It’s difficult finding an MMORPG to devote time to. Games either don’t live up to the unrealistic hype that other people create for them, or you happen across one you genuinely enjoy and it turns out nobody else does. The game’s empty.
And with so many MMOs having come out this year: PSO2 New Genesis, Swords of Legends Online, Bless Unleashed, Crowfall, Elyon, New World. Have the top 10 most played MMOs shifted? Is there something better out there that everyone is devoting their time to? Let’s find out. Together.
Especially given next month is the beginning of 2022, and you’re going to want something big to play, right?

Let’s start this off with the only Anime MMORPG in this list: MapleStory.
MapleStory released all the way back in 2003. This game has spawned a plethora of other titles under the same intellectual property: MapleStory M which was received with.. moderate enthusiasm, and a sequel, MapleStory 2, that shut down a year after launching.
Neither title truly managed to capture the quirky style that MapleStory employs. This is the only MMO in this list to utilize a horizontal graphical style – you move your character horizontally, left to right, across the screen. You can jump and climb, but the bulk of the game takes place on one level.
You take quests, you venture out, you group with other players, fight for control of the area, and… grind. This game is a grind. An unbelievable grind. Almost grindier than any other MMO I’ve played in the last decade. Thankfully it employs an incredibly fast, often chaotic action combat system to make up for the time you spend engaged in combat.
It’s got an adorable Anime-ish graphical style, and gets updated repeatedly over the course of the year, with new areas, new events and new classes. This brings players coming back to the game, and is what makes it one of Nexon’s highest grossing, most profitable franchises, averaging hundreds of thousands of players across all regions per month.
Yes, this list isn’t including specifically English-speaking countries.

Star Wars The Old Republic released back in 2011 as part of the greater “Star Wars” franchise. Movies, TV series, video games. And while The Old Republic – The MMO, never truly lived up to the potential of the IP, it still eventually found its footing, and allowed for Star Wars fans to channel their inner fan.
Now The Old Republic has had its highs, and its lows. With its low points lasting significantly longer than its high points, but that’s partly due to how the game has been handled up until this point.
This is an open-world MMO, with plenty of different regions – and as you’d expect, plenty of different, highly diverse worlds to explore at your leisure. The Old Republic has one of the deepest, most compelling narratives of any MMO.
And while that’s 2 for 2 thus far, its combat is much less impressive. It utilizes a fairly basic tab-target combat system that definitely looks and feels older than a 2011 MMO should, given RIFT, Aion and TERA.
Star Wars The Old Republic just released their latest expansion – which has garnered quite a bit of attention, and shot the game up to hundreds of thousands of players over the course of the last month. How long this lasts however is another question all together.

The Elder Scrolls Online released in 2014, a mere 7 years ago. It feels like it’s been out longer though, right? Much like Star Wars The Old Republic, The Elder Scrolls Online is set within an already existing franchise: The Elder Scrolls. You know. Morrowind. Oblivion. Skyrim. Yes, I listed the 3 best in order of best to most overrated.
ESO has been pretty steady for the last couple years. It’s never really had any large peaks in terms of growth, but at the same time, it hasn’t sunk very far beneath what it had already established itself as.
The game has a fantastic narrative, a large open world to explore, action combat, a fairly extensive class system allowing you to more or less equip what you want in terms of weapons and armor, while giving you freedom to craft your class – in terms of skills, however you like.
Graphically, the game holds up well. It’s one of the better looking Western MMOs out there, with Guild Wars 2 being the only real competition.
ESO averages a couple hundred thousand unique players per month, and has been averaging roughly a similar amount all year.

Guild Wars 2 was released back in 2012, and has since gone on to become one of the most played free MMOs. More than that, it’s generally considered to have the friendliest community of any MMO online.
The main issue with Guild Wars 2 is that for the last several years, content has been released fairly slowly. This is due to NCSoft being incompetent, and inhibiting ArenaNet from truly making Guild Wars 2 one of the greatest MMORPGs of this generation.
And with slow releases, comes an expected decline in terms of player population. Although with the recent announcement of its latest expansion, “End of Dragons” looming on the horizon, players have come back in droves to play catch-up, and new players are jumping in to see what all the hype is about.
Guild Wars 2 is a gorgeous game with an incredibly large world. It has plenty of class customization, an active PvP community and one of the better narratives out there.
The game utilizes a very high quality hybrid action combat system, allowing for players to change their entire playstyle by merely altering the weapon they have equipped.

Now this one is a little different. See, on the one hand, Star Citizen hasn’t launched yet. It’s an indie MMO that has been in development for years, and has, over the course of its time spent in development, acquired hundreds of millions of dollars worth of funding.
More funding than Final Fantasy XIV. More than World of Warcraft. And we’re still years – perhaps decades off from being capable of playing a fully realized game. However, that hasn’t stopped players from playing it in the form it’s available in.
This is a very incomplete game, with very few fully implemented features. Yet last year they reported that they had – at their peak, hundreds of thousands of active players. Which is some of the most ridiculous numbers I’ve ever seen for an unreleased title that is still so far off from being ready.

