My husband and I are long-time MMORPG fanatics. I started with UO back in 1998 and he started with WoW. We've each played many MMORPG's and between us we've probably played most of them. We decided to give New World a try despite it being buy-to-play with no free trial which is generally the first red flag for a game. It says "we want your money and we don't care if you like the game". After playing for a month, it's pretty clear that is precisely the case.
1) Nearly every aspect of New World is copied from another, better game and none of it is done as well as those other games. Housing is BDO style but the scoring system doesn't work, many of the furnishings are glitchy and won't place against walls, and don't even get me started on how furnishings are acquired/made. Weapon/Skill building feels like a low-grade version of Secret World with UO style stats assignments, gearing also feels quite UO-centric with random stat drops which utterly nullify the WoW style gear colors that are also in use just to make things super confusing. Gathering and crafting is a dead ringer for GW2 minus the super handy separate storage for crafting materials but you do get separate "bank" style storage in each town like, again, in BDO and additional slot bags as you level like GW2. Leveling hails similar to FF14, the 3 factions are basically Secret World's factions with different names and colors, the faction/pvp/town control system feels similar to what AoC has said they'll be doing but half-cracked as if Amazon Gaming just really wanted to try to slap something together quickly and release it before AoC came out.
2) Character creation is one of the worst I've seen. The faces for both genders ALL look swollen and lumpy like they've just stepped out of a Mike Tyson fight. Options are incredibly limited and the graphics - in fact all of the game's graphics - are shockingly potato. This game has some of the highest system requirements of any game currently on the market and yet the graphics don't hold up to some of the oldest games still going strong and even with a brand new top-shelf gaming PC and HSI this game is still filled with lag and rubber banding issues even in totally out-of-the-way isolated locations where we were the only players in sight.
3) No mounts. At all. In fact, all movement for this game is done to hide the fact that for an "open world" MMORPG the map is freaking tiny. You can't jump. Minor hops are all you get and I mean MINOR. I've seen 3 year old children with better verticals. You cannot swim. You CAN go in water but you simply walk in and continue walking perfectly upright along the bottom like a bad interpretation of a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean. Movement (which is already painfully slow) is drastically slower in water, you can't jump at all in water, there is no sprinting, and breath is limited so try not to drown while moving from one island to the other which is frequently required for questing and you'd better also hope you don't get attacked because you can't fight in water either.
3) Combat is reticle which I ordinarily hate but I've seen it done decently. I get that the extreme lack of combat choreography is probably intended to appeal to a sense of realism (I mean who really does a back-flipping tripple sowcow while shooting a gun *yes I'm looking at you FF14*) but it makes the combat insanely boring. This is literally the only game where I've ever actually fallen asleep WHILE fighting something. Skills and skill trees are based on your weapon and vaguely related to the roles of tank/dps/healer but only vaguely as you can be fully tanked to the max but without the right top-level gems in your weapons you won't hold threat from a healer who is 10 levels below you with no gems at all no matter how hard you try.
4) Every aspect of this game screams a complete lack of originality not only in the ways it copies other games but also in the blatant and unabashed way that it copies itself. The mobs you are fighting at level 1 are identical to the mobs you will be fighting at level 60 which is currently the max (despite crafting/gathering jobs going up to 200 each). The first town you visit will have all the same building styles, housing layouts, and graphical aspects of the second town you visit and that will be 90% identical to the third town which is also 90% identical to the fifth town. Leveling up and getting sent to a new area by the main story quest will not be the exciting refreshing experience you're used to in other games because you will arrive and realize it is quite literally SSDD. The same mobs, the same animals, the same buildings, the same cities, the same quests, over and over and over and over again across the board. Nothing. Changes. Ever.
5) Finally the crafting system. I've saved it for last because - in all honesty - it's the thing that finally made me say enough is enough with this game and go back to FF14 and GW2 where I will continue to wait for another new game to play. I'm going to use what most games would just call "blacksmithy" to explain but in this game know that the collective tasks of a "blacksmith" have been separated out to armor smithing, weapon smithing and smelting and the processed described apply to ALL of the jobs with a variation on the specific ingredients but pretty much ALL crafts regardless of job require the holy trinity of wood/metal/leather in some form. From 0-50 you will need an obscene amount of iron ore to make iron ingots which you can then use to craft iron objects. From 50-100 you will need an obscene amount of iron ore to make iron ingots which you can then use to make steel ingots which you can then use to craft steel objects. From 100-150 you will need an obscene amount of iron ore to make iron ingots which you can then use to make steel ingots which you can then use to make starmetal ingots which you can then use to craft starmetal objects. See where I'm going with this? And it's not a low number either. On average to get from 100-150 you'll need to make about 120 objects. Each object can require as many as 22 of the primary ingredient to craft. 2,640 of that primary ingredient will require 4 secondary ingredients each. 10,560 secondary ingredients will require 4 trimary ingredients each. 42,240 trimary ingredients will require 4 base materials each. So to get from 100-150 be prepared to gather 168,960 base materials plus additional primary ingredients from the trinity and high-level base materials, and open a bunch of chests to get the correct reagents and remember that's JUST 100-150. That's not 0-150 and it's certainly not anything to 200 which is max. For that you'll need a whole lot more of everything. Now - for those of you like me that are die-hard crafter/gatherer types thinking 'no problem, it just requires patience and perseverance, think again. ALL base resources in the game with the exception of wood and stone are finite meaning if a character named "asgkhkjh" is running through a line of iron nodes hitting them before you get to them - you're out of luck until they respawn. Unless - of course - "asgkhkjh" beats you to them again which they probably will because - as I'm sure you've realized by now, "asgkhkjh" and a billion other characters with similar obviously randomly generated names are all bots. The game is CRAWLING with them. They literally move in herds. You can stand in any major resource spot in the game and watch 10-15 bots mow across the land before you gobbling up all resources in their path from trees to ore to vegetation and animals and everything in between. They're not subtle and that should tell you one very important thing - Amazon. Does. Not. Care. Back to the red flag I mentioned earlier about buy-to-play games. Once they sell you the game - they Do. Not. Care. about your experience in the game nor do they care if you're a real player or a bot farmer. They don't need to keep you happy so you'll keep your subscription active because there is no subscription. They don't need for you to enjoy the game enough to buy it because there is no free trial so if you're playing it you've already bought it. There is no refund. They got your money and if you realize it's a giant piece of flaming plagiarism trash with dumpster fire graphics and a system that actually encourages community toxicity - THEY DO NOT CARE.
Don't waste your money. I have nothing but regrets when it comes to this game.
Sean
L. M. SMith
Gilbert Armour