New World: Aeternum News

Early New World fans played it like Rust - here's why the devs changed it

It sounds like the original build of New World would have had some big appeal to fans of survival games like Rust. In a talk at this year's Develop: Brighton conference, senior producer Katy Kaszynski discusses the various development stages of Amazon Games' MMORPG, and it turns out that players of its earliest alpha build took to it like a pretty unforgiving survival game - so the devs had to make some big changes to steer it back in an MMO kind of direction.

For context, New World's alpha 1.0 was a pretty different beast to the MMO that tons of players have been getting stuck into since its launch in September. As Kaszynski explains, New World went from "this survival, crafting, horror, full-loot PvP game to what we have today" with the first alpha featuring these kids of elements: full-loot PvP, survival and crafting mechanics, and a fully player-driven economy where players built cities, pretty much anywhere they liked. This was all bundled in a sandbox world with no quests - just a bunch of intersecting game systems.

The devs invited a group of players to give it a whirl, and discovered that they didn't tackle the game quite as expected. "We were hoping people would go out into the world - and we built this beautiful world that's very similar to what we have now [...] where they could build their own structures, where they could go and fight each other, and really chase each other down, and it was so cool. And that's not what happened."

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New World gold exploit countermeasure leads to new gold exploit

Amazon Games has temporarily disabled New World's wealth transfer functionality due to a new gold duplication exploit that's been doing the rounds. Unfortunately, it looks like that's created another way for players to duplicate gold.

One player took to the game's forums to report that starting a town upgrade can lead to the cost being added to your company wallet rather than removed if you wait for half an hour or leave the game and come back. Other players have also jumped in to share that they've been experiencing much of the same.

A community moderator has jumped in to explain that the team is aware of the exploit, and is "currently investigating a possible gold duplication exploit". The moderator has also said that "the team will turn wealth transfer back on" when the exploit is investigated, though that's led to some confusion among players as it isn't clear which exploit they're talking about. We've reached out for clarification, and will update this story if we hear back.

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New World's hatchet bug is destroying players, but help is coming

New World's Hatchet is a bit good right now, to put it lightly. Over the past few days, oodles of players have taken to Reddit and the MMORPG's forums to flag that the Against All Odds perk probably isn't behaving like it should, prompting a response from one of the game's community moderators.

"Hello everyone, thanks for letting us know about this, and confirming others are experiencing the same issue," Rayman says. "Some other adventures also reported this earlier, and I have made the dev team aware already. I will be sure to include your details on the report as well! Thank you for your patience while we work to improve."

Typically, Against All Odds is intended to give you a base damage increase of 10% for every enemy that's within five metres of you. However, players report that the buff persists even after you die or someone leaves the five-metre radius, which allows some people to put out damage of up to 2,000 while unbuffed, for example. The buff only goes away if you swap weapons.

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New World dev highlights how Town Criers brought players news during open beta

MMORPGs are a great place for players to get up to all kinds of antics and shenanigans. For example, in recent months Final Fantasy 14 has seen players running around dressed as Colonel Sanders, a giant chicken, and even Bethesda director Todd Howard. It seems New World is no exception, with senior producer Katy Kaszynski highlighting one amusing, and rather heart-warming, example that came to the devs' attention during the MMO's open beta.

In a talk at this year's Develop: Brighton conference about 'active listening' and how New World evolved into an 'MMO success story', Kaszynski touches on how the open beta (which ran from September 9 to 12) revealed to the devs "all of the other new and exciting ways the players were using our game". The test "let us see all the ways that people were using their agency", Kaszynski explains. "One of my favourites was this group [who] created a company called the Town Criers, and the Town Criers literally got the news of the day and then went to the different zones, the different settlements, and yelled in the middle of the town what was going on.

"What wars were coming up; when invasions were happening; where there were iron nodes that people hadn't found yet. They were just so excited to be these town criers, and it was really fun and really cool to see."

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New World has lost over 500,000 players in a month

Amazon Game Studios' MMO New World has lost more than half of its player base since its launch. While initially, players counts for the game had been extremely promising - launching to 650,000 concurrent players before raising significantly to over 900,000 at the beginning of October - over 500,000 players have left New World in less than a month.

New World has certainly had a rough time since its stellar launch on September 28. Various major bugs and exploits have turned up, and even its best feature - the sheer number of players - proved troublesome, as servers got overloaded, waiting times skyrocketed, and the ability to transfer between servers got progressively more and more delayed.

According to SteamCharts (via Forbes), it would seem that the majority of players have either had enough of these issues or are waiting for New World to become more stable - or get more features - and have stopped playing for the time being.

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