Who Would Live In A Place Like This?

The delightful scene above is a pretty fair representation of what I've been looking at for most of the afternoon. That's Weaver's Fen in New World. Charming, isn't it?

I've had it in mind for a few days to say something about how New World follows the unfortunate pattern of most mmorpgs in making the zones increasingly unatractive, not to say hellish, the higher up the levels you go. That's certainly been my experience so far, with the bright, colorful, coasts of First Light and Monarch's Bluffs shading into rich farmlands and autumnal glow of Everfall, before the gloom descends with the haunted house aesthetic of the ironically-named Brightwood and the dismal swamps of Weaver's Fen.

My faction, Marauders, by far the weakest on Zuvendis, holds just a single zone now. We did have two but we lost First Light days ago and despite warring for it ever since show no signs of getting it back. 

Our stronghold, such as it is, is the truly awful Reekwater, a zone that is, I'm sad to say, very accurately named. I imagine the only reason we hold it is because no-one else wants it. No-one with anywhere else to go would dream of setting foot on the rotten, rickety planks of the shanty town it calls a capital, let alone raising a flag.

I went there to see what our faction town was like, just in case I might have wanted to settle there. I think you get some benefits for crafting and so forth in zones owned by your faction. In my case that gives me a choice of one.

Reekwater is apparently a level 58-60 zone but I had no trouble whatsoever getting there in my early thirties. Well, maybe I did have a little trouble. The first time I tried to come in via the road that travels eastwards out of Everfall but that turns out to run right through the middle of a ruined village populated by angry ghosts. I took one look and thought better of it.

Next time, I came down from the north, along the road from Weaver's Fen. It's one of the bigger roads, not just a track. By and large in Aeternum, the wider the road, the safer it is. It helps that just about everything seems to have the same run speed. Provided you get past something, it can't catch you, so long as you don't turn around to see how far behind you it is.

And this is the nice part of town...

One quick trip around the waterlogged decks of Reekwater town confirmed all my fears. It's a classic mmorpg end game zone - ugly, dark, miserable and depressing. They're always either that or frozen solid or on fire.Of the three, I think swampland is the worst.

Based on everything I've seen for myself so far, I'd have been justified in lambasting Amazon's designers for falling into the trap of making the path from character creation to cap a journey from comfort to despair, visually at least. Only I've heard otherwise.

Belghast dinged fifty today and he's been pondering where he might settle down when he caps out and buys a house. He's thinking about Ebonscale Reach, a level 50-60 zone, which he describes as "...really gorgeous... its layout somewhat reminds me of the temples in Pandaria with everything terraced out of the face of a mountainside." 

Someone else (I apologize to whoever it was. I know it was someone whose blog I follow but I can't remember where I read it.) was talking the other day about one of the later zones looking like the Plains in Valheim, an aesthetic that strongly appeals to me. Unfortunately, I also can't remember which zone it was. This isn't helping much, is it?

The point is, there's anecdotal evidence building up that not every endgame zone in New World is dank, dark and deacayed. It looks as though there's actually some geographical logic to it, not just a desire to exploit the inevitable correlation between the aesthetic tastes of players most likely to make it to the level cap and the kind of imagery traditionally found on the covers of heavy metal albums.

It seems that, from the center to the south-eastern coast, the isle of Aeternum is covered by one massive swamp. Upward from that, along the coast, by all reports the climate improves. I'm going to have to go and check it out for myself.

So far I've visited eight of New World's fourteen zones. I find almost all of the game's progression systems compulsive but by far the most satisfying of them all are the Standings. In a way it's nothing more than the faction we're familiar with from many games but the mechanics and implementation and the fact it's linked directly to the towns themselves make it feel different. And desirable.

Where would you rather live? I mean, come on...

 

Improving my Standing in Everfall made up the main thrust of my gameplay from the moment I decided that was where I wanted to buy my first house. I only changed focus when I started to feel a little burned out from running town and faction missions back to back, session after session, by which time I was already Respected, the title you earn at Standing 15.

At that point I was also Standing 13 in Monarch's Bluff and Standing 10 in Windsward, meaning I could have bought a house in any of them. I'm also at least Standing 5 in First Light, Brightwood and Weaver's Fen by now. Everywhere I go I make an impression, it seems.

You can't really help it. The missions bring in the most credit, of course, but just as everything you do gives you xp, so it gives you Standing. Even running along a road from one side of a new zone to the other without stopping will usually get you enough Standing from discovery xp to raise your profile from Stranger to Newcomer.

I took a couple of sessions off from grinding Everfall faction to go level up a bit. That took me from the late twenties into the early thirties and also filled all my resource pools to the brim. At Level 32 this afternoon I couldn't receive any further Azoth rewards, faction tokens or faction reputation. If I could change one thing about New World it would be to take those caps and hurl them into the ocean.

