There is simply not enough space to clearly articulate everything that is wrong with New World. But I'll try to summarize the things that upset me most about this unfinished game.

1. It has the most grind of any MMO I've played. So much of your time is spent gathering sparse resources, micromanaging inventory and resource placement, and endlessly repeating content to glean small increments of gear progression. I'm almost 1000 hours into this thing, and I figure that I've got probably somewhere between 25-70 days at 6 hours a day to close the gaps in my character's gear requirements just to get to the point where I can be competitive in PVP. One of the reasons for this is that AGS, once realizing that people were progressing too quickly, started ham-fistedly adding in more time and resource gates to slow people down. Normally, this would not be a big deal, except for the fact that large populations who did insane grinding at the beginning are already there. To close the gap with them now takes even longer.

2. Game breaking bugs have plagued New World since the start. The worst ones involve gold and item "duping", wherein players could take advantage of a number of game design flaws to endlessly replicate their coin, resources, and gear. Even though the worst offenders who used these exploits were banned, the trickle down effects of their exploitation had a profound effect on server economies, the upshot of which is that traders and early adopters indirectly benefited from the cheaters, and still remain unbelievably wealthy today, another gap which is impossible to close.

3. PVP combat is both slow and bug-ridden. Press buttons during a fight - you're lucky if anything happens as planned. Skills don't fire, potions remain unconsumed, weapons are unswapped. Skills that show as available in your UI do not match what you actually have available to use. In large scale engagements, such as wars, which are necessary to win territory, there are frequent lock ups. You're there, and then 8 seconds later when your screen resolves, you're dead. This is not fun.

4. AGS makes constant changes in response to both complaints and their dearth of content. It's nice when they fix bugs. Much appreciated. But sometimes they do things like: shut down the traders for days on end, killing server economies. Disallow furnishing trading for weeks forcing furnishings to pile up in your inventory. Some mobs drop too many resources? Turn off those drops for weeks on end without replacement, while the prices for those resources skyrocket and slow down crafting progression.

5. The time you spend in the game is usually not a good time. You will spend hundreds of hours staring at a screen while your toon chops down trees. It's fun the first few hundred times, but eventually, it's a massive bore to the extent that I often literally fall asleep at my PC doing these endless farm runs and mindless chest runs. Expedition runs are challenging, but keep getting overtuned to prevent people from sailing through the content. In one patch, you might clear, next one, you don't, then the next one, you can again somehow, In order to grind expeditions, you also need to grind and craft keys to access them, which take forever to make and costs a lot - on our server going for a dungeon run means paying someone 2,500 in coin, which takes hours to grind, and then unless you've run it a few times and understand the mechanics, you're probably also going to spend 1-2K coins in repair bills. Other MMOs, when you want to queue up for a dungeon, you find a team and just go. In New World, you might as well not even bother because you'll just lose time and money for little to no reward, going through content whose mechanical difficulty is based primarily on a variety of nigh-invincible damage sponges.

6. I'm a governor of a pretty large company on Ys, and all of our players were just behind the curve of people who benefited from the early exploits and simpler progression curves. We have 80 players and a number of friendly companies to work with, and territory moves no where, because we don't have the gear and cash to fund more wars, much less win them. Managing a company is done all outside the game - AGS does not even allow you to track transactions going in and out of the company coffer. There are no tools to help - and that pretty much goes for the rest of the UI. You learn recipes, but there is no easy way to track them. The UI for the trader has a clunky and inefficient design. The game has a serious lack of tools to manage your play.

7. Tickets submitted to AGS do not get addressed. They just don't. At all. It's incredible.

I think I might be about done with this game. It has been the largest waste of time I've ever spent in my entire life. If you are thinking about picking this game up and starting it, don't. You will end up frustrated and angry. Three years from now, when they've figured out their problems, listened to their consumers, and implemented all of the lessons that they should have ALREADY LEARNED from the past 20 years of MMO development, this might be a good game. Right now, it's a toxic pool of quicksand that will draw you in with its magical graphics and immersive soundscapes, and then it starts pulling you down, eating away at your soul with each patch hastily designed to put more and more roadblocks in the way of your progression, and as your sunk costs increase, it gets harder and harder to get off the treadmill of chop chop chop chop chop *ding* chop chop chop *ding* chop chop chop chop chop chop chop chop chop *ding* chop chop chop *ding* chop chop chop chop *ding* chop chop chop chop CHOP.

Don't buy it. Don't even think about buying it.

