This weekend there’s an open beta (details on getting into it in that link) running for New World: Aeternum, which is a kind of re-launch of New World. To be honest it’s all a little confusing to me but as best I can tell, owners of the PC version who have not purchased the expansion can access the early areas of Aeternum for free. Owners of New World and the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion (currently $30 on Steam) get the whole Aeternum kit & kaboodle for free. It sounds like your existing characters carry over but I may be mis-understanding that. On console, of course, it’s a new game with a full new game cost ($60) which honestly feels a bit steep to me, but then there’s no subscription or anything so maybe I’m just getting cheap in my old age. There is cross-play but not cross-progression, so if you decide to buy on console and PC you’ll have 2 separate accounts, which is unfortunate and odd since you will be playing with folks from other platforms.

I’ve played New World on PC, but not the expansion, and not for a long while and if I understand it things have changed quite a bit. So I decided to try out the Open Beta and chose to do it on Xbox.

I was, honestly, pleasantly surprised. The game played nicely with a controller; for me it was arguably more fun than when I used to use mouse and keyboard. When you create a character you pick an archetype which seems to just set your starting equipment. I picked one that uses a big-assed sword and a blunderbuss and that was quite an enjoyable combo. The intro is quite a bit different; a lot more cinematic and it feels more like an RPG than a straight-up MMO. But in the open beta at least you could definitely see that it was an MMO because the world was PACKED full of people to the point where doing quests was a challenge since mobs were dying as fast as they were spawning. And the chat was totally toxic; first order of business was to mute all the channels.

The basic game loop was what I remember: gather materials, craft a skinning knife, hunt boars, make food. Same first steps as it used to be. Then hunt zombies. Your character levels up but so do your weapon skills. All of this will be very familiar if you played the original game. I don’t know if the strong guild-based gameplay is still there, where a realm will hold territory and have to level up crafting stations and such. I’d need to research that since it was one of the reasons I quit playing as a primarily solo adventurer. But Amazon is billing this as a game you can play solo so maybe that stuff is gone?

Honestly I didn’t spend a huge amount of time playing. I installed the beta to re-assure myself this wasn’t a game I needed to pay attention to, but that backfired and I actually find myself having fun and thinking maybe I will pick it up, or if I go PC pick up the expansion. I’ll probably play again later in the weekend once the initial mob moves on so it isn’t quite so crowded. Heck maybe I should install the PC Open Beta while I’m at it and see how that feels. $30 for the expansion is a lot better than $60 for the whole game on Xbox or PS5!

But yeah, if you’re curious I’d say check out the beta, which is why I’m chucking this rough-draft of a blog post out into the world. I want it out asap so folks still have time to try it.

I DID play in the closed alpha on Xbox and that was pretty horrible (I was under NDA so didn’t say anything) but they’ve made a LOT of improvements since then, which is quite encouraging. And as I mentioned I found combat using the controller was a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to playing more at some point.

I’ve had a rough time with New World. Not the actual playing of the game, but the issues that orbit the core gameplay.

First it was the queues. On Day 1 I created a character on Minda to play with Belghast’s Greysky Expeditions Company. And, being me, I created a 2nd character on a different server because I know there WILL be times when I want to play in absolute solitude on a server where no one knows me.

The launch week queues on Minda & character #2’s server (not being coy, I literally forget what server it was) broke me though. I couldn’t take waiting hours to play any more.

Solution #1 was to create a character on NA West just to spend time with. So that was my 3rd character. Didn’t last very long since the lag difference was appreciable. Felt like dodging was a lot more iffy. That character still exists, gathering dust.

Solution #2: By the time I got to Solution #2 Amazon had rolled out a bunch of new servers on NA East that were empty(ish). I deleted my Minda character, created a new one (character #4) with the same name and look on a low pop server, and re-started. The idea was to level up on the new server until Amazon gave us server transfers, which they’d promised. Then I’d rejoin Bel & gang.

This new server never had a queue and at first I was having a great time. But then the community started getting super toxic. At least the Syndicate faction was super toxic and the worst players also ‘ruled’ the faction by dint of holding land. I mean there was other faction/Company drama (super high taxes set by bitter Governors) but the end result was I kept ‘moving’ towns to try to avoid the idiots. Eventually it started bothering me just to log in. But I still wanted to play.

