As soon as Friv2Online's brand new MMORPG started closed beta testing, the friv game attracted an unexpectedly large number of players and aroused genuine interest among thousands of Twitch regulars. We were not left out either. We share our first impressions of New World.
Frankly, I belong to that dilapidated category of gamers for whom the abbreviation MMO evokes stable associations not with session action games with account upgrades, and not with survival games a la Conan or Ark: Survival Evolved, but with gray-haired multiplayer friv games like Lineage, World of Warcraft or Eve Online, which has absorbed thousands of free and non-free hours of the same raving role-playing adventures that I have always been.
For this very reason, I have been following the new Friv2Online project closely since the announcement. The lack of novelty in the field of MMORPG is already pretty boring, some even say that the genre is dying and is no longer in demand, which, however, eloquently disputes the same incredible hype around New World - the second, but already independent attempt by Friv2Online Games Studio to break into the sphere massive online games.
From the testers who came to the "New World" in the process of its formation, I happened to hear a lot of conflicting impressions, but the most common opinion was that the friv game needs to be "finished", and then it will certainly become perhaps the most worthy of the modern successors of the MMORPG kind.
Meanwhile, Friv2Online has repeatedly postponed the release of New World, citing the need to work with player feedback and tighten up the weak points of the project. But here's the problem: having personally participated in the pre-release testing of the game, to my surprise, I came to exactly the same conclusion that testers came to at different stages of development - the friv game is in dire need of polishing.
For my unpretentious taste, one of the weakest sides of New World was the graphics. To be more precise, the ratio of graphics quality and high requirements for gaming hardware. As sad as it is to admit, for a modern MMORPG title, Amazon’s work does not seem spectacular enough, but it loads systems almost at the level of open-world games and ray tracing.
I was not able to achieve stable FPS when the hardware met the recommended specifications for a PC with a "green" graphics adapter, nor was it possible to achieve at least thirty frames per second at the lowest graphics settings with a "red" video card, despite the fact that the second assembly also fully meets Friv2Online stated minimum system requirements.
Here it is necessary to mention that New World does not have servers for our brother, which is why some Russian-speaking players are forced to put up with a rather high ping. Someone in this regard is more lucky, and someone even has to forget about some types of weapons, the successful possession of which depends on the speed of the player's reflexes.
And all would be fine if New World had more trump cards up its sleeve. After all, we put up with high ping and an abundance of bugs at the start of Black Desert, because we played and even actively donated to the disgustingly optimized ArcheAge.
But BDO at one time somehow immediately conquered us with a Korean picture, animations and a combat system, and in AA there were ships and open PVP, because of which the allied factions forgot about the ideological enemy on the opposite island and staged real wars right here - with their neighbors in the garden. New World, on the other hand, offers players about the same scheme as the isometric Albion Online offered in 2017.
It's not the guilds that are fighting for dominance here, but three powerful factions that have taken root on the island long before the arrival of the first players. These are militant "Marauders", scientists from the "Syndicate" and the religious "Covenant". The lands of the "New World" are divided into territories with small cities, each of which has its own level of loyalty towards the players, and forts, for which inter-factional wars unfold during campaigns.
It is large-scale PVP battles that put the combat system of the game in the most favorable light. Here you are not some kind of "targeted" batch and not a massive super-dynamic fighting friv game - the control in New World gives off classic action / RPG with rolls, blocks, stamina and feints with melee or magic weapons.
Here, Friv2Online certainly did not lose. This is a real breath of fresh air for both fans of skill-based brawls and players who yearn for PVP-oriented MMORPGs. By the way, such a combat system leaves a positive imprint on the PVE-component of New World. Fighting monsters is interesting, combining different types of weapons is also interesting.
All player abilities are tied to combat equipment, which gives some scope for creating builds for different situations. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to carefully study the balance of weapons, but I would like to believe that the developers will be helped by detailed feedback from the inhabitants of the New World.
The owners of the territories establish their own rules in the cities, reap gifts and taxes, and work together to develop the settlement, and in peacetime they can selflessly attack other "flag" representatives of the communities. And there are sure to be such ones, because the most risky missions of factions are carried out in PVP mode.
