Digital Media Concepts/New World (game)

New World is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that was created and published by Amazon Games. After being announced in 2016, the game had years of alpha testing and delays, and was finally released on September 28, 2021. The game takes you on an adventure through the supernatural island Aeternum, set back in the mid-17th century. You discover the secrets of a magical substance called Azoth that is abundant throughout the island. This substance is the reason you must fight to stay alive until you are able to control and use it for yourself.

In Beta
New World offered a closed beta only open for people who pre ordered the game. It also uses a different system to sell its game compared to most games of its category; it makes the consumers buy the game instead of buying a subscription to play the game.

Being a new MMORPG, people had been waiting for the release for years after not getting a new MMORPG title for a while. People have overplayed most game in this category so this game had high hopes before even being released. Once the beta had started many players began to preorder and purchase the game to experience it early. It reached upwards of 200,00 players on the game at the same time. Still in beta, it was the second most popular game on twitch at the time with 300,000 viewers. Due to all its popularity it's servers were over filling and people had to start waiting in queues to join the servers.

Post-Release
On release day the viewer count went up and reached above 980,000 viewers. Once released, the game was so full that players were facing queues to join the servers but still had up to 730,000 concurrent players. On October 3rd, it hit an all time peak of 913,634 players in the game at one moment. Currently it stands #8 in all time top sellers, and it has been released for two weeks. At the time of writing, it has 567,523 players in the game currently.

The game had 170+ total servers and still could not hold the massive wave of players it faced. This lead to to massive server queues and over filled servers across the world. Even with a server cap of 2,000, people were looking at queues up to 1000 people in front of them. New World offers 54 servers to the NA East region, 22 to NA West, 63 to Central Europe, 26 to South America and 11 to Australia. It is said that since release Amazon has been working on adding more servers to lower the queue time.

Gameplay
New World has the basic MMORPG features such as: large free-roam maps, thorough story line with quests and the separate worlds of player-versus-player and player-versus-environment. However it is classless meaning everyone is equal and there are no specific jobs or weapons you can't use. Aside from the regular features of MMORPG games, it's very diverse with its progression system, housing, settlements, forts, engaging combat and territory control. Weapons come in a big variety each having their own pros and cons. As you slowly master your skills for each weapon class you will get passive skills and 3 special abilities. The weapons you may find along the journey are: Bows, Great Axes, Hatchets, Spears, Life/Fire staffs, Ice Gauntlet, War Hammers, Rapiers, Muskets and a one hand sword and shield. In the beginning of the game you choose from one of three factions (the Marauders, the Syndicate and the Covenant) to fight and defend for.

While progressing through the story players have the option to turn their "PvP Flag" on or off. This means that when "off" other players in the server can not attack you and vice versa. However as you grow stronger and get better at the game you may want to turn it on and join the fight. Giving players another level of depth to the game which hasn't been seen before in other MMORPG games. It has aspects of all sorts of games. The combat forces you to learn the games fighting controls rather than just clicking buttons and watching things happen. It makes you learn dodge attacks, block attacks, heavy attacks and light attacks, and since it has not auto-targeting or locked targeting it relies on your accuracy.

The game offers a diverse progression system for the different trade skills of survival. It gives you the ability to level up your skills and tools without engaging in the player-versus-player fighting. There are 3 categories of trade skills all with their own subsets of skills. These consist of 5 gathering skills, 5 refining skills, and 7 crafting skills. Gathering skills consist of: mining, logging, fishing, skinning, and harvesting. Refining skills consist of: smelting, stonecutting, tanning, weaving and woodworking. The 7 crafting skills consist of: enigneering, weaponsmithing, jewelcrafting, armoring, cooking, furnishing and Arcana. There are also 5 core attributes that you upgrade as you go along: Strength, Dexterity, Focus, Intelligence and Constitution. This game gives more depth into character progression than others of it category with all of the small things you can do to increase a skill.

The game offers four game modes to play aside from the free roam aspect. These are Expeditions, Invasions, Outpost Rush, and War Mode. Expeditions are basically a planned mission with a team of balanced players to beat a strong boss and dungeon. Invasions are team of 50 players versus waves of enemies and even a very powerful boss, if you can survive 30 minutes your territory is upgraded. If not it is downgraded. Outpost Rush is a player-versus-player-versus-environment mode where teams of 20 defend and capture outposts, while still gathering resources, upgrading defenses, fighting enemies and enemy players. War Mode is a huge 100 player mode where you must attack or defend a fort in order to keep control of your territory.

Development
In 2016 at Twitchcon, New world was announced. Amazon started off trying to make three new games Crucible, Breakaway and New World. Breakaway's development was paused and then cancelled soon after leaving Amazon to focus on it's other games. Later after the cancellation of Breakaway, Amazon announced that Crucible is being cancelled to put Amazon Games' full effort towards New World. it wasn't until February 16,2021 that it was announced New World would be releasing on August 31, 2021. The closed beta was announced to open July 20 2021 for pre orders. New World was originally set to be released August 31, 2021 but in early august it was announced it would be released on September 28, 2021.