RuneScape is the oldest title in this list, releasing back in 2001. I’m not entirely certain how this game has retained the playerbase that it has, but I guess this is a testament to how good the game must be, right?
Now I’ve never dedicated much time to the game. I’ll be the first to admit that – not every person will enjoy every MMO, right? It’s asinine to believe that anyone would enjoy every single title in this list.
RuneScape is an enormous game, with more content than you can realistically dream of partaking of if you’re a new player. Sure, it’s very dated – both in terms of how it looks and how it plays. But that’s part of its appeal.
Even though it’s 2 decades old at this juncture, this game – these developers push out more updates than almost any of its competitors, paid or free.
Thankfully player numbers are public, so we can see that there are hundreds of thousands of active players at almost any point in the day. Even if some people claim that half of them are bots.

Black Desert Online released way back in 2014. Yeah, almost 8 years ago. Eight. Years. In all that time, not a single MMORPG released has come close to competing with the game’s dominance over the market in terms of graphics or combat.
To date, BDO is considered to be the “pinnacle of the MMORPG genre,” that one game that every MMO has to live up to. And I can honestly understand why.
Not only is this game absolutely stunning – the world itself, which is completely open, no loading screens at all. Entirely explorable without limitations, whether on land or sea.
But the depth of the character customization is unrivaled. Name one MMO with as good of a creator as BDO. You won’t find one. Couple that with some of the best action combat, and you have what should be the best MMORPG available, yet due to its horrendous pay to win, RNG and grind, falls short.
Pearl Abyss have confirmed hundreds of thousands of active players – on the higher end of the spectrum – which sets it above almost every other MMO in this list.

While New World is less than 2 months old at this moment, it is definitely worth noting that even with all of its issues, all of the exploits, the hacks, the duplication of items, of gold, the lack of endgame, Amazon’s poor handling of all of this, their choice to make the grind even longer in a recent update.. there are still hundreds of thousands of people playing this.
At the time of writing, there was still a peak of 132,000 players concurrently logged in, with likely over a million players still playing over the course of the last month – minimum.
New World features a large, open world – albeit the world itself seems to lack much in diversity – both with regards to the environment, and the monsters found within it.
It utilizes an action combat system that honestly isn’t bad but felt too limiting to me when I played it. There’s an extensive crafting system, a territory system and so much more that is completely overshadowed by how often new exploits are taken advantage of, repeatedly ruining the experience for everyone playing.

World of Warcraft released back in 2004, and up until 2020 was the most populated MMORPG. It was completely unrivaled. Nothing came close to competing with it, especially after WoW Classic launched.
Yet like everything, eventually things fall into obscurity. And while WoW is far from falling into obscurity, with the game still having over a million active players across both Retail and WoW Classic, it’s a far cry from what it once was.
This is evident by the premature end of Shadowlands, in their mad rush to push out something new to re-ignite the playerbase’ passion to play through something new and potentially exciting.
WoW is definitely a dated looking game – for most of it anyway. Newer zones are absolutely gorgeous, and the game features what is arguably the best tab-target combat in the genre. With the exception being maybe Aion or ArcheAge.
It also features more lore than almost any other game I’ve ever seen, but its story has become so disconnected, such a convoluted mess that it’s almost funny trying to keep track of what’s going on.

And finally, Final Fantasy XIV. Final Fantasy XIV released initially back in 2010, and was such a critical failure that they overhauled the game from the ground-up costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
This was the largest undertaking in the entire MMO genre, and has paid off, given it is now the most played, most popular MMORPG. And with Endwalker having just launched into Early Access, and both Mrs Stix and I playing through it, this is probably going to be the largest year for the game to date.
Final Fantasy XIV already confirmed they had hit their highest concurrent player numbers before the mass exodus of WoW players, and the combination of the those additions to the game with fans are going to make queue times unbearable.
Final Fantasy XIV features a large open world, with each expansion introducing even larger areas than the last. It’s a gorgeous game with an incredible narrative. Shadowbringers was by far the best storytelling I’ve seen in an MMO. And I’ve played almost all of them.
Its combat isn’t the best, but it’s good enough that it doesn’t bring the game down – doesn’t hinder it.
The amalgamation of everything that Final Fantasy XIV does right has shown continued success, with the game once being rivaled by Guild Wars 2, and now tripling, maybe quadrupling it in terms of active player numbers.
Nobody ever thought Final Fantasy XIV would dethrone WoW. They thought WoW would to that to itself, and Final Fantasy XIV would continue on the route it was. Boy were we wrong.

And that’s everything. They’re the 10 most played MMORPGs in 2021, moving into 2022. Were they what you expected?

I’ve avoided, for the most part, doing videos on all of the New World drama going on recently. There are other content creators out there that have done a far better job at detailing the almost endless number of issues the game has had over the last month as they arise.
But I get messaged repeatedly asking what my thoughts are on all of it. Asking why I’m not covering it as well. And you know what? That’s a good question. The more people discussing it, the more attention brought to it, the better.

