Amazon’s highly anticipated fantasy MMO New World has faced two delays, first, in May of last year when the Covid-19 pandemic pushed the release until August of 2020, and then another delay in August of 2020 delaying the game to a questionable “spring 2021.” In February, Amazon Games announced a firm release date of August 31, with a closed beta starting July 20.
While the delays have disappointed some, they have allowed for the developers over at Amazon to work more with the alpha testers on New World to fix bugs, class balances, and create new systems. Last week, the developers sat down and wrote a blog post detailing their vision for the future of PvP within New World as well as to introduce a few new PvP features that are going live this week in the alpha. PvP has been a major focus of New World since the games inception.
In essence, the team stated that they wanted PvP to both coexist and complement PvE gameplay in New World, allowing players to bounce back and forth between PvE and PvP content. The team also stated that they want PvP content to reward equally with PvE content for similar amounts of time invested, hoping to balance the rift between players who only want to do the PvE or PvP content.
The developers went on in the blogpost to showcase a new system they’ve been working on that launches on the alpha servers this week, the world PvP faction control points. These faction control points exist out in the open world that player teams can fight over in order to attain world buffs such as gained experience and influence boosts. They also announced Outpost Rush, a new PvP mode in which players compete in 20 vs 20 battles to capture three control points. Similar to other MMO’s control point PvP gameplay modes, players must compete to defend their control points and secure resources while getting kills in order for their team to win.
New World comes at a time when the MMO landscape has been in stagnation with very few new ideas appearing in new games that look to capture on the success of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. While the initial release of the alpha was met with widespread criticism within the MMO community, the developers seem to have listened to the feedback and have been nonstop making improvements to the game experience in all facets. The developers also seem to have made the most out of the multiple delays the game has faced, improving and updating PvE systems. The team has recently announced new weapons, PvE game modes, balancing. We will see if the company can hold onto its promise to release the game August 31st with a beta period beginning this July. Be sure to check out the developers blog here to read more in depth about their vision for New World’s PvP.
