The Business: Does "New World" Have A Future?

Josh Stryfe Hayes on New World, Amazon's new MMORPG:

TLDR: The game's due to collapse because it doesn't have sufficient endgame content, it has significant user experience issues, and it has these issues because of the severe ping-pong of design objectives during development.

I have no confidence that the dev team will make the changes required in time to retain what players the game has. Amazon's management has proven to be incompetent and (for MMOs) stingy. The game demands a core PVE daily play experience that builds to the old WOW endgame: raid for gear, PVP for dominance.

The developers could put in the work required, but the first signs of it should already be there and it's not; endgame gameplay is non-existent. Couple that with the fact that the game launched in a completely solved state--there were leveling and dungeon guides before it launched--due to how permissive the Beta testing was, and you have a recipe for disaster. The core audience will bulldoze their way to the endgame, see that there's fuck-all to do beside grief other players, get bored and fuck off- and they will talk down the game to everyone else because of this, scaring away Normies needed to make the game profitable both short and long-term.

Don't be surprised to see reports of the game's population collapsing between Christmas and Valentine's Day, even those that get it for Christmas. if MMO players have nothing to do, they quit. Content is something that matters to do, and this game lacks it where it counts: at endgame. Josh's Avatar comparison is apt: it is entirely likely that this game will flash big and then disappear as if it never existed.