Should You Play New World In 2023 Review
New World Review in 2023:
New World is an open world MMO set in the world of Aeternum, developed and published my Amazon Game Studios. New World doesn’t feature classes, but lets you build your character and specialize into 2 main weapons, and has a heavy focus on both pve and pvp activities.
New World had a pretty chaotic development cycle where they changed completion direction of the game, and the launch was successful but rocky too. Since then we’ve had some good content releases in the last year, that have added new zones, content and weapons, but the player count is surprisingly low for such a polished game, by such a big studio. So today let’s go over the game and discuss if New World is worth playing in 2023. We also have a full video review with gameplay, if you want to check the review out:
Character Creator:
The character creator in new world is pretty solid, lots of customisation and options and the graphics are decent. There are no classes in new world, height, weight, or any other decisions don’t impact your power, so its purely cosmetic.
And then you’re thrown straight into the tutorial, which is actually fantastic. Awesome cutscenes and introductions to the systems, pick up a sword on a beach, creature jumps at you, talking through the controls and intro your first mini-boss.
Leveling Experience in New World Review:
The leveling experience in New World is where the game really shines for me. I has a couple of major issues that I want to mention, but overall it’s fantastic! This is a very typical quest based MMO, you go to a main quest, pick up the side quests and go complete them, most of them are clear out a location or talk to a person for an item and then you go back to the city, hand them all in.
On top of this New world has an incredible gathering and crafting system, so you can easy take 3 times longer doing these quests because you’re skinning every animal, chopping tree’s harvesting every rare resource, and then when you do get back to town and hand your quests in, your using all these items to craft.
But the leveling experience has 2 real issues:
The lack of mounts:
So you have to manually walk from one side of a zone to another, talk to a person and walk back. And if you’re just looking to level fast, this is terrible. You will spend more time walking than fighting. It improves towards the end of the game when you have every city and quick travel spot open, but getting to that point for sure will lead people to just quit.
The Limited Server Cap:
I’m not sure how much this has changed since release, but when I leveled up, the server cap was said to be 2,000. And the world is HUGE, so you may struggle to find people to quest with, do dungeons and open world pvp, unless you are on the biggest and best server. My server was so so dead, and I couldn’t even join a level dungeon, but after going back last month to check out the game, we’d been merged and things do seem better. So make sure you are on a big population server, or this is going to feel very empty as an MMO.
Builds and Classes:
This opens up with 2 weapons, and you can really mix it up. Use an ice glove to set up a turret and a chill effect, switch to fire and blow enemies up. Use a weapon with skills that give you buffs, or incapacitate the enemy then switch and use damaging abilities. The skill tree’s also have tons of passives that make the builds you make super unique.
I do wish there were more abilities, this game launched on PC, we could definitely handle 5 abilities per weapon in my opinion, or some other way to mix up the combat, outside of 3 abilities on 2 weapons and a dodge.
New World PvE and PvP:
It would be wrong to cover a New World Review without discussing the key underlying issue with the games development:
New World is a little confused in its PvP and PvE content, the game was originally set to be huge on PvP, but they realized that that full PvP games have a much niche audience that PvE games with tanks, healers, dps and dungeons. And they just changed the game, so what actually released was a PvE focused game, with tank weapons like a sword and shield and a healing staff, but barely any dungeons and nowhere near enough actual end game content to compete with any of its competitors. Check the official New World site for all PvE content types and activities available.
The dungeons are actually fun though, the ones we have are great. They include puzzles, objectives, bosses, loot, a really cool looting system where the bosses drop items that can then be saved to craft boss weapons. The dungeons are genuinely a fantastic experience. Each one is really unique and its super fun trying to work out how to overcome them. There’s also open world bosses, rifts and other challenges that keep the PvE experience fun.
And then the PvP, it feels like PvP is now just a side part of the game. PvP is fantastic, the battles for territories and skirmishes feel fun, shooting people from range with a rifle, or charing in with a greatsword are all fun, but PvP just feels secondary. You can manually turn PvP off in the open world too, so if you’re looking for a fight, you can be looking awhile, again especially on a low population server. I personally wish the new world would have stuck with its decision and either, made the greatest PvP mmo ever, that had huge keep fights, wars, and open world conflicts. Or spend another couple of years making dungeons, raids and a real working endgame.
Neither the PvP or PvE in New World is bad, it does both good, but doesn’t do either great. And its endgame really needs to decide what it wants to be. Right now its just grind out different gear and increase your expertise score, engaging in PvP if you fancy it.
Territories and Factions:
Every part of this is a fantastic idea. Working for your faction, ranking up, getting their unique armour, taking over cities. Finding the enemies in the open world and PvPing them, or taking on huge faction v faction battles is amazing, and it’s one of the things that sold New World to me before it came out. Once you take these territories and settlements, you can upgrade upgrade them, set the tax rate, reap the rewards, build houses. The whole system is such a good idea on paper. And there are huge rewards for leading your faction to victory, taxes, crafting rates,
But again, it also has its problems, normally one faction grows and overpowers the rest, leading them to have all the perks and benefits. They bring in all the money, players, and power, and are hard to overthrow. Which makes you feel awful if you’re faction only has a handful of places on the map.
New World Review in 2023:
Overall, there is a lot to love about New World. If we were to pull out the systems, gathering, crafting, territories, wars, how the weapons feel, the dungeons. Each of them are really cool and unique and make me want to play the game. And I want this New World review to be possitive.
But the game itself as a package, as an MMO, that you need to dedicate time and hours too, just doesn’t feel good. If you’re looking for an awesome endgame, the big themepark MMOs do it better. PvP is done better in games like Mortal Online , Albion online, and other big pvp focused games, even games that have full pvp servers work better.
I think New World has the foundation for one of the best MMOs, and I said the same thing on launch, we just arn’t there yet. And there’s a reason people either got bored on the journey to max level and quit, or got bored at end game and quit. With the new battle pass, change to questing and plans for the future, I am hopeful the new world becomes something great. But right now, is it worth playing in 2023. Yes for a bit of fun and because it’s a new game, but to go all in as your main MMO, not in my opinion.
Check out our other MMORPG Reviews here:
And if you’re looking for the an MMORPG with updates siege combat and hardcore PVP, check out our Mortal Online 2 Review