So today’s video is going to be a little different. I’m not going to board the “hate train” that so many players seem to be on, attempting to bring the game down. No. On the contrary, I’m going to discuss every issue I’ve been made aware of over the course of the last month. 30 days.
That way, we can see what has been plaguing the game, we can see what steps Amazon have made to remedy the issues running rampant, and make certain players know exactly what’s out there.

Let’s start this off with one of the first bugs I noticed while browsing online: On October 15th, it was reported that players were abusing an exploit to allow for them to become completely invulnerable. I covered this, and included the video used as reference.
This involved playing in windowed mode, and required players drag the game window at a certain moment, which put you in a temporary state of suspended animation, preventing you from taking any additional damage.
There was a small hotfix to this introduced that caused you to crash if you attempted to drag the window while in window mode. But by October 28th, a full update was rolled out to address not only this, but several other issues.
Yes, players were abusing this for almost 2 weeks straight.

On October 28th, it was reported that players weren’t receiving Gold after their Auctions ended while offline. This is a bug that affected the entire community – not just cheaters in PvP.
In essence, if you were offline at the moment that your auction ended, you wouldn’t receive the gold. It wouldn’t matter if you had just logged out, or relogged. You’ll receive a notification that your items were in fact sold, but you’ll be refused the funds directly from that sale.
On October 30th, Amazon reported that they’d rolled out a hotfix in an attempt to remedy the issue. While many players had reported they were successfully receiving their Gold once again, there were still a number of players that reported the opposite continued even after the fix.

November will likely go down as the “month of dupes,” with a bug that allowed players to duplicate gold being brought to players’ attention on the 1st of the month.
How you triggered this dupe was to engage another player in a trade, click, hold, and then drag the window around while confirming the trade, have the other player cancel the trade while you’re doing this, after which their trade would be canceled, they would keep their gold, yet you’d receive the Gold they were attempting to trade you as well.
Players were livid when learning of this, with many people asking for Amazon to do a roll-back. To fix this as soon as possible. I mean, a game is only as successful as its in-game economy. If everyone has limitless Gold, then money has no purpose.
In an effort to stall players from abusing the duplication exploit further, Amazon disabled trading between players. This was a good move in theory, as it would’ve temporarily halted any additional Gold from being duplicated and injected into the community.
However, upon disabling trading, they created something just as bad: Another duplication bug.
This time, if you attempted to trigger any type of town upgrade – like a kitchen, as an example, you would be charged a set amount of Gold to upgrade it, however, it wasn’t functioning as it should have been and instead, results in an error message.
If you reconnected to the game, not only would you be refunded the canceled upgrade, but you’d have the cost of the upgrade added to your Company wallet as well.
Then there was another exploit concerning the Storage shed, where if you took an item from one Storage shed and transferred it to another, and reconnected during the transfer, not only would you possess the item in your original Storage shed.. but you’d also possess it in the Storage shed you were attempting to move it to. Two items in total.

2 weeks later, a week ago from today on November 13th, a new duping exploit was confirmed. While Amazon had banned a portion of the abusers responsible for duping in the past, there were many left without punishment.
This new exploit was posted about on the official forums, and even had video footage dedicated to showing how to reproduce it. According to players in that thread, it was a dupe method that had worked in the past, resurfacing once again.
Amazon quickly responded to this, and once again disabled all types of wealth transfer a day later, preventing players from once again trading amongst one another. Something they did earlier this month in an attempt to prevent players from further damaging the economy.

4 days ago, on November 17th, there was a new thread created on the New World subreddit, detailing 7 new exploits running rampant on the live version of the game, after Amazon restored the ability to trade with one another.
Yes, 7. It’s genuinely difficult to even imagine that being possible. First, there’s the “trade dupe,” which is achieved merely by trading items with another player.
Second, the “crafting dupe,” which is achieved by attempting to craft an item and forcing the game to cancel it, not only refunding, but also duplicating the materials used.
Third, the “bound item exploit,” which is achieved by selling bound items on the Trading Post if you first place them into your Storage.
Fourth, the “recipe dupe,” which is achieved by salvaging a recipe while in combat. If you allow yourself to die, the recipe will be restored within your inventory after respawning.
Fifth, the “gold dupe,” which is achieved by trading gold to another player while in the Outpost Rush. Both you and the other player will retain the gold traded. Or, attempted to be traded.
Sitxh, the “outpost rush food buff,” which is achieved by using a food item while participating in the Outpost Rush, logging out after you receive the buff applied, then logging back in. What this does is provide the food buff to you permanently, and stacks infinitely, without limit.
Seventh, the “furniture dupe,” which is achieved by allowing your housing to expire, it adds the entire content of your home to your storage. You pay tax, and then your home keeps the original furnishings.
And those are only 7 that players were aware of at the time of posting.

And finally, the most recent exploit: The ability to reset your influence to 0. According to players on Reddit, companies that own territories are capable of changing their name to reset their influence.

Now I’m not listing these exploits here so players go out of their way to abuse them. I’m posting these here so players know they exist. So Amazon know they exist. So something can be done about them.

