Apologies for the lengthy post, but here we go:
As some of you may know already, the RtA event has been “interesting” to say the least. MANY players (including myself) who participated in the RtA event cannot help but to feel taken advantage of by AGS’s decision on not letting any players continue our fresh experience on a FSS.
I am a bit baffled (maybe I shouldn’t be at this point) on how this is something that wasn’t considered early on, ESPECIALLY after seeing how fast the majority of the server populations absolutely TANKED after the first several days. The planning of the event may have seemed great at the start, but the execution on the other hand as days passed, not so much.
Now before some people comment “you know what you’ve signed up for” etc. Please try and understand that many of the people who are still left playing had no idea (AT THE START OF THE EVENT) that the execution of handing out keys was going to be this poor (many who got keys were under the impression you got the game for free and/or tried selling them) and had 0 intent on playing the game in the first place. Blaming whomever is irrelevant, but at the end of the day the players on the server suffered: less players = more work on objectives. OF the players who participated, many players also just played to get their title and quit. Many of the creators themselves quit days before the event even ended, and last but not least, nobody knew these servers were going to be this dead given the supposed “hype.” Most RtA servers hovered between 100-400 active players in the last 7 days.
I’m sure if all of this was known prior to the event, results would’ve been much different.
I am not one for writing posts like this, but I feel compelled to do so because I am also a content creator/streamer myself. I’ve had some first-time players + players who quit early on due to initial issues with the game, roll on the server with me and our community because we wanted to play together and help participate in the event. So far, they’ve been absolutely LOVING New World even with the fact that the RtA servers are a slightly different experience.
Now that the last 2-weeks have passed and things have fully unfolded, I cannot help but feel that many of their initial experiences are ruined/ wasted because of the options we’re given:
Option 1: We have to choose to play on a legacy server with players who’ve been able to work on their characters for over a year, have multiple perfect gear sets, inflated economies, feeling like they are just playing catch-up instead of leveling WITH others on the servers (and for some, this really defeats the purpose of rolling fresh in the first place).
OR
Option 2: Play on a server with less than 200 active players.
Both of which are undesirable so they feel it’s best to just quit the game entirely.
We’ve tried coming up with solutions for this. One suggestion: Giving RTA server participants a one-time transfer token to any server in any region (except any locked servers ofc).
Reasoning:
1) (Also open to server merges) But a transfer token will help dissipate players so not all of us will be flooded onto one server to jeopardize potential queue times.
2) Region-wide transferring: I know Titan for example had some EU streamers/ communities so it would be fair to allow them to go back to their respective servers if they so wish.
3) Option to go FSS or Legacy servers: We already have the option to go legacy if players want, but also allowing a fresh server transfer to play on servers with split communities (players who weren’t able to get keys etc.) among the reasons stated earlier.
I’d like to think that since many of these players on RtA who “supposedly” sacrificed their initial fresh-char experience, it would seem at the bare-minimum, to say “thanks" by showing a level of appreciation because they 1) Provided all the other players with multiple free drops and 2) Promoting this game albeit not getting paid for it.
It would seem to be a drop-in-the-bucket to allow RtA players who grinded these objectives for everyone else, a one-time option to transfer to fresh servers.
As someone who has been playing the game since the first beta (over 2000+ hours), I’ve played through almost every single issue/ obstacle this game has experienced. Despite it all, I want nothing more than for New World to thrive and succeed as a whole. I truly love this game. I want New World to get the recognition it deserves especially since the initial launch rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. It has come A LONG way since then and it’s amazing to see so many people having fun playing fresh servers.
Let’s continue to find ways to improve the game itself and more importantly, the players’ experience as a whole starting with this. Time is of the essence, as these players will continue to fall further and further behind each day that passes. Please allow these RtA players a chance to continue their New World experience on Fresh Start Servers.