Yet Another New Direction For New World

The big mmorpg news of the moment has to be the much-hyped and even more highly anticipated launch of the Brimstone Sands update for Amazon Games' floundering flagship title, New World. There's already been a flurry of posts in my blog roll from people who haven't yet played it and this is going to be another.

Oh, wait! No, it's not! Because I have played it! Well, some of it. A tiny sliver, a taster, a teaser. The merest trifle. One hour, precisely or, rather, imprecisely. Fifty-seven minutes, timed courtesy of GeForce Now, my preferred portal for playing games that make my PC chug like the little engine that really rather wouldn't, thank-you very much.

In light of the surprising revelation that I have some hands-on experience to work with, I think I'll mothball the post I was going to write, a rather stuffy extrapolation of the kind of huffy, borderline passive-aggressive comments I've been leaving on other people's posts, where I've been making (Entirely justified, in my opinion.) comparisons between the Year One development paths of New World and Guild Wars 2, in favor of some good, old-fashioned Very First Impressions . I took a lot of screenshots; I might as well use some of them. (Oh, no you won't! Ed.)

So, let's begin at the beginning: character creation. Okay, that's not exactly the beginning. There's still the moody cut-scene that dates back to when the game was going to be called Conquistadors and Cutlasses (No really... or was it? No, it wasn't. Should have been, though.). At least, I'm guessing it's the same cut-scene. I hit Escape about three seconds in when I saw it coming. I must have sat through it at least ten times now and while it was impressive enough at the start, I think I've had about as much of it as I can take.

The rest of character creation seems much as I remember although I'm not going to swear nothing's changed. Once again, I couldn't summon up the enthusiasm to go through all the options one at a time yet again, so I hit "Randomize" a few times until it kicked up an image I liked. I'm now a green-eyed, raven-haired, somewhat piratical wench with a Veronica Lake 'do. It's a look I'd never have made for myself but it's striking and I like it.

I say "raven-haired"... It depends on the light. It was jet black in character creation but on the deck of the ship in the storm-filled cut scene that followed, it turned electric blue. Since then, my hair's been almost auburn and a weird kind of subdued pinky-purple. Maybe it's the residual magic draining out or maybe I'm a superhero and just don't know it yet. (Not as unlikely as you might imagine, given what's coming later.)

The next part on the beach is about the same as it ever was, although I think it's been beefed up a little to make it feel more dramatic. The tutorial hammers home the basic commands in more merciless fashion than I remember, too. The fight with the Captain who throws fireballs at you has definitely been upgraded to last longer, although it's still scripted to have you lose no matter how well you seem to be doing. 

After that, it's back to the campfire at the beach like always. I didn't get any choice on which settlement to start at, a change I think was made long before the latest update. It's Monarch's Bluffs or bust, now, it seems, because that where the King Arthur stuff happens and you wouldn't want to miss it.

Speaking of choices, I wasn't able to pick the server I wanted, Themyscira, home of Wonder Woman and Belghast, because as Bel's already discovered, the doors have closed. The sign says it's only temporary but I obviously wasn't going to wait. I picked one of the servers that was flagged light blue, Heliopolis. In a moment of madness, I also named my character Sarsparilla Flynn, a decision I'm sure I'll come to regret if I end up wanting to play her for more than a few sessions.

Thanks to New World's annoying one character per server-cluster rule, this is actually the first time I've made a new character since launch, although I made plenty before then. It's been so long since the last time, I really can't say what's changed, if anything, about the opening stages of the main questline, which in any case used to vary slightly depending on which settlement you washed up near.

The parts where you make a skinning knife, kill and skin some boars and make yourself something to eat seem roughly as I remember them, although I think maybe it used to take more than one boar to satisfy the Warden. After that, though, there are significant improvements.

And, yes, I do thnk they're improvements. I was happy enough with the old version, where you went foraging among the wrecked ships along the beach for various supplies, but the new version, which has you meeting a feisty pirate captain (I think she supposed to be Irish although it's not always easy to tell with some of the voice acting in New World, most of which is surprisingly ramshackle for a project of it's size and budget.) and cutting a deal with her to recover items from a ship's manifest as well as her own lost possessions, feels much more urgent and exciting.

Someone is going to pop into the comments to tell me none of this is new, I just know it. Even as I type, I'm getting flashbacks of doing all this stuff before. I think what they've done is keep the bones of the previous tutorial and zhoosh it up a bit but exactly how much is new I couldn't say with any authority. Whatever the truth of it, the current version is slick and satisfying and just like the early stages of every other mmorpg, so job well done there, guys!

There's also been some thought put into the rest of what you see and do in the opening minutes. One of the quests rewards you with a blunderbuss, the newish weapon that featured in another major update not too long ago, and there was a greatsword lying right in my path as I followed the quest marker to one of the shipwrecks. The greatsword, in case you haven't been reading the memos, is the featured weapon of the moment, introduced in this very update.

