The New World MMO: Un-Masked

The past couple of days have delivered quite some drama from the New World development team. New World released cash shop plans, which included pay-to-win boosts. These boosts included leveling and crafting XP boosts.

The devs followed up yesterday with a clarification that the XP boosts were intended to be a trial only, and will not be in the game at launch. They would focus instead (initially) on quality of life items, cosmetics, and dyes.

(Most people won’t even notice the dyes, but what do they really mean? They mean crafting gameplay is cut or watered down so crafted items can be sold instead in the cash shop at launch.)

Kripparian on Twitter gives a concise summary of how much of a joke this is:

In New World they plan to sell quality of life and boosts now.

Boosts aside, how is it okay to sell quality of life features for a game that hasn’t even released yet? Why not just improve the quality? pic.twitter.com/ASPdAoMbuK

— Kripparrian (@Kripparrian) May 15, 2021

So they are creating a game on purpose with low quality of life, and they will then sell you extras in the store to alleviate the pain! This is nothing new, but it’s so barefaced and early that people are rightfully up in arms even after the clarification.

If you’re actually interested in delving into this drama, I would recommend watching Asmongold’s video on Youtube, at least minutes 2:30 to 6:30.

As an aside, Asmongold is a surprising voice for classic values in MMO’s. It’s odd to me, as a liberal, to be on the same side as people with ‘conservative values’ in this instance. Of course, we’ve been going down this degenerate cash shop road for several years now, so it’s interesting to see some major voices getting traction after all this time.

I played several hours of the New World beta and leveled to 20-something. It showed a lot of potential. It looked nice. So far I believe they’ve released info on one real dungeon, one new region, and some new weapons. Nonetheless, based on my knowledge, it’s almost impossible for this game to be as good or as large as either Rift or LotRO at launch.

Realistically, it can’t even be close, right?

The game is overrated due to everyone’s desperate hopes for a new great western-style MMO. Is it still worth playing if you don’t care about the cash shop in lieu of a subscription model? Sure. It might be worth the box price for a lot of people, but my memory of the beta is still pretty vivid.

In other news, Blizzard greatly slashed the absurdly greedy price of their Classic character copy service due to similar player outcry. I plan to play Burning Crusade pre-patch in the next week or so. I quit Hearthstone for good last fall when they introduced the Hearthstone Battle Pass.

New World is actually launching with a Battle Pass. Yeah. And then comes the slippery slope.  They will slowly add pay to win back in.  Then come the sales. Leveling is too tough? Buy a boost. Boost is too expensive? It’s 10% off today only. Still too expensive? It’s 20% off this week, 40% off if you buy a bundle. Etc. etc.  Such fun gameplay.

Good goddess, think of the children.  I’ve been saying that since LotRO went F2P years ago.

And Blizzard just had to go full greed in Classic with the deluxe collector’s edition and the expensive level boost. Blizzard claims the boost is to help people catch up to their friends, it’s good for the game, etc. etc. which we all know is B.S.. We have suspected or known about Burning Crusade for several months, plenty of time to level.

This is a sellout of a game people are playing because it isn’t sold out. But Blizzard couldn’t resist those modern-day opportunities to allow dollars.  If someone couldn’t make it to 60 the old fashioned way, they don’t deserve to continue. That’s my opinion.

Elder Scrolls – Oblivion looks enticing this year. Their companion system is releasing only two companions up front,  however, which seems very odd. It indicates better companions will be in the cash shop soon, like Neverwinter Nights.

l almost re-installed ESO today for the high elf experience, but then I thought about that good old skill bar with only 7 skills on it (or whatever). I’d be doing the same rotation over and over thousands more times. ESO is such a great-looking game, but they sort of ruined Elder Scrolls back in the Oblivion days by dumbing down everything for consoles.

Remember when instant ports all over the Tamriel map didn’t exist? Those were literally the best days. Naturally, the original Morrowind was far, far better than the carefully monetized, watered down expansion pack of the ESO rendition, although there were a few nice quest lines and dungeon areas in ESO: Morrowind to be sure.

So! I guess I’ll see you other old school types in Burning Crusade Classic in the next weeks.