I haven't touched an MMO for a long time, but with New World that changed. The battle system is something that is better to my taste. It's more what I qualify as "skill-based" versus a click and lock-on. PVE or PVP is fun. You could go down a rabbit hole of crafting for hours. There's always something to do. I've been told the world isn't as big as other worlds, but I don't think most people go running around looking at everything so it makes it feel small. But if you truly explored every crack and crevice, new world can feel huge. You can fast travel, but the price is high and forces you think about where you want to fast travel to instead of manually running there. The expeditions are nice little dungeons but can tough to get through if you don't have the right team, level, or gear. After 183 hours, I'm currently level 52, the max level is 60. I'm interested to learn what the end-game looks like. So far so good.

New World has been super fun with friends and is now my group's "Go-To" game at the moment and will probably be the case for the new few months, maybe longer, will see. I hope the studio and Amazon Games takes care of this gaming gem and don't let it fall into MMO purgatory.

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Update - 3000 Hours+ Review - Brimstone Free Expansion
This game have been a roller coaster ride. There's been some downs, but right now New World in it's current form has been great. The gypsum orbs to increase expertise versus watermark was a game changer. The Brimstone addition was huge adding a new desert region, the sandwurm elite trial 20-man raid, the hatchery 10 man arena raid, and other elite areas. Further down the line, there's been addition of more mob types like Humans, and new expeditions. The leaderboard was a much needed addition, and I can't believe the game was going on so long without it now that it's an essential piece to the game.

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Update - 4500 Hours+ Review - Rise of the Angry Earth
I've been on New World almost everyday since release (I don't know if I should feel proud or ashamed about that fact... lol), but I can tell you that the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion has been the BEST state New World has ever been in. No more Resilient, Wards and Banes (well, there is, but they're nerfed and won't drop in the world anymore), and as a result there's a lot more options for build variety, which I and apparently a lot of other players likes. For the players that had ward-sets like myself, we definitely got burned, BUT I think for the greater good and longevity of the game, I suppose that's something I can accept.

I really like the addition of Artifacts, which are basically OP gear that usually has illegal perks or a unique perk that cannot be dropped in regular loot gear. Farming for Artifacts is fun and seeing the volume of other players also trying to obtain the Artifact drop is a great experience. Unlocking the full potential of an Artifact requires you to perform certain things, kill a boss, kill X number of Z mobs type from zone Y, for example. It's kind of annoying, but it gives the player a reason to wander the open world and actually use your mount.

Speaking of Mount, just WOW. New World devs did a great job with Mounts. Mounts look good, the value-added of this new feature actually feels meaningful, and the racing-quests feels worthwhile because it'll buff your mount, like make it faster for example.

Crafting feels a bit intimidating this patch, but crafters now have the ability to craft the exact item they want, which is cool albeit for an insane price!

The new beast mob types are "beasty", my favorite beast mob must be the mammoths. They're huge and are intimidating! But once you break their stamina they're quite easy to defeat.

I haven't done a whole lot of PVP at the time of writing, but it's to safe to say that it'll take a while to see where the meta shifts to now that build variety has opened up with the removal of resilient and introduction of artifacts.

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6500 hours Review - New World Aeternum
New World Aeternum has been the best iteration of New World yet. Cross platform with PS5 and Xbox, plus crossworld for OPR and 3v3 has been great. The player population has boomed and there's so much activity going on.

The two biggest things to do in the end-game though is the 10-man raid "Gorgon Hive" and the PVP island "the cursed mists".

For the raid, It's definitely not easy with a PUG, but if you pull together a team strategically with a strat, then it's actually beatable in about 40 minutes. Lots of groups has been struggling and passing the 3 hour mark, so it's definitely hard. The key I think is to have a solid tank and melee dps. The team should be on voicechat and players should be making calls throughout the run. The loot only drops on bosses though, giving you 3 opportunities to gain some.

The PVP island on the otherhand, I think AGS did a great job developing this area, the atmosphere and environment is S-tier. There's so much detail to buildings, things looks great and feels eerie, but the best part is since you don't know if another player is watching you you're always on edge. The problem though is most interactions just passes by, minding their own business. I think AGS needs to introduce a way to force confrontation, maybe a storm circle every once in a while?

For early-game, AGS polished the story and added full voice acting to every NPC interaction, quite amazing if you'd ask me.

Along with the Aeternum release refresh, there's a host of new artifacts which should inspire players to develop new builds and change the meta. The game definitely plays smoother, and now there's option for DX12 (beta). Graphic-wise, there's also options for AI-upscaling (FSR, DLSS), which is nice.

For the past 6 months since AGS made their summer announcement, I've been SUPER skeptical and took a break for about a month (the longest I have since release lol), but now that the game is here, I feel pretty good and am confident in saying that AGS made the right call. I just hope the steer the NW boat in the right direction and don't let the game crash and burn, it's a precious gem in the online gaming world as there are no other games quite like it.

A few more thoughts, I understand AGS wants players to participate in the new activities, but leaving mutations out of gaining 725 gear feels criminal. That means the Hive is going to get boring real quick, unless that is they mutate the Hive too, which I doubt that'll happen.

The game is in the best state it's ever been, now is a great time to join.