New World is poised to have a fantastic fall if everything the team is planning comes together. From the launch of its upcoming expansion next month, Rise of the Angry Earth, to completing its task of fully revamping the leveling process by years' end, New World is building towards its future.
Today, the team celebrates its second anniversary, launching on Steam in September 2021 after multiple delays and changes. Starting out as more of a survival crafting PvP game, New World was forged into what we know it as today: an open-world MMO with PvE and PvP elements.
It Starts With Storytelling
Amazon Game Studios' path to the two-year anniversary of New World was anything but easy, though. When the MMO was delayed out of August 2020, the main reason was to build out more content and dramatically shift the focus from the survival crafting roots it had always had to a more traditional MMO. But even then, when the MMO did finally launch on September 28th, 2021, there were still many players who found what was there in New World lacking overall.
As the one who reviewed New World for our site, the lack of compelling storytelling was one of my biggest complaints. With a forgettable storyline initially, made even more forgettable by the repetitive and monotonous grind, New World was hard to recommend to anyone who wanted a great story-driven MMO. And it was a shame because the world is so ripe for storytelling.
While some of the characters left a lot to be desired, the initial story threads, from uncovering the source of the Lost and the Corruption, to contending with Captain Thorpe and, eventually, Isabella, were strong hooks that were ready to be broadened.
However, the team hunkered down, listened to feedback, and iterated over time, building New World into what it is today.
"It's no secret that a year before launch, we were more of a survival crafting MMO," New World's game director Scot Lane told me in an interview last week. "So we didn't have a lot of those vectors of storytelling in, and we prioritized it. We were like, 'Wow, players really want more [storytelling.] And we really would have loved to have had more in the launch. But for whatever reason, we didn't."
Instead of pulling the game or just doubling down on the initial design and ignoring feedback, Scot tells me the team decided to improve the overall game "in place." Build out the content, revamp things, and streamline the grind in the live game, especially for those players who love to play alts, but more importantly for those new players still to explore Aeternum.
It all started with the commitment to creating a strong story and "carrying it all the way through," as Scot puts it. The team improved the level grind from 1-25, completely revamping the new player experience and changing the look (and storyline) of the early zone of Monarch's Bluff. They didn't stop there, with content updates such as Heart of Madness, Brimstone Sands and even events such as the recent seasonal stories which saw the closure of First Light by Adiana, expanding the New World narrative by a ton compared to what the MMORPG launched with.
As a result, it has made the New World team better at their craft, and the players will reap the rewards as a result.
"By making that commitment to storytelling and carrying it all the way through, it's made us better. The Brimstone expansion demonstrated that with this new content we're getting, we're definitely improving. And I'm hoping that we all agree that there's another step forward in the Rise of the Angry Earth [expansion], which I feel really strongly about. This is a big expansion coming out."
Dealing With Negative Narratives
Over the course of two years, any game is going to hit some speed bumps, but it seemed that New World couldn't get out of its own way at times. From multiple gold dupe fixes where the team had to shut down the economy, to delays with patches that players were expecting, New World faced an onslaught of criticism from both media and the community.
However, one area of criticism that has not really died down in the last two years is the subject of player count.
Having players in your MMO is incredibly important, especially one where there are no NPC vendors and the world's economy is dependent on a healthy player base. So many of the early headlines surrounding New World had to do with the incredibly large player counts and the long, long queues to get into the MMO at launch.
New World's all-time peak, according to SteamDB, was 913K players online concurrently. That's huge, especially for a PC-only, PvP-leaning MMO like New World.
However, as player counts started to fall, the criticism mounted, with people claiming New World was a "dead game" just a month into the MMO's lifecycle. It's easy to look at the player numbers and think that too, especially as those early updates kept breaking something unrelated in the game at the same time. There were a lot of hurdles the team had to overcome in the early days.
However, the player count discussion, at least to me, always felt a little disingenuous. Player counts for every game taper off after launch. It's pretty natural. Yet the narrative persisted.
"There's not a lot you can do with narratives," Lane says. "People can say what they want to say whether it's accurate or not. What we try to do is focus on the game, putting out the best product and keeping it as high quality as we can. And again, try to build the right things to make the game better.
"As far as the numbers, it's not uncommon for a game to come out and see the numbers go down. I think we went down a little faster, but then I think some of our turnaround has helped level that off and right the ship."
One narrative that has improved has been the Steam review positivity, according to Scot.
"One thing that I looked at was our Steam Review positivity, and that was a real encouragement for me, watching it go up and up over the last few years."
Clicking With The Fanbase
A turning point, it feels, in the last two years happened when the team really came into its stride with how it communicates its plans and updates with the community. Sure, they could rely on blog posts that would get picked up by outlets such as ours and call it a day. However, the New World team has started over the course of its two-year journey since launch to communicate directly with fans through their development videos.
It didn't always start as the Forged In Aeternum series or as a dev roundtable. One early example of the team responding to feedback and criticism was to stream themselves playing the MMO. An early critique leveled at the AGS team was questions whether or not they played their own game. The AGS team responded by showing that they in fact did, livestreaming an Expedition run (and looking like the rest of us normals while doing so).
