New World is about to get a whole other type of content. Amazon games took us on a tour of what to expect when they plunge Aeternum into Fellowship & Fire on 28 March.
Amazon’s own MMORPG launched to moderate success and now seems to be holding its own in a hugely oversubscribed market of MMORPGs, but after nearly a year and a half of updates, it seems fair to ask what’s next?. With the dark clouds of player disinterest always hanging off in the horizon for every online adventure, New World is about to plunge into its very first round of seasonal content. Amazon Games will bring Season 1: Fellowship & Fire to New World on 28 march, with PTR testing starting tomorrow. It should add a ton of new stories, quests, NPC,s activities, and rewards, and we got a look at what’s coming.
David Verfaillie, the creative director on New World described the introduction of Seasons as a change designed to “provide something new that everyone can participate in.” Rather than follow the traditional WoW led vertical approach to content drops, these will take players back through Aeternum, introducing tales of bravery and content that will build up over time to constantly expand the player experience. Of course, any added extra is more than just new NPCs and old friends additional dungeons and a new Season Pass system will dangle plenty of loot in front of players as they jump into this new endeavour.
Season Pass
Season Pass comes in two forms both paid and free. The free track 100 levels of rewards split across milestones that drop everything from skins to a pet for your house. Marks of fortune, boost tokens, seasonal weapons and armor are also confirmed if you’re looking for something to help with the fashion wars. Umbra shards and Gypsum Orbs will be of interest to end game players, while obligatory crafting caches are included in the free Season Pass track too. If you’ve had run ins with the Fortine or Apex freemium system then this should be familiar territory, with free loot dropping for each tier ticked off.
In addition to a free reward run, players have the option of purchasing a premium upgrade. This will cost around 20,000 marks of Fortune, which is approximately $20 USD. it is available at any point in the season and will retroactively receive any rewards players would otherwise have scored. Buying this will unlock additional premium rewards, including an additional premium skin set, a tent skin, additional marks of fortune, even more token boosts and high grade loot.
Getting rewards still demands a time sacrifice to level the new Season Pass system, and there are three ways to do this. The most obvious is using the integrated Season Journey. Kicking off at level 25, this constitutes 5 chapters of goals and quests that help move players through the new tale that each season brings. This is a natural progression of the traditional quest line and doesn’t sound all that different to Guild Wars 2’s episodic logbook. The second way this pass can be levelled up is by completing challenges. Without telling us much, Amazon did note that these come in as higher level content that players can check off at any time during a season for additional season specific XP.
Further aligning this new reward track with ArenaNet’s gameplay philosophy, New World will also give players a list of activities that they can complete. Seeming like a reskinned achievement system, this provides players with a way to level up at their own pace and grab all the loot when they have time.
While Amazon didn’t confirm it, we expect that you’ll need to at least dip into all three of these to significantly progress the 100 levels of reward on offer, otherwise it doesn’t act as much incentive to re run seasonal content. This coupled with a level 25 requirement to kick off all this new content really does seem to point towards keeping existing zones busy and p[players together as opposed to spreading out into the frontier.
Aside from giving players something new to do, the reward track and extra seasonal add ons are likely to drag players back across Aeternum. Rather than focus on adding swathes of new maps, Verfaillie confirmed that most of this content will be dispersed throughout the existing world. The advantage seems to be that it will keep old maps fresh, add a solid churn of players, and won’t simply squander the recently revamp areas to anybody passing through to end game. End game and high level play will, instead be directed into new dungeons and Expeditions.
Varangian power
Season 1 will drop imminently, and when it does you’ll will find more than just endless fetch quests. New enemies await. The Forged are a brand new type of Varangians, reborn in the flames of the Imperium Forge. With a new purpose, they also carry powerful new abilities that can burn the unprepared asunder. The most adventurous residents of Aeternum will be able to attack the heart of this new threat, and head into the Imperium Forge as a brand new Expedition.
While, again, Amazon is keeping the content close to its chest, it’s encouraging to see new content coming that won’t just be about heading in and ticking boxes.
Taking A Leaf from Another Book
We we’re subject to very little actual gameplay when Amazon toured us through what’s coming iun Seasons but we were able to gleam plenty from our time sitting around the table. It’s clear that Amazon has learned the lessons that Guild Wars 2 has to offer the market. While WoW still stans part with its massive release cycles and huge expansion hype, it’s not the norm any more. Guild Wars 2 churned out several dead dragons, a manic mastermind Sylvari, and more during its war in Tyria. The result is a sticky player base and a place as one of the better-established MMORPGs in the market. Now, with Amazon seem to be out to ape the Living World. Seasonal content is wrapped up in a different monetization model, but challenges are easily interpreted as achievements that can be tackled in any order. New content in old maps that lets players pick and choose how they ant to advance their reward track through narrative tales or in game challenges definitely strikes of a play your own way approach. The only niggle, many cosmetics will be locked away once a track is retired, so you’ll want to get in before things are gone. We’re not entirely sure what this heralds for expansions, but this certainly beats dropping in a new class and waiting for everyone to re roll through old zones. Whether the seasonal approach is manageable for Amazon’s devs and makes the world feel alive is down to the content, in the end.
You can take a look at some of the content currently being previewed by heading over to the official New World blog for more on New World’s Fellowship & Fire.
