New World Review – Test of the beta gameplay for PvE players

New World is the new action-MMORPG from Amazon Games. All info in the New World PvE Beta Test Review.

What does New Word, the new MMORPG from Amazon Games offer for PvE players? All info & complete analysis in the New World Review, more about New World PvE gameplay, events, raids, dungeons, characters, character creation, skills, open world, world design, crafting, story, fun, etc.

New World is the new action MMORPG from Amazon Game Studios. Planned as a pure Open PvP Sandbox MMO, it has been moved several times and has now been converted into a mixed PvP & PvE MMO. New World offers high-quality graphics and complex systems for sieges and battles, but what can it do in the PvE area?

This article is available here as text, but also as a YouTube video (German voice-over, many subtitles). This way you can choose how you would like to enjoy it most.

New World Review Video:

German Voice-Over, many subtitles

New World (p)Review English – PvE Player Test of Amazon’s MMORPG – Introduction – intro

Hi there, this is the Zap. In this New World Beta Review, I tell you a little bit about the new MMORPG from Amazon Games. I’ll show you how it is played, what’s in it and how I liked it, but most of all I want to give you all the information so you can decide for yourself if it could be fun for you.

I have received a key from the publisher, my thanks for that, but this has no influence on my test. I always rate all games with the thought in mind, how would I feel if I had paid the full price.

Background – New World – PvP and PvE

New World is an action MMORPG, which is currently being developed by the new studio Amazon Games and will probably get a release date in spring 2021. It has already been postponed several times because the community was not really enthusiastic about it during Alpha tests. One of the main criticisms was probably that the focus was too much on PvP and almost not at all on PvE. But you have to give the developer a lot of credit for the fact that the feedback of the players is very important.

Amazon Games is an offshoot of Amazon, so there is a lot of financial power behind it. The studio was founded in 2012 and there are now several departments. In addition to the studios in Seattle and San Diego, Double Helix Games and Relentless Studios have been part of the company group for some time now.

However, in this long time since the studios were founded, not a single really finished game has emerged from them yet. With Crucible there was a 4 vs. 4 team PvP shooter for a very short time, which was so badly received that the studio withdrew the game and continues to develop it behind closed doors.

New World should probably not take the same path of failure. Therefore they try to get a lot of opinion from the community with alpha and now beta-tests and have postponed the release several times, at the moment until spring next year.

An important part of the changes is that the players wanted more PvE content because the PvP content probably didn’t bring enough fun to most testers in the long run. And since it was initially completely geared towards competitive player vs. player gameplay, Amazon Game Studios now wants to make big improvements in PvE content.

I am a pure PvE player in MMOs, and without these announced PvE changes I would probably have completely ignored New World. But now the game should probably be interesting for me and for players with similar preferences.

And so in this article, I want to take a very special look at the game from the perspective of an MMORPG player who plays pure PvE and no PvP at all. So let’s see how far the development has come and how New World plays itself.

New World Test – game type

New World was originally developed as a pure PvP Sandbox MMORPG. It is mainly about the conquest and defense of areas and their fortresses. This part of the game is still a very important part of the whole mix and should remain so in the future. However, there is no more forced PvP in the game and a lot of additional PvE content has been added.

A very important part of the game is also exploring the world and collecting and processing resources. Crafting has a very high priority in the game, both for the character’s equipment and for the expansion of the cities, and for the beautification of their own houses in the settlements.

New World Gameplay – PvE – Hit the monsters flat

Well, so what’s in it so far, and what can you as a PvE player expect in terms of fun? At the moment, I see this as still very mixed. The fighting itself is surprisingly fun. The weapon types and skills work well, even though other MMORPGs offer much more choice, tactical decisions, and overall more depth.

But the pure dodging, blocking, switching between light and heavy attacks, the few uses of skills and in between some food and healing, that fits so far already quite well. After some time I was surprised myself how much fun I had with it, although it is actually rather flat.

As a longtime PvE-MMORPG player, I have to say that the quests offered here by Amazon are still at the lowest end of the fun scale. Because here you can see that New World really started planning and programming the PvE content just a few months ago.

