Son and I got a beta key from Danielthedemon streamer and we played the beta till like lvl 20 for me, 25 for my boy he loved the game, we only played the pve of it and I quite enjoyed it too.

There no button mashing required and if you dont block or dodge and just button mash the mobs will stagger you but it far from being mortal combat ninja finger skill levels etc.

The pvp is optional in that when in town you can toggle it on or off which is great IMO cause it allows to turn it off when you want some quite peaceful pve gathering etc but you can turn it on when you want some w/e goes open world pvp. We didn't try the other pvp modes or dungeons so dunno about them.

There was lots of exploits like for example the town board quest if playing with someone you could get items needed for the turn in XX item quest, get the turn prompt on the quest tracker, trade items to your friend hand in the quest then get items back from your friend essentially keeping all the itmes so you can get the same quest again and repeat. 

Quest on the town board are on a  30min timer to refresh and there some variety but there was also a trick that allowed you to get the same quest back mostly. after doing trade to friend hand in quest you log out to main menu friend stays in game and when you body which is laying down on the ground in his game goes away log back in...the quest you just handed in should be back so pick it up and repeat.

One thing about pvp which seems quite fun is how getting down on the ground makes you stealthy so you can hide in bushes and others wont see you till practically stepping on you unless they saw you hide there beforehand ofc which can lead to some really neat ambushing opportunities.

Overall I think I will pre order it for my boy and I even if we don't play it for years I think we would play long enough to get our monies worth. the game has good bones right now but I can see them needing to add to the game world for sure.

I think the month delay is to fix up these kinds of things tbh, also it has been shown that there are other weapon types via some data mining.

And what did you salty bastards conclude?

Bobbicus wrote on Sep 27^th, 2021 at 12:50pm:


Its PVP-centric and will be crap no matter how "optional" the PVP is(I never one time PVPd in WoW and yet PVP still shit all over my gameplay-experience with every other patch).

Combat: definitely active combat, but nicely balanced. When facing against at-level mobs, I can just happy hack away and ability spam. When facing mobs over my level, I can use dodge, block, stuns, etc to significantly mitigate incoming damage. Simply moving out of the attack area also works.

I really like how they've implemented the "classless" system. Proficiency with every weapon - from swords to magical staves to muskets - can be leveled up, giving you new attacks and abilities with that weapon. There are often multiple branches one can go down, like DDO eventually did with action points.

Crafting is pretty cool, they have batch crafting built-in, which makes leveling up crafting pretty quick. You can craft from your bank ("storage shed", lol) so you don't need to carry components around. So far, at least, it is not complicated, and easy to figure out.

There's definitely plenty of "fetch me 10 rabbit hides" quests, but overall, the game feels fairly sandbox-y. I can go where I want and do what I want when I want. Though I'm sure I'd get stomped on if I went someplace too high-level. I've done a lot of exploring, getting to the tops of mountains and whatnot. Very pretty.

A small list of negatives, so far:

• The movement isn't bad, but it doesn't have the fidelity I'd prefer, particularly when jumping or climbing over obstacles.
• Faction. There are three factions, which is fine and all, but you can only join companies (guilds) within your faction. So, you have to coordinate with friends and agree upon a faction if you want to be in a company with them. IMO, anything that discourages grouping (in any form) in an MMO is a very very very bad idea. I'd be surprised if this doesn't change in the future.
• I wish the inventory were more compact and independent from movement. Currently, if you open your inventory, it basically takes over the screen and you can't keep doing whatever you were doing. It also uses huge icons that result in you needing to scroll through the inventory.

noamineo wrote on Sep 30^th, 2021 at 2:07pm:

I've really only played one MMO with factions (Wildstar), and it (having factions) was an abject failure if you ask me. Everyone was on one side! I made a character on the other faction and could not believe how desolate their part of the world was.

Okay, never seen this before: public voice chat. I walked by two guys having a conversation and thought it was the weirdest NPC convo I'd ever heard... then I realized they weren't NPCs.

What's really crazy is that it sounds like it fits - like it came from an NPC. Except for the word selection, of course.

Strake wrote on Oct 1^st, 2021 at 1:55am:


I have always wondered what that would be like.

Unrelated but what would it take to pipe the music from "epic sax guy" through my mic?

kum-gulp wrote on Oct 4^th, 2021 at 6:30am:

Other things that set it apart:

• Active combat - timing, position, dodging, and blocking play a big role in combat
• "Classless" system that is actually implemented very well, and allows for infinite build specialization (basically, they've recaptured one of the things that DDO did oh-so-well: insanely cool builds)
• Interesting and fun implementation of weapon specializations, with significant specialization capabilities
• Itemization that makes weapons/armor/tools interesting, not just red/green numbers. Think about how cool things like vorpal were in DDO.
• Very robust crafting system
• Vendor-less economy. Seriously, there are no vendors in the game. It's weird, and awesome.
• Due in part to the above, a very healthy auction house-based economy

I've been suffering from an issue with focus in this game, and I am not alone. I start out with the decision to work my way over to an area and complete some quest objectives there. Along the way, I start chopping the occasional tree, mining the occasional boulder. Then I see some rare harvest-able goods on my radar and run off that way. Which puts me near a mountain that I just have to climb up to the top of. Where I find some rare metals to mine.

Focus, Strake! So I jump off the mountain and start heading back to my original destination, which is now somehow further away than I started. I chop a tree here, mine a boulder there, and oh hey is that a hot fishing spot on my radar? I break out a beer and start fishing. Oh, and hey, that quest turn-in is only a few hundred meters over there, why not get that while I'm here?

I complete the turn-in and realize that it'd be quicker to run to the nearby town and teleport to a town closer to my destination, so I do that. Chop a couple trees, harvest a few plants, mine some boulders. I get to the town, teleport to the other town, then start heading to my destination. Chop some trees, and oh my is that some silver ore over there? And more over here? Ohhhh!

Uh-oh, I'm nearing encumbrance. Quick, run back into town and unload my goods into the storage shed. Well, while I'm here, I should bang out some crafting to free up some storage space and whatnot. Eight crafting tables later, have to head back to the storage shed to drop off crafted things. Now run to the auction house and sell all the cool stuff I've either collected or crafted.

So here we are, two and a half hours later. I'm almost out of playing time and I never even reached my intended destination...

In this game, I sure do.

I think it may be indicative of assigning good value to things across the game. It seems that often in games one avenue (typically questing/adventuring) poses way more reward than other activities (crafting, harvesting, exploring, pvping, etc). The benefit seems to be more evenly spread out across activities in this game.

Or, maybe that's just a temporary thing.

I will say, this is not the first game that led me to distraction like that. Wildstar was another. Crafting, exploring, and housing all had significant utility.

Haven't checked out housing in New World yet. I can't imagine they'll ever live up to the amazeballs that was Wildstar housing, but who knows...

Well, played my first group dungeon tonight. Seemed cool, but every fight was so laggy that half the time you couldn't hit anything. I hear there's something going on specifically related to that quest and that the devs are trying to address it.

Amusingly, this group quest is also required to advance the story quest

Strake wrote on Oct 5^th, 2021 at 2:07am:


damnit, I was hoping to avoid that instance for a while as I've built my healer ice/mage completely wrong for party content whilst leveling & it won't really come together until weapon levels 14/15