I made some armor I didn't need and ported somewhere I might just as well have walked to get my Azoth down. I bought a rune of holding for 3000 tokens (and 500 gold, which I could ill afford) to let me earn yet more tokens.

The faction reputation, though, I could do nothing about. I'd run up against the hard cap of a new Rank. 

Ranks have a different name in every faction. In the Marauders, the third rank is Ravager. To become a Ravager you need to do a "Trial", just as you did for the previous rank, Gladiator. 

The trial, which is just a fancy name for a quest, is recommended for Level 35. The Gladiator one didn't just recommend Level 30, it required it or so I thought. I think now I may have misunderstood what was going on because I was able to get the Ravager quest at 32. 

Except when I got it it said it was recommended for Level 40. Gulp! Oh well, it's not like anyone stays dead in Aeternum, is it? (Actually it is but that's a whole other post...) So I followed the marker and went to see how far I could get. 

All the way. With ease. Literally the only difficult part about it was getting to the first of the three or four villages I needed to cleanse. That one was inconveniently crammed between a cliff and a town full of highly agressive Elite mobs, capable of sending me back to spawn in a couple of hits.

Once I'd navigated a route past those obstacles, though, despatching the requisite ten mobs was ridiculously easy. Yes, some of them were six or seven levels higher than me but mobs in New World vary incredibly in difficulty and threat compared to most other mmorpgs I've played. These were all Lost and for my build at least, Lost are just about the softest of kills.

So now I'm a Ravager, which means I can buy the third grade of faction armor. I don't want to, because I don't need it, which is just as well. I can buy it but I can't equip it. Clearly the developers did indeed expect players wouldn't be doing these quests until they hit 35 or even 40 because those are the level requirements to wear the bloody stuff!

Seriously? What do I have to do to get some respect around here? Arm-wrestle alligators? Because I will!

 

Never mind. At least I can gain reputation with the Marauders again and make my way towards the fourth trial so I can become a Destroyer. And there are some useful utilities I can buy for tokens.

Along the way I did do a few more missions in Everfall. My Standing there is now 19, just one level short of being able to buy the Tier Three house I wanted. Note past tense.

I might still want it. I'm not sure. It's a great house. And Everfall is a great town. There's just one problem. It's also an insanely busy town. I get more frame-rate lag there than anywhere else in the game. I can barely move after eight in the evening. I'm begining to think it would be a mistake to settle there.

Then again, I have all that Standing. It would be a shame not to take advantage of it. I can't see myself waiting until I hit the mid-50s to start all over again in Ebonscale Reach, no matter how delightful it is. 

And in the long run, it'll be the endgame zones that are busiest, won't it? It usually is. By then, Everfall might have slipped back into being a quiet, low-level backwater. 

I hope so although I suspect not. It's just too conveniently placed and as we all know... location, location, location.

One thing's for sure. Wherever I end up living it won't be Reekwater, no matter how damn quiet it is. I have some standards, at least!

I Was looking For More Of A Fixer-Upper. Do You Have Anything In The 5k Range? An Overview Of How Housing Works In New World.

That's not my house up there, before you ask. God forbid I'd ever live in anything so gaudy. It's not even the house I plan on buying or, I should say, the plot, although it is in the same settlement, Everfall.

The one below is the one I thought I was going to get. It's slightly more tastefully decorated, although if you look carefully you can see some of the same items, just a little less ostentatiously placed.

My house most definitely won't look like anything like either of them, when I get my hands on it but unfortunately you'll never know that if you walk down my street. It will still look much the same from the outside, no matter what I do to it.

That's because New World has something I've never seen in mmorpg housing before: a ranking system to decide which player's decor gets used by the server as the default for the street view.

It might be nice if the winner was decided by something like EverQuest II's voting system, although given the rampant gerrymandering, ballot-stuffing and downright, shameless, blatant cheating that went on when that was first introduced (/em raises hand, guiltily) perhaps not. The way it works in New World is very simple: the game uses a combination of the value of the placed decorations and the owner's territory standing to decide who gets to show off their execrable taste. 

Apparently you can even see a list of the highest-ranked players for each plot. Minimalists and anyone with any sense of subtlety needn't bother looking. Their names won't be on it.

I spent some time this morning reading up about housing in the game. I learned a lot but not what I needed to know, which is where to find the houses that cost 5,000 gold.  

If you look at the picture above, you might wonder what I'm talking about. Doesn't it say "5,000" right there? Yes. Yes it does. But it means 10,000.

Points mean publicity.

When you buy your first house, wherever and whichever it is, as a first-time buyer you're entitled to a massive 50% discount. That 5,000 you see is the price after the discount has been applied. That house goes for 10k at market rates.

