Monday 10/9/2023 Post

 This one... sucked.  Young team to blame? Maybe.  My view: bad coaching, bad execution, and no lucky breaks for the Packers.  Raiders on the other hand were gift wrapped this one.

Day 4: Rise of the Angry Earth (MSQ, PvP Arenas, and Outpost Rush)

 Read about all of my Rise of the Angry Earth experiences here.

 For my fourth day in Rise of the Angry Earth I finished off the main story quest (MSQ) and did some PvP arenas and a round of outpost rush (OPR).  I had fun.  Lots of fun!

 I pushed through the MSQ for the new zone, Elysian Wilds, and wrapped it up.  The story was click-through material (something, something, Medusa... mammoths...) and other than some amazing visuals it was forgettable.  I respect the effort the team put into the story, but as I've said before about all the MSQ reworks I am not a big fan of the new story-line with King Arthur and now apparently Greek stuff.  I really miss the original concept of discovery-era "new world" and a bunch of mystery about Aeternum.

 Part of the MSQ was a series of single player trials which were like dungeon boss fights.  Unfortunately they were stupid simple to beat and I was not challenged in any aspect.  This can be said about most of the new zone as well; there is zero sense of danger.  I was able to complete the MSQ and solo trials with my 625 gear.  I have NOT upgraded a single piece of gear.  I get that AGS wants the game to be approachable but this is too easy and gave zero incentive to progress my character which left me feeling like I accomplished nothing (remember, I was already level 65 before starting this just from other activities).

 To celebrate finishing off the MSQ I jumped into some PvP content.  First I did some 3v3 arenas and went on a stellar 7-0 run!  The mode scales gear score up to 670 so my prior 625 gear has been more than sufficient.  Other than a couple opponents I honestly feel my build is as strong as it was prior to the expansion.  I feel no pressure to upgrade my gear.

 This was reaffirmed by playing my first post-expansion OPR and I finished in the top 10 with a good  number of kills and high damage.  We lost the match 900 to 1000 so it was a long match.  Like 3v3 arenas, OPR scales players up to 670 gear score.  At this stage of the expansion this seems sufficient for a good experience even in my 625 gear.  I won multiple 1v1s and got into (and out of!) multiple clump fights.

 I am sure as time goes on more and more players will be 700 GS and my 625 up-scaled to 670 gear will start to show its age, but I think that is still a bit off into the future so like I said yesterday, "I'm taking it easy!".  No rush here and will enjoy a more planned out upgrade path for my "Wheelchair mage" build.

 Day 4 screenshots!

Yadda... yadda.. click... click

I think this means I did something important

I win the main story!

I don't know what this does in the new Savage Divide expedition but I just had to click it!

 

Day 3: Rise of the Angry Earth (Taking it easy)

Read about all of my Rise of the Angry Earth experiences here.

 Rise of the Angry Earth is approaching its first full week in New World, but I'm only on my third day of my adventure in the Elysian Wilds thanks to a full-day internet outage, offsite work meetups, and then getting sick.  With real life intruding, and my pre-expansion burn out, I've taken a step back and realized there is no need to rush.  It is better to take it easy at this point.

 The first major reason for taking it is easy is that I missed out on some of the gravy train of early "not exactly as intended" features of the expansion.  The main was the story-mode expeditions dropping loot up to 700 GS.  A few players I know were able to spam these expeditions and are 680+ gear score already and since story-mode is a nerfed regular mode there was literally no challenge involved.  Now regular (aka story-mode) expeditions only drop up to 670 GS.  As they say in MMORPGs: "abuse early, abuse often".

 I am not too upset about missing out as I am getting plenty of 670+ GS drops from other methods and I also have a couple artifacts now which are always 700 GS.  I have no problem taking it slow and being deliberate about my gear upgrades.  Also I am finding with my prior 625 gear set that I am capable of holding my own.  I am winning PvP arenas and PvP fights and just tanked a story-mode expedition with it.

 Speaking of tanking an expedition I got the chance to try the new Savage Divide expedition via it's story-mode.  It is a beast-themed expedition with apes, mammoths, and some other beasts.  AGS made it so the story-mode was very low barrier to entry and my group had no issue clearing the expedition; even after locking out one of our DPS on the last boss.  A little disappointing that it was this easy but I can see how in mutations this will be a much harder expedition.