Naturally, I picked it up and started using it. Even though we never made it to Thermascyra, my character nust have the strength of an Amazon, judging by the ludicrous size of the thing. It's an ultra-low-level, grey item but it's still one of those crazy ironing-board shaped planks so popular in just about every fantasy game for the last twenty years or so.

It's fun to use, hitting slowly but hard, as you'd expect. I would love to train it up and see what tricks you can do with it, which I imagine is the idea. Even so, I was much more excited with the drop I got from a Drowned Sailor, a sword with a wicked curved blade that glows green!

There were a few other interesting bits and pieces lying around, all of which I scooped up. It made for a good opening impression but whther any of it was new with the update I couldn't say for sure. I definitely don't remember getting a green sword before, though.

One thing that absolutely, unequivocally is new is the voice that talks to you incesantly inside your head. Every time you do anything of even the most trivial import, some disembodied supervillain starts yammering away about how you've spoiled their nefarious plans and, man, you are so going to get it. 

 

Given they're talking to a bedraggled, confused survivor, who's barely been able to drag herself out of the waves and is now desperately trying to dress herself in rotting rags stolen from walking corpses even worse off than herself, it doesn't say an awful lot for the supposed authority of the speaker, who I take to be the mysterious "Isabella" from the before-times.

Nevertheless, it does certainly give the whole experience a more gamelike tone, as do the new static cut scenes done in the style of a superhero comic. I rather like those. I took a whole load of screenshots to show here but of course I forgot I was playing on GeForce Now so none of them saved anywhere I can find them. They're probably on a server in some in Nvidia bunker by now. I'll never see them again, that's for sure.

Fortunately, someone's already uploaded the whole thing to YouTube so here it is. And I can filch a couple of stills from it forto replace the ones I lost, too! Thanks Flex!

I also took a lot of shots of new quest dialog (All lost now, naturally.) some of which archly pokes fun at a few of New World's long-standing problems, such as what the hell Aeternum is supposed to be and how the whole eternal life thing is meant to work. I found them quite amusing but then I like a bit of metafiction in my mmorpgs. I imagine it will class as immersion-breaking for others.

Experience is supposed to have been ramped up to make the journey to cap faster but I think that probably kicks in later. The first ten levels always seemed to whip by and they did today but I can't say it felt faster than last time. That said, I was level 8 when I logged out and as I said at the top, I only played for just under an hour. That does seem quite speedy, now I come to think of it.

Overall, I was moderately impressed. The stuff I'm sure was new all seemed fine, even if tonally much of it felt completely out of kilter with the game as it used to be. The new version seems to be aimed far more squarely at a typical - maybe I should say younger - gamer audience. Back at launch, as I said many times, New World really had much of the feeling of old school EverQuest about it but i don't think that comparison would come readily to mind now.

And that, I imagine, is something Amazon Games would be very pleased to hear. They started out making a survival game, switched to some kind of hybrid and now they appear to have ended up with a full-blown, mass-market mmorpg. It's not exactly a WoW Clone but if it had tab-targetting it wouldn't be that far off, particularly when it comes to the questing.

I hope to start over for real when the Fresh Start servers come up in a few weeks, so I don't want to burn myself out before then, but I really enjoyed my hour today. Maybe I'll carry on and see where the plot takes me next. Or perhaps I should take my Level 60 into the new, high-level zone, Brimstone Sands itself. 

Hmm. That sounds like a better idea. I'll do that. I'll be sure to let you know how it all turns out.

I Got Skills: WoW Classic

I wanted to say something about weapon skills in Classic, following Kaylriene's post on the subject. I was going to write a long, theoretical post about the concept and mechanics but when it comes down to it there's not much wrong with the way Classic does it already. A quick run-through of what my Hunter was doing yesterday should cover most of the salient points.

I replied to Kaylriene, saying it was the norm (back in the day) to buy all the weapon skills as you could afford them, then swap between weapons as you levelled so as to hit the cap with everything at or near max. This is true but I'd forgotten it was something I was never very good at doing. Or, more accurately, remembering to do.

Having reminded myself, I spent yesterday afternoon taking my Hunter around Ironforge, Stormwind and that Night Elf hovel, finding weapon trainers and paying them ten silver to teach me all they knew. You'd think it would cost more and take longer, right?

Acquiring the skill is trivial but how about training it up? Fortunately for the forgetful (and slackers), weapon skills in Classic improve incredibly quickly, at least until they get to about ten or fifteen points short of your level cap. Then they slow to a crawl, but by then you're already good to go with that weapon in any normal leveling situation.

Like shelling peas. And yes, since you ask, I have shelled peas.

As far as training weapons go, it seems to make remarkably little difference what quality or level you use. Anything remotely close to my level on the Auction House was way out of my price range (I had about sixty silver to my name at that point) so I bought a Level 11 white quality bow from a vendor and filled half eight slot bag with the second-cheapest throwing axes, 50 copper for a stack of 200, meaning I was carrying 800 throwing axes. Best not think about it. Then I went to Wetlands, where I spent a couple of hours killing gnolls, crocs, raptors and slimes.

