New New World: Only ONE New Zone?

 I wanted to start covering the myriad of changes coming to New World for it's expansion and season 3 balance changes.  There is a ton to unpack and no particular order to cover it in so I came up with this serious of posts titled "New New World: <topic>" because we are in fact getting an entirely new and fresh version of New World!  Today I want to talk about the "just one new zone!?" feedback for the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion.

 

 There has been a small uproar in the community about the expansion only having one zone and there is an argument to be had that it's not even "new" since it is just the First Light zone redone as the Elysian Wilds.  That doesn't seem like much for an "expansion"; especially when we received all of Brimstone Sands as a free update last year.

 I can somewhat see the argument that it is not an "expansion" as we are used to in the MMORPG space.  Normally an expansion means an actual "expansion" of the game on the size and scale of the original game.  With that said, based on Brimstone Sands last year, and what we've seen so far from Rise of the Angry Earth it seems like this will be New World's annual "expansion" size: one new zone and a bunch of new features.

 I am good with that.  I dislike when games add too much new landmass and invalidate all of the old.  While there will be a period of time where the Elysian Wilds is the zone to be in I expect players will fall back to Brimstone Sands, Reekwater, Shattered Mountain, and other current end game zones along with Elysian Wilds.

 Also we can't forget about the other zone receiving a makeover with Season 3: Edengrove.  With the angry earth taking over First Light they have left Edengrove open for the taking.  Edengrove will now be a capture-enabled territory with multiple changes to go along with it.  So technically we are getting two "adjacent to new" zones for the Season 3 and expansion.

 Combine two reworked zones along with mounts, level increase to 65, gear score increase to 70, reworked mutations, and a new weapon with the Flail and it is silly to think $30 is too high a price tag for the expansion.