New World could have been an amazing MMORPG. It’s a lot of fun. There’s plenty to do in the game. But how poorly this game is handled is laughable. It’s become a meme online, Amazon Game Studios has become a massive meme online. Players that were excited for Lost Ark are now cautious, even given the fact that Smilegate are still in charge of development.
Sure, concurrent player numbers are down. That’s partly due to the fact that so many players are fed up with all of the issues that seem to arise almost daily, but also due to things as basic as burnout and running out of things to do.
It happens to every MMO, to every game. New World isn’t anything special – it’s no exception to the rule.

Amazon have a long way to go before New World is capable of giving any of the large MMORPGs any type of long-term competition. But I have faith they can still turn this around. Maybe..

I’m not overly fond of covering drama, exploits, cheating or anything like that. But every so often, a topic like this arises that requires attention.
In this instance, it’s Amazon Game Studios and their horrendous handling of their new MMORPG, New World. And I say “horrendous handling” due to the number of bugs, exploits and hacks circulating ever since the game launched, and Amazon’s.. inability to accurately and adequately fix them.

So, New World finally opened up server transfers this week. And in typical Amazon style, the game is already riddled with bugs. Bugs that players are uncertain of whether Amazon will actually fix or not. Bugs that have already made irreparable damage to the game’s economy.
That has resulted in the ban of many players with no regards to the innocence.

Now bugs aren’t uncommon in games. Especially MMOs. But the sheer number of bugs that players have experienced in New World in the several weeks it’s been live is an extraordinary number.
This bug, though.. this exploit is by far one of the most damaging the community has come across yet.

You know what else is damaging to the community though? Not subscribing to this Youtube channel, which you guys totally should be if you’re looking to keep up to date with the latest MMO news – release announcements – gameplay and discussions every day, and, if you feel I deserve it, drop a like and comment on the video.
It’s a huge help for the YouTube algorithm!

But what is the bug, and why is it so damaging? See, upon transferring your character to another server, you run the risk of encountering a database error. This error makes you unable to add friends or interact with trading posts. However, you’re capable of sending gold to anyone.
This isn’t necessarily game-breaking, but what happens after relogging is. Once you log out, then back in, your gold is back.
But.. the recipient, the player that actually received the gold? They get to keep it. You can imagine how much damage can be done to the economy when players begin abusing this, right? Now let me give a little context here.
There are reports of players via Reddit and the official New World forums stating that players are sending the maximum amount of gold to other players – players that they don’t know personally in an attempt to grief them. To troll them. To get them banned.

A Community Manager for Amazon, Luxendra, addressed some of this on the official forums.

“We are aware of a small number of players who upon transferring become unable to save their progress on their new server. We’re working to address this for those affected, which we believe we can accomplish with data changes not requiring a patch. We will update when we’ve corrected the problem.

For anyone taking advantage of the gold duplication bug, appropriate action will be taken as it is considered an exploit.”

According to Lux, this bug only affects a small number of players. Which very well may be the case, but reports would lead us to believe otherwise. Then again, “a small number of players” could be pertaining to a percentage of players, of which there are millions active per week currently.
And in the same message, it was confirmed that players – in their words – “taking advantage of the gold duplication bug,” will have “appropriate action taken.”
This is where it becomes a little.. unfair to players. And much more concerning than upon first inspection.
According to a post made by Irru on Reddit, you’re actually incapable of rejecting mail in-game. What this ultimately means, is if someone that duped gold wants to harrass or remove you from the game.. then you’ll be forced into accepting it whether you want to or not.
There is no confirmation option whatsoever, meaning that players have absolutely no control over whether or not they’re “abusing the exploit.”

An easy solution to this is would be to simply do a roll back of the server. I mean, in all honesty I’m uncertain why the servers are still online currently. They’ve been online this entire time. Players have been continuing to wreak havoc with this all day.
Sifting through the comments on Reddit and the official forums, players are wondering much the same thing. Downtime, even a roll back is 100% preferable to allowing players this large an advantage – banning players who have no way rejecting the gold they’re receiving.

Now according to Amazon, and they might change their stance on this after seeing how rampant the abuse is, they have no intention of rolling back the server in an effort to compensate the players that were affected. Nor have they confirmed whether or not players that were innocent, yet banned regardless, will have those bans rescinded.
The reasoning for this is that rolling back the server would cause additional technical difficulties which would ultimately deal more damage to the game. Additionally, if players are receiving errors during the transfer of their characters, doing a roll back – altering the database in any form could result in the loss or corruption of every pending character transfer.

At the time of recording, this bug has been running rampant, completely unpatched, for over 20 hours.
I’m well aware that Amazon are working on attempting to roll out some type of fix as soon as they can – and by the time this video goes live they very well may have a temporary fix in place.
But this isn’t the first bug that players have come across. Quite the contrary. Amazon Game Studios’ ineptitude has become a running meme everywhere online, with seemingly new bugs, issues, exploits arising every time they attempt to do literally anything. Anything at all.
But Amazon aren’t the only ones at fault here. The sheer number of bug abusers, exploiters and scammers that take advantage of situations like this are equally as to blame.
Every day you log onto Reddit – or the official forums, there’s more drama. More people taking advantage of one another. It’s almost like real life.

