Over the last few days, New World successfully passed two of my crucial tests for a possible new main mmorpg. Makes it sound as though I have a list, doesn't it? I wish I did. Maybe I should make one.
Until I do, these two will have to do:
- The more I play, the more I want to play.
- I begrudge having to do other things with the time I could be playing.
When was the last time that happened? Well, Valheim, for sure, but Valheim, much though it feels like one, isn't an mmorpg. Neither is Genshin Impact.
I think I might have to go back as far as the launch of Guild Wars 2 to find the last time this happened with an actual, for reals mmorpg. For all the enjoyment I've had out of the many quality imports - Blade & Soul, Black Desert Online, ArcheAge or this summer's Bless Unleashed - I don't recall any of them evoking the same sense of potential permanence that oozes from New World, a game that feels so obviously built to last.
It is only potential, of course. It is entirely possible that in a month or even a week I won't be writing about the game any more or even playing it. Maybe no-one will, or not enough to matter. Warhammer, Vanguard, Age of Conan, Wildstar - they all opened big, then faded.
In New World's case I don't get any sense there's likely to be that kind of front-loaded success followed by catastrophic collapse. People aren't going to lose interest as they discover the game isn't all they thought it would be. They know what it is already. They tried it in the various betas and liked it and the live game is just the same, only it doesn't stop.
In New World's case the problems are about access not content or execution. And of all the ways an mmorpg could struggle at launch, not being able to provide enough servers to meet demand has to be the least bad. Also the least long-lasting.
The current server issues and queues will be resolved, one way or another. The whole thing will settle down. Right now it seems super-important because everyone's stoked to play and frustrated because they can't but it's always like this when an mmorpg launch is more successful than anyone anticipated. Time telescopes. People talk about things as though there's a terrible immediacy but it's not even been a week yet.
Even unsuccessful mmorpgs run for years. Successful ones run for decades. The traumas of launch will be mostly forgotten in a matter of weeks, remembered, if at all, in the form of war stories told by battle-scarred veterans to disbelieving newbies. "You had to be there", they'll say, "we queued for hours. It was horrific!" and the latecomers will catch each other's eye and shake their heads. It never happened. Things were always good.
Or maybe not. Maybe this time the house of cards will come crashing down. Maybe, as Scopique suggests, all those tens, hundreds of thousands waiting in line will find they have time to re-consider whether they really want to play after all. Maybe they'll decide "Sod this for a lark" and log out, never to return.
I kind of doubt it. For one thing, this isn't a free-to-play game. All those people bought a box, albeit an imaginary one. They want their money's worth. Is there any kind of movement for refunds building, like there was with other high-profile disasters like No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk 2077? A class action suit, maybe? Those always pay off.
Probably not. Unlike those, this isn't a disastrous game, just a disastrous launch. What most people generally seem to agree, when they're able to get in and play, is that it's a pretty good game.
What's more, it's a pretty good Western AAA mmorpg and those aren't dropping off the conveyor belt the way they used to do. It's not like everyone can choose to skip this one and wait for the next. That's years away. If you don't have the patience for the queues right now, waiting for Ashes of Creation's hardly the solution.
And then, there's a wealth of difference between finally getting to play the game you paid a lot of money for and finding you've been sold a pup and knowing if you only could get in you'd be having the time of your life. That's the kind of exclusivity that hasn't done any number of high-end venues and luxury marques any harm in the past.
Of course, Amazon will need to let everyone in eventually. There's a point when anticipation and longing turns to anger and rejection. I don't get the sense we're anywhere near that point yet, though. So long as the reports coming out of the game from people able to play remain positive about the experience and as long as Amazon appear to be doing what they can to improve the situation - and crucially saying the right things about what they're doing - then I'd say they have some slack, still.
How long will people wait? Well, how long did it take Blizzard to get the queues under control when World of Warcraft went ballistic? I don't know. I wasn't there. I've heard plenty of people talking about it over the years though, and my impression is the firefighting went on for weeks. Maybe months.
What that led to was the largest, if perhaps not the longest, period of sustained growth for an mmorpg we've seen. The reason? The game was good enough that people wanted to play despite how tough it was to get a slot. Word of mouth is powerful.
Is New World's word of mouth good enough to overcome the negative publicity of hours-long queues? Too soon to judge, perhaps, but I keep reading people saying things like "When I do manage to get in-game I’m having a great time" and "I have to say that New World has solid and engaging gameplay". That's the sort of thing that makes even people who weren't all that interested in the first place think "Hmm. Maybe there's something to this thing after all".
However it all falls out, I'd say it's a sure thing New World isn't going away any time soon, unlike Amazon's last two tries at breaking into gaming. A completely rational response right now would be to hold off and wait for things to settle. Yes, you might miss out on the launch-day/week/month excitement but that's a blip in the life of any mmorpg. The real game goes long.
I still don't think New World is going to be my next "main" mmorpg. It could be. It has the stuff. I just don't believe it will. I think it's going to be a lot of people's, though, and I don't think a few weeks of queues will do much to put a dent in its long-term prospects.
But then, it's easy for me to be sanguine. I can log in almost whenever I want. There are no queues on Zuvendis until 8 or 9pm my time and even then they're short.
In fact, I'm going to stop typing this and log in right now. Because as I said at the top, the more I play New World the more I find I want to play it and I begrudge spending time I could be playing doing other things and that includes wirting about playing.
Probably says a lot more about the situation than the post about fishing in Aeternum I thought I was going to write when I started this an hour ago would have, doesn't it?
Explains the pictures, though.
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