New World: Why fresh start servers?

New World's community manager, Luxendra, recently indicated that fresh start servers were under discussion and that more information will be available soon.  Of course the community took this as 100% confirmation that fresh start servers were coming.  This has lead to an argument as to whether fresh start servers are warranted at this point or not.  At the same time there are also folks outside looking in asking "why now?".   I will attempt to make the case as to why fresh start servers make sense now.

The most obvious reason that fresh start servers make sense now is the revamped leveling experience from levels 1-25 that is included in the next major patch scheduled for October (and currently in testing on the public test realm).  Towns, zones, and quest lines have been replaced and/or overhauled.  Early reports from test realm is that the experience is a huge step forward for the game and does deliver "a brand new experience".  So it makes a lot of sense to offer players the chance to enjoy this new experience along with many other players on a set of fresh servers.

The next big reason for fresh start servers goes back to the experience that many players encountered during New World's original launch.  During that launch there was a plague of dupe exploits which many state as a reason they gave up playing the game.  There is an argument to be had about whether the duped gold and items ever actually made it to the market, but regardless the perception of the problem was enough to chase folks away.  Fresh start servers (with server transfers blocked) give players a confidence that they are on equal footing without the taint of dupes.

A smaller reason for fresh start servers is that it encourages players to try out New World for the first time at the same time a bunch of other players are starting from the ground up.  Just look at the popularity of things like World of Warcraft Classic as evidence on how much fresh starts are enjoyed by the MMO player community.  If you missed out on the launch window of an MMO you likely missed out on some of the most fun times for that game.  Fresh start servers give a chance to live (or re-live) that magical period.

Lastly, the buzz around fresh start servers combined with an advertising push (such as the data mined Twitch "Return to Aeternum" event) will bring back players to the game.  More players is always better for massive multiplayer games. Worst case there is another boom and bust cycle with server creation followed by server merges.

While the above points are good reasons for fresh start I do want to list a few of the reasons not to have fresh start.

• There is valid concerns that exploits (not duping this time, but things like speedhacks) will plague the fresh start servers as companies race to take control of the major cities.  The main argument here is that new servers are a bad idea until Amazon Game Studios fixes territory control.
• An argument can be made fresh start servers will divide the playerbase. New servers that just got stood up to deal with the current population boom could quickly crash and need a merge.
  
• Players returning for fresh start may come back to the same problems they saw in the first game: overcrowded servers and long login queue times.  Since the main servers are jam packed and most have new character/character transfers locked these players looking for an alternate to fresh start may not find one.
• The sweaty players want new players to dominate with their best in slot gear.  Not a real argument but I've heard it said enough lately.

What are your thoughts?

Sunday 9/18/2022 Post

 

Goal: 1 Comment

 With the return to blogging regularly I have made the decision to axe my old DISQUS set up for comments.  With this a new goal: have a single comment left to prove to me comments work.  Challenge is on all three of you that see this.

Ashes of Creation Post 1

 I am a long time online game player (20+ years).  My prime gaming years were marked by the golden era of MMOs with Ultima Online and Everquest.  I've played almost every major MMO since that time with New World as my current jam.  I'd be negligent as an MMO enthusiast if I didn't get some thoughts out on Ashes of Creation (AoC or Ashes for short) which is shaping up to be the great MMO savior we've all been waiting for.

First, I will admit that my knowledge of the history of Ashes is limited.  It was a Kickstarter backed effort that also is funded (or secured in funding) by it's founder.  I will be honest I just know him as Steven and from all accounts Steven is just like me: 20+ years of gaming and a passion for MMOs.  Steven is super rich though...

I will further admit that I haven't spent a lot of time looking up details.  So what I am going off of is some podcasts I've listened to (Ashes To Go by Studio Loot which is no longer producing new episodes and Ashes Pathfinders) and some reaction videos on YouTube like this one where Asmongold begs "please be good" before hitting play.