I genuinely hope Amazon find some way to address this – though not just this, I hope they somehow show players that they’re a capable developer one day. Because this is unfair to their community. This exploit, and every other exploit that has went on to show how new to this they are.

Today we’re giving away 3 copies of New World. You know, the upcoming MMORPG from Amazon Game Studios launching in just a few days on the 28th?

Winning a copy is easy! First, Mrs Stix is doing a giveaway over on her Twitter – simply click the link to her Tweet, like it, retweet it and leave a comment for a chance to win.

⚔️Giveaway Time
With New World right around the corner we want to give back to all of you by offering one free copy of the #MMORPG.
🪓Follow these steps!
🪓Like this post
🪓Comment what you’re most looking forward to in New World
🪓Retweet

This ends 9/27 at 3:00 pm EST

— Mrs Stix (@The_short_nurse) September 25, 2021

Second, make sure you’re subscribed to our Youtube channel – as this copy will be given away to one of our active subscribers and I can tell if you are – then scroll down and leave a comment stating what about New World looks most interesting to you.
And finally, participate in the giveaway below for your chance at the third copy.

New World September Giveaway

All 3 winners will be chosen by Monday afternoon, so we can send your copy ready to play at launch on Tuesday if everything goes according to plan.

Also, we’ll probably do a small giveaway over on Twitch when the game launches, if you’re interesting in stopping by. We’ll be streaming just a few hours from now, and stream every Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday at 3PM EST at twitch.tv/MMOByte.

In news I’m sure nobody saw coming (as New World is slated to launch next month,) the New World Twitter page went on to announce that the upcoming MMO is holding another Beta test–this time, an Open Beta test allowing everyone into the game.

Many players have taken to Twitter to share their negative opinion on the Open Beta test, with common concerns being that they’re “killing the hype for the game before it even launches,” by burning players out, allowing for them to repeatedly run through content they’ve completed in the past and might not be willing to push through for the umpteenth time when the game finally launches, and even players concerned this Open Beta test is to test features that could potentially push the game back even further than it has been already. And for fans of the game.. that’s all but a death sentence. Players are eager to get into the game, but at the same time, there’s only so many delays they can take before finally caving and moving on.

The New World team have confirmed that this Open Beta test is to test their “server infrastructure, featuring a higher server capacity than the Closed Beta.”
They further go on to confirm that this Beta test is “crucial and will help ensure that everyone has a seamless experience upon release,” the release of course still being at the end of September.. unless this test phase provides issue otherwise.

New World’s Open Beta test phase will begin on September 9th and last until September 12th, 2021.

🧭 Chart your course and determine your fate!

From shipwrecked survivor to legendary hero, grow as an adventurer as you explore the ancient mysteries of Aeternum!

Open Beta starts September 9th!
⚔️ https://t.co/rjftWBn6Ao pic.twitter.com/iMpyeLVXOI

— New World (@playnewworld) August 25, 2021

Amazon Game Studios have just revealed that they’re taking their upcoming MMORPG New World back into Alpha testing. With that knowledge, I thought it would be in our best interests to create an all encompassing “everything you need to know about New World” article going into 2021.
I did a video on New World featuring my first impressions of the game as both Mrs Stix and I managed to play it during the Preview event held a couple months ago.
After playing for several days, I, along with many other players were of the opinion that the game needed a lot more content, a lot more variety if it is to compete with any of the other premium titles dominating the market right now.

So you guys are going to want to take a little bit to sit back and I urge you to watch this until the end as it will cover every question you might have.. and trust me, there’s a lot of info here.

New World is a brand new upcoming open-world MMO set on the fictional island of Aeternum during the 17th century.
It features various survival mechanics but for the most part a large number of those survival elements were removed with the game moving more towards traditional MMO features. The game features action combat, and has a 3D graphical style.

I know a lot of people wanted New World to be a free-to-play MMO but unfortunately it seems as though Amazon Game Studios is determined to release the game as a premium title, requiring a one-time purchase that varies in price depending on the package.
It is unconfirmed whether or not the game will feature paid expansions like Final Fantasy XIV and Guild Wars 2, or rather if the studio will instead focus on regular, free content updates.
Considering the game will utilize a buy-to-play business model, it would stand to reason paid expansions are likely. Otherwise, realistically, what kind of source of income would they have outside the initial influx of sales?

According to the studio, there will in fact be a cash shop present within the game. However they claim it won’t have any items that promote pay-to-win. Currently, cosmetic items and furniture are planned to be added with a fully functional housing system present in the final version of the game.
I know cash shops are concerning by default – just because a developer claims they won’t include a certain type of item doesn’t mean they won’t go back on their word at a later date.
The devs have revealed they want a level of “fashion wars” to be present at end-game, kind of how Final Fantasy XIV and Guild Wars 2 have a large focus on outfits, so that’s promising.
Currently they stated that they’re not interested in adding mounts into the game, but they noted if enough players want the feature introduced they might be willing to go ahead and add it.
If that does happen, they might end up selling various types of premium mounts within the cash shop as well but that’s all just speculation.

