nerdSlayer's Thoughts on New World 

Go to Squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, go to www.squarespace.com/nerdslayerstudios to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this video. I hope New World does succeed, but I just don't think it will with how things are looking so far...but don't just take my word for it, I explain my perspective in the video!

Oh hey, he's writing a rough draft of DoaG: New World!

Very interesting to see how most of new world problems seem to stem from unexperienced developers, and then seeing that studio trip confirming that theory.

"The game would launch september 2020-" Me: "oh damn, harsh year for AGS to have to patch this stuff" "-1" Me: "Wait, all of this shit went down in *2 fucking months* ??? Holy shit.

Yeah, lots of red flags on this game right from the start, but I was mildly hopeful it would all pan out. It really hasn't. Which is genuinely a shame.

I dropped about three weeks ago once the 3rd gold dupe and 4th item dupe became public and everyone on my server was decked out in end-game gear, tons of gold, and maxed out skills. It doesn't feel good to play that horrible grind while everyone who exploited got ahead and at worst a 24-hour ban. The latest patch, 1.1, only made the legit players and solo players impossible to catch up. The game is absolutely dead, and I look forward to Death of a Game: New World to release no later than this time next year.

Its the Fire Phone effect or Google Stadia effect: even with unlimited funds you can fail

Ironicaly, "New" World feels and plays like a 1998 game with 2021 graphics. 2 years tops until maintainance mode.

Still can't wrap my head around the fact Amazon tried to get into the gaming market by making a MMO, a notoriously expensive and difficult genre to get into. It be like trying to get into football by signing up to the world cup.

I do thank New World for getting me into MMOs, even if it wasn’t the traditional MMO, it opened me up try them. Now I play FF14 and it was the best decision I’ve made.

I saw virtually no difference between how Amazon handles their studios and how Google did with Stadia; brute forcing their way into the industry with money and buying developers. The only difference between the two is that Amazon is run by egotist wanks refusing to budge, while Google is run by robots who don't care about humans, only data. It's only a matter of time before Amazon Game Studios goes the way of Google's internal teams. The leaked in-dev game store strongly hints at this move being already mapped out. Also, huge respect for Bethesda for sticking out with Fallout 76. It might not be the online Fallout fans deserved, but for those loving it, I'm happy to see it keeping on and actually improving. If I were a betting man, back during its launch I would've put my money on F76 being featured on this channel soon - and I would've lost money on that.

This big companies that think that they can get into game development just because they have tons of money need to get a reality Check. A new dev team saying that they wanna make an MMO as their first game is incredibly stupid. Regardless of whether the team is an indie dev or a AAA studio. MMOs are incredibly hard to make and people seem to somehow constantly forget just how many MMOs are released constantly and immediately forgotten about. The fact that *any* MMO has managed to maintain a lifespan is practically a miracle. And even then you can probably count the number of successful MMOs that are still running on 1 hand. If these companies want to really get into game development, they need to realize that they can't just go for the big fish right off the bat no matter how deep their pockets are. They need to start out small and focus on more concise games that are easier to produce and maintain. If you really wanna go multiplayer then do something on the scale of a CoD or an Overwatch with only a handful of players in a match at a time instead of an MMO. But even then you should really start out with something small and single-player. Keep it simple stupid. it's a Mantra to live by. Only then after you've proven your chops on the basics should you even *attempt* something like a big multiplayer game, let alone an MMO. Like think about it, a vast majority if New World's problems are directly related to networking issues and other multiplayer related problems. And people seem to enjoy stuff like the combat and exploring the world. If they had just made a single player game, (or maybe something with small scale co-op/pvp like dark souls at most), then imagine how much of the effort that went into those bad networking and multiplayer efforts could have instead gone into further refining that combat and exploration system for a long and fun single player campaign. They were literally sitting on a potential gold mine and decided that it'd be more efficient to try and fill the mine in with cement to build a parking lot over it that nobody will use.

I think aside the one bug topic you touched on, which was the Economy, you really should've delved into the actual issues with security in the game, and a number of exploits that would inject code into chat. This was what finally killed the game for me. Being unable to control my character, or watching my char move around on their own, because I had hovered over something that was being traded in public chat. There was a ton of stuff like malicious code being allowed to run rampant, to the fact that endgame activites weren't even working for the first month of the game's launch. There are just so many actual vital topics to talk about on the game, more so than what you have covered.

What a lovely Pre-mortem! At this point you've seen so much bloodshed, you're becoming a real Nostradamus of gaming!

You're the first one who had guts to say loud and clear "NW decline is not normal" thank you

If you've done a bunch of kill and collect quests at lv10 or lv20, it's the same at lv50 and lv60.

