Why I Quit Throne and Liberty to Go Back to New World

I just can’t bring myself to play Throne and Liberty any longer, and it took logging back into New World for a few minutes to see why. New World is the better MMORPG. It’s better in every aspect I care about.

Sorry Helpie!

One thing I missed while I was in Throne and Liberty was how being zoomed so far out affected my experience. Playing effectively in Throne requires you to zoom way out, which creates a sense of detachment. Over-the-shoulder gameplay becomes impossible. In contrast, New World limits the zoom, keeping you behind your character, which feels far more immersive.

I spent almost no time staring at the UI in New World. There’s no constant tabbing to check if I have the right enemy targeted, no staring at my hotbar waiting for skills to come off cooldown, and no constant glances at a minimap in the top corner. Instead, I’m engaged with the game world itself, which feels much better.

Combat is a night-and-day difference between the two games. Throne’s tab-targeting system, paired with its overwhelming “word salad” abilities, is replaced in New World by an intuitive and immediate action combat system. What you see on screen dictates your actions—big fireball? Dodge big fireball. Enemy in front of you?  Press attack and hit them.  It’s that simple.

Then there’s the PvP. If there’s one triggering event that pushed me away from Throne and Liberty, it was may last dominion PvP event where I was repeatedly getting stunned and killed in seconds which was frustrating. I thought maxing out my gear and tank build would unlock the “can’t kill me” status tanks are supposed to have in Throne. Instead, even with 3,500+ CP, I died within seconds, often while stunned. Purge one stun? Another is coming.

Even without the constant crowd control, Throne’s combat remains unintelligible, drowning in poorly explained skills and convoluted mechanics. I had no idea what was happening half the time, leading me to mash my emergency buttons out of desperation. It’s the worst PvP I’ve experienced in an MMO.

In New World, PvP is a breath of fresh air. The combat makes sense—dodge the fireball, hit the enemy, block the attack. Even in larger battles, I can understand what’s happening, and the game is responsive enough for me to make an impact. Stuns and crowd control, while present, are manageable and nowhere near the mess they are in Throne. I’d still like New World to refine these mechanics further, but compared to Throne, it’s night and day.

Even with New World introducing aim assist and target lock (which I’m still getting used to), the PvP remains far more enjoyable. In large-scale fights, I can follow the action and feel like I have a role to play. In Throne, battles often felt like meaningless chaos, leaving me with no sense of agency.

Best of all, gear in New World contributes to power without creating an insurmountable gap. Even though I’m still at 700 GS and many players are now 700+ (with a max of 725), I’ve noticed no significant disadvantage in PvP. It feels like I’m competing on skill rather than being outclassed by someone’s gear.

Another thing I missed was the trading post. Jumping back into New World, I was reminded of how satisfying the economic side of an MMO can be. Throne’s auction house, limited to premium currency, was a disaster. Not being able to trade for basic materials was frustrating. In New World, the economy feels alive. Items that were once worthless are now valuable, and I love placing buy and sell orders to carve out my slice of the market.

I don’t understand why New World isn’t more popular. And I don’t get why so many players are still sticking with Throne, especially with the upcoming Tier 2 items doubling the grind required for gear progression—unless you swipe your credit card. New World is the better game and offers so much more to players. Now, I just need to figure out how to convince my friends to leave Throne and Liberty and join me back in New World.

 

Note: this post was edited with the help of AI. The thoughts are my own.  The grammatical correctness is the AI.

Rerolling into Rosa

 New World Aeternum has launched, and although my internet was still down due to Hurricane Helene (thankfully, it’s back now), I was determined to dive in. Bad internet or not, I couldn’t resist the urge to join the wave of new players hitting the shores. I decided to hop onto the new crossplay server, Rosa, and bring HeartlessgamerX (aka X) to Aeternum!

 My main goal? To play through the new storyline and reach level 65. I’m a few days behind the herd, especially since I’m still playing Throne and Liberty, so this will be a slower grind for X.

Amazing view!

 For my leveling build, I’m sticking to my tried-and-true setup: Firestaff paired with Sword and Shield. I’ve spent thousands of hours mastering this playstyle, and it’s still as satisfying as ever! There have been a few tweaks to the Firestaff, particularly with mana, so leveling a new character feels like a good chance to familiarize myself with these changes.