I fired up character #2 and for some reason, just wasn’t feeling her. I often play female characters in MMOs but for some reason that felt off for me in New World. I think it was because I figured I might start actually interacting with others and didn’t want to deal with any confusion. That’s probably a really out-of-date attitude given I know many, many people who play a gender other than what they present in real life, but whatever. In the end I deleted her and started character #5 on yet another new, empty(ish) server.

And, though I’m worried I’m going to jinx it, I think I am FINALLY comfortable with queues, community and my character. Most of the big Companies on this server have non-offensive names and faction chat (I went Marauder this time) has been mostly inoffensive. I’m still sorting this character; I started him as a full dex built, using Spear and Rapier & wearing light armor. Not sure that is going to stick but since he is only level 14 I can respec for free.

My Minda-replacement character is still on the toxic server, waiting to be able to move. He is Hatchet/Hammer and with this new character I’m trying to resist replicating him but it’s hard. Hatchet is super fun.

But anyway the point is I now log in, putter around at my own pace, don’t get my blood pressure way up due to being around a bunch of asshats, and I’m finally really enjoying the whole vibe. But damn it took a while to get here!

Of course thanks to Stargrace’s posts about Black Desert Online, I am now torn between 2 MMOs, New World and BDO. When it rains, it pours! 2016’s Black Desert Online is now becoming a new obsession, but that story is for another post.

Last night, it being the start of a weekend, I did something drastic. I deleted my New World character that was on Minda where my friends were all trying to play. I just didn’t want to spend my weekend trying to manage a queue around chores and dog walking and such. Since Amazon has promised free server transfers, I’m gambling that I can play on another server for now, then transfer to Minda later.

[Since New World only allows one character per server I had to delete my existing character to free up room for my eventual transfer, plus I wanted the same name.]

In the course of one evening I almost caught up to the progress I’d made in the 3 prior evenings of combatting the queue in order to squeeze in an hour of playing before bedtime. So that’s the good news.

When looking for a new server to roll on, I sorted by queue size to find one with no queue, then I chose a server with Low population. Randomly picked Nolandia (NA East) and off I went. Overall the new server is pretty chill. I even have all the chats on because it is all relatively civil (there’s always the odd troll). Gameplay also felt more responsive but I’d had to reboot my machine earlier in the day so maybe that was just local. But suddenly I had no issues dodging out of the path of attacks and such; prior to last night it felt like my dodges didn’t register quickly enough to be super effective unless a mob had a slow tell, like gearing up for a charge attack (boars).

But there is always a downside. On this world NO territory has been taken by any of the factions. At first I didn’t care because that just felt like balance to me. But then I realized that, at least as far as I know, there’s no way to level up crafting stations unless a faction controls a town. So the entire world is stuck at level 2 crafting stations; we’re stuck in the iron age, literally.

Nolandia was add on Sept 29th and Amazon added even more servers to NA East on Friday which is puzzling. Why keep adding new servers if some of the servers you have are empty? Maybe they’re gearing up for server transfers. Or maybe it’s a publicity stunt to show they’re reacting while they figure out a real solution.

Anyway I’m interested to see what happens on Nolandia. When I was on last night there was no company with more than 5 members online. [I am a boob, I was looking at “# of Claims” not number of members.] There was some discussion in Faction chat of dissolving some of the companies and everyone joining into one large company so they can take a town. I don’t really understand how taking a town works, beyond being able to out and out buy one for I think 100,000 gold. I wonder if an alliance of several small companies could do it.

I’m not too concerned since I’m not thinking of this as my permanent home, but if you ARE looking for a server to call home for the long run, maybe look for one with Medium population. Too high and you’ll spend your gaming time waiting in a queue. Too low and there’s not enough warm bodies to support all the game’s systems, apparently.

[The image at the top of the post comes from New World Status. I don’t honestly know how accurate the site is (it isn’t affiliated with Amazon), but it is reporting that there are a total of 163 players on Nolandia! (Granted, it is early on a Saturday morning.)]