"Games launching with supbar systems to games that launched nearly decades before, you have the blueprint right in front of you, just go out and play and study those games before you attempt to make such a massive undertaking" Fucking NAILED it. Yes they're a newbie studio but exactly this, right here. They've made the same mistakes decades of MMO developers have made and SoE continues to make. I mean, fucking WoW had a bug in which you could post pictures in chat come out during New World's developers, but they're SO out of touch nobody was paying enough attention...or simply too unaware to think "maybe we should make sure we don't make that mistake"

You are a very professional presenter and obviously very intelligent. I really enjoy what you put out.

Ironically amazon hired former arenanet employees to develop a MOBA shooter instead of their flagship MMO. Which is IMO a pretty idiotic move if you consider that gw2 is probably the most consistent MMO in terms of quality content/player retention.

Lets be honest.... this is gonna make it into the "Death of a game" series sooner rather than later🤣👏

While on one hand it's sad to see New World failed, it's prolly a good thing for the game devs that amazon's toxic work culture has failed to produce a successful product.

I disagree with your comments on the engine & sound design. The engine is cumbersome & limiting, while the sound design is horrible as far as group combat goes. There's a reason for the "ting ting" NW meme. Other than that, it does have a content problem, because like you said, they probably let some unpaid intern make the quests in 1 day. Most enemies share skeleton rigs & design too. It gets boring super fast & there's no reason to PvP. I 100% agree with you - Devs today have incredible games to study & improve on but they get stuck thinking they can do better & re-invent the wheel.

lmfao first time a death of a game episode isn't post-mortem but pre-mortem... Pre-mortem from alpha LMFAOOO. To be honest anyone with a working braincell knew NW would be a trainwreck just by watching some footage of the beta. Especially if they knew Amazon Games' track record...

Talking about mmo in general, the thing that comes in mind is old swtor (pre f2p, launch version) customization system. There were only few color crystals. And to get magenta you either could buy one that costed you really much, or you could craft one (if you got recipe) and to get one you had to have a crystal from the overworld boss, then mine 8 crystals (there were only 3 mining spots on 1 planet with 10 minutes cooldown) then you hat to refine the mining crystals on one of two force user starter planets in certain location. After that you could craft magenta crystal. If you wanted to look unique, you had to work for it. Same with slotted armor. You wanted different look, you had to search for rare armors with slots. Then the game went f2p and cosmetics went so overboard that it's more rare to see someone in vanilla armor than in modable one. Same goes for color crystals. Can't remember last time someone used vanilla blue or green.

Thank you for saving my Time and my Money on Bezo's little Rocket Company. After the 1.1 Patch i was on the fence... but hesitant... some YT Content Creators like NW, some don't (to put it mildly); the Beta was okayish but did not Scream BUY IT!!!!!, but your Opinion was one of the most neutral & profound... so i will watch from the Sidelines and maybe we are Lucky and in 2022 Lost Ark will be great and not P2W for the Western Market... Cheers...

All those content creators meeting with devs are just to create hype. Which they actually did successfully (over 900k active accounts during first month). Devs very rarely listen to constructive feedback and even less often implement it.

Mr Nerdslayer, just want to say I love your content and this sort of setup is really cool probably my favorite outside of death of a game but thankyou for the video it was entertaining 😀

177k peak players as of 11/30 As an alpha/day 1 player I can tell you this is because of complete developer incompetence and a completely fucked economy, not just because of the 5+ dupe methods but also the way it's designed

its very rare to have some1 so well spoken and knowledgeable about this topic and mmos in general i watch alot of content creators opinions about games in general but they dont put in the work effort this is very nice i subscribed to this channel for a long time i think but i never seen u stream or play games :D just watch the youtube videos i guess nice thoughts on the game btw! u got a like

Reading the comments I think Amazon should have tried the publisher route instead of making their own MMO internally. I mean, many veteran MMO devs have jumped to KickStarter and have a hard time delivering the products they had set out to make, imagine if Amazon had injected resources into these projects instead of making their own from zero with inexperienced devs (in the MMORPG field) . Then again, I don't think Bezos is the kind of guy who would be okay with letting indie devs do what they want with his money. But the result is Amazon losing much more.

John Smedley's gonna get another notch on his belt, isn't he?

i was eyeballing NW since its first announcement, as it sounded promising . but with the desaster that crucible was, i was skeptic if amazon could actually manage to make a decent mmorpg, a notoriously difficult genre. annd as expected, they couldnt. im pretty happy that i didnt waste money and time on this. dodged a bullet. kinda happy jeffs company is failing hard on the gaming market. shows money doesnt help much when u lack creativity , heart and soul.