 Jumping back into New World was refreshing—literally! I like how the new introduction starts with the player swimming toward the shoreline. After a brief introduction to combat and item interaction, you're thrown into a dust-up with ole’ Thorpe and then introduced to Isabella. The tutorial now has much more substance than at launch!

 Once out of the tutorial, it’s back to familiar territory: the shores of Windsward, where I found myself gathering flint, picking bushes, and hunting pigs. The early quests feel familiar but have some fresh twists, with new characters joining you on the journey. While I think these new additions are well-executed, the story is still just "OK" for me. As much as I promised myself I'd pay more attention, I ended up clicking through most of the dialogue.

 All in all, I’m enjoying my return to New World. While the game feels improved, the commitment to push to level 65 is still substantial—especially when you factor in trade skills, gathering, and everything else that also is starting over. Having put thousands of hours into my main character, I already miss the perks of having piles of gold and full ultimate trophies. But for now, it's one step at a time. Stay tuned for more updates!

New World Aeternum is FINALLY here!

Here we go.... again

 Today is the day that New World relaunches as New World Aeternum and launches on consoles along with bringing a slate of updates to the game for PC players.  There is a new 10-man raid, match making in PvP modes (arenas and outpost rush), a free-for-all PvP island, new gear score max of 725, and many other changes.  Annnnnndddddd I won't be able to enjoy it because my backup internet solution (due to Hurricane Helene knocking out our main wired connection from Spectrum) can't cut it for action gaming!

 One item that has been a hot topic is the addition of target lock in PvP. During the Aeternum open beta the target lock was pretty aggressive and could track a locked-on target pretty well.  It made sense to have a target lock to help controller players, but with how sticky the lock was it took away most of the "skill" to be able to land attacks.  Players found they could just spam left click and the game would keep them on target (as made famous by TrickTrick winning a duel blindfolded and just clicking his way to the win).

 With the final patch notes for the Aeternum launch provided there are numerous changes coming to the target lock:

• Killing a PvP opponent in target lock will no longer automatically switch to another target
• Target lock now breaks more aggressively when losing line of sight to your target
• A character’s turn speed is now slower when using target lock

 These are all good changes that I think will help make target lock more palatable.  The biggest issue from the open beta was target lock sticking you to the enemy and performing in ways you could not realistically do normally.  It is now closer to the "assist" form that it should be.

 I was originally in the camp of NOT wanting any target lock at all but in reflecting back on it I came to the conclusion that the game needs to try new things to have a fighting chance at a long future. Console is a big part of the current future and there are plenty of games I've played where console players are given some assistance to compete with PC/Mouse&Keyboard players and those games were fine so why not expect that from New World?  There will still be outcry from a vocal few but they are the same vocal few that complain about everything.

 We are also finally getting a new season after Season 5 seemed like it was never going to end and I think it is appropriate they call the new one "Season of Opportunity".  This is the opportunity for the game to turn around.  We are only an hour into the launch here and Steam Charts are all hockey sticking upwards which is a good sign.  That is also just tracking the PC playerbase; we really don't have a sense yet of the uptake on the console side (I don't think it's going to be crazy high but hopefully enough to have made the work worth it for the New World team).

The type of graph we like to see!

 I am a bit bummed I won't be in Aeternum for a bit here until my internet situation stabilizes but I'm excited to get back to New World!  Being excited for the game once again is a better place to be than where I was at back in June with the game.  I'll take it!  See y'all in Aeternum... maybe.... hopefully sometime soon :)

Get hyped for New World Aeternum with this fan made trailer!

 New World Aeternum is only a couple weeks away (Oct 15th launch) and I ran across this fan made trailer to help get you hyped!

New World : This is Aeternum - Fan Made Trailer
byu/toto77170 innewworldgame

August 2024 in review

 August (or should I say Blaugust) 2024 has ended so lets take a look back.

The Blog

 Blogger provided number (last 30 days graph so a bit off a full month): 30,300

 This is up about 1,000 from July.  I do not know what the big spike was in late August as I could not zero in any posts that had that much traffic.

 

 In other metrics:

• Posts:
  
• Target: 31 (Blaugust Rainbow Award level)
  
• Posted: 32
• Difference: +1 because I can't let a reward go unclaimed!
  
•  Search Trends
• "new world roadmap 2024" surged to the top spot this month.  Ironically it appears so often that I created a post for those exact terms with the 2024 roadmap which is just continuing to gain traction.
  