There is simply not enough space to clearly articulate everything that is wrong with New World. But I'll try to summarize the things that upset me most about this unfinished game. 1. It has the most grind of any MMO I've played. So much of your time is spent gathering sparse resources, micromanaging inventory and resource placement, and endlessly repeating content to glean small increments of gear progression. I'm almost 1000 hours into this thing, and I figure that I've got probably somewhere between 25-70 days at 6 hours a day to close the gaps in my character's gear requirements just to get to the point where I can be competitive in PVP. One of the reasons for this is that AGS, once realizing that people were progressing too quickly, started ham-fistedly adding in more time and resource gates to slow people down. Normally, this would not be a big deal, except for the fact that large populations who did insane grinding at the beginning are already there. To close the gap with them now takes even longer. 2. Game breaking bugs have plagued New World since the start. The worst ones involve gold and item "duping", wherein players could take advantage of a number of game design flaws to endlessly replicate their coin, resources, and gear. Even though the worst offenders who used these exploits were banned, the trickle down effects of their exploitation had a profound effect on server economies, the upshot of which is that traders and early adopters indirectly benefited from the cheaters, and still remain unbelievably wealthy today, another gap which is impossible to close. 3. PVP combat is both slow and bug-ridden. Press buttons during a fight - you're lucky if anything happens as planned. Skills don't fire, potions remain unconsumed, weapons are unswapped. Skills that show as available in your UI do not match what you actually have available to use. In large scale engagements, such as wars, which are necessary to win territory, there are frequent lock ups. You're there, and then 8 seconds later when your screen resolves, you're dead. This is not fun. 4. AGS makes constant changes in response to both complaints and their dearth of content. It's nice when they fix bugs. Much appreciated. But sometimes they do things like: shut down the traders for days on end, killing server economies. Disallow furnishing trading for weeks forcing furnishings to pile up in your inventory. Some mobs drop too many resources? Turn off those drops for weeks on end without replacement, while the prices for those resources skyrocket and slow down crafting progression. 5. The time you spend in the game is usually not a good time. You will spend hundreds of hours staring at a screen while your toon chops down trees. It's fun the first few hundred times, but eventually, it's a massive bore to the extent that I often literally fall asleep at my PC doing these endless farm runs and mindless chest runs. Expedition runs are challenging, but keep getting overtuned to prevent people from sailing through the content. In one patch, you might clear, next one, you don't, then the next one, you can again somehow, In order to grind expeditions, you also need to grind and craft keys to access them, which take forever to make and costs a lot - on our server going for a dungeon run means paying someone 2,500 in coin, which takes hours to grind, and then unless you've run it a few times and understand the mechanics, you're probably also going to spend 1-2K coins in repair bills. Other MMOs, when you want to queue up for a dungeon, you find a team and just go. In New World, you might as well not even bother because you'll just lose time and money for little to no reward, going through content whose mechanical difficulty is based primarily on a variety of nigh-invincible damage sponges. 6. I'm a governor of a pretty large company on Ys, and all of our players were just behind the curve of people who benefited from the early exploits and simpler progression curves. We have 80 players and a number of friendly companies to work with, and territory moves no where, because we don't have the gear and cash to fund more wars, much less win them. Managing a company is done all outside the game - AGS does not even allow you to track transactions going in and out of the company coffer. There are no tools to help - and that pretty much goes for the rest of the UI. You learn recipes, but there is no easy way to track them. The UI for the trader has a clunky and inefficient design. The game has a serious lack of tools to manage your play. 7. Tickets submitted to AGS do not get addressed. They just don't. At all. It's incredible. I think I might be about done with this game. It has been the largest waste of time I've ever spent in my entire life. If you are thinking about picking this game up and starting it, don't. You will end up frustrated and angry. Three years from now, when they've figured out their problems, listened to their consumers, and implemented all of the lessons that they should have ALREADY LEARNED from the past 20 years of MMO development, this might be a good game. Right now, it's a toxic pool of quicksand that will draw you in with its magical graphics and immersive soundscapes, and then it starts pulling you down, eating away at your soul with each patch hastily designed to put more and more roadblocks in the way of your progression, and as your sunk costs increase, it gets harder and harder to get off the treadmill of chop chop chop chop chop *ding* chop chop chop *ding* chop chop chop chop chop chop chop chop chop *ding* chop chop chop *ding* chop chop chop chop *ding* chop chop chop chop CHOP. Don't buy it. Don't even think about buying it.