My time with Diablo 4 is winding down. I think I was running around aimlessly in another Helltide then running a Nightmare dungeon shortly thereafter when it started to hit me that I don't actually like this game anymore.
I know I know, I've been the guy that was writing about it seemingly endlessly for the past 3 months or so but that is what a life-cycle for a game is like with me. I don't know how many hours I got out of D4, maybe close to 200 and if that is the case, this will be the game that I have played more than any other on my PlayStation 4 or 5.
A few days ago, Sony dropped a bunch of new free games for all PS-Plus users and I thought I would at least have a look at them. New World seemed like it might be ok, but I was apprehensive because it was made by Amazon, who doesn't have much of a name in the gaming industry. But oh well, it is free so why not?
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The game starts out good enough and in a visually appealing way. I'm not a huge fan of massive intros or cinematics so I only watched one of them. In games like this I suppose you could say that I don't really care what the story is because I already know that this game is an "MMO pretending to not be an MMO" and the story will quickly become completely irrelevant to most people once you actually start playing it.
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So the story is that a bunch of people are heading to a "new land" hence the "new world" title of the game. This kind of accounts for the fact that while there is some technology in the game that most of the area is wild wilderness. Ok, I'm on board with this so far. Then the whole sinking of your ship you are traveling on happens, and while this is a tired way of introducing a game that has been done hundreds of times before, well, they execute it pretty well and it serves as a good contained area for you to learn the basic skills like light strike, heavy, parry, and dodge. Fair enough.
Then you end up in a surprisingly difficult boss fight that you must pass and it lets you do so endlessly or maybe even won't let you lose. This is the point that the real game begins and you are thrust into the actual world of "New World" and unfortunately this is where the game was quickly able to let me know that I am not going to be playing this game.
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I knew this was going to be the case because it's simply not possible to have an MMO that's not an MMO (Amazon claims it is not an MMO... it's an MMO) without having quests that progress your XP in a scalable way. The quests have to be easy busywork at first. There is no other way to do this unfortunately.
So you are charged with going to seek out your crew mates who also were on the sinking ship which is conveniently located, just over there. There are some easy enemies standing there being dopey and doing nothing in particular and they are easily dispatched as you would and should expect. But herein lies the first problem I have with New World. Since there are no instances and you genuinely ARE sharing this world with hundreds or thousands of other real-time players, outdoors the mobs must constantly respawn so that everyone has something to attack. This results in you getting attacked by the same enemies that you just killed a minute ago because POOF! Here they are again!
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They pose almost no threat to you if you are actually at the controller. I think you would have to be AFK in order to actually die, not that dying actually has any real impact on your progress.
So I went and completed this first mission with no difficulty and then started seeing that the NPC I was returning to started doing something to me that I truly despise in all MMO's and this is a very large part of the reason why I avoid them for the most part.
Fetch quests
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I suppose the item doesn't really matter but in this situation I was told to go and retriever flags off of a ship that ran aground. It is conveniently shown on my map exactly where it is and getting to it consisted of walking a bit and then fighting a few trash mobs then grabbing the flags. Then the trash mobs have obviously respawned so you fight them again or just run past them.
Then you return the flags and the NPC is like "good job buddy, now go get me 5 rocks and 3 pieces of wood". It was evident to me at this point that this is going to be the bread and butter of this game. You are always going to be searching for some sort of material in order to craft something in order to get to another place where you will have to do more crafting and finding of increasingly rare materials in order to get to ANOTHER place where.... well, I think you can see where I am going with this.
Final Fantasy: A Realm Reborn was notorious for repetitive questlines that just bored me to tears and honestly, other MMO's really weren't much better. I suppose I enjoyed Destiny 2 for a little while and New World is much more like Destiny than it is like any other traditional MMO's.
it still has a shitload of busywork though and the rather small fanbase keeps referring to how great "endgame material" is.
Here's the thing guys. Not everyone wants to slog through 30 hours of something boring in order to have a crack at what is promised to be fantastic endgame material. Not everyone wants to squint their eyes and 900 different options for upgrade points and an ever-growing list of craftable things.
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My eyesight isn't the best so I have to move forward to be able to see my television and what items are needed for crafting something and even though I was only at like level 5 or something like that I could already tell that crafting and cooking was going to be a massive part of this game. There's nothing wrong with that if you are into that sort of thing but it is not what I am into.
Also, this is dramatically more complicated and irritating if you are playing on a console. Being able to mouse move things rapidly probably makes the game a bit more enjoyable but with the hovering pointer being your left analog stick on the PS5 or something similar on Xbox, it's just more annoying than anything else. Some things shouldn't be ported but they do it for the sake of money - which is understandable.
These days, and especially after kind of getting fed up with Diablo 4 recently, I am definitely not in the market for a game that never ends like New World. There was a time, perhaps back in my Anarchy Online, Dark age of Camelot and even as recent as Guild Wars 2 times that I would welcome massive crafting sections, but I'm just not that down with it anymore.
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there are actually websites dedicated to builds of characters that are best at gathering cut down trees...oooh! What fun!
A lot of this has to do with player fatigue (mine) as well as my fading eyesight though, this much I will admit.
The major problem that I have found as far as reviews by people that have put a lot of time into the game is that they state that their isn't a great deal of stuff to do with other actual humans later on in the game and you end up running around and soloing for no real reason since you've already defeated the base game a long time ago and now you are just dungeon running... for what?
I don't need to get involved in something like that and I am glad that I was able to get this for free with my PS-Plus membership, play it for 90 minutes or so, then delete it.
It is quite difficult to find honest reviews of this game online because this is an Amazon game and saying nasty things about one of the largest and most powerful companies in the world could get you into a lot of trouble. For example: we all know Rings of Power is hot garbage but the professional critics all sing its praises... I wonder why that is? :)
New World might be fun to someone that has never played an MMO but for those of us that have played many of them and are kind of over they way they all function and especially for someone like me who loathes fetch-quests this game is going to be one that you can easily never play and be just fine with that.