New World

[Peppermint Lounge]

Anyone? I hate to say I'm a little tempted to check it out. Apparently the launch server queues are horrible.

Obligatory pasted launch trailer:

[Twiztid Elf]

My eldest picked it up.
First impressions from his experience late last night: "I didn't get past the 18 hour login queue".
He tried to get on again today. He tapped out at 250 left to wait in the queue as he had to go to work.

[t0mby]

He should've just left it in the queue whilebhe went to work, might've been close come home time, that or dad could play.....

[Twiztid Elf]

I don't know for sure, but I'm assuming, to make the queue even crueler, if you don't have activity in a certain time after connection it turfs you out again.
I've seen that in the past.

[Twiztid Elf]

update: in the very early hours of this morning he was able to login. Queue was about half an hour he said.
Then when he got on played for about 2.5 hours and big thumbs up.
He's loving it. Says it is a new step up for MMO's.
FWIW, he's a cynical, burned out Wow veteran that has tried FFXIV, GW2, ESO, Rift, Terra, BDO.

New update:
Either they've fixed the queues, or the game is already in sharp decline.
Logged straight in today.
I sat and watched it for a while. It looks really pretty on his souped up rig.
The faster paced combat looks nice and more fun.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Good update, thanks. Does he PvP? How's his connection performance?

[Deef]

Lel, playing Apex a lot nowadays. Always funny when you hear a voice actor elsewhere; this one's Loba.

(Also funny when recognising another guy from Apex in FFVII Remake... and Dying Light... and Sonic.)

[Gamma]

I get that every game has server issues on launch, but surely Amazon of all companies were better positioned than most to not drop the ball? Anyway, good to hear it's sorted now.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Am kind of scared away from this now. I follow gaming journo Paul Tassi and on New World he wrote recently:

It’s completely devoid of story, so much so that I cannot name a single character I have come across in this game, as they’re all faceless NPCs that blur together and offer the same five types of fetch quests on repeat.

It’s clearly focused on clan participation, teaming up and PvP wars. I am not normally a big “clan” gamer, and most of my IRL friends I play with only have consoles, not gaming PCs. If I did want to play with streamer friends, I already picked a random server I am now stranded on as you don’t have the ability to jump worlds right now. Clearly, the more I play, the more I realize this game is designed for groups.

And yet…

I am hopelessly addicted to New World despite all this. I wake up every morning and have to restrain myself from turning it on and doing my three XP bonus faction quests immediately (confession: I already did one in between articles today) or go chop down a forest of trees to get my rank up.

Why? Why am I down this rabbit hole so deep, even though so much of it doesn’t appeal to me? Because what New World does get right, it gets really right, and to me, there’s something almost therapeutic about its “numbers go up” systems in a way that few other games get right. It’s a megabudget version of Cookie Clicker, except the cookies are gold deposits and skinable wolves and zombie pirates.