Honestly, when I played during the Preview, the combat was basic. Very basic. It was slow, it felt clunky and it wasn’t at all enjoyable for me mainly due to your abilities sharing cooldowns between weapons.
What I mean by this is: You have 3 different types of weapons you can equip at any given time. You also possess various skill trees to invest into to develop your character. You’re able to select 3 skills at any given time per weapon, totaling 9 abilities – but can only use 3 abilities per weapon equipped.
Now during the Preview, each weapon ability shared cooldowns across each weapon type, meaning that if I clicked Q on my sword and then swap to my bow.. the Q ability would also be on cooldown for my bow.
However, as of their most recent update on October 20th, it turns out they’re making alterations to the current system, with each weapon now having their own independent cooldowns, allowing for the swapping of weapons without restriction of abilities.
The combat itself wasn’t bad. It was definitely very slow – much slower than I expected it to be but it required more calculated movements and choices. This is something I’m not used to and I know a lot of people aren’t used to especially after playing games like Black Desert and Blade & Soul.

No, there are no classes available. Not in the traditional sense at least. You do obtain experience and level up just as you would in any MMO, you also gain attribute points and skill points that you can distribute between a selection of abilities and statistics.
These function, in essence as your “class” but provide you with a lot of individual identity, allowing for you to really craft something that fits the type of class you want to play.
As an example: There are Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Focus and Constitution stats that you can distribute points between. Each one obviously affects a different aspect of your character. Mana regeneration, total HP, overall weapon damage with various different weapons.
Now this allows for you to essentially take a certain “path.” If you pump everything into Strength or Constitution, you’ll probably find quite a large benefit from Heavy Armor and large 2-handed weapons, or 1-handed weapons and shield.
Depending on what weapon you choose, what armor you choose, whether you opt for a shield.. your entire skill-set will change allowing for so much creative freedom over your character, something you really don’t see much anymore.
But at the same time, there are still going to be “cookie-cutter” builds that are just.. better than every other build so the majority of players will still opt for those, removing the need for personal experimentation.

Honestly.. I’d like to say yes, but if you’ve ever played a Western RPG then for the most part you’ve likely grown accustomed to the limitations that are imposed on character creation.
There were some face types, some hair styles, some facial hair options and a couple skin tones.. but other than that, for the most part, you’re going to look like every other character running around.
You didn’t have any options to customize your eye shape, nose shape, lips, brows, body size, body shape or anything. I know customization options are important to an MMO and I feel like this will really stifle any type of creative freedom players might have had or wanted.
Of course this might change over the course of the current Alpha test so there’s no guarantee they won’t improve or expand on the available options.

The graphics, if we disregard the character models themselves as they look like something out of a 2008 RPG look great. The world is bright, it’s vibrant, it’s filled with life.
The world is completely open. There are no segregated zones, the world isn’t split between loading screens. I was surprised to see this as MMOs these days make heavy use of zone segregation – having large areas filled with content, but small loading screens connecting them to one another.
Typically this hasn’t bothered me at all. A small loading screen isn’t enough to turn me off of a game, nor is it enough to really disconnect me from the world and actively enjoying whatever it has to offer, but I’m happy to see there are MMOs that still care about seamless open worlds.
I only played for maybe 15 to 20 hours total, and I didn’t see much in the way of diversity with regards to actual environments. There were plenty of forests, rivers, farmland, mountains. I hadn’t had the opportunity to see if there were other biome types but I can only hope!
Abilities at times looked and felt a little clunky, more specifically the close-range swings and ranged projectile skills.

Currently, New World is going to be a PC exclusive. The game will be available to pre-order via both Amazon itself and Steam.
The devs have confirmed that they have absolutely no interest of porting the game over to any type of console in the future, and would like to keep this exclusively on the PC.
Which is honestly a shame as I feel like an MMO like this would have been perfect for consoles and having cross-play functionality between PCs and consoles is a huge missed opportunity.

PvP was the main attraction for New World originally when it was planned to be a survival game. With the ridiculous overhaul, revamp and rework, PvP became much less of a focus but it still retains a certain level of importance.
Players can now entirely opt-out of PvP, meaning that you can completely ignore the feature all together. PvP requires a certain level to participate – level 10 specifically, and for you to be a part of a faction.
The Criminal System that was originally in place has since been removed and players no longer drop items when they die, removing the full-loot aspect of the game. They also have no plans on full-PvP servers anymore.
Open-world PvP takes the form of faction missions – or at least during the Preview that was the case. Players would go to a specific location, while having PvP flagged, and would attempt to participate in and complete the mission.