Look who greeted us on the other side of the door!

 Jumping out of expeditions I also got to try the new influence race for territory control.  This was a ton of fun with hundreds of players fighting over a single control point in Monarch's Bluff.  Most amazing was my performance was really good.  I think my graphics upgrade to a Radeon 7800XT is mostly responsible, but still hats off to the team at AGS for making a massive open world PvP fight with hundreds of players something playable.  Rewards were great as well; lots of gear drops, faction tokens, and PvP experience/salt.

Open world PvP fight during an influence race

 While I had fun in this race I do have a few areas of feedback

• Tents need to be disabled during influence races or at a minimum block them around the control points.  You can place tents within spitting distance of the new control points which means any "victory" with pushing players out of the control point is short lived as they re-spawn literally in the middle of the fight.
• The races are popular right now but how long will that last? Will players come back over and over?  The root content is fighting other players vs engaging with the new objectives.  What I've seen so far is one objective becomes the main hub of the fight and the rest are relegated to watching the paint dry unfortunately.
• Players not playing now and farming the hundreds/thousands of players being killed are missing out - the bulk of rewards are oddly tied to number of players that show up and get killed vs the reward at the end of the race.  In the future if you just get a few kills per race because it's not as popular it will be a lot less beneficial as it is today.
• It's a bit irritating to go and pick up loot bags in the mass of zergs.  Lots of loot bags were missed because you can't go out and collect them.

Anyways; back to playing it easy :)  Enjoy some other screenshots from my adventures!

 

After defeating Medusa in the soul trial

The expansion visuals continue to stun

This Minotaur guy is my favorite (though I don't pay any attention to his quest text)

Jumping puzzle?

A big chain.

Charts! New World continues to rise (in more way than one!)

 Click-bait title aside - just a quick drop in here on a Sunday to capture New World's peak player numbers over the first weekend of it's expansion: Rise of the Angry Earth.  We've seen a 22,000+ peak concurrent player increase!

Over 77,000!

 Also on the rise is player cap per server; now up to and testing 3,000 players per server!  AGS confirmed it is for testing so we'll see if it becomes a long term solution to the feast and famine player spikes New World continues to see.

3,00 players per server in testing!

Day 2: Rise of the Angry Earth (Level 65, Featherweight, and more!)

Read about all of my Rise of the Angry Earth experiences here.

 After taking a day offline due to a Spectrum outage I returned to New World's expansion: Rise of the Angry Earth.  We marked a few accomplishments.

 Ding! Level 65!  I missed the screenshot to capture the moment which is not surprising as it flew past.  I don't really understand why they added the levels if they were going to be so easy to achieve.  I don't want a big long grind, but this was just pointless number inflation and now I'm right back where I was at level 60 with a map full of quest icons that are mostly meaningless as the XP gained from completing them goes into a blackhole.  I'd recommend AGS look at the mastery system from Guild Wars 2 as a way to make general XP worthwhile after max level.

 Next I snagged my first artifact: Featherweight!  This dropped for me on the first kill of the named open world boss that drops it.  I feel sorry for folks farming this for hours on end, but hey sometimes you just get lucky.

 

 For those following along this means I am now in the Elysian Wilds zone playing through the expansion's storyline.  It is moving along quickly and I am not hitting some of the slowdowns that other players faced with the crush of players on launch day.  Quests that can only be completed one player at a time were open to me with no waiting lines.  In general I am enjoying the zone (screenshots below), but the story is click through material (i.e. boring).  One part I do like is the Angry Earth chick talking to me; the audio is great and really feels like it is inside my head!

 Check out some of my screenshots from Day 2!

Into the Elysian Wilds we go!

 

A cool hideout in old First Light; the story could of done more with this location.

A tower off in the distance I need to check out still.

Still burning stuff with the flamethrower!

There are four people on my ship in Starfield and I'm too afraid to ask why

 My internet (Spectrum) was out all day yesterday so I had to... gasp... play offline video games to pass my time.  I decided to jump back into Starfield.  I was in the middle of a quest which I tidied up by killing everyone on the "Scow" ship.  Upon returning to my ship there were four people on it; three of whom I have no idea why they are there.  They've also been there a while.

 This is part of my complaints about Starfield.  Many things seem to happen or not happen and then suddenly there is a bunch of people hanging out on your ship with storylines you don't ever remember interacting with.  One would think you'd have more control over your own ship.