The team was also really active on its forums before they got pulled into the Discord server. Feedback, updates, and more came quickly (though not always quickly enough for fans) on the forums, with everyone from senior developers to QA members responding to feedback and providing development insight where they could.
"I think things started to get really positive, in my eyes, was when we started learning how to connect with the players," Scot said in our interview. "I think, right around that first dev update we did, I thought that was really cool because that was a way for us to talk to the players. And what we didn't expect as much of was all of the suggestions and feedback that came through that. And that turned into Forged In Aeternum, Balance Of Power. That allowed us to have a dialogue back and forth and really helped us shape the roadmap.
"It's really nice when you're not only looking at telemetry and data that you get from play habits, but you're also having a dialogue with the players. I think that was a huge learning, connecting with the players early."
It helps too that the developers play their own game. Some of the feedback was things that they themselves were feeling as well, and it only helped to strengthen the arguments of both the players and developers advocating for certain changes. As a result, the team has been able to learn and develop to make the best MMO they can over the last two years.
"I think it's critical," Scot said when asked about how feedback has helped shape New World in its two-year journey so far. "It' helps shape the game. Two, it makes it clear to the community that we're listening. "
Lane tells me a story about how he goes even further than just the normal channels for feedback, from Reddit, Steam, forums, and stuff like that. He will oftentimes sit on an incognito character on a random server and just monitor the game chat while working.
"Everyone talks in game chat," Scot said with a chuckle. But he says it's a great way to learn a ton from those players who might not feel comfortable talking on Reddit or a more public forum, but have ideas to make the MMO better and feel more comfortable talking in-game with other players about them.
Memorable Moments With More To Come
Over the course of the last two years, there has been plenty going on in Aeternum. While players might remember the gold dupe exploits that shut down the economy multiple times, there is more to the New World story than just the downtimes. There have been real high moments in the development of the MMO, especially as the team has been able to flex those storytelling muscles more and more with each subsequent update.
"I think Tempest was a huge moment that allowed us to really, really close out the Isabella storyline," Scot says, recalling some of his favorite moments in the journey of the MMO. "And I think that just the scale of that expedition, and the beauty of it, all the different bosses - I think that was a great moment."
Scot also attributes reducing friction in the MMO as a memorable moment in the history of the game, as it shows the team's commitment to where they are going rather than just staying stuck in the past.
"We don't talk about it a lot, but if you remember the first reduce friction initiative, and then the first improve storytelling initiative were released, I thought those were big moments that showed the players, 'Hey, this is where the commitment [is] and this is where we're pushing things.' And we made sure we were aligned with the playerbase."
Brimstone Sands, the sprawling new zone that came out last year devoted to all things Ancient Egypt and the Roman Empire, is another banner moment for Scot as it heralded another "big step forward" for the team's ability to tell stories, but also set New World up for the next year with the Greatsword's introduction, as well as a jumping off point for more storytelling later on in the recent Seasonal shift.
Some more organic moments have come from the player base themselves, with the recent chest runs developing out of thin air in recent updates. This wonderful testament to the community's ingenuity has been taken up by the team, with chest runs now being considered when developing new content, including the upcoming expansion. I also remember in the early days of New World, those mad scrambles to close Corruption portals, creating tentative PvP truces with other factions doing the runs so we could all keep PvP flagged for the extra XP.
Getting that first parry with my Rapier and doing so on command, even in a hectic dungeon run. *Chefs kiss*
The New World team is looking back on two years, but they aren't resting on their laurels. The MMO is in a healthy place - despite what naysayers may say about player count numbers. Each time I log into New World, it's bustling, with activity everywhere, and an active player base on every server I'm part of. That is a good sign, especially when many MMOs feel dead, with the exception of a few end-game zones nowadays. New World feels alive everywhere I turn, with PvPers duking it out for supremacy in each region while groups are constantly looking for each other to tackle the latest expeditions.
And it feels it's only going to get better as Rise of the Angry Earth takes the storytelling and ramps them up even more. Releasing next week, the first true Expansion for New World continues the story being told recently with Adiana shutting off access to First Light thanks to a giant Bramble Wall. The MMO will be adding some much requested features, including the long-awaited arrival of mounts, and a new weapon: the Flail.
"Hopefully, we all agree that there is another step forward with Rise of the Angry Earth," Scot states in our interview. "I feel really strongly about it; it's a pretty big expansion coming out. And I think, bringing the beasts in, I think it's awesome just seeing what happened to First Light, it's just so cool. And the concept is that the Angry Earth hates civilization, and the island just hits back, and this is the form it takes. And that's not something you see in a lot of games, and it will allow us to really lean into our lore more and get better at sharing that lore with our players."
As far as where New World is headed after Rise of the Angry Earth, Scot won't say, but for players who are excited about the future of New World, as it plans out its next anniversary, the next milestone is that there doesn't seem to be any chance of the devs slowing down.
"We're not going to take our foot off the gas; we're going to continue growing and building the game."
