One of the major marketing points Amazon wanted to get across with New World: Aeternum's upcoming launch is just how soloable the MMO is now. From a revamped story quest that no longer requires you to jump into expeditions with other players to the Soul Trials, which bring those epic boss fights to individual adventurers, the MMO is another example of a solo-focus trend in the genre.
When New World launched back in 2021, it was not a solo-friendly experience. And I think many of us older MMO fans understood that it would be the case. I mean, the first two words in the genre's acronym are "Massively Multiplayer," so naturally, there would be the expectation that you would be required to group with other players to get through the content.
And there were ways this was accomplished relatively easily early on. From the PvP territory rush that saw many players eagerly join factions and companies to get in on the action to the impromptu corruption portal runs that saw groups form all over Aeternum daily there was a ton to do with other players.
Yet, as Game Director Scot Lane tells me during an interview at a preview event for New World: Aeternum last week, it was clear early on how much players wanted solo content.
It’s a topic that helped fuel the question of whether New World was still an MMO, or whether, like Amazon has been marketing New World: Aeternum, it was solidly an ARPG now.
“It’s such a hard question to answer,” Lane tells me when asked what New World: Aeternum is now. “Because we’re not pigeonholed into any genre. It’s a blurring of many genres. So it plays a lot like an ARPG, because you can play the entire game single-player. Combat is definitely ARPG combat. The way we tell stories is ARPG storytelling. There’s an open world where you don’t have to follow the story, and you could go play, and there are thousands of other players on your server. So it’s a massively multiplayer world. I think you could call it an ARPG or MMO, whatever you want. But it’s really either, depending on how you play the game.”
“I think to add onto that, the MMO elements that PC players have liked, like the player-driven economy, the loot gathering, all the stuff that made New Worldan MMO is still there in Aeternum,” Creative Director Dave Verfaillie adds on to the topic. “We’ve just added some things. We’ve added better storytelling. We’ve worked on the combat, we’ve optimized it, we’ve polished that and the storytelling. So it’s really just an addition - it’s not an exchange in any way.”
When I asked about what to me looked like a strong, singular push into solo play over group content and what data Amazon was using to support this move, Lane didn't hesitate to provide a startling statistic.
"The easiest one we saw [was] just the pure number drop off when you got to the Amrine [Expedition] quest at launch," Lane said. This is content that was around level 22 when the MMO launched in 2021, and it was the first major forced grouping experience in the original main storyline. Scot says that signal was "crystal clear" to the team, and it continued to trend that way the more players were put in these situations.
"[W]here it was required group content, we saw that. And then, as we replaced it with solo content, we saw the curve smoothing."
"Especially if you weren't in that initial rush, right?" Creative Director Dave Verfaillie added. "It can be harder to find Amrine groups later on."
So[lo] Trials
Enter Soul Trials, which are the solo boss encounters from the main story quests that now replace that forced grouping experience. These started to become introduced with the Brimstone Sands update and have populated the new, revamped story experience over the last few months as Amazon has completely reworked its leveling process. These Soul Trials are also featured heavily in the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion story whenever a major boss battle occurred.
Ever since this content was made available, players have asked for more. The boss fights are, by and large, very engaging and entertaining, but once you completed one in the storyline, you were never able to do them again.
New World: Aeternum solves this by adding a daily Soul Trial queue for end-game players. This is a daily rotation of three Soul Trials for players to do in order to earn rewards such as end-game Artifact weapons and gear, items and more.
I, personally, have been a big fan of the Soul Trials ever since I restarted my New World playthrough leading up to my Rise of the Angry Earth expansion review. Getting to replay a few of them during the event was fun, especially since they aren't all simply quick hit boss fights.
For an endgame in New World that is mostly about its PvP with Outpost Rush, Territory Wars, Chest Runs and more, Soul Trials offers solo players something to do when they hit level 65. While you can always brave the new Cursed Mists free-for-all PvP zone for some high level resources and rewards, if you mostly played solo to this point I'm not sure the prospect of getting ganked is going to be all that enticing to you.
Sure, the Corrupted Leviathan isn't that difficult a fight, and the Last Soulwarden let me take out some early story quest grind PTSD out on poor Yonas, the Isabella fight is a spectacle. This one was tough, with its multiple waves progressively getting stronger and stronger as the fight went on.
Lane warned us rather early on in the Soul Trial portion of the event that Isabella was no joke, and by the end of the day only one of us had defeated the boss (spoiler alert: it wasn't me).
The repeatable Soul Trials also offers some repeatable content for PC players who have been eagerly awaiting something this year ever since Aeternum was announced back in June. It'll be interesting to see how often new Soul Trials are added to the MMO, and if it's something we only see with content updates, or if there will be Trials added as part of upcoming seasonal content and more. But it's a step in a good direction for the MMO.