• "best battlefield game", "best battlefield", "best battlefield games" still all are near the top but not the top dog anymore: Best Battlefield!?
• Once Human searches filled out the third spot with searchers looking for more details around the season resets.  This makes sense as the first launch servers recent changed over.  Unfortunately searchers will find nothing of value on the blog as I've not gone through myself or commented about the actual mechanics of the resets... yet!
  

What I Played

 Once Human dominated my August playtime as I made it to level 50 and set up my Frost Vortex build.  I also built a proper base finally (it looks like an airplane hanger).  I posted about none of these accomplishments because I had other ideas for Blaugust posts that took up my blogging time.  I have had to take a break from gaming for the past week due to real life stuff (trip, work, kids stuff) so I have yet to transition from my first scenario into a new one (likely moving to a PVE hard mode server with some folks on Sept 8th).

Years Ago

1 Year Ago

 August 2023 brought my introduction to Blaugust (check my Blaugust 2023 tagged posts) and I jammed the month full of posts.

 The most notable game launch was Starfield (early access started late Aug) and it's hard for me to believe that was already a year ago.  Too bad that game landed like a dud, but they finally added vehicles a year later so I guess I should fix my old post.

5 Years Ago

  Aug 2019 was in the 'no blogging' era and nothing comes to mind.

10 Years Ago

 In Aug of 2014 I was not blogging regularly but I was thinking about it as evidenced by: Long time, no post.  My nonexistent heart was warmed by all the commenters that stopped by though!  6 comments; probably the most of any post in the last 10 years... ha!

15 Years Ago

 August of 2009 was the month I became a father and my life was forever changed.  That kid is now 15 and about to start learning to drive.  He may, and this is a BIG may, also be better at video games than me now.  Speaking of comment counts; this post garnered 40+ which was heartwarming but it also shows how much commenting on blogs has died off over the years.  I'd have a crazy smile on my face if a post these days hit 10 comments; let alone 40+!

 Also some loser named Brett Farve (don't you dare spell check me) signed with the Minnesota Vikings in August of 09.

 20 19 Years Ago

 Technically I have 20 named years on my sidebar, but mathematically 2005 is only 19 years ago.

 In Aug of 2005 I was posting on Google Videos (before this thing called YouTube).  Sadly I think the video "CS:S video released - Two of the gReatest things eveR" and "Battlefield 2 Video - Lets go!" are lost to history as I am not sure I have copies anywhere and they did not make its way to YouTube when that took over for Google Video.  It is crazy to think had I just stuck with videos in that early era I could have been a YouTube content creator instead of annoying my team at work about getting stuff done. 

 With that said; one video from that Google Videos era did get saved to YouTube.  A World of Warcraft video I made while playing with the guild behind the Taverncast podcast: The Pod People invade Westfall.flv

Lessons Learned: MyMMORPG and the rule of 10

 In the spirit of "Lessons Learned" week for Blaugust 2024 I want to talk about a blogging lesson I've learned: ideas for serial posts are easier than writing the actual posts.  A prime example is the "MyMMORPG" series I started and, checks notes, wrote one post for.  The idea was to translate my experience playing games into pontificating about the MMORPG I would develop should I ever get the chance.  This should have been easy and I should have hundreds of posts already!  Yet I didn't post about it.  Let's give that single post a buddy using the lessons I've learned from playing MMORPGs for close to 30 years now.

 I've developed a rule in my head when playing games which I call "the rule of 10." The rule states: as a player, I can manage 10 available actions at any given time. Any more, and I get overwhelmed; any less, and I lose the feeling that I have meaningful choices or control over my outcome. This balance is crucial because it keeps the gameplay engaging without being stressful. When I have too many options, analysis paralysis sets in, making the experience feel chaotic rather than fun. On the flip side, if I have too few choices, the game starts to feel monotonous or overly simplistic, as if I'm just going through the motions without really influencing the world within the game.

This balance is crucial because it keeps the gameplay engaging without being stressful.

 Stress is a major factor for my enjoyment of gaming.  I can't do hardcore PvP or "dragon kill point" raid content anymore because the stress outweighs the possible fun.  Stress is also a compounding factor on players and every player's stress tolerance is different.  An area we can take stress away from a player is by keeping them feeling like they are in control. Limiting actions to 10 or less caps keeps the player in control.