As a skinner and a leatherworker, with a tailor relying on a steady supply of cloth, this sort of thing is always time well spent. I killed a couple of grey cons to see if they gave skill-ups (they did) and then I moved to where everything was green and gave xp.

I tore through them as fast as if I was using my regular gun and two-handed axe. It was confusing. In order to get the most skill increases I sent the pet in and stood back, chucking axes. Everything stayed on the bear and died fast.

My throwing skill increased by nearly a point per throw at first, slowing down a little after I hit three figures. It took me half an hour and exactly 200 axes to go from zero to 145. Getting the last ten points to my level cap took almost as long. Still very quick.

I was also training one-hand axe. I had let it slide so I had about 50 points to do. I had nothing in my off hand because alhough I'd trained Dagger and Fist I hadn't got weapons for either. I did think I might get some increases for "Unarmed", which isn't a weapon skill as such, but nothing doing. I have eleven points in it so I've obviously punched something, somewhere, sometime but I have no idea what I did then that I wasn't doing this go round.

That's the Skinning Knife. Sure looks like a dagger to me.

Going through my bags in the vain hope of finding an off-hand weapon I'd forgotten about (not at all impossible, given the state of my inventory) I noticed that my Skinning Knife had damage stats and was flagged "One Hand". I equipped it, which at least freed up an inventory slot.

It didn't do anything else. I got no skill-ups and the combat log recorded no damage. The Skinning Knife, although it has a damage rating and can be equipped, doesn't show a weapon type. It looks like a dagger but clearly isn't one. Not sure why it didn't do any damage, Might need further research.

Once Thrown was maxed I went to swap to Bow, only to find I didn't have one. Which was odd because I was one hundred per cent certain I'd bought one an hour ago. After a bit of head-scratching I decided I must have sold it so I ran back to Menethil and bought another. I later found the original safely tucked away in the bank, so that was twenty silver wasted.

Bow went much the same as Thrown except that by the time my skill was over a hundred I seemed to be doing as much damage as I'm used to doing with my gun, which has double the DPS. I kept pulling aggro from the bear, which was fine because it let me carry on raising Axe and Defence.

Things seemed so easy and safe I started to press into higher level areas and pick off mobs nearer my own level. By the time I decided Bow was high enough at 150/155, I was on Level 29 Elder raptors, just a couple of levels below me.

WoW might be the only MMORPG I've played that uses more than one death animation for the same mob. Here are two identical Giant Wetlands Crocolisks. One just collapsed on his belly, the other did a dramatic back flip and ended up with all six legs in the air.

I'm sure if I parsed my DPS I'd see the difference but experientially I really couldn't tell. I did spend a lot of time just using auto-attack, which I never really do, and I wonder if that's actually more efficient than cycling through skills and abilities. Or maybe having the bear tank for longer helps.

Also, I didn't die at all (well, that one time I pulled five gnolls and then got two adds running away...). I may have to rethink my usual "Horatio on the bridge" approach. It doesn't seem to be quite as efficient asI thought it was...

After all that was over I went back to regular questing. Still using the Level 11 Bow and the Axe. And I bought a White Level 11 dagger from a vendor and stuck it in my off hand. I spent the rest of the evening killing mobs my level and up to three levels above me in Shimmering Flats. It went as fast as I'd expect it to go.

Leaving me puzzled. I know it makes a huge difference when I get a much better weapon. I have seen the major increase in DPS. So, if I can see that leap when I upgrade, why can't I see the drop when I change down?

I do think it has a lot to do with how it made me change my approach. Because I was being more careful and cautious at first, letting my pet do more of the work, meleeing less and using fewer skills, my downtime was significntly reduced. Not only did I not die as much (or, really, at all) I spent far less time sitting and drinking to recover mana and far less time running and re-setting after bad pulls.

They don't call it "Wetlands" for nothing. Heaviest rain I have seen in any game, ever. Then again, I've never played "Heavy Rain".

All of that may have made things feel faster even though each kill might have taken longer. Although I can't say they ever felt longer. Also I think I have majorly underestimated the value of just auto-attacking with my hands off the keyboard. What that says about Classic gameplay I hesitate to consider too closely. 

Also, I think it's worth noting that just killing green con mobs in Wetlands for two hours got me a third of the way through Level 32. If I can replicate that with mobs above my level, which I believe I can, that would be more like half the level, which is a lot faster than I'm leveling by doing quests.

Today I plan on getting Dagger to 150 or so. The I have to work through One-Hand Sword (already in three figures), Two-Hand Sword, Staff, and Fist. Not to mention Crossbow and Polearm, neither of which I have ever seen in game.

I find this sort of thing immensely enjoyable. I look forward to doing it on all my characters from now on. And it's going to be a lot more efficient if I start early. The only hard part is going to be working out what weapons each of them can use without looking it up outside the game.

Those weapon masters could at least tell me who uses what. I mean to say, I'm paying ten silver!