There's inexperienced, and there's incompetent. Duping, auction house, yeah, inexperience. The game's chat allowing you to actually insert *code* and crash people out of the game? That's sheer bloody incompetence.

Me and my friends all live in different parts of the world and when new world launched some of us couldn’t play on the same server due to high ping and long queue times, but since amazon promised us world transfers we decided to play in different servers for sometime, then we’d all transfer to a server in either AP or EU because some of my friends in asia had around 100ms there and we didn’t mind having slightly higher ping if it means that we could play together. But when the transfers came, we found out that it was region locked and we wouldn’t be able to play together. We were all lvl 50+ and didn’t want to start all over again. Made all 10 of us leave the game. Its sad because i really loved the game

Numbers are now 50,000. About 5% of initial playerbase. Still "lights stay on" numbers but I can't imagine amazon being happy about it.

I hope Amazon doesn't screw up the western release of Lost Ark. I know its got nothing to do with the studio who worked on New World, but I actually look forward to that game after playing the beta.

having to look for dungeon groups in order to progress the main story quest is what did it for me, among many other things but if that could be done solo I still might have been playing it

Your assessment of crafting is right on, why bother when loot drops or the AH are almost free.

I guess you can directly make a Death of a Game New world. Quickest death of a game after release ever made.

I was just wondering a few days ago what you thought of this debacle haha

I really liked the game at first but I left four weeks ago and I'm not planning on coming back. Also, my computer is begging me not to reinstall it. It is a fairly new machine but it had major problems running the game. The one good thing about NW is that it made realize that WoW was actually far from bad.

The watermark system is easily the worse endgame progression system I have ever seen in an MMO.

Hey NS congrats on the marriage! I missed the podcast yesterday did you mention if you played the new halo yet? Since it's well known you're a fan of the series.

I always found really funny how everyone wants New World to be a plethora of different things, which makes sense when an MMO overhypes itself so much it attracts the attention of a playerbase divided by MMOs so different in terms of gameplay. The only thing of value after that remark i can add, is that the ESO pvp refugees are absolutely adoring the NW combat system which, from what i've heard, it feels really snappy like how old ESO pvp felt like and it doesn't have the insane performance issues that are currently leaving the game in an almost unplayable state.

13:00 ALSO doesn't help that AGS has a second game! -Lost Arc due in mid December, AND Ashes of Creation is out by mid January. . . And Elden Ring in February. Reads like a repeat of Titan Fall 2, sandwiched between CoD, Battlefield, and 2 amazing single player games within months of said sandwich.

Criminal system was never in public beta, only closed alpha. Also, "full loot pvp" is kinda of misleading since if you were not a criminal you only lost your inventory, not equipment. I wish a real deep dive into the Alpha could take place, but sadly it is still under NDA and will remain so.

Was waiting for this video to break into "DEATH OF A GAME!" halfway through ;)

Great video! I actually share a lot of your opinions and this actually gets me wondering whether the MMORPG genre as we know it is inherently flawed in design. MMOs need population to function, to pay for their high costs and to provide a good experience for those playing it. So to get enough population you need to make a game with mass appeal, but the systems created to make it accessible to many are the same systems that end up alienating others. A succesful game needs to be satisfying for its "harcore" players, but to even have those players the game must be satisfying for new and casual players, those that may become "hardcore" one day, but those same players will hate the systems that help new players, which they once were. I often think it's a good idea for studios to not try for "one size fits all" games but design for specific player groups but it seems even the players in those groups themselves are not sure of what they want. Back when MMOs were a novelty many had great experiences that they want to have again, but that is not because the previous systems were better it's just because at the time it was a dream come true, something they never had before, so they didnt expect better systems they just enjoyed whatever they got. Over time those systems evolved in a logical way, addressing its issues, and then we became unhappy, because ""better systems make for a worse experience" somehow. But... we cant just go back to the outdated systems, once the nostalgia wears off, old school games end up running into the very same issues those improved systems were created to address. How do you design an MMO then? if the solutions to it's core problems end up ruining the core experience? I mean, it must be possible, but it's useful to acknowledge the challenges there.

I remember Skillup's take on Anthem when I think of this game: "[they] made the wrong game and they made it badly." This game needed much longer to complete its pivot to being pve focused if it was going to ha e a chance.

"You can create infinite wealth by controlling a territory and taxing people" America Simulator 2021

As I always say "never preorder, never buy day 1, and never purchase microtransactions".