When I have too many options, analysis paralysis sets in, making the experience feel chaotic rather than fun.

  Analysis paralysis is a real problem in games and life in general.   The paralysis quickly leads players to feel like they are losing control.  Even if the "good" options to choose are minimal the fact that there are many more choices to pick from defeats the minimal choice.  We also have to consider the game world itself and in the case of MMORPGs, other players, also are providing input to the player that drive additional choices. All of these contribute to the paralysis.  Limiting actions to 10 or less limits analysis.

On the flip side, if I have too few choices, the game starts to feel monotonous or overly simplistic, as if I'm just going through the motions without really influencing the world within the game.

  Going with too few options makes the game boring.  I can only left/right click so many times or press that same button so many times.  At some point as a player I need to feel like I am in control and just like too many options can cause me to feel like I'm losing control so can too few options.  Players end up feeling "helpless" without the choices to control what is going on around them.

 You may assume that this entire post is just about combat but that couldn't be further from the truth.  The rule of 10 applies to everything.  Crafting, exploration, navigation, traveling, gathering, any action you can think of taking in an MMORPG.  Any of them should have a goal of meeting the rule to strike the balance.  

 A complex crafting recipe with 20 materials and scroll bars to see everything is going to overwhelm players.  Breaking that crafting process into more manageable steps allows us to have more control of each step and reduces stress on the player increasing the chance they don't just give up.

 I also break the rule down further as not all 10 actions need equal weight at any given time.  This helps to further strike that balance we are striving for.  That breakdown is as follows:

• 5 immediate actions
• These are the bread and butter actions you take all the time.  In combat in most MMORPGs this would be your "rotation".  In crafting this is adding materials and setting variables.  
  
• 4 intermediate actions
• These are situational actions that are used when the conditions are right.  Too many of these skills and it increases stress and analysis paralysis chance. Four is a good number and gives enough variability to cover multiple situations.
  
• 1 limited use "fun" action
• Often called "ultimate" abilities.  These generally charge up over time and have some neat effect.  It always saddens me that this idea is often limited to combat, but it could be useful any other time.  For example; you are gathering away out in the wilderness and build up an ultimate gathering ability that lets you chop a giant tree down in one full swing.  The goal should be to answer YES to the question "is this fun to use?".

Two game examples where I feel like they get it right:

New World (combat)

5 immediate actions: Left click attack, right click block, 3 weapon abilities

4 intermediate actions: Four consumable slots (potions, etc)

1 fun action: heartrune ability 

Guild Wars 2 (combat)

5 immediate actions: 5 weapon abilities

4 intermediate actions: heal ability + three selected support abilities

1 fun action: the last ability on the hotbar (forget what its called)

 The ultimate goal of the "role of 10" is to make the game approachable for players and ensure that interacting with the game doesn't become a barrier to entry.  Not every game follows this path.  Some games, like Path of Exile, use complexity to target a specific type of player.  That is fine.  However, for MyMMORPG we're sticking with the "rule of 10".

Staying Motivated for New World?

 It's Thursday of the "Staying Motivated" week for Blaugust 2024 and the desire to post every day is starting to weigh on me.  I have topics to cover such as recent Ashes of Creation drama, Hell Divers 2 losing it's luster, or dupes in Star Citizen but they just don't seem to pull words out of me.  I keep thinking about New World though and if I am going back to the game in October so I need to post to help me understand if I'm motivated to or not.

 The video below from Bowsense really got me thinking about it.  As a long time diehard New World fan the video does hurt to watch.  Maybe it is a little unfair in parts but it's over all theme is spot on.  I hate to say it but AGS has fumbled New World and having taken a break from playing daily I can look back with a more critical eye at the game.

 The video doesn't put New World in a great light so why am I still trying to find motivation to return?  For one I really enjoy the combat and how the game plays.  I play the game; not a UI like I am struggling with in other newer offerings like Throne and Liberty.  The combat is light years ahead after I tried out games like Elder Scrolls Online or more recent entries like Throne and Liberty or Once Human .  If players think New World is bad about bugs or unpolished features (which I disagree with) then I'd really like to see what they think of games like Once Human that are far buggier and less polished yet somehow don't take any heat for it (or lose players over it).

 As you can tell I still get a bit defensive about how New World is treated because I think there is a good base game there.  I was reminded today by a Reddit post today about one of the earliest trailers for the game.  That brought back so many memories of when I first discovered New World in its first preview beta event.  It reminded me that the promise of the game behind that trailer is still possible.

