..it has been now. Just a little bit more than three months. I didnt get that much time to play DDDA, after all, but it’s still installed. But I am actually more looking forward to the next game, Dragon’s Dogma 2, that will launch in just a few days. 22nd of March, I’ll head off to Gransys once again.
…kinda. This weekend is my weekend with the kids, so I wont be able to play too much, but a few hours during the evenings I should be able to! Provided I’ll get the PS5 for myself, that is – all three of my kids have decided to put their paws on it, all of them playing their own favorite games. I almost wish I have a second PS5, just so they dont have to share as much, but then I need another monitor and it’ll all cost way to much.
So, what’s been happening lately? Well, my “slow-play December” went on for a few days into January, and when I came back to New World, basically half the player population decided to take a long vacation from New World, including my company. I do not blame them – the game is basically put on a shelf by the devs, and the “content” the devs provided with Season 4 wasnt all that much to hang on a christmas tree. Couple that with the fact that the devs straight up told us that we’re not going to see much until summer, when we can see their roadmap – not “get more content”, but legitimately “see their roadmap”.
Like, this summer they’ll share their plans for the future. They most likely are not going to have content by then; a roadmap is a plan for upcoming content. And so, the players was left with very little content, that seemed poorly planned ahead – such as the fact that everyone was basically “enough-geared” before a week had gone by – and now they have nothing to look forward to either. And any bugs or balance-fixes was supposed to come with Season 5 – which inexplicably got delayed. No word on why, and no word on the new release date. What we did get word of though, was that it was apparently “cool stuff!” coming on the roadmap. So..
Dead game? Probably.
No, to be more real, though, I do believe they’ll keep New World alive for a good while more. They’ll keep the servers up and running, and even make a console release – they’ve recently added controller support, which was supposed to come with Season 5 – and through console release they’ll get an infusion of both cash and players. That is what I believe.
What I hope as well, is that said console release will have shared servers across all platforms. I also wish for it to be cross save – so that I can play on my characters on PC, and boot up my PS5 and log in there and play with the very same characters. It is, after all, a fairly new tech, FF14 had it working three years ago or something? Baldurs Gate 3 have it too, as do Diablo 4, and it’s been added to other games after their release, such as Witcher 3, for instance.
But just beause it’s a few years old tech and that a few other games offer it, unfortunately does not mean that New World will offer either cross platform play, or cross save.
To assume so already, way before we’ve even heard of whether or not they’re actually going to release on console yet, is a mistake.
Yes, it’s logical to assume they’ll release on console – they’ve added controller support, and another game they’re publishing – Throne and Liberty – is multiplatform and supposedly crossplay and cross save, and another game they’re in the making, the Lord of the Rings MMO – which is also on the same game engine as New World – is supposedly going to be crossplay and cross save.
However, they’re just publishing Throne and Liberty, they’re not the developers. And Lord of the Rings MMO is so far into the future, they havent even gotten there yet – they might not even know how to cross play with Azoth Engine, and putting New World on consoles might be their test for how LotR-MMO will act out. It’s entirely possible that the New World game will be released on console with no cross play on release, just to have it added years down the line, and by then there’ll be so many servers set that people wont transfer, and unless they merge “console servers” with “PC servers”, the player bases wont ever touch.
Anyway, my belief is that they’ll keep New World up and running, push it to consoles and hope people buy it and play it there, so that they can use console-NW as a “testing ground” to squash the bugs when it’s still New World, just to have LotR-MMO off to a better, running start, when it is finally released. Regardless of how many copies they’ll sell on consoles, they’ll keep New World operating because they need something of their own up, atleast until LotR-MMO comes out. The “future” of New World is basically guaranteed – from AGS side – atleast until then.
After the LotR-MMO release? New World is on shaky ground, and its future is all depending on how well recieved it has been meanwhile, from now till that LotR-MMO-release.
But even if the devs keeps the game up and running – by life-support, if needed – there’s no guarantee the game will be “alive”. The playerbase could shrink drastically – which it has, I’ll show an image later on – but it could also explode dramatically – which I find unlikely. It could also be that the devs do come back and give good content to the game, enough so that the playerpopulation will come back to atleast a reasonable level again.
This is what I find most probable, but I cant shake the worrying feeling, that the “cool stuff!”-content that AGS wants to share with us, and the future roadmap they’ll show us, wont include anything meaty – it’ll all be pointless, useless, boring.. so much so that people will stop playing all toghether, and that the only players playing the game will be the ones that bought it on the most recent sale. They’ll chose a server, hoping to play with lots of people, and just…run around in a ghost world. They, and fifteen more who just bought the game.
If that happens, the devs will force the game to be up – they’ll need their test environment for LotR, after all – but it’ll be a life-support they’ll unplug the same day that the LotR-MMO comes out. It’s quite a pessimistic outlook, but I can not help it. AGS hasn’t given us much to go on, we have no info, and we’ve been in the dark for months.
Season 5 is now a week past it’s original date, and we still havent heard anything besides “well, news within a month. Probably”.