Amazon Game Studios and were provided for press usage.