 So here I am recently re-motivated by the original 2021 trailer for New World holding onto the promise of the game it can be.  We need to see what the shift to New World: Aeternum brings and if the team can execute back to the promise.  I think I owe the game a fair try again in October.

New World Creator: Savvvo Games

 As part of Blaugust 2024's Creator Appreciation Week I want to take a moment to give props to a creator that is smaller but has stuck with pushing out content for New World through all of it's up and downs.  His content is free of the doom and gloom and hands out the information you clicked the thumbnail for.  That creator is: Savvvo Games

 Check out his video on the upcoming New World: Aeternum open beta for PC and console.

New World just can't win right now

Not bad? Not good? Not sure.

 

 New World posted about their wrap up of the closed beta for the console release.  They were rightfully called out on Reddit for the lacking quality and content of this update.  As /u/randrogynous broke down:

In the spirit of sharing statistics, the official News Article that this was pulled from contained 240 words. 81 of those words were a reminder that the Closed Beta was under an NDA and breaches would be treated seriously.

Over a third of their 'recap' of the Closed Beta was a reminder/threat about not talking about the Closed Beta.

New World is starting to resemble Fight Club. The first rule of New World is you do not talk about New World. The second rule of New World is you DO NOT TALK ABOUT NEW WORLD.

 Ouch.

 It is never a good situation when developers are more focused on NDA enforcement than building excitement and Amazon has made the rounds having videos and other content taken down that came out of the beta.

 The worst part is most of what has leaked out is so minor in nature it baffles me why there was an NDA in place.  Does a new artifact and some changes to some quests need to be behind an NDA?  Do a few tweaks to some weapon skills along with other balance changes warrant an NDA?

 Damn it AGS stop digging New World's grave.

Monday Screenshots: The Many Faces of Heartlessgamer

 It is time for Monday Screenshots but with a Blaugust slant!  As we are in the "Introduce Yourself" week what better screenshots to feature than the many faces of the characters I've played recently across games.

 

New World

Throne and Liberty Global Beta

Once Human

Pax Dei Alpha Test

Enshrouded

Battlefield 2042 playing as Irish with my favorite skin

Call of the Wild: the Angler

New World open beta

Oldie but goodie - my Guild Wars 2 launch character... ummm yeah

July 2024 In Review

 Blaugust 2024 is here which means July 2024 is over! Let's take a look at what happened on the blog in July.

The Blog

 Blogger provided number (last 30 days graph so a bit off a full month): 29,200 visits

 This is up about 7,000 from June and there was a spike around 7/5 while I was out of town.  I did not dig into the spike.

 

 In other metrics:

• Posts:
  
• Target: 18 (week days minus days I was on my trip)
  
• Posted: 22
• Difference: +4 Woohoo! Lots of good topics to talk about and playing a new game, Once Human, kept the ideas flowing.
  
•  Search Trends
• "throne and liberty beta review", "throne and liberty impressions", and "throne and liberty open beta review" flew to the top this month with lots of Google searchers finding my initial impressions post and then after beta review post.  Look at that mountain in the chart!
• 
  

  

  Look at that mountain in the chart all driven by Throne and Liberty searches.
  

  
  
• "best battlefield game", "best battlefield", "best battlefield games" continue to be towards the top still thanks to this post: Best Battlefield!?
• Then another new search trend is cropping up around the game Once Human (see What I Played).  Lots of folks (me included) are searching for information about how seasons and season resets will work.  Here are the most common search terms:
  
  • once human 6 week reset
  • once human seasons
  • once human season reset
  • once human resets
  • once human seasonal wipe
• And for New World searches... well they dropped all the way to page 2 of the results!  It's all Once Human and T&L here baby!
  

What I Played

 For the first month in close to two years the answer for "what I played" is NOT New World.  I basically quit New World cold turkey after coming back from my trip.  I do drop in to reset some long duration trading post listings and to keep my "days since last login" fresh on the company board but that is it. I have not actually "played" the game since June.

 What I have played though is a lot of Once Human (all tagged posts).  I really like the game even though it has tons of issues and is death marching towards a seasonal model that is going to piss a lot of players off with how the server locking has gone.  We'll see if it has staying power after July.

