Be Vewy, Vewy Quiet...

This was going to be a post about hunting rabbits. It kind of still is. Only not really.

When Wilhelm posted yesterday about having drifted away from Lost Ark, even though he didn't think it was a bad game, just not really the right game for him at the moment, it made me think "Oh, yeah! Lost Ark! That's a game that exists!"

Then it reminded me of another game I was playing a while ago, namely New World, and I remembered I'd been enjoying it quite a lot, so I logged in and played that for a while.  I might get back to Lost Ark some time. I did say I was going to get that boat and I still expect to, too. Not right this minute, though.

When I logged into New World I was confronted with the screen above. I'd completely forgotten the rabbit event. The rewards are hardly must-haves - well, the storage chest would be if it wasn't ultra-rare - but I fancied having a bash at some bunnies anyway. Get a post out of it, maybe.

And I might have, too, if I could have found any. Granted I got distracted immediately by the fact that the Main Quest I had in my journal had vanished, which I thought (Hoped!) might mean it had been given a solo option like some other Expedition steps on the MQ. I went all the way to the questgiver to see if there was a choice now but he just tried to give me the same old one that had gone from my journal.

I declined it, so as of now I have no Main Quest at all. I'm only just shy of one level from the cap, so I don't imagine it matters.It's not like I need the xp and any rewards are going to be way below my level. I suppose I ought to get the upgraded Azoth staff but then it's not like I ever use the one I have...

I ran around doing a bunch more quests to level up and if the puppy hadn't decided to go completely nuts I might well have hit fifty-nine last night. As it is I still have about a level and a quarter to go before my leveling journey ends.

Towards the end of the evening I remembered the rabbits I was supposed to be hunting and went looking for some. I hadn't happened on any by chance and things didn't go any better when I was trying. Usually they're all over the place so either they're hiding or they're being killed as soon as they appear.

That's not impossible because the other thing I discovered when I logged in was that my server has finally been merged. We've been the host server for several previous merges and it never seemed to make any noticeable difference but now we've been amalgamated with another server as the junior partner and it's like launch week all over again.

Seriously, I haven't seen crowds like this for months. There were people everywhere, chat was buzzing and at one point I even ran across a bunch of people using the game's inbuilt, open voice chat, something I have never seen, or I should say heard, before.

I didn't even realise New World had open voice, let alone that it was on by default. I don't know who thought that was a good idea. Mine stayed on precisely as long as it took for me to find out where the off switch was.

I'm in two minds about the larger population. It certainly helps the economy but I was rather enjoying New World as a sparsely populated wilderness. It seemed somehow more in keeping with the milieu than the current party atmosphere. It was late evening on a holiday, though. I imagine it'll be quiet enough mid-morning on a weekday.

While I had Steam open I thought I'd check the comparative popularity of Amazon's two mmorpgs. New World isn't doing badly by normal standards. It's #35 as I write this, putting it in amongst popular titles like No Man's Sky, Terraria, 7 Days to Die and Valheim. Using the old rule of three, a game with a concurrency of 30-35k  probably has about a hundred thousand players, which is very decent for an average mmorpg.

Lost Ark, however, is #3 on Steam's charts, with a concurrency, as I write, of 458k. Of course, Lost Ark is free to play, so you can't really nail down a number for who "could" be playing. I'm not sure the old rule of three really applies. Even so, it's fair to assume if nearly half a million people are playing Lost Ark all at once, a lot of different people will be playing it earlier or later the same day.

I still like New World a lot more than Lost Ark, even if it's not the popular kid in the Amazon playground any more. It's just really good fun to run around in and the combat is massively more appealing to me, especially when I'm fighting things much lower level than I am and they're still giving me very good xp. Not like the miserly 2xp per kill Lost Ark doles out. That makes me begrudge every mob I have to kill beyond the bare minimum to get a quest done, whereas in New World I run around picking fights all over the place for the sheer hell of it.

Anyway, I'm starting to ramble now and I've already padded this out way more than I ever thought I'd be able to get away with. Just wait until I actually find some rabbits to kill! The posting then will be epic!