There are plenty of PvE elements that comprise the game. Let’s start with the Player Housing. Players can purchase houses and decorate them. These can be purchased beginning at level 20. Houses are only purchasable within Settlements.
Settlements are a part of the territory system present in-game, with territories being capable of being taken over by companies – essentially New World’s version of the guild system.
Players can then govern them, setting taxes, providing crafting stations and most importantly, fortifying it, in the case of invasions.
Invasions take two separate forms: You have player invasions which are large-scale 50 vs 50 Siege battles between companies, which is I guess a form of PvP – so maybe this should be in the PvP section…. but I digress.
Then you have NPC Invasions, which allow for up to 50 players to sign up and participate in a large-scale invasion of corrupted enemies lasting 8 waves.
There are no planned dungeons or raids – yup, this is a core MMO mechanic that is completely removed from the game much like Black Desert did. I know this will upset some people but Blue Protocol should satisfy those of you that want that type of competitive PvE content.
We have Corrupted Breaches that spawn around the world that allow players to group up and tackle waves of enemies, with the goal of sealing the breach and returning the land to normal.
Then there are Factions.. players have to choose a faction, and in doing so will open up quests specific to that faction. Joining a faction is permanent, and as such you’ll only be capable of joining a Company of the corresponding faction you choose.
Taking on faction quests aids your factions overall influence of the territory, and quests themselves differ between PvE or PvP as to not limit content for any single type of player.

If you know Mrs Stix and I.. you know we hate crafting. I prefer to just pay someone to craft the items for me, so seeing how important – how focal of a point crafting is in this game.. definitely kills me a little inside, but yes, there is definitely crafting present.
Crafting comes in various forms and requires a variety of materials. You can gather utilizing Mining, Skinning, Logging and Harvesting. You can refine using Smelting, Stonecutting, Woodworking, Leatherworking and Weaving. And finally you can craft using Weaponsmithing, Armoring, Jewelcrafting, Engineering, Arcana, Cooking and Furnishing.
When gathering materials to craft you can find special items that actually improve the items you craft, and crafted items actually have not only different tiers, but also different qualities that influence the item’s gear score and overall statistics.
Crafting is pretty extensive and is definitely rewarding if you dedicate enough time to it.

As of October 20th, 2020, New World has returned back to its Alpha status, with the developers claiming they’re making extensive alterations to different aspects of the game and attempting to introduce plenty of new content.
As such, they’re sending out random invites for players to participate in the revamped content, however, the entire Alpha is back to being under an NDA. Meaning we can’t stream, we can’t record, we can’t take pictures of, and we can’t even discuss what we experience until they say we can.
As for the Closed Beta, it was originally scheduled for April 2020, but after repeated, quite extensive delays, the Closed Beta has been delayed to Spring 2021.

Interestingly, the Closed Beta begins in Spring 2021, and the official release of the game comes at the same time. So not only are we going to be able to test the game come Spring, but if there are issues present.. then too bad I guess?
Now while they do claim the game will fully launch in Spring 2021, with the sheer number of delays the game has suffered thus far, I wouldn’t say it’s out of the question for the game to ultimately end up delayed again to a later date in 2021 or 2022.
But that’s just me. Remember, New World was supposed to launch May 26th 2020.

Amazon Game Studios have not confirmed which, if any regions will not have access to the upcoming MMO.
As it stands, it’s safe to assume if you could play Crucible, then you’ll be able to play New World as well, but considering the money Amazon has.. I wouldn’t expect the game to be unavailable anywhere that wouldn’t already be difficult to launch.
But then again we won’t know specifics until we get closer to release this coming Spring.

I know this is an important question – “can my PC run New World?” Currently, we have both the minimum and recommended specs required to run the game and honestly, considering the recommended settings are a GTX 970… I wouldn’t imagine they’re really going to be all that bad.

And that’s pretty much everything I can think of. All of the questions I’ve seen asked, and all of the topics that I think really need covered.
New World is one of the hottest upcoming MMOs – being one of the most anticipated titles in years and could potentially be the biggest online release of 2021.
Amazon Game Studios have had absolutely no success with their games thus far, but that could potentially change if New World ends up being a huge hit. They currently have Lost Ark and a Lord of the Rings MMO planned for the future, but New World will be the first MMO release for the studio.
I think the future of the studio depends on the success of this game, but from what I’ve seen thus far from the Preview event.. it still has a long way to go and not as much time as they might need to make adequate changes to the game.

I’ve been playing through New World on and off over the last couple days, and honestly.. I can see why the game was delayed until Spring 2021.
Now before you rally your pitchforks – hear me out. New World is a very aesthetically attractive game. When I first logged in, I wasn’t expecting the cutscenes to look as good as they did, the introductory area to feel so full, so mysterious, so dark. I was very, very impressed. I was really excited at that point.
You’ll see that excitement in a couple minutes when I show the stream highlights – but that excitement slowly, but gradually continued to decline the more I played through the game.

Now before we go any further, I do want to preface that this iteration of what I played may not be the final version of the game that we get next year. This is, however, the version of the game we would have gotten if they’d released when they wanted to, and I am glad they opted against that.
So my impressions, my thoughts on New World, are solely based off of an unfinished product, that has the potential to improve substantially between now and release. Or they won’t, and we’ll get.. this, and see what happens.