 I also took the opportunity to try out the Throne and Liberty global beta and I shared my thoughts.  I wasn't hooked enough to say for sure I am playing at launch but having broken the New World grip on my gaming time it is entirely possible I give it a go in Sept.  It will be free 2 play so not much risk.

Years Ago

1 Year Ago

 In July 2023 I was prepping for my first Blaugust!  

 Season 2 of New World was in full swing and I was posting my daily checklist which was a long standing driver of traffic to the blog as it was picked up on the New World subreddit.  Sort of makes me sad to look back and see how positive we were on New World and just a year later and its doom and gloom.

5 Years Ago

  July 2019 was in the 'no blogging' era and nothing comes to mind.

10 Years Ago

 In July of 2014 I was also not blogging regularly so had no entries.

15 Years Ago

  July of 2009 had us talking about the infamous Darkfall review debacle and eventually we got the real Kieron Gillen Darkfall re-review to talk about.  To be honest the original review was fair.  Darkfall was a turd of a game.  Personally I liked my May 2009 take by taking Kieron's review of The Path and treating it like it was for Darkfall.

 I was also enamored with Battlefield Heroes through the month of July. It still holds a spot in my "best battlefield" list.  Sad that it closed so soon after launching.  It was Fortnite-like before Fortnite!

 20 19 Years Ago

 Technically I have 20 named years on my sidebar, but mathematically 2005 is only 19 years ago.

 In July of 2005 it was a mix of Battlefield 2 posts and posts complaining about World of Warcraft.  Hmmm... that seems familiar.

New World Roadmap 2024

 I get a lot of visitors from Google searching for "new world roadmap 2024" which I find surprising as this has been provided by the developers.  It isn't much of a road map but it is what is coming in 2024, including the rebranding to New World: Aeternum, whether we like it or not.

 Note: this states this is all coming Oct 15th but it's not clear it becomes available immediately or whether it comes out through the end of the year.  Missing is stuff like the winter event and we've not heard confirmation whether we'll get the event this year or not.

New World roadmap 2024

 

June 2024 In Review

 June 2024 has come and gone.  Here is a look back (late delivery due to being in the middle of Nowhere, Minnesota for the last couple of weeks).

The Blog

Blogger provided number (last 30 days graph so a bit off)

 In other metrics:

• Posts:
  
• Target: n/a (with my big canoe trip I didn't have a target set)
  
• Posted: 20
• Difference: n/a
  
•  Search Trends
• "best battlefield game", "best battlefield", "best battlefield games" blew up last month and continues to dominate my search trends.  All thanks to this post: Best Battlefield!?
• New World continues it's prominent spot with "new world roadmap 2024" right behind "best battlefield game" searches.
• In the third spot is the search for "pax dei" where my post Pax Dei: Wilderness Alpha Feedback appears.
  

What I Played

 New World continues as my main game and I spent a lot of time in 3v3 arenas and the trading post.  The game has lost steam without much to do so we'll see how it ranks in July.

 I fished a bit in Russian Fishing 4 which was a change of pace but not sure it's a game I'll stick with.

 The surprise game of June though was the Once Human demo which ran for a week.  I was hooked on the game and looking forward to it's launch today (7/9) at 5 PM EDT!  Check out my Once Human posts.  I suspect this may break me from New World for a bit!

Years Ago

1 Year Ago

 In June 2023 I was hard at work grinding out my major combat trophies in pursuit of the ultimate combat trophies.  I finished my 3x major corrupted in the 28th.

 Oh and our vacation last year started with our rental bike getting stolen.

5 Years Ago

 June 2019 saw no blog posts on the blog and I cannot recollect what I was up to.

10 Years Ago

 In June of 2014 is when my blog drought occurred.  Crazy looking back that it lasted so long and amazing how life just gets in the way sometimes.

15 Years Ago

  June of 2009 was the month of Battlefield Heroes (which I still maintain as one of my all time favorite Battlefield experiences).  It was basically Fortnite-ish before Fortnite was a fart of an idea.

 This month also saw the merge of Bioware and Mythic after they were consumed by EA.

 Probably the most important update though was the fact I finally gave in and purchased my first microtransaction in a game.  Looking back it was a dumb purchase for a dumb game.  Now a days I don't really sweat buying something in a game if I am enjoying it, but back then it felt like I was breaking an unwritten rule.