Great point about FF XIV and NMS's successful turn around being exceptions and not rules. Because in the Old World, the Real World success in general is an exception and not rule. The only rules in life are evolution and death. New Wold didn't evolve from old MMO by fixing the pain-points of the old, just merely copied the PVE mundane-ness and fell into the same pits that countless other MMOS's have fallen into previously. I hope New World to be successful, but I don't expect it to be

Interesting you thought the visuals were so good Technically speaking yeah its a very nice looking engine but I just thought the art direction was utterly bland and uninspired.

Was waiting for this video! Great content as always NS. Really like you telling us your long history with the game

This sounds like a pre-mortem of a game...

Following the clues for your video on the death of new world

I had been following NW with a bunch of friends since the game was first announced. We were all ready to pre-order it if it came out in one of the earlier states, just with some PVE content if we wanted some time off PvP. Needless to say, we played the last Beta event and decided to refund the game at the 2 hour mark so we could at least keep the pre-order bonuses if they ever fixed the game.

I think your analysis of New World is pretty accurate. Even as a person who purchased the game and still enjoys it at a casual level, it definitely has a lot of systems but everything is kind of mediocre. The only standout is the combat, which definitely can feel dynamic at times, even if it isn't perfect. Casually the game is OK, because as you mentioned, it is beautiful and the sound design is probably the best in any MMO, so filthy fishermen like me enjoy hopping on and getting a few reels in. I think the only thing I would also mention is that the devs seem to be working overtime to patch and fix up their hemorrhaging game. Every week seems to bring some very significant changes. While I agree that they probably won't pull an 'FFXIV' or 'No Man's Sky', it's pretty evident they are trying really hard and they do deserve some credit. That being said, until they do somehow pull off an 'FFXIV', I think the longevity of the game will have to rest on a combination of good will and a good flow of content.

Waiting for the death of a game episode on nw

Why isn't this part of the "Death of a game" series ?

13:49 "There's not much competition" - oof

Thanks for sharing insight that few others have on touring their studio early on. As much as I want to like the game for it's pretty graphics, I play games for entertainment and there is just boring work after lv30.

when you said thanks for watching guys i got a chill down my spine

would love to see a video like this on lost ark once its been in NA for a month or two!

its interesting watching this 3 months later, the game has evolved but I'm still unsure of the future. They have mentioned a road map so hopefully we will see that soon.

No one is commenting on how plug ugly the female characterizations are. Like some very mannish guy got dressed up for halloween as a woman, and is trying to walk/run in ultra uncomfortable female foundation garments that he's put on upside down. I'm a female player. I play as a female character. Might as well not because the guys look better even with rampant beards or mohawks. Choices for the females seem to veer from "Plug Ugly" to "What The Hell Were You Thinking, Dev?" I don't want to have a toon that looks like a big eyed weirdly underage Anime blow up doll, but seriously... Also lots of the video used in the video above seemed to be from any MMO EXCEPT New World. Haven't seen many of those characters in any form so far. It's very similar to the footage I saw being touted as Chronicles of Elyria, actually. Or do they all put pretend devs in front of screens "tweaking graphics/characters" just for times like this? Like stock footage to look busy? Seems very suss.

Idk how they didn't pre-emptively design for things as basic as gold seller bots in an MMORPG. Just look at Black Desert Online, they literally designed the MMO to be largely immune to issues that had plagued the games before it.

"Only continue to drop well below 300k players." The game is now peaking at 140k daily.

'Can neither confirm nor deny being in the Alpha'; can't bother looking up the original NDA. From day one New World felt like amateur hour, of ANY badly managed software project. The story line felt like it was being changed/made on the fly. So did the game mechanics. The overall feel was New World was a prototyping project. That may work for engineering projects with zero to little history. Such as SpaceX's re-usable rockets. A successful iterative process. But an MMORPG? A game category with a history of storied predecessors, long running games, and a cemetery full of failures. Why Did They Try To Re-Invent The Wheel? "Woulda... coulda... shoulda." Columbus, Zombieland (2009).

See you next year for Death of a Game!

3:30 yeah that was used in Lineage 2 and it worked great. That was like 20 years ago tho xD

It’s just a clusterfuck of incompetence and completely oblivious to the market. It’s also proof that there is a shitton of people waiting just for a run in a mill standard mmo. Another story of, trying to cater to everyone, you cater to no one. And if you are trying to cater to everyone, it needs to be waay longer in production if you have the means to go for it.

imagine if they had someone on the NW team play archeage for a year and then were told "make this with our engine but leave out the bullshit parts"

I uninstalled at level 46. I couldn't go on. This last patch definitely doesn't make me want to go back to grind even harder.