Simplifying The Experience
One of the first things I noticed during the Open Beta earlier this month was the removal of ammo. As someone who wasn't a crafter, but loved the feeling of progression when I would use new ammo types, I was a bit bummed to see it gone.
"We had a simplification initiative," Dave tells me in response to my lament for ammo. "I think one of the things, especially with MMOs that have been in development for three years like New Worldhas, you just keep piling on stuff, and at some point you're like, 'Wow, this game got pretty complicated.' We made an initiative to try to look at some things and go, 'Hey, what can we remove to make it maybe a little bit easier for new players coming in?' And where we thought it didn't add a ton, we cut. And I think ammo was one."
Dave mentions he thought I was upset about the change because I was a crafter who made some good money, but I'm just a nerd who liked the idea of different ammo types, and the progression I felt when I would graduate to something more powerful as time went on. I also still think The Lord of the Rings Online should bring back weapon speed and make damage type more meaningful again, but I digress.
When I noticed all the simplification being done to Aeternum during the Open Beta, I wondered if it was done purely because of a need to cater to console players, who might not be super familiar with a hardcore PC MMO. However, Scot tells me it was less that and more making it work well on the controller that drove the decision.
"I wouldn't say for console, but I would say for controller," Lane explained. "I'm trying to think of an example, but I think that was one of the things we talked about with ammo, if I'm not mistaken, and the layout. But it was more for when we went to controller we started thinking about some of this stuff."
"One thing that came out of the simplification initially that, actually I guess is new, so I'm not sure if it's technically simplification, but there are a lot more contextual popups now," Dave adds. "So if you played in the Open Beta, the first time you get a consumable, it'll tell you to put it on your hotbar, and I think just little things like that sort of simplify the experience for new players. You know, [we] just don't assume that everyone's done 100 MMOs or ARPGs before. Teach them along the way."
"There's just so much to Aeternum, right?" Lane continued. "The game is so big. There are so many systems that you've had to have played multiple genres of games to really understand all of them"
Another new part of the simplification initiative is the fact that you now get a cut gem as a reward in the main story quest, according to Dave. The MMO now teaches players early on that you can, in fact, slot cut gems into armor and weapons - something I'm ashamed to admit, I didn't understand until I was like...level 40 in my initial review.
Another interesting thing about simplifying the MMO is that while the grind to level cap has been reduced from, as Dave estimates, 150 hours to around 40-60 hours, the content is just more dense and interesting than it once was.
Recapturing PC Players
To say PC players have felt a bit spurned by this year's New World: Aeternum announcement is an understatement. After the June reveal, many PC players were, rightfully, upset that the announcement felt more catered towards the console audience, and even more upset when they were told there wouldn't be any more major content updates to PC until Aeternum released.
This doesn't mean that the New World devs forgot about the player base that has stuck with them throughout the last few years, as the new end-game content will only be playable out of the box by those PC fans who are level 65 on October 15th. Amazon Games Orange County is painfully aware of the feedback, yet noticed a shift in tone a few days before the Open Beta launched earlier this month. This might have coincided with a content creator and press embargo lifting on the Open Beta Early Access event where players could finally see New World: Aeternum in action, unfiltered for the first time.
"I feel like the sentiment changed about three days before Open Beta,” Scot says. “I noticed that everything I was reading was…nicer? I think once people got their hands on the Open Beta. they realized that we were doing a lot for [PC players].”
One area that was immediately noticeable during the Open Beta was just how stable the framerate was, and this was thanks to the sheer amount of optimization that went into getting the MMO in a place where it can not only perform better on PC, but also on less powerful consoles. Lane describes a situation where players were saying that they could run at higher settings thanks to the performance increase they were getting. Lane also talks about PC players starting to realize all the endgame content coming to Aeternum with the update.
“And I think they started realizing, through talk and through us talking about it, that we are thinking about endgame and adding some endgame stuff, like the things you got to play today. And I think just seeing the number of players in the game kind of reinvigorated them to be like, ‘Oh, I forgot how fun this is,’ and I think that experience helped. And when people like things, it’s contagious.”
As far as the post-launch content release schedule after New World: Aternum’s October launch, the company is being tight-lipped there. Lane says that they would like to get back to the seasonal cadence they were on before the team hunkered down to finish this version of the MMO, and while he wouldn’t be specific, Lane does tease that there is “more PvP stuff in the works,” adding that “we’ve done so much for PvE, like, tons, and we just want to push a little more toward PvP for a bit.”
Full Disclosure: Travel and accommodation for this event were provided by Amazon PR.