In the storyline, the player's character is found on a ship sailing straight to the legendary island that appeared in the Atlantic Ocean exactly between North America and Eurasia. At some point, exactly according to the precepts of Lovecraft, the ship is surrounded by gigantic megaliths, growing before the eyes of the crew from under the storm waves. The ship is wrecked, and your hero finds himself on the shore of the coveted island.
This is just the beginning of the survivor's trials. Almost immediately, he almost becomes a victim of possessed sailors, whose mind and body are distorted by corruption, which the locals, who arrived here earlier as part of other expeditions, managed to dub "decomposition." The good news is that those whose organisms are able to resist the disease do not age and die in the usual way on this island.
The main quest chain that follows these events no longer introduces newcomers to the island and its inhabitants, but teaches (and teaches very well) the basic friv game mechanics. In general, historical sketches are scattered around the world, which we collect and file into a common archive, but I do not dare to call this reading material fascinating.
New World has a very large and seamless world to roam and roam, but as I noted above, the visual part of the game leaves much to be desired. If conceptually New World is somewhat similar to Albion, then outwardly it resembles some kind of Rust. I don't mean to say that Rust looks terrible, no. But this is not at all the level that you expect from a new MMORPG, and even not Asian tailoring in 2021.
A huge number of outdated textures with the simplest geometry and low-detailed surfaces catches the eye, and you won’t look at the character models without regret. The hero editor is as primitive as possible, you won’t find acceptable faces in it during the day with fire, but you can dye your hair in an uncharacteristic color for that time, fill an incomprehensible tattoo on your face or stick a beard on a woman, which many players, of course, did not fail to take advantage of.
The question is, what are the resources of the system going to. Perhaps for all this variety of vegetation, swaying in the wind and slightly deforming underfoot, which could look much more profitable if the friv game developers worked on lighting, palette and shadows properly. The release of the game was postponed three times, and in the fireplace of the hotel where I stayed, firewood is still blazing without fire animation. There are still a lot of bugs in New World.
But the character development system is worked out quite scrupulously. There are eleven weapons in the game with two talent trees and unique abilities for each, seven crafting crafts, five resource processing skills, and five gathering professions. And all this, including combat skills, swings as you use it.
Characters mine ore and chop trees not with one magical swing of the tool, but for a long time and thoroughly - the more the vein, the thicker the trunk, the more time it will take to mine. They go down to the river to scoop up fresh water, add rare herbs and brew an elixir, they look for sulfur for bullets, they hunt birds for meat and feathers for arrows, they skin wild animals and sew authentic outfits - everything is intuitive, accessible and no work points.
At the same time, friv game interfaces are calibrated with amazing attention to detail and perfect navigation. Here it is very easy to understand the crafts, to understand where this or that resource is mined, what tools and skill level will be required. Items sort themselves in the inventory and are automatically removed from storage during production. Everything related to crafting in the Friv2Online game is implemented at an exemplary level.
There are also auctions in New World, but they are much less friendly to beginners. Players who understand their device will eventually be able to purchase the house they like and decorate it with furniture of their own production, however, they say, the city authorities will have to regularly unfasten the rent for this pleasure.
New World looks worse than 2015's Black Desert or 2014's The Elder Scrolls Online. The combat system in it is really good, but still far from the level of development that Blade & Soul or Guild Wars 2 can boast of. And, if the new MMORPG does not blind with beauty, does not offer an epic plot or some new mechanics, it does not have localization into Russian and servers with appropriate ping, but requires more hardware than officially stated in the system requirements, a reasonable question arises why a real MMORPG fan should prefer the Friv2Online game.
It seems to me that the answer lies in the PVP component of the project, in massive wars with siege weapons, in brawls, which often happen with adventurers rushing to the next faction quest. And also in the crafting system, which may not be too new, but made by Friv2Online really on the conscience. It may very well be that for players who love to mine, create and fight with other players, New World will still give a lot of exciting events.
Eleena Timmons