Amazon’s new game studio announced three games that they are working on at TwitchCon yesterday. (Amazon owns Twitch, so there is that connection… and you can now get some Twitch bennies for being an Amazon Prime customer.)
Of the three, the one garnering interest in this corner of the internet is New World, because they used our three favorite letters, M, M, and O. Or, at least they said “Massively Multiplayer,” but the “online” part is more that implied at this point.
New World is the one for us though. I think. I hope. I guess.
Just how new and how worldly?
It was hard not to roll my eyes a bit, mostly because the acronym “MMO” has been so stretched and otherwise abused by now that I don’t trust my gut when people use it. Everything that can get a dozen players online at once seems to feel entitled to that tag these days.
Yes, yes, cynicism is my thing here, but after the last decade of MMOs I think anybody trying to use the designation has to earn our trust. I am a product of my environment.
Old man yells at cloud base gaming… and AWS…
We have a description of sorts, right there on the store page over at Amazon.
New World is a massively multiplayer, open-ended sandbox game that allows you to carve your own destiny with other players in a living, hostile, cursed land. How you play, what you do, and whom you work with or against is up to you. Live on your own amidst the supernatural terrors or join with others to build thriving civilizations. In this evolving world that transforms with the changing of the seasons, weather, and time of day, the only limit is your own ambition.
And for those who don’t like their information in paragraph format, there are bullet points as well.
- New World is a massively multiplayer, open-ended sandbox game that allows you to carve your own destiny with other players in a living, hostile, cursed land.
- How you play, what you do, and whom you work with or against is up to you.
- Live on your own amidst the supernatural terrors or join with others to build thriving civilizations.
- In this evolving world that transforms with the changing of the seasons, weather, and time of day, the only limit is your own ambition.
- A release date for New World has not been set.
Of course, tossing in the word “sandbox” got an audible sigh from me as well, as it is also a favored term of late and seems to mean something like, “We’re not going to completely copy World of Warcraft.”
At least we know it will be released on Windows.
Minimum System Requirements:
- Processor: TBD
- RAM: TBD
- Hard Disk: TBD
- Video Card: TBD
- Supported OS: Windows
However pricing, business model, and whatever have yet to be announced.
I like the price so far… unless that means F2P cash shop hell
And given how long it can take to get a real MMO together… if it is a “real” MMO, by which I mean a worldly, persistent, shared experience, multiplayer RPG… I suspect it will be some time before we get enough details to begin projecting even our most optimistic fantasies on it.
But it has been announced, so I figured I had best take note. And, of course, because it is already listed over at Amazon, it has reviews.
Only 4 stars for a non-existent game
The other two titles that were announced:
- Breakaway – Breakaway is a 4 vs. 4 mythological sport brawler built for fast action, teamwork, and live-streaming.
- Crucible – Crucible is a battle to the last survivor on a hostile alien world. Players choose and customize heroes, making alliances and betraying allies on their path to victory. An additional player heightens the drama by triggering events, live-streaming the battles, and interacting with viewers
So that sounds like a streaming optimized MOBA and something that might be Overwatch meets The Hunger Games maybe? I don’t know. Not MMORPGs.
New World is the title that fits here, though I have to say that all three of the titles chosen seem likely to have problems standing out from other uses of those words.
As I noted above, others in our little internet tribe are talking about it as well. They might even be less cynical than I.