 20 19 Years Ago

 Technically I have 20 named years on my sidebar, but mathematically 2005 is only 19 years ago.

 In June of 2005 I got screwed out of some loot in World of Warcraft and created a classic forum fire to go with it.  Ironically looking back I see that the guild the player was part of was Angels of Death which at the time I said "I will probably not group with any Angels of Death members anytime soon." which if memory serves me I never did until..... many years later in 2024 when I joined up with Angels of Death to play Battlefield 2042.  Small world out there.

 We also got the Battlefield 2 demo in June 2005 and I was enamored with it and have been a diehard Battlefield fan ever since.  2 is still my favorite of the series.

 And Dark Ages of Camelot was playing around with what we'd call a "classic server".

 Oh and we got battlegrounds in World of Warcraft.

 What a month!

Screenshot Monday: Relaxing in Ebonscale Reach

 By the time this post goes live I am likely many, many miles in the middle of nowhere on a off grid canoe trip.  So here is a picture of me relaxing in my Ebonscale Reach home in New World (as well organized as my real life one).

 

Where I'm At With New World

 After reading Massively OPs article, Massively Overthinking: The New World Aeternum debacle, I wrote a long comment I wanted to capture on my blog as well.  It really captures where I am at with the whole situation and I'd prefer to spend no more energy on the topic for now.

As one of the louder New World fanboys who was devastated by this turn of events I have come around to this take on the situation: they screwed up communication but this is actually the right step for the game.

Out of all the MMORPGs I’ve played (which is practically all of them in the last 30 years) New World is one of the few that I feel makes sense on console. It’s action combat system fits consoles and that action combat extends to the rest of the game where you spend a lot of time involved with the game world and not a bunch of time with UIs like many MMOs.

So I think console was the right direction and having cross play and shared servers between PC and console was the right move. Also since AGS has shown a higher-than-normal focus towards MMORPGs (regardless of this recent genre twisting) and is working on other MMOs then I want them improving the base line tech for future games.

I also think there is some good content coming. The lawless PvP zone, raid, cross server arenas (my key item), sharding (assumed larger server sizes), and gear score increase to 725. All things the community has been begging for. Did they hit everything the community wanted? No, but that is still a fair shake of items.

The only issue with it is the wait time and AGS needs to improve their speed of delivery. I am hoping with the console transition done they go full bore on content delivery. I really think the game has a second wind coming and we’ll be talking about it at it’s 10 year mark similar to how we’ve seen GW2 and ESO both ascend post initial declines.

With that said they absolutely cannot f-up communication like this again. I was a huge “trust but verify” player before this and now I’m “zero trust”.

Screenshot Monday: Mountain Temple in New World

 I was out and about in New World's Ebonscale Reach zone when I caught a chance to grab a screenshot of one of the temple's on the nearby mountain top.  Regardless of all the doom around New World right now it never fails to disappoint in the visuals.

 

Sorry ESO, it's not you

 With some downtime from New World I've been out trying some other games.  Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) was one I dabbled with and I shared some thoughts here.  The game didn't hook me though and so here are some thoughts as I walk away from my fledgling Templar.

 The foremost driving factor was the combat.  It just isn't acceptable for my tastes when I've played games like New World where combat is far smoother.  It is annoying having to overthink your combat.  Canceling animations, weaving light attacks in, etc.  These are just not things I care to take on.  It doesn't help as well that the bulk of content doesn't require knowing how to do those things so the only way you learn about them is reading about them online and watching videos on how to do it.

 Second I just didn't like the disconnected world.  It felt like Starfield.  Run a little and load screen.  Run a little further; load the next room.  Sure there are bigger zones but I never got a sense of "world".

 Next I didn't dig the UI and as much as I love UI mods being supported I just didn't have the energy (or time) to dig into what was all available.  I've waffled on UI mods over the years.  Back after World of Warcraft I couldn't envision not having UI mods in an MMORPG but more recently playing New World where I spend very little time looking at the UI I enjoy how a minimal UI keeps me in the world.  Staying focused on the world, and not a UI, has become my new preference.

 Last of all I don't think ESO looks all that good.  I don't consider myself a graphics snob but ESO is dated compared to newer games.  I did not get to newer content in ESO so I am sure it gets better visually with the newer content.