I've put over 700 hours into NW and want it to succeed so much but AGS just keep making the same old mistakes that should never be made in an MMO in 2021. Mass build nerfs, making time gates worse, nerfing drops, massive buffs to enemies and worst of all, ninja patching a lot of this. The bones of the game are easily the best on the market, by a long way but I've pretty much lost hope that AGS have the skill or experience to save the game.

12:22 ohh man you miss the opportunity to say "exception that proves the rule"

Mr Nerdslayer literally slaying nerds in the closed alpha event

You can tell the game really didn't have a set idea behind it. It wasn't created because someone had an idea they had to put into action. It was made in a boardroom, with changes being influenced by surveys and forum posts. The only driving factor was how many 'butts they could get into the seats' not enjoyable gameplay/experience. The real sad thing is the game was actually 'ok' at launch. The 'balance' patches have been horrendous.

I anm definitely excited..to see New World in "Death of a Game" in 2022.

Another great video NS! Really was looking forward to this deep dive on new world, hopefully the game can get better with time but with how rampant the glitches and tech issues are, I doubt it..

Amazon reportedly spent around 500millions a year on their game development department and not 1 person has enough brainpower to think "hey we're making an MMO, maybe we should hire someone with experience in that particular game genre to oversee this shitshow" HOW did Amazon EVER become one of the biggest companies in the western world???

I pray to God they learned some valuable lessons for the development of their LotR MMO.

Dragon Nest has one of the best PVP combat mechanic.

"More like dark souls than an MMO" > "These things could be improved over time." What?

Move fast. Break things. The funny part is that I was part of a multi-year effort to basically FFXIV the ordering pipeline software on what used to be the "bookstore" side of things because the old software was a buggy nightmare that was impossible to fix without adding new bugs and impossible to add features to without adding new bugs, and it lacked any testing suite. So the software developed during Frazzini's days has been gone for over a decade now. Anyways no longer at Amazon but really not surprised about New World.

When will this be added to "death of a game" playlist??

How long until Amazon calls it a loss and drops support?

I'm just at the start of the video, so out of curiosity. If it's not mentioned later, what's the reason for the NDA drop? Was it timed? Was it limited until release? The ones I usually see aren't without a limit or such thing.

All your suggestions are great. They are unoriginal so it’s not like it would have been ground breaking or hard for them to understand and implement. However there’s only so much time the employees have to work on aspects

My main gripe with New World is the huge server lag and desync issues during wars (which is supposed to be the end-game pvp content). It is literally a slideshow.

This game should have been developed an designed by vets of the gaming world an programming, this damn game will barely make 2 years of it makes that long

WICH ONE OF YOU WAS OK WITH THE SHITTY ANIMATIONS FOR THE CHARACTERS?? I WATCH RUSTED JOINTS ON A CAR HAD MORE SMOOTH MOVEMENTS

Open pvp is a fun fantasy, but a fantasy is all it is. In practice it never results in anything but a griefing simulator and there are no deterrents you can add that will actually deter that behavior without going so extreme you make the pvp unnecessary. It's just a honeypot for the kind of players that only play because they derive fun from ruining other peoples play time and they simply don't care about any penalties for themselves. Open world pvp is a pipe dream and its been a poison pill for so many mmos post-wow since on its surface its so much easier and cheaper to make "content" for than it is for pve so devs are naturally attracted to it as their games focus.

See you next week for Death of a Game: New World

ho god a nerd slayer vid about new world, the nightmare of the new world sub reddit.

I agree with you except with some stuff you said about crafting. I'm still currently playing New World and I don't know what you mean by "Salvaging endlessly for resources you need." Salvaging drop items only gives you repair parts and tiny amount of coin and salvaging things you craft only gives one of 2-3 resources back and way less then what was used. Crafting has many issues imo, but not what you have said about it in this video.

To give Amazon credit they were ambitious in starting their game studio with an mmo, but thei re problem is they went too big too fast. They should have started with something simple like an FPS or something.

It's somewhat funny to keep seeing the logo for AGM and read Game StudioS. No game, lots of studios. Gives that EA vibes in a way.

Hope you and the other half had a decent Honeymoon

Actually having played it I have a different take on it, it's a game looking for it's thing. It's not a single player MMO, you get out of the early areas things get harder, much harder if your just travelling on your own. Also you have along the primary adventure path a group dungeon, with NO matchmaker for grouping. I've not played a MMO like that since EQ1. Now if your with a friend or two, chances are your starting in different cities and starting areas, so no matching up for a while, :) I wanted it to be great, but it feels like it's trying to appeal to everyone and falling short everywhere