After an actually well-done, longer tutorial quest series, in which many functions of the game are presented, the game flattens out extremely fast. The game changes here to a whole range of “Go to area XYZ, kill 20 enemies and collect 10 items from boxes”. And sometimes this is loosened up by “Go to area XYZ, kill 10 enemies, collect 5 items and kill the boss Horst”. Oh, that came as a surprise…

The stories told are very flat and uninspired. The gameplay during these quests varies a lot depending on how crowded the area is. Because if you play while only a few people are present, it can quickly happen that you get more enemies at once than you can handle.

At peak times, you’ll again stand around for ages and wait for respawn, because 50 players are trying to kill the 20 monsters that exist in the area. And these have a respawn time of about 5 minutes, no matter how many players are present. For the Named Bosses, this means that every 5 minutes for 2-3 seconds you get a chance to give the boss a hit before he is gone again for 5 minutes.

These spawn and camp problems have long been solved by other games with dynamic spawn times, which adjusts these spawn times to the number of players currently in the region. Here you can see the inexperience of the studio and unfortunately probably also the general lack of MMORPG expertise in the team.

New World Gameplay – Events, Raids and Dungeons

There are also some bigger events. Corruption events spawn and bring special monsters and challenges for groups into play. However, these random contents will probably only unfold gradually as the cities are further expanded.

During my test period, there were only the first weak effects. These have not really convinced me yet. A dark swirl appears in the landscape, which is visually quite nice. If players come close, a few extra monsters appear, but they weren’t very different from the others either. Whether these events will continue to evolve, I haven’t been able to explore yet. Maybe this will be more interesting later and you just couldn’t see it yet because the world is still too young.

Later on, however, these Corruption creatures are also supposed to attack the towns directly, which could add minimal more PvE depth to the game. In this context, Open World PvE Raids were mentioned in some places. Here, however, farm work is probably built up mainly for the companies or guilds that own the locations. Because before an attack additional defense is needed, and after an attack, some things will probably have to be repaired.

There is also a feature that the developers call Open World Arena. Here, up to 5 players are taken to an instanced part of the world and have to defeat a boss there. To enter this arena, each player needs a key before. Unfortunately, I could not test how good this game feature is. But real complex group dungeons are not planned at the moment.

MMORPG Gameplay – Characters and Role-play

There are no character classes in the New World. We have a moderately extensive character creation at the beginning, where you can choose your face, skin color, hair, and possibly a beard. Most of the time you have the choice of five or six different defaults and two genders.

Then there are seven categories of weapons, and you level them by using them. With each level increase, you can distribute one point in one or even two weapon skill trees. There you can unlock both active skills and passive effects.

The weapons feel very different. I first started with the melee weapons sword and warhammer and then I went on to magic, where you have the firestick and the staff of life. In addition, there are throwing axes, bows, and muskets to choose from.

Later I changed to the, confusingly (at least in German), weapon called “Wurfaxt” (throwing ax), which is still used as a melee weapon. Only one of the two skill trees refers to throwing and the normal attack with the ax is to hit, not throw. So you shouldn’t be fooled here, the throwing ax later became my favorite weapon.

You can also equip several weapons, first only two, later also a third kind. But of course, you only get experience for the weapon type you just used. The skills are tied to the weapons, and the necessary points are unlocked by using the respective weapon.

You can do light and heavy attacks, but you still have to dodge and think about when to use your three skills most effectively. Because these skills usually have very long cooldowns in proportion. In most fights, you won’t use much more than one or two skills here.

This has a particularly strong effect if you change weapons in a fight because there are even additional penalties. This makes the whole weapon change feature less interesting in combat. A doubtful decision of the developers in my eyes. Without these additional cooldowns, much more tactics in combat would have been possible.

You get only 3 skill slots for each weapon, so you have to make a choice. This will result in a certain character development after some time. But compared to many other MMORPGs, the decisions, the tactical depth of the skills in combat, and the character development as a whole are rather in the lower strategic range. The role-playing factor in New World is therefore rather low.

Gameplay – Open World and World Design

The world of the New World is in my eyes the biggest strength of the game. Because of the MMORPG’s rather high-quality graphics and the really good design of the landscapes of New World, the exploration part and traveling through the world is very much in the foreground.

The concept of the game is based on the fact that all players are stranded on an island that is roughly based on more Caribbean conditions. Thus, corresponding zones are also predominant at least at the edge of the map. Sea, beach, palm trees determine the first areas. However, in the inner island, this changes into deciduous and coniferous forests, wide meadows, and rugged mountain slopes.

