I played at launch but stopped within a month or two. The issues I had:
There seemed to be a content drought/gap at a certain level (cant remember the level exactly…maybe in the mid 40s or something?) where the only reasonable way to leveling was the job board. It became the worst slog ever.
Signing up for wars and never getting in (dodgeball ptsd here…hah). It was understandable that the guilds funding it would pick their own and then the best that they can get, but I never got to experience this stuff.
Little to no dungeon/endgame dungeons… Felt like there werent any and people didnt really do them.
Endgame seemed like it was A) get a group B) compete with other groups for farming elite mobs. I did this in Archeage and it got old fast.
These were my main gripes with the game. Has anything changed? I havent really followed new world at all since I stopped playing.
I believe they added quite a few things fo fill this gap, but thats without knowing for sure as I havent made more than my 1 character. Need to look it up!
Pretty much the same here, wars are still controlled by the players that own said cities. You are not missing out tho… they are not as fun as they seem.
Lots of dungeons now, bunch of wacky people with too high demands tho. Start your own and block those you dont like.
I never run out of things to do at 60, always something.
1, Not sure as it’s been a long time since I hit 60, I believe AGS lowered the xp gain from town boards significantly to prevent people from levelling from just town boards and I think they increased the xp gain from quests.
2, The signup for wars is the exact same, chances are if you didn’t get into them then chances are you won’t now. I wouldn’t worry though as wars were fun at launch due to using siege equipment etc, now they are just 50v50 zerg fests with the side that has the least amount of issues/bugs win, so wars are not fun and not worth doing.
3, There are a lot more dungeons now, and there are mutations, pretty much the same dungeons but for endgame, where the damage you do/ receive is scaled based on your gear score. Some people claim it’s hard to find randoms to do it, although we do have a group finder for them now, I usually do them in my usual 5-man so I can’t say how quick or easy it is to find groups.
4, End game now is the mutation dungeons I mentioned above, with 10-man raids coming in the summer. Some would argue that PVP is endgame content but you only need 623-624 gear score to reach maximum stats for PVP whereas to do the highest level of mutations you need 625 gear score.
If you do all the quests you see you should be more then fine leveling, It’s just the people that do exclusively the main quest that will experience a xp problem.
War is and will be an exclusive activity, it requires coordonation and people to have the ability to listen to orders as well as to play at least half decently, and as such 95%+ of the community is not even qualified to play in them.
For example the devs changed the ballance around 2 weeks ago, basically making armors actually work as intended (light is quishy, heavy is tanky), most of the people complaining on the forums for example refuse to play anything other then light. So yeah its hard to take people like that to war, they are not smart enough and would just ruin the experience for everyone.
But for the general population, ther eis OPR, 3v3 arena and OWPvP, you dont have to do the exclusive activity for 1% of the population to enjoy the game.
This has changed majorly, there are plenty of expeditions now and they have mutations (similar with mythic in wow)… their dificulty is nothing compared to Destiny2 or Lost Ark, but its more dificult then a addon game like WoW… so hope that gives u an idea of what to expect.
Endgame indeed involves chest runs, but thats not all to it… crafting, expeditions and some PvP are all up there.
Other then that we got gear loudout sets, which make it a bit easier to manage gear… still a problem but its a bit better, and they are doing slighly better with their visuals so skins are starting to look a bit more decent (especially the ones in the season pass).
You have lots of dungeons, no need to craft orbs, fast travel it’s almost free with lots of new fast travel shrines.
Wars is still the same, specially if you haven’t played the game, no one knows you, and it’s a gear a skill thing.
Content wise went from 1 to 8.
End game isn’t elite chest runs, that’s a filler. Best way to improve gear score is doing regular genesis, you have 25 runs per day, so people are doing the first boss chess and restart (you kill 2 bosses plus the chest it’s 3 bumps).
If you quit the game back then you will quit again, because that’s what quitters do.
What server are you on or do you intend to create a new character, In which region? The server and server pop will be a big factor in you enjoying the things you want to do.
No “Assign me random to a Dungeon” Button, you still have to choose a Dungeon and get presented with an Interface, structured by difficulty. You can see how many lobbies are listed for every difficulty.
Select a difficulty you either want to Join a group or make a Lobby yourself.
Lobbies are listed with certain requirements, such as Gearscore/Role by the System but Players use the Lobby Name for additional requirements such as Ward/Bane/Weapons and usually on High Mutation lobbies - to Link your Gear to the Lobby Creator.
Dont go onto a Fresh Start Server if you’re somewhat of a Community-Type of Player.
If you want to play the whole Game, aim for an Medium Pop Server with an avg. Player Base around 1.000.
1: Content drought has definitely improved significantly, but there still feels like there are some things missing. The roadmap has some raid content coming up with will be really helpful. There have been? Tempest, Barnacles, Ennead, Starstone/Amrine Mashup mutation, Depths mutation and Empyrean Forge expeditions added to the game. Mutations have been added since then which extend the life of the dungeons by making them more difficult and a slightly different experience. They still get a little dull after a ton of runs, but it definitely is helpful to extend their life a bit.
They have mentioned trying to mutate the boss mechanics in a few dev videos, so I imagine that is in development? That would be really cool, but it’s not out at this time.
In terms of solo end-game content I still think it’s a little lacking, but raids are an exciting change coming up but that likely will require larger groups and coordination.
Seasonal content is pretty good and it looks like they will have all of the seasons done and cycle that each year now, adding new things each time. World boss events are out now, they are definitely getting better as well.
2: Leveling experience. It’s improved a ton at the lower levels as they have revamped the questing experience, they are now up to Brightwood/Weavers. After that it kinda sucks still. They removed the townboard xp, which sucks because it was fast, but then again it was rather boring content. You can so get to 60 VERY FAST if you find people to run PVE arena trial orbs*(literally 30 minutes probs haha)*. But! on the bright side they will have the entire 1-60 questing experience done by the end of the roadmap. It just isn’t out yet. The questing experience is night and day, it’s really fun for those that enjoy questing and getting into the game’s lore which was very lacking before.
3: Signing up for wars is still the same unfortunately. They made changes to make it so the same accounts can’t do all of the wars on a server, but it’s still exclusive. You need to invest a decent amount of time into getting into a roster. They mentioned casual wars over a year ago in a dev video but no real news on that in a while. But I think they are trying to address that? But if that’s a major factor for coming back, you might be disappointed.
PVP feels lacking outside of the upper end, but they have released 3v3 arenas since when you played and appear to be working on improving that side of the game but the PVP side still needs a bit of work compared to what they have done for PVE. They mentioned improved influence pushing? Cross server queues? Revamp of the PVP reward track, which was added since you played.
Overall: The game is drastically better than it was at launch, but honestly the only way to really know if you will enjoy it is to hop in and give it a try. There are people on these forums that will say the game is perfect and never mention it’s current issues, but there also are people that will hate on every single change regardless of what it is. Some people love to complain. Find out where you are in that spectrum. If you feel it’s trash then that’s okay, it’s just not for you. If you enjoy it then awesome. Enjoy it and maybe if you run out of things to do you can put it down and come back when they improve it even more. I would consider a new account so you have access to the new MSQ, unless you made significant progress on your main during the month or so you played.