 I do want to note that it was exciting to think about the large amount of content ESO offers; both PvP or PvE.  I really was hopeful it would hook me as it would have given me a good amount of stuff to chew on.  Alas it was not to be and I realize it's me, not ESO, that is really the cause of the mismatch.

#savenewworld

 

#savenewworld

 Here is where I think New World needs to start in order to #savenewworld after the disastrous fall out from their "big announcement".

1. Release an honest apology to the community and admit it was wrong to hype the announcement up
2. Provide a roadmap for 2025 as soon as possible
3. Ensure all PC owners of either the base game or base game + expansion get upgraded.

 At no point can AGS say "can't talk about that right now" without causing more backlash.  It simply isn't acceptable that anything is being held back.

Dark Days for New World

Note: after the New World debacle with Summer Game Fest and IGN Live this past weekend I could muster no words to describe how disappointing the it all was.  It is now Monday and I've had time to dwell on the situation so here is an attempt at some words.

 If you tell your players to wait 8 months for a "big announcement" and after the wait the players walk away from your "big announcement" not understanding what genre your game is in or whether you are wiping their characters then you fucked up.  

 If your "big announcement" then says "wait four more months" after you had your players wait eight months then that is a year since your players got any meaningful update which is fucked up.  

 If all that the "big announcement" you hyped up for those eight months was just "the game is coming to consoles" with no other big updates then you lied to your players which is also fucked up.

 Amazon Game Studios... you fucked up.

 Let's take a step back to a post I made about the ill-timed community update for May 2024 in which the community lead and a developer were shown with a heavy dose of censored discussion. It was meant to poke fun at the "big announcement" they couldn't talk about yet.  It was a blatant tease and pissed off a lot of the community.  

 At the time of the video I commented:

 They better have a banger of an update for June otherwise this video will likely be forever held up as the moment "remember when New World died?"

 After that video however I still supported the team.  I even made a long post about how I had faith in New World and why I thought others should as well.  That was a mistake.  My trust in this development team is gone.  We can, and will, look back at that May video update and point at it as the moment New World died.

 It is so upsetting how they handled this announcement and there was no reason they had to handle it this way.  

 First and foremost; there was NO REASON for secrecy.  There was nothing of substance in this update to require it being hidden from players; especially after the minuscule number of changes were data mined months ago.  To prove the point further in the latest minor patch (which came BEFORE the "big announcement") they dropped a relatively major technology update by adding sharding to the game.

 Sharding is one of the biggest new technology things in the entire set of changes and just gets dumped in a minor patch.  How hard would it have been to record a video telling us "hey shards are coming!".  It didn't need to wait for the announcement and if one of the biggest tech changes didn't need to wait then why did the rest of it?

 I can't overstate how obvious it was what was coming.  We knew about the name change to New World Aeternum, the free for all PvP zone, the gear score increase to 725, and it was abundantly clear that the game was coming to consoles.

 I can understand having to keep the console news under wraps, but the rest of the stuff? What on earth were they thinking!?  All of these items would have made good fodder for video updates over the last several months.  Instead we got starved with a promise of "something big" in June.

 Was there no one at AGS that previewed this announcement and said "we have no new information; current players are going to be pissed"?  Was there no one that identified that maybe they shouldn't be hyping this up?  Did no one think maybe some better wording in the follow on videos and IGN Live interview were needed... just a simple "hey if you are a console gamer and wondering what New World is here is what the game is"... instead of leading everyone on like the follow on update was going to give us a bunch of juicy information?

 Let me predict something for you: they have a bunch of pre-canned dev updates that the video clips from the larger update came from and they are going to release them over the next few weeks.  They will put "note: recorded before announcement" subtext in the videos because none of the videos will address the community anger.  I will be SHOCKED if they address the monumental miss in any way.

 What is the end result of all of this?  AGS lost the trust of the current playerbase and has earned every aspect of backlash that will result.  Including when console release does not go as expected.  New World is approaching three years old before it lands on consoles.  What console gamer is going to want to pick up an old game, at a full game price tag, that has Overwhelmingly Negative reviews on Steam.  

 AGS could not have fucked up this situation any worse.  Dark days ahead for New World.

New World Aeternum

 Today is the BIG day for New World announcements.  We got a minor leak about the console release when New World Aeternum (note the name is not just New World) showed up on the Playstation store (it was then promptly removed).  We all assumed a console release was pending so nothing shocking here.  We will get the rest of the update at 5p EDT today!  Set your timers!