And what the level designers have made out of these things is really something to worth see. In no other MMORPG have I had the feeling of being in a forest as much as in New World. The density of nature, the arrangement of trees, grass, bushes, and also the variety of the different elements, often reminded me very much of the woods at my doorstep here in the Harz Mountains, but without the dying forest and bark beetles.

At the moment the monster distribution is still a bit uneven, sometimes you stumble from one wolf to the next, then you run for minutes through the forest without even seeing a hare. In general, the arrangement of content in the world is very uneven, wide areas of empty landscapes alternate with areas where you have to plan every step carefully because of all the enemies.

The landscape is divided into zones, and over time you level up your reputation in the areas. So after some time, you get bonuses like more XP, fewer trade taxes, or a faster reputation increase. This reputation system means that you first have to gain a reputation for bonuses in each new area.

As a negative point, I would like to mention the very similar structure of the twelve areas. The main village is more or less in the middle, and around it, there are farms, ruins, cult sites, smaller and larger fortresses of the ancestors, and one fort each, which plays an important role in PvP around the area, this is where the castle siege battles take place.

However, quest NPCs are exclusively found in the villages, and around the settlements, there are only enemies to find. So the procedure is always very similar. You go to the town of a region, take all the quests you can get, wander through the area, complete the quests, and back to the settlement, and repeat everything from the beginning.

You usually run enormous distances, and unfortunately, there are, at least so far, no mounts in the game. So the travel routes sometimes become very long. This will be mitigated a bit by the nice areas, but it will wear off very quickly. And then there comes a spell with the staff of life that allows you to teleport forward, and as a result, almost all players walk around with this spell, and one of the most heard sounds is the scream that the characters make when casting this spell.

I also found it a bit negative that the towns look extremely similar. They are visually nicely designed, colorful, and also not boring when you look at them individually. But if you later know more than one place, the scheme of a big crossroads with a fountain in the middle, and almost the same arrangement of everything around it becomes obvious. On the one hand, this is very boring, and it makes the places look more like copies and can easily be mistaken for each other.

Crafting and collecting

The category Crafting is another strength of the game and an important content overall. There are 4 gathering professions, 5 refining skills, and 7 crafting categories.

Each section is full of recipes, and everything only levels when you use it. Here you can spend a lot of time, you also get a large selection of items.

But these recipes are a fixed set that is there from the beginning and then stays that way. I have never found a new recipe for a rare item in the world. And usually, the search for new recipes is a big part of the fun of crafting. This is completely missing here, a big minus point.

How useful these things will be in the endgame, I can’t judge after my short playing time. Short playing time I mean here, measured in relation to an MMORPG, where you often spend hundreds or even thousands of hours. So far I have reached about 30 hours on the counter and a char on level 30. The max level is currently at 60, so I was still quite a while away from the endgame.

But during the leveling, I was already able to create some things that I didn’t find as loot. And the different kinds of buff food, potions, furniture, etc. are probably not available to be found at all. But often the profession leveling consists of making dozens of items of the same type, more variety would be much better here.

Where there should certainly be use for professions, is the Housing Feature in New World. You can buy a house in a city if you have brought the reputation level to level 15. After that, only a few thousand of our hard-earned gold pieces are needed, and we get our own house in that city. This then serves as a permanent fast travel feature, and we can decorate it with furniture.

Gameplay – Story

The story surrounding the Aeternum, the Cursed, and the things with the strange name “The Hutzeligen” (German Translation) is all in all relatively flat. One learns very little about what happened on the island in the past. It remains unclear why and how the situation has developed in such a way and also real progress in the story rather does not happen at all. Apart from the territorial battles that take place between the guilds, or rather the companies as they are called here.

In English, the guilds get the incredibly original name “Company”. Finally a company with a grind, which you can run after work. And instead of helping the company at work with the development, you can now help the MMO company with the development of the cities at the end of the day, but that’s only a side note.

The quests always have very short texts and roughly follow a story approach. In combination with the generic and partly randomly generated quests in the style of the Skyrim Quest Generator, a constantly repeating gameplay evolves relatively quickly. Here you can see very, very clearly that the pure PvP sandbox system is currently being expanded by a simple quest system.

