In the past week, Amazon Game Studios announced a major change to its upcoming MMONew World.New Worldoriginally pitchedopen-world PvP gameplaywith near-full looting of corpses. Amazon since decided to shift directions, removing full open-world PvP and corpse looting from the game due to griefing and toxicity. Going forward,New Worldwould focus instead on its faction-based PvP systems and 50 vs. 50 wars. Amazon has since elaborated on these changes in a new Q&A video.
In the Q&A,New WorldScot Lane explains how Amazon tried several fixes to prevent griefing and toxic player-killing. Lane describes how these fixes ultimately felt like “bandaids” on the issue. Rather than continue layering bandaids, Amazon decided to instead drop free, open-world PvP and corpse looting in favor of a new, opt-in system. Players can still partake inopen-world PvP, but only against other players who have also opted-in. And while there’s no longer corpse-looting, Amazon’s planning other rewards for victorious PvPers.
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Specific details about how the new system will work were also provided. InNew World, all new players will be protected from PvP and won’t have the ability to opt-in until progressing further into the game. This will prevent new players from getting griefed, while also encouraging new players to get out of new player areas quickly. PvP will unlock once players reach level 10 and join an in-game faction. After joining a faction, players can turn on their PvP flags and start fighting other flagged PvP players.
In addition to standard opt-in PvP,New Worldwill also have its faction war system still in place.Amazonhasn’t changed this system. Factions will be able to declare war on other factions and then battle for territory. War winners will take over or retain control of the disputed territory. Interestingly, wars are pre-arranged; they’re scheduled. This way, both factions can fully participate in wars and don’t have to worry about territory being stolen in the middle of the night.
Amazon acknowledges that in part these changes are being made to strengthenNew World’s PvE experience. Lane describes thatNew Worldcan be played entirely in PvP, though he hopes players will feel encouraged to join a faction and PvP as they progress. Amazon is also consideringdungeons and raids, but is going to wait and see how players respond to the game as it stands first. With the PvP changes,New Worldis certain to be a different experience than once promised, but Amazon believes it’s for the better.