It took me a while to figure that out. When I finally did, it explained something else that had been puzzling me, which was how come the game tells you you're entitled to buy a house when your Standing hits Level 10 but the housing interface says it needs to be Level 15.

The answer to that one is obvious but only if you realize there are cheaper houses somewhere. That one you're looking at, which you thought represented the first step on the ladder, is actually the second rung. 

There are four grades of house altogether. There's a detailed breakdown of the differences in this guide but the crucial requirments for prospective buyers to be aware of are the cost and the standing. 

The cheapest house costs 5,000 gold, which means when you look at it in the housing interface as a first-time buyer, what you'll see is 2,500 gold. That house also requires you to have Level 10 Standing in that settlement and be Level 15 in real levels. You have to be at least  level fifteen to buy any house.

I'm Level 26, I have five and a half thousand gold and Level 10 standing in both Everfall and Monarch's Bluffs, so I'm covered all ways round. Actually, I'm Level 13 in the Bluffs but it's Everfall where I've decided to settle. It's a compact little town with an eternally autumnal feel to it. 

It is literally always autumn in Everfall, hence the name. That would suit me perfectly in real life, provided it was the kind of crisp, dry, golden season Aeternum enjoys. I've never seen it rain yet. In game, Everfall's the obvious place for me to live. It's also very handily placed in the center of the map so there are practical considerations as well as aesthetic ones.

Of course, if I play long enough I should be able to live in several places. Three, to be precise. You can have up to three properties if you can afford the weekly propery tax, which in my opinion looks pretty damn steep at a base rate of around 10% of the price of the house at the bottom end, falling to 5% for the top-rated properties. Player-governors can raise that somewhat, too, so watch your landlord.

The good thing is that you don't get evicted or even locked out if you come up late one month. The penalty for missing a payment is relatively light. All that happens is you can no longer place new decorations or move old ones, you can't use the housing-based fast travel system and any buffs you have from trophies stop working.

You can still go in and out and, most importantly, carry on using your storage, which is probably the main reason most people will want houses in the first place. I've seen worse penalties in other games. I can definitely live with those.

Or I could if I had a house. I thought I was going to buy one today but with what I've learned, I'm having to rethink. I have a couple of problems to resolve before I decide what to do.

For now I'll just camp here, outside the walls.

The first is simple: I can't buy the house I'm allowed to buy, the Tier 1, 5k/10 Standing option, until I can find someone willing to sell me one. If there are any genuine starter homes in Everfall, I can't find them. I suspect there aren't any.

I could go look in other places to see if there's some dingy back street with a clapped-out shack I could afford but I want to live somewhere at least halfway respectable and I really want it to be Everfall. I am curious, though, to see where those cheap houses are and what they look like, even if I end up walking away.

The other factor is that hefty half-off one-time-only first home discount. All the guides recommend saving up to buy the biggest house you can afford because that discount doesn't just apply to the initial purchase, it applies to the rent you pay forever after. For someone who plays for a few years that's going to run into millions. Even if you end up with the maximum property portfolio, it makes sense to make your first home a mansion.

And it would be nice to have one of the big houses with the great views and the big gardens. Only they cost four times as much as I've managed to save so far and, more worryingly, a Standing of Level 30. I can't see myself waiting however many weeks, or more likely months, it would take to get to those numbers just by playing the way I'd like to play and equally I can't imagine grinding Everfall rep and scrabbling for gold day after day to get it done faster.

House on the left is T4. House on the right is T3. Worth waiting for, I think.

Either of those would suck the fun out of what is shaping up to be an extremely enjoyable mmorpg. At the moment I'm minded on a compromise. I already have the gold for the Tier 2 house and I'm certain I can easily get my Everfall standing to fifteen. I'm going to do that and see how fast and fun it feels. 

If I'm fed up with it at fifteen I'll buy the Tier 2 house. If I'm still enjoying grinding rep, which is not all that unlikely because it is the sort of thing I tend to get hooked on, I'll carry on to twenty. By then I should have more than the 7,500 gold I need to invest in the property market and I'll buy a Tier 3 home in Everfall.

I suppose there's an outside chance at that point I might decide to carry on until I can get the Standing and gold for the biggest house but I think that would be a mistake. I'm not sure the benefits would outweigh the costs and time spent. 

We'll see how it goes. I really need to take my own advice at this point. I've been dropping comments in various places suggesting people may be in a tad bit of a rush in what is, after all, a game we could be playing for years. It shouldn't be too much to ask that I wait a couple more weeks to get the house I want, should it?

And anyway, there's really no pressure. If I take my time, the houses will all still be there, waiting for me. It's not like anyone's going to swoop in and snatch them out from under my nose. 

This isn't FFXIV!