Until now this additional “quest cap” is still very flabby and loose and not very attractive. The number of writers in the development team is probably far from sufficient to fill an MMORPG with adequate content. Storytelling in New World hardly takes place at all.

There are still some notes to be found, which provide some background history, but even there the text level is nothing to get carried away. Apart from the fact that the non-English translation is often still missing and instead of displaying the original English texts, you get some internal placeholder abbreviations displayed.

Here is the biggest weak point of the game, in my opinion. The letters RPG in the MMORPG New World are written very, very small. The character development is flat and the stories told are much flatter. Unfortunately, I have to say that most of the Asia Grinder MMOs offer more stories than New World in its current version.

I hope that the developers will use the time until spring to add something more in this area. But if I’m honest, I have extreme doubts if Amazon will be able to do that in this short time.

To be able to improve something fundamentally in the foreseeable future, the flaws of the game are too serious. The weaknesses in the quest design and in the story flow are huge. And the unexciting sequencing of random quests makes it even worse.

So if you are especially interested in the stories in your MMO worlds, New World will most likely disappoint you. There is only little story here and in all probability there won’t be much more until the release.

Technology, Graphics, sound

The game uses Amazon’s own lumberyard engine, which is based on the CryEngine, for which Amazon has purchased a license from CryTek. With my high-end CPU and midrange GPU, I get at 1440p to halfway usable 35 to 40 FPS, so it is well playable. But that’s not a really good performance.

There are complete crashes every now and then, as well as the typical MMO problems, like lags, monsters or players jumping around abruptly, shots or punches that don’t hit because the game is not 100% synchronized. But this is rather at a rate of 2-3 times per hour, which is sometimes annoying, especially the crashes, but it’s not in a dramatic bad range.

But since the loading times are by no means short, even though the game was installed on an SSD in my case, a lot of time is wasted every time. A little patience and forbearance are needed here. What is positive to note, however, is that if you are kicked out of the game, you will always be exactly where you were last after reloading. I have experienced this already much worse with many MMORPGs.

Music is almost not in the game at all, and when it is, it is very subtle and inconspicuous in the background. There is nothing outstanding here, but at least also nothing annoying. The ambient noise is of high quality and coherent, though. You already get a feeling for “I think I’m actually standing in the forest” when you close your eyes. However, the village sounds partly the same, although from the logic there should be fewer animals, etc. there.

Voice output is very rare, so a lot of reading is required, at least so far. However, the stories are now anyway not what you absolutely must have read. And for the quests, there are always practical short texts and the “Kill 10 of these, collect 10 of these”-tasks don’t need much explanation to understand them. From this point of view, the texts, their quality, and non-scoring are no obstacles in the game.

For non-English speakers, for example, the German translation of the screen texts, menus, and items are, if they are available, very good. But in the preview version, there were still many placeholder texts. Also, monster names, menu options, and even the main menu often showed the program’s internal identification placeholder codes instead of actual labels. But I guess that this part will be much better until the release.

New World Screenshot Part 1

Click or tap on the image for a larger view.
In the enlarged view, you can scroll right and left on the edges

More Screenshots can be found at the end of the page.

Opinion & Conclusion

I have already mentioned the most important points in the last sections. In a nutshell, the general picture for PvE players is not that positive. Flat storytelling, unexciting random quests with rather boring quest objectives, only moderately complex character development at best, and also the loot design isn’t really amazing.

As a positive aspect, one must absolutely point out the really high-quality world design. And here New World makes up for a lot. Because the boring quests and the mediocre fighting are much more fun in this really pretty world.

I was surprised by myself that even after some hours I could still find the motivation to pick up a new batch of random quests in the village and to visit 6 to 10 random places again to fulfill the quest objectives. And the reason for this was clearly the beautiful world.

I can imagine that especially players who just want to beat up some monsters after work and want to level up a character at the same time can find a lot of fun here. New World doesn’t demand a deep dive into the world and the landscape offers something like a little vacation trip.

But players who are looking for the next big MMORPG, or looking for a replacement for WOW, ESO, Guild Wars, or similar titles, probably won’t be happy here. Or at least not for a very long time.

It remains to be seen how much Content Amazon Game Studios can still put into the game until spring. The present version offers a technically feasible basis. The world offers a lot of space for additional stories, it only needs the appropriate investment in writers and quest designers who do not produce flat content on the assembly line.

