It was a difficult week before New world. Amazon Games’ long-running MMORPG is now being relaunched in the form of New World Aeternum, which revitalizes the entire game, adding new characters and endgame material, improving combat and offering a litany of additional player-requested features. It sounds promising, but the response to Aeternum was extremely critical. The New World Steam page continues to be bombarded by reviews, dropping the game’s rating to “overwhelmingly negative” based on recent player responses. Speaking to PCGamesN at Summer Game Fest, Amazon Games explains how Aeternum aims to transform the MMO for the better.
Criticism of New World Aeternum centers around a perceived shift by Amazon to focus on the console rather than the PC version of the MMORPG. One of the key features of the relaunched edition of New World is its revised combat system, which is largely designed around a controller rather than a mouse and keyboard. Players are also critical of the cadence of New World patches and updates, saying that the reveal of Aeternum, after a long wait for more material for the PC version, feels inadequate. Of the more than 3,000 player reviews posted to New World’s Steam page in the past 30 days, only 10% are positive.
There are also concerns that New World Aeternum will compromise or sacrifice the game’s MMO foundations in favor of mechanics that are more traditionally those of an ARPG. Speaking to PCGamesN live from Summer Game Fest, the team behind New World offers more insight into its intentions.
“I call it [Aeternum] a spiritual successor,” says game director Scot Lane. “By the time this comes out, we’ll have been live for three years. We have worked as closely as possible with players to deliver the changes we are making. This is the culmination of it all. I was talking to someone who played New World, who hadn’t played New World since the beginning, and they said, “This feels like a different game, just in the same kind of genre.” I think that’s what we were going for.”
“For me, Aeternum is the ultimate New World experience,” says senior producer Katy Kaszynski. “If you played in 2021 when we launched and haven’t played since, it will be a very different experience when you come back – it won’t be the game you remember. If you’ve played, this is now a continuation of your journey.
So what’s different? Why Aeternum, and why now? Amazon Games explains that it wanted to refine certain systems, streamline others, and expand the New World endgame. The idea is to cut some of the busy work and build on some of the more rewarding and fulfilling parts of the RPG, including character, quests and satisfying end-game material.
“The high-level story is still very much the same,” explains creative director David Verfaillie. “It’s about this island that’s almost a character, and unraveling the mystery of ‘what is Aeternum?’ But I think there are new elements added to the stories, especially new characters and NPCs you meet along the way. The core of the story is the same, but we’ve done a lot to bring in some great new characters to join you on your journey.
“What I like about Aeternum is how we’ve made the onboarding and initial experience great for new players. It’s not just the story. We’ve streamlined the quest experience. It also fills in gaps that players have been telling us about for a long time, like Group Finder – we launched without that, and now it’s so easy to get into a group. It fills in all the gaps we’ve had and now it’s a full, ultimate experience.”
Any long running game or live service game will potentially encounter this problem. Months or perhaps years after launch, when the fundamental engineering work is complete, the base game is running well and the player base is established, there is the opportunity to start designing and delivering transformative updates and patches. But if you have so many ideas and so much new material that you want to incorporate into your game, rather than incrementally building on what’s already there, it might be easier to do a soft relaunch.
“I think there are a lot of reasons to come to Aeternum,” says Lane. “It’s a completely different experience. If you haven’t played New World since Brimstone or earlier, it’s almost unrecognizable. There is just so much more to do.”
“We did a good job of reducing the grind, but still keeping the challenge,” Kaszynski explains. “The routine is still there a bit. You can’t have a game like this without a little grind to get your stuff up to the highest level. But now it’s a lot more fun than maybe a lot of people who left once felt.”
“Many of the systems that players have been playing in the endgame are just getting bigger and better,” Lane continues. “This is an addition to the endgame. It makes it more of an endgame. There’s our first attack, our PvP zone. We’re adding our solo trials – you can now also do these as an endgame activity. We don’t take anything away from the end game; we are improving it. And one thing we’re doing for PC players: if they own Rise of the Angry Earth, they’ll get this for free – it’s a free drop.”
Between World of Warcraft Classic and Old School Runescape, we’ve also seen some modern MMOs return to previous versions, so that loyal players can still enjoy the games the way they first found and fell in love with them. For the New World believer, Kaszynski says Aeternum is a “continuation of their journey… the end-to-end game, plus the end game.” On the issue of an alternate version of New World similar to WoW Classic, Kaszynski says that Amazon “will always listen to our players.
“If we hear that there is a need for it, we can put it in the backlog,” says Kaszynski.
While we wait for more on Aeternum, check out some of the other best RPGs currently available, or perhaps the best multiplayer games you can get on PC.
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Additional reporting from Summer Game Fest by Lauren Bergin.