Just this Sunday, a video surfaced on Reddit that's supposed to be of an early Alpha build of Amazon's New World MMORPG. While we've reached Amazon Game Studios' PR about this possible leak (it's still rumored as of this writing), we thought we'd rez an old list from just after the game's official announcement in 2016. Yes, it's been that long already. Aside from our wants below, what else would you like to see from this horror + colonial + stream-centric MMO?
THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
When Amazon Game Studios announced a couple weeks ago that it was making a Triple-A sandbox MMORPG called New World, the news quickly excited the throngs of MMO fans. It’s not often these days we get wind of big money being spent on a new game in our favorite genre. With that in mind, we’ve decided to write Gaming Santa and ask him to deliver these things to the biggest new game on the horizon. Bear in mind, all of these ideas are pure wishful thinking. So join us, and start taking bets on what we get when we learn more about the game.
5.) NOT ANOTHER FIRST PERSON SURVIVAL ALMOST MMO
We’ve seen more than enough games use the first person view and make players fight for survival in recent years. We didn’t see much of New World’s gameplay (none of it, really). But the game description gives us hope that it won’t be yet another survival quasi-MMO where only 64 or so people live on a server. We’re all for survival aspects of games, but like we said about Dark and Light – the eating and drinking and bandage game is not fun when it’s all you’re doing. Make it a real MMORPG with massive amounts of people and a massive world to explore and live in, please.
4.) COMMUNITY AND PARTICIPATION
One of the things that struck me most about the brief glimpse at New World, aside from having World of Wacraft’s Dave Maldonado at the Creative Director helm, was that it plans to engage the community through twitch with events, streams and more. I know some worry that this means the focus would be on “shareable” moments a la ARK, and DayZ, but I wonder if we’re thinking about it wrong. What if the Twitch interaction was used to create the kind of living and interactive worlds we had when UO was in beta and Lord British was assassinated? That’s the kind of levying of the tech I’m hoping for.
3.) REAL HORROR
There are few horror games in the MMO category, and New World looks to join The Secret World, but by focusing itself on a specific time period in the past it could be potentially all the more terrifying. Additionally, let’s not beat around the bush – being newer and based on Lumberyard means New World will look absolutely gorgeous if our brief looks at the game’s art and renders are to be believed. Tie this in with a sandbox-anything-goes unscripted game experience and if the developers can create real tension with its fights, atmosphere, and indeed the other players. TSW is a scary game. New World can be even scarier with the right design.
2.) OPTIONAL PVP AND FULL PVP
I said this in our Dark and Light List, and I’ll say it here: for New World to grab as many people as possible, Amazon and their team need to make sure the game’s servers allow for all types of player. The PVE folks who want to worry about enemy AI and not each other are just as valuable as the PVP centric folks. PVP makes for better Twitch streaming, but so does horror (see Dead by Daylight). Let the players choose their ideal way to play.
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1.) A STORY IN THE SANDBOX
Probably the hardest part for sandbox and survival games alike to do: tell a coherent story. You don’t want to lead players by the hand, but New World definitely looks to be establishing its own mythology and lore here. I don’t want to see that in just websites, wikis, and little achievements in the UI. I want Amazon to tell us a story, without tying us to scripted content. Do I have any idea how to do that? Nope. But I’m not a multi-billion dollar company striving to change gaming. I’ll leave that to Amazon.
