Can Tech Giant Amazon Compete in the Crowded MMO Space?
A hands-on preview of Amazon’s “New World” massively multiplayer online game
Everyone knew that Amazon entering the game dev industry was going to be a fascinating story one way or another. The burgeoning Amazon Games Studios totally botched their debut earlier this year with Crucible, the copycat hero shooter that was so badly received that it got unreleased and put back into beta. So, it wasn’t looking too good for the conglomerate right out the gate. Luckily, Amazon has been working on two games. Crucible was a multiplayer shooter, relatively tiny in scope compared to the spawling, player-driven MMO world promised by New World. If they can’t manage a 20-minute 8v8 match, they can’t possibly make a world populated by thousands of players and make it fun, right?
Well, it turns out that all those players might actually be the key to New World’s success. After all, the reviews for Crucible said that it was, mechanically, a very competent game. It just suffered from having no unique charm to make it stand out from the many (far more interesting) arena shooters in the market. Well, if you can’t create an interesting world yourself, why not build an environment that encourages players to make one for you?
I was lucky enough to receive a key to the short New World preview that ran through the last half of August. From my brief time with the game (and I’m talking 2–3 days, adult life is hard), it’s clear that a focus on enabling these player interactions may have been the decision that will keep this game’s head above water going forward. Because a lot of the stuff designs by the developers could do with a healthy dollop of imagination. Worst offender first; quests come in just three varieties:
- Kill (x) enemies
- Open (x) crates at (enemy camp)
- Do both of the above
It’s a quest pool that even classic World of Warcraft would mock, and I sincerely hope that this limitation does not carry on past the preview because, frankly, it borders on insulting when players are expected to do these quests for tens or hundreds of hours.
Other issues are less embarrassing but just as banal. The world design and art style have an interesting concept — a new continent is spat out of a mysterious maelstrom at the height of the colonial era — but it’s dampened by a typical steel-grey Dark Souls aesthetic and some serious copy-pasting of towns and enemy camps. Combat follows the standard action framework that was also popularized by (swear jar) Dark Souls. Light attack. Heavy attack. Dodge. Block. Parry. Mechanically, it flows beautifully, but it just feels a little obvious.
In general, the things that New World does well can often be traced back to genre trailblazers. Classes are non-existent, with all skills instead being learned through practice and specialization, akin to Runescape or The Elder Scrolls. Crafting is surprisingly addictive, but we’ve all ran the crafting loop until our fingers bled over the last ten years.
OK, so that’s the bad stuff out of the way. Which is good, because, despite all that, this game pulled me in like no MMO has done for a very, very long time. It also reminded me of what separates the upper pantheon of MMOs from the rest, it reminded me of why I fell in love with World of Warcraft despite it being one of the most tedious games of all time. New World gives players a sandbox that encourages them to build friendships and collaborations.
The faction system might be fairly limited to far, but everyone knew the names of the big guilds that ran the settlements across the map. Thanks to guilds setting tax rates, you quickly learn which banners, draped across the town entrance, meant that prices would be steeper in this part of the world. Players stopped me outside encampments and asked if I wanted to team up for quests. These are small additions, but they make this uninspired little world feel so tangible compared to the LFG menus of many other modern MMOs.
So it’s a plucky little beast, but it’s got a long way to go if Amazon plans to flesh out these mechanics into something greater than a passing novelty. And I assume they do if we are to believe the theory that these games exist to demonstrate the strength of Amazon’s servers to investors. I hope the preview I played doesn’t represent the extent Amazon is willing to take this player-driven world because it’s got some tough competition if that’s the case.
The MMO market is infamously difficult to break into, but Amazon does appear to have a precise strategy. With no raids and a subpar questing system (at least thus far), New World clearly isn’t designed to compete with PvE-focused games like WoW or Guild Wars 2. The warring factions and world PvP suggest a target audience more akin to Asian MMOs like Archeage or Black Desert Online. There is definitely room to improve the sandbox that these games provide, but New World will have to step up its game if Ashes of Creation lives up to its promised levels of a player-driven economy. While it might impress now, it may have come a little too late to a genre that’s about to make a substantial generational leap.
Honestly, I find myself with a surprising bundle of affection for this game after just a few short days with it. It’s not perfect — far from it — but it’s got an endearing determination. The game doesn’t release properly for a while yet (“Spring 2021”), so I hope Amazon keeps building on the ideas they have leading up to release and beyond. Let’s hope this new world isn’t swallowed back into the maelstrom before we can explore it properly.