From my experience, New World doesn’t feel much like an MMO. I know I’ll get some hate for saying this, but it’s the truth. There are a ton of players out playing in the same world as you, but it feels like your typical survival game.. with some side-quests.
Which, let me tell you, if you ask anyone, consists of more or less the following:
Go kill some drowned zombies. Go loot some supply caches. Go kill some discolored drowned zombies. Go loot some supply caches. Go kill some breathing zombies. Go loot some supply caches. Go kill some zombies with jackets on. Go loot some supply caches. Now go craft a knife. Skin a boar. Make a campfire. Now go kill some village zombies.
After 5 hours, I’d encountered some boars, some wolves, and 17 different types of zombies, all with the same model, albeit with slightly different names.
I’m not sure if they were just lazy or that was legit what they’d envisioned the early game to consist of. But this felt so empty. So unrewarding, especially with 100 people all running around trying to kill the same spawn of 6 zombies. And when you’re required to kill 15? 20? And you can tag maybe 2 per several minute spawn-window?
Yeah, that didn’t feel all that fun for me.

Speaking of killing zombies, the combat felt very slow, very clunky and very unintuitive – both as a melee, and a caster. Being locked to utilizing 3 abilities per weapon feels very, very restrictive.
I know you can have several weapons equipped at a time, but I don’t see how they thought this would provide any sense of depth to combat, especially when abilities share cooldowns between weapons, something I learned the hard way when I was in dire need of healing from my staff but couldn’t cast the spell I needed due to it being in cooldown.. for using my melee axe ability.
This leads me to believe that they have no intention of making combat require weapon swapping like is done in Guild Wars 2 or The Elder Scrolls Online, so how is this supposed to retain any type of interest?

Other than the poor combat, and the general lack of content present in-game, I found the game can be kinda fun. It was a very good looking game to run around exploring.
The crafting system seems pretty well thought out and has some depth to it meaning crafters will definitely have a lot to play around with and enjoy. The UI looks very clean.
There is a ton of gear to be found around the world, and to also be crafted, with your physical appearance being altered depending on what gear you have equipped.
There are world bosses to engage that definitely require larger groups, there is a PvP system.. albeit using certain weapon types in PvP is pointless.

There’s a lot to do in New World. There’s just not a lot in New World that makes it feel like an MMORPG. But maybe this will change by the time the game launches next year. Who knows. Maybe you guys will have more fun than I did.
Again, this might not be the final product we get so don’t judge it too harshly, and this is just my opinion based off of what I experienced in this version of the game.

Amazon made an announcement on August 20th that they’ll be holding an open preview for their upcoming MMORPG “New World,” on August 25, 2020 at 9:00 AM PT (12:00 PM ET) through until September 4, 2020 at 11:59 PM PT (September 5, 2020 at 2:59 AM ET).

Eligible participants will be able to log in over the course of that period and play the game – but not only that, they’ll finally be able to not only stream, but record footage without an NDA barring the sharing of footage. This is new, as up until this point there was an embargo on any information not released from Amazon themselves. Alpha Testers and Beta Sign Ups will be allowed access from August 25th-29th over the course of 5 waves, with Amazon 2016 Pre-order Customers, Amazon Pre-order Customers and Steam Pre-order Customers being allowed in directly as the game opens on August 25th in the first wave.

This is the largest test phase they’ve held yet, and will not be their final test phase as they’ve mentioned that while there will be no NDA currently in place, the next Alpha test – yes, Alpha test, not Beta test, is going to have an NDA in place. So we’re currently uncertain specifically what will be altered between this Preview, the next Alpha, any following tests and the final version of the game. Additionally, they’ve opened up a Content Creator Program for influencers interested in partnering with Amazon – something I’m sure that will be of great benefit to various content creators like yourselves.

Pre-registering for New World and gaining access to the game is easy. Simply click the button below to be taken directly to the official New World Steam page where you can pre-register, pre-purchase and then pre-download the game in advance.

Whether or not New World will ultimately be worth playing remains a mystery, but hopefully we’ll at least get a small glimpse into what the game has to offer during the preview window.

New World is scheduled to release next year in 2021.

In news that a lot of people had predicted, the New World devs have confirmed that the upcoming MMORPG is going to be delayed. Yup – after suffering a delay already earlier this year, it turns out New World will be delayed yet again, but this time further than anyone had anticipated.

According to the official New World website, and I quote here, “We want our players to feel completely immersed in the game, and know that our studio stands for quality and lasting gameplay you can trust — and that means added time to get things where we want them before we fully release.” Yet the statement made just prior to that “players like the game” is about as far from the truth as you can get. Players all over the internet have been voicing their concerns with the game all year. Complaints about how bad the game is in its current state have become the norm. In no way do the majority of players “like the game.” However at the same time, I do give them kudos for taking the time to correct the issues currently wrong with the game and make improvements where they need to be made. Otherwise New World would be launching to a playerbase of thirsty players.. and would be absolutely trashed and dead within the week.

We’ll see if Amazon Game Studios and the New World devs can pull this off and turn this around and develop an MMORPG truly worth playing.