 On top of this is the pure irony that these folks are just sitting on the ship for whatever amount of time for some sort of trigger to do whatever is next in their chain of events.  I was jailed, had my ship impounded, and once free there they were... just hanging out.  Look at these fools.

I know why Sarah Morgan is here, but why are you looking at me random guy?  And why is there a "settler" standing by the hatch?

That's OK buddy; you just go ahead and use my bed.

 Anyways; the internet is back up so back to online gaming!

Day 1: Rise of the Angry Earth

Read about all of my Rise of the Angry Earth experiences here.

 Day 1 for New World's first expansion was 10/3 but for me my first steps were on 10/4 and really today 10/5 for the full plunge.  So what did I do with my first day?

 First I started out by salvaging stuff that was clogging up my inventory and town storage in key towns.  I have a long, long way to go on salvaging all my 625 and below gear, but I got through salvaging all the perk mods, umbral shards, and other items that were deprecated.  I am now over 1,000 dark matter, made 10,000+ gold, and have thousands of attribute perk mods.

 

Look at all them attribute perk mods!

 Next I hit the trading post and started posting my horde of items I bought to flip.  I am NOT sharing my secrets but lets just say it is going well and I am closing in on 200,000+ gold!  The one dud I will share is golden scarabs and I'm glad I didn't overinvest here.  They are NOT going up in price; they are cratering! 

 A few other progress notes:

• Refining skills are all over 205
• Gathering skills are over 205
• Level is 64 (just from doing mount quests and a ton of refining)
• 50% done with the new faction tier
  

 I also made my way through the mount questline up to unlocking my wolf mount.  I am taking a break there and headed towards the new Edengrove settlement to start the quest line to enter the new Elysian Wilds zone.  Note: I tried to go directly to the Elysian Wilds and failed to read the prompt that you will be killed by the spores if you don't do the questline.

 I ended with this screenshot outside of Edengrove.  Check back in for more fun in the following days!

New Edengrove!

Charts! Successful launch for Rise of the Angry Earth

 Rise of the Angry Earth launched yesterday and minus some server queues it seems like it is a resounding success.  Some charts to go with it!

 First we have active players on Steam DB showing a peak concurrent player count of 55,000+ players.  This is short of what we saw with Brimstone Sands, but still a solid uptick in players.

 Secondly we have the Steam's Top Sellers with New World and Rise of the Angry Earth at spot 2 and 3 respectively with only Counter Strike 2 ahead of it at 1.  This is a good sign of both returning players and new players picking the game up.

 Both of these tell a good story for New World and it's first expansion.

Launch day! Rise of the Angry Earth

 Today is the day!  New World's first expansion, Rise of the Angry Earth, launches at 12 noon eastern!  Downtime starts at 9 AM.  I won't be able to join the fun today so will see everyone online later this week.

Final Prep: Rise of the Angry Earth

 New World's first expansion, Rise of the Angry Earth, launches tomorrow 10/3 at 12 noon ET!  There will be lengthy downtime ahead of the launch and players will need to re-download the entire game.  This leaves today as our final prep day before the expansion!

 For anyone interested in my larger plans; I documented that here: New World Rise of the Angry Earth Preperation Checklist .  This post will be more about; did I get it my prep done and are there any final adjustments to make?

 The big answer is: no.  No, I did not get my prep done.  Real life is busy and I ended up camping and fishing this weekend with friends so I'll be rolling into the expansion with little in the way of raw materials and completed quests.

 So what adjustments am I making because of this?  None.  I am going to just enjoy the game and play at my own pace as I have always done.  My original prep list was all about getting stuff done fast to be on the cutting edge and I should have known that wasn't going to happen.  That is not my style.  

 I am still a completionist so getting all my crafting and refining skills to 250 will be a goal.  Getting faction levels and to 65 will be a goal.  Getting my mount and getting that leveled up will be a goal.  I will just take it all at my own pace.

 And my pace is going to be behind the curve because I won't be available for the launch due to work.  I will maybe get to log in late on 10/3 but won't have time until 10/4 and realistically 10/5 is when I'll get a good chunk of play time.  I am hoping this means I miss out on launch day headaches but get in on some of the launch-related shenanigans.

 What are your plans for launch?