So far the things I've heard that I like

• The game will feature PvP and PvE
• The game will feature unique world progression where each server levels up differently
• The world will be huge (even huger apparently based on recent updates)
• The game will run on Unreal Engine 5 enabling top end visuals

Some things I am worried about

• There will be forced PvP that will be kept in check, supposedly, by a reputation/bounty system
• There will be individual servers instead of a megaserver approach
• They really like selling the promise of access to alpha/beta testing and saying "but we don't need your money" and taking years to produce said alpha/betas

Long development cycles don't really concern me; MMOs are complex.  I am fine if people want to give developers money during the development of a game.  I'd rather have that model than not having any way to concretely vote for the types of games I want to see made.  Note: I am not an AoC backer at this time but I have backed other Kickstarter MMOs.

The more concerning items are the PvP and server bullet points above.

First, forced PvP is just a bad choice.  It pains me to say that as my PvP blood goes back as far as I can remember typing that /kill command in my first MUD.  The reality of the current market is that forced PvP is just an excuse for toxic behavior.  Skilled players are not out in the open world of MMOs looking for fair fights to test their skill; they are playing ranked arena modes or avoiding MMOs altogether in favor of competitive games without the 1,000 hour /played requirement to gear up.  What is left in open world PvP in MMOs is most often wolves looking for sheep.  No amount of reputation or bounty system can change that fact.

Ashes does seem to have creative ideas with their reputation and bounty system, but I hate to admit that all of them are circumvented by the log out button.  The game is not real life and no version of digital prison will stop the player that has become bored from screwing over every other player they can on their way out.  I'll hold outside hope that I am wrong on this point but I expect a rapid reversal of open forced PvP shortly after the game launches (and will be surprised if it makes it out of beta with open PvP).

Note: I will agree with the AoC pundits that there are games out there that do mange to feature open forced PvP, but I'd argue most of those games are with captive audiences mostly in asian markets where there is often not much choice in game to play (i.e. like the golden era of MMOs for me).  In western markets these days; the sheep simply leave your game for greener pastures and wolves hate when they have to fight other wolves.

In regards to Ashes plans for individual servers I will simply point to the challenges New World has had with the concept since it's launch or the struggles of World of Warcraft Classic.  The gaming market is boom and bust; there will be significantly more players at launch than there will be a month later. No matter how good AoC turns out to be there will be a precipitous drop in concurrent players within the first few months.  There is just too many other games for your average gamer to play.

 Modern MMOs should not be launching with the concept that a player picks a server and that is their home.  Single server technology, even with the might of cloud services like AWS, has a capacity of players it can handle.  In today's streamer world individual streamers bring massive armies with them that will instantly cap out any server.  That army will be gone tomorrow but then back on Friday when the streamer starts up again.  

Take the streamer aspect out and you will still have the boom and bust population to deal with.  And AoC is doubling down with their concepts that worlds and the nodes within level up uniquely based on what the server population does.  It all sounds amazing but what happens when there is only ten people logging onto that server each day (a very real scenario New World faced going from 900,000 concurrent players down to just 15,000 at its low).  The answer is server merges, but if the world is built so unique per server the idea of a server merge or transfer is painful to think about.  

AoC will have to have some really detailed plans on how its going to handle new servers being spun up to meet demand and then be merged back together or it will be a nightmare of player frustration.  Either they will limit total servers and we'll be stuck in login queue hell or they will have too many servers with too few players and the experience will suck (a massive multiplayer game without the massive or multi).

AoC may have some of the coolest ideas, systems, and gameplay we've seen in decades as far as an MMO goes, but I see real risk in the PvP and server question I pose above.  Intrepid Studios seems to be taking it's time with the game so likely a while before we find out whether their plans for these items will work out.  If somehow any of the team behind the game ends up reading this I hope it sparks some thought to these topics.

Can you PvP in New World without being over 600 gear score?