Whether this will work, I am not able to judge at the moment. But I have reasonable doubts. And I am very, very sure that it will not work at all until spring 2021. It’s useful for the end of the day monster-slaying, for PvP fans the game might offer more, but PvP players said to me that there’s also a lot going wrong. But in general, I would advise skepticism and caution when it comes to pre-orders.

I will probably skip at least the release and full price phase here for now. I’ll wait and see if the title can mature further in retrospect or if it follows the path of many MMORPGs of the last years and will be forgotten quickly. This is unfortunately also supported by the fact that Amazon has started to work on a new “Lord of the Rings” MMORPG at the same time. And I suspect that they will not want to start to be their own competition here. Which should not mean good chances for the longevity of the New World.

Rating

The game is far from being finished, and the release is still far away. But I assume that even after the release, there will be still a lot of work to do. Because the game is already available for purchase, I would like to give it a rating.

If I would like to give an overall mark due to the past contents, the disadvantages outweigh strongly for me here. The game is not only not finished yet, but what is in it has a very marbled and sometimes even poor or boring execution.

Only the design of the world and partly the action fight entertained me, but that’s probably not enough in the long run. Much more has to be done to build up a long-term motivation typical for MMORPGs, which could keep players interested in the game for a long time.

I would like to use a 75 % score as the base rating for the overall game design. Sometimes wobbly stability, lack of motivation, strong weaknesses in storytelling, and also not convincing dubbing let me deduct another 8 %. This results in a final score for New World of a weak 67 %.

But I still have hope that the developers will be able to recover this 8% by spring 2021. So the potential until the release is maybe just slightly above 70%, but I wouldn’t expect much more. Whether this will be worth the purchase price of $39,99, you have to decide for yourself.

New World

Zap by ZapZockt.de

New World is the new action MMORPG from Amazon Games. All info in this New World PvE Beta Test Review.
PvE player test of Amazon’s MMORPG
What does the New World, the new MMORPG from Amazon Games offer PvE players? All info & complete analysis in the New World Review, more about New World PvE gameplay, events, raids, dungeons, characters, character creation, skills, open world, world design, crafting, story, fun, etc.
New World is the new action MMORPG from Amazon Game Studios. Planned as a pure Open PvP Sandbox MMO, it has been moved several times and is now converted into a mixed PvP & PvE MMO. New World offers high-quality graphics and complex systems for sieges and battles, but what can it do in PvE?

Story

World Design

Roleplay and Character Development

PvE Gameplay

Graphics

Sound

Scope

Price / Performance

Rating

The game is far from finished, the release is still far away. But I assume that even after the release, there will be a lot of work to do. And since it is already for sale, I would like to give a rating.
If I would like to give an overall score based on the previous content, the disadvantages outweigh strongly for me here. The game is not only not finished yet, but what’s in it has a very mixed and sometimes even bad or boring execution.
Just the design of the world and partly the action-fighting have entertained me, but that’s probably not enough in the long run. Much more has to be done to build up a long-term motivation typical for MMORPGs, which could keep players interested in the game for a long time.
As a basic rating for the bids so far, I would like to use a 75% rating. Sometimes wobbly stability, lack of motivation, strong weaknesses in storytelling, and also not convincing dubbing let me deduct another 8 %. This results in a final score for the New World of a weak 67 %.
With this 8 % deducted, I still have hope that the developers will be able to get it back by spring 2021. So the potential until the release is maybe just over 70 %, but I wouldn’t expect more. If this will be worth the purchase price of $39,99, you have to decide for yourself.

3.4

Outro

Is it just important for you that beating the monsters feels good and the world is fancy, or would you rather make complex character decisions, discover secrets and experience exciting stories in an MMORPG? Feel free to write me your opinion about this and New World in the comments.

More gaming news and game reviews can be found on the YouTube channel or here on https://zapzockt.de/en/ – If you leave me a subscription or a thumb, I would be very excited. Then I wish you a great day, have a good time, ciao ciao, your Zap

Links and Sources

New World vorbestellen bei Amazon
(Affiliate Link) For every purchase via this link I get a small commission

New World Website

New World Twitter

Info about the Lord of the Rings MMORPG by Amazon (German Article)

New Word Gameplay Screenshots – Part 2

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