Hello,
Wanted to share some feedback as I looked through the forums and didn’t see much about this.
I’ll start off by saying I played new world in the beta and liked the game but grew discontent when playing for awhile and not really knowing what the end goal of it was. At that point I did feel like I had more interaction with people in the beta but ended up stopping playing because I had no idea what I was grinding to get to I didn’t really feel a great sense of progression.
Fast forward to a few days ago I have been playing classic wow but am fully geared and waiting for next patch to come out. I hear one of my favorite streamers mention they love new world so I figure I haven’t played since beta let’s hop back on and check it out. So I buy the game and start a new character. I am playing and leveling up and its not bad, I feel like I am growing and getting a little more powerful but the first flaw I see rears its head.
*Socializing - As a new player you can’t chat in a lot of the chat systems, ok no biggie its only 3 days and I will be able to. I chat in the area chat and get nobody responding back but see people socializing in other chats I can’t be a part of yet. Really is unfortunate considering a lot of people do play mmo’s to socialize and in impactful part of the game where people make the decision to play or not they are not able to. Will come back to this in my other point.
Now again not really a big deal if you know what you are working towards you can just grind and level/gear up for whatever comes next but there in lies the problem I have absolutely no clue what lies next.
*What is end game? - I legitimately couldn’t tell you what people do at level 60 aside from some wars (no idea what this looks like but see them shouted out in chat) or running dungeons? not sure if that is what they are or how they work or anything. I would definitely ask other people but I can’t because I can’t chat. I ask the help channel one of the few channels I can actually chat to and crickets. I ask if anyone is there in the area chat and what do you know same thing. I put on my mic to try to create any type of social interaction with anyone I am running by and hoping anyone will just chat for a bit and tell me what new world is like what I have to look forward to etc. and nothing, no responses and no social interaction for me.
I look up videos on youtube of what end game content is and that is a big gripe I see people have is the lack of end game content. I have no idea if this is being worked on or not or if these wars I see are crazy epic or if I am just going to be disappointed and I can’t ask anybody because I don’t have access to chat channels. This could be I am doing it wrong and if that is so a simple forum response saying hey ask in this chat channel would be great.
To sum it up this has been a terrible player experience for a new player. I am saying this as someone who loves playing MMO’s and has spent countless hours on them in other games. This has by far been the worst experience I have had thus far in an MMO starting out. I really want to like new world I have grinded to level 30 already and am still in my first 72 hours of my account so I generally like the questing and gameplay so far. I found myself countless times playing today just asking myself am I sinking my time into this game for nothing? Its really the same reason I ended up leaving the game the first time in Beta not knowing what was going to be end game but this time people are at end game and I just literally can’t talk to them and I don’t think the game itself does a good job explaining what to look forward to either. I am sure the reason behind the chat is to curb spammers or something like that so I am not blind to why it is there but damn does it make it a really bad experience for new players. Regardless of where I end up making my decision about New World I do hope you all make it a better player experience for new players going forward. In a time (the first couple days) where someone is trying to figure out if they want to stay with the game or not they should not be completely shut off from any social contact even with a ton of effort to be social.
Best,
Prophsrchaos