 There is a lot of New World players that will tell players that haven't yet reached 600+ expertise / gear score that they can't PvP.  "PvP will be miserable" is the most oft seen quote.  To the contrary I present a 560 expertise / gear score player going 38 kills - 1 death in Outpost Rush.  Enjoy and I hope this gives those players returning to New World and looking to PvP before getting to 600+ gear score the inspiration they need to keep plugging away!

Online Gaming Marketplace Shakeups

 I caught wind of recent news regarding TCGPlayer and BGG Geek Marketplace and wanted to share some thoughts.

First, eBay has announced their plans to buy TCGPlayer. This transaction makes sense as TCGPlayer has really become an eBay-a-like for trading card games.  This news would have been filed away in mind as a blip, but then I saw the amount that eBay spent: $295 Million.  Holy cheese balls!  

I had a short stint as a volunteer writer for TCGPlayer posting articles about the World of Warcraft TCG.  At the time it was very much a fan run site for fans of TCGs.  I did not get the vibe of "we are a future multi-million dollar corporation".  Feels like I missed an opportunity here had I stuck with the freelance writing for TCGPlayer.... giving me vibes of the time I missed out on contributing to WoWHead before it got gobbled up for a million dollars... which makes me lament my younger days and not having the chance to become a streamer (I was an early adopter of Google Video before Google had Youtube).  Apparently my destiny is to always be early to the party!

The next news item to cover is Board Game Geek's (BGG) sudden announcement they were shutting down Geek Market.  This came as a surprise as BGG was in progress testing an updated version of Geek Market so to go from beta testing a new version to shutting down the entire thing (including the original Geek Market) caught the BGG community by surprise.  Since that announcement and uproar from the community the folks at BGG have opted to establish a new classified-style market.  

I don't really have any commentary; just found the news interesting.

More can be read in these three posts at BGG (in chronological order)

1. Announcement: Classic & Beta GeekMarket Shutting Down | BoardGameGeek
2. GeekMarket changes update: Classifieds coming | BoardGameGeek
3. Launching New GeekMarket Next Week | BoardGameGeek
   

New World Server Woes

 Woe is me as I post back to back days about online multiplayer woes.  Today I want to zero in on the New World server woes.  Ultimately for the game it is a good problem to have.  Player numbers are on the rise and more and more folks want to get in and rejoin in the fun.  However, for some of us that stuck it out when there were a bunch of empty low population servers it is a bit frustrating to now be stuck in login queues night after night severely limiting playtime.

Some quick back story for anyone that hasn't followed New World's trajectory.  When the game launched last year it blew away expectations peaking at over 900,000+ concurrent users.  Amazon Game Studios (AGS) quickly expanded available servers and before we knew it each region had hundreds of named servers.  That peak concurrent user count dropped like a rock and as quick as the servers filled up they atrophied to the point where some had single digit concurrent players (which were likely bots abusing the empty server to gather materials without competition).  AGS responded and merged servers.  Towards the end of the merge cycle regions like NA East were down to just four servers.  Four very full servers.

Full servers are great for New World as there is no cross-server play and when I was playing on the Pluto server pre-merger I went weeks/months without being able to play certain content that required more players online.  Post-merger there are enough players that any group content is easily accessible because there are always players.  About the only negative game play effect of a full server is competition for gathering nodes but that has been much improved with more nodes available than ever before (personally I am also fine with the limited influx of gathered raw resources coming into the economy).

What full servers are not great for is logging in and playing as players get stuck in a queue for 30+ minutes (and don't get me started on crashing after a couple minutes of playing and having to go back to the queue).  With recent changes to the game and buzz around the upcoming October patch (bringing a new zone, expedition, weapon, and a bunch of other changes) the player populations are spiking back up.  New World has gone from a peak of 15,000 concurrent players to 40,000+ and the login queues came with them.

AGS did add a couple new servers and increased server population caps (2000 increased to 2200 for most servers and 2500 for some servers as a test).  This has helped but there are still 30+ minute queues for my server at peak times and I am NOT interested in paying for another server transfer to get to the new server that isn't at cap yet.

The current situation also has me worried about what October will bring when the big patch hits.  As noted we are already seeing increased interest just from the word-of-mouth about the patch and it is still a month away.  I am sure we will see a dip before the patch but then I fully expect a huge swing of players coming back for the patch.

Those players coming back are going to find their characters merged into the few servers so their return will clutter the login queues further.  Players, like myself, who waited out low population servers and have stuck with the game through the decline and now rise are being punished for that loyalty.  Ideally AGS would have set it up so that as players return and find their previous server merged they would be funneled to newly created servers vs creating problems for those of us that have been active through the thin side of the thick and thin.

I am not confident players are going to stick long term after the October update.  I anticipate seeing a higher regular player count for a while, but there will be a boom and bust for the October patch; especially with the major streamers that will bring 10,000+ players to peak times on some servers.  The bust said of that is going to be more frustrating if there is a boom in servers that then have to be merged back down.  I firmly believe there is fatigue related to merges which is why AGS waited so long to merge the low population servers (it took them months!).  Also AGS is clearly gun shy adding new servers now.

My end hope is that as AGS navigates New World through these peaks in interest that one of their top priorities is to figure out the quagmire that is the server model in today's gaming world where a single streamer brings a 10,000+ player army with them.  

New World is still one of the most fun MMOs I have played in years and is continuing to deliver on the promise.  These ups (and the downs before) won't scare me away but the frustration piles on past frustrations so over time is cumulative frustration.  At some point I will be done with it so hopefully AGS has a plan before then.

Call of the Wild: The Angler Multiplayer Woes

  The multiplayer system in Call of the Wild: The Angler does not work and is poorly designed.  It should be the top priority for the development team to fix and make fundamental changes to.

The multiplayer mode in CotW: The Angler allows up to twelve fishergamers to drive, boat, and fish together on a single map (known as a reserve in the game).  Unfortunately the "join friend's game" does not seem to work as I have yet, after dozens of times trying, been able to join a friend's game.  In fact most of the time the game doesn't even represent the online/offline status of friends correctly (usually saying they are offline when they are online playing).  The "join game" option on the friends list does throw an error at the user though and then connects to an online map anyways.

More irritating than "join friend" not working is the mind boggling decision that random match making
online multiplayer would be defaulted to ON with no option to have friends-only or private sessions.  To top it off the setting for turning mutliplayer off does not save properly so every time you launch the game you have to remember to go turn it OFF again.  Fortunately there is no chat or way to communicate with other players in the game so right now there is no risk of getting spammed or told something that would make my mother blush.

Defaulting to ON may seem harmless, but it can mess with the new player experience.  What I ran into in my first fishing trip is that I couldn't do the boat driving 101 or driving 101 because another player had spawned a boat or vehicle and it wouldn't allow me to spawn another from the same terminal.  Also since we were all playing right at the launch of the game I have no doubt some of my early frustrations not being able to catch fish in the beginner spots for the tutorial was directly because a dozen other players fished the area out (which is a real possibility with how the game works in populating fish in the world).

Anyways; it is 2022 and there is no reason to be defaulting players to multiplayer match making with random strangers unless that is what they explicitly want to do.  I do not understand why the system does not work exactly like Expansive World's other game theHunter Call of the Wild.  In theHunter you have to actively turn your map into a multiplayer session and then you can control if its public or friends only.  It is just baffling that the Angler went with random match making turned on and provides ZERO options for setting up a friends-only session.

Other improvements needed in multiplayer.  Voice or chat communication is a must have if there is going to be random match making and public servers.  Ideally we'd also get the "search for available games" browser available in theHunter so we can find games (especially important when new maps launch).  There also needs to be away to share your catches with others nearby or over chat.  How am I supposed to brag about that monster I just landed?   I guess I'll just lie about the catches like I do in real life.

At least it is neat to see other players fishing.