Well, folks, we colonized the New World yesterday and… I have to say on some level it is exactly what I would expect a land run on new territory would look like. For those who managed to log in, I think the experience was pretty solid. There was EXTREME resource scarcity for those who were there at 8 am when the servers turned on, and while everyone was trying to crit path their way to choosing a faction. I know largely because I was there with them because a last-minute change of heart meant I too was trying to get things set up and running and get a company functional for invites. Mind you I had no intention of doing this thing, but as we got closer to the launch of the game I started feeling that maybe that big company wasn’t really my scene.
All in all, though it was probably a good thing I had that last-minute change of heart. While we did not get as many invites as I wanted… it wasn’t for lack of desire. There were a lot of folks who just simply gave up on the server queue, and since I logged out around 9:30 pm CDT I also wasn’t really around for invites. I’ve tried to pass out officers to a bunch of people, but far as I can tell there isn’t really a way for people to see who is on in the company if you are not already in the company? One of my big takeaways the social structure of this game needs some tweaking. For example, I don’t have a Message of the Day set because if I start typing… the second I hit space my character jumps and it exits out of the interface. It also doesn’t support cut and pastes… so I can’t even “jury rig” it into working that way either.
Other than just some general concerns I had about the attitude of the leader, my main concern and what ultimately prompted my action is knowing that we were dealing with a very limited pool of possible invites. From what I understand the larger company filled up without actually managing to get everyone in that had signed up on the roster. I knew in my case that I had friends who were wanting to play this game that might not be able to create a character until the weekend, or god forbid a week late… and there would be nothing I could do about it. I refuse to adopt a “got mine, fuck you” attitude towards my friends. Back in World of Warcraft, I had a top tier raid guild courting me for one of their main tank slots… but I ultimately gave up on that notion and helped found a “friend and family raid” instead because it felt wrong to go off and abandon the people who helped me get where I was. I didn’t want to lead a company… but doing so absolutely made me feel better about the whole situation.
This is what our territory map looks like on Minda, the server I am playing on… and it is nowhere near as Syndicate dominated as I would have feared. Right now the Marauders aka Team Green controls the territory I hang out in Windsward as well as Monarch’s Bluffs. Over night the big company that I was going to join managed to snag First Light, which was the last of the four starter zones to be claimed. I am guessing they went for the route of raising 100,000 gold in order to buy the claim. Everfall is likely going to be in a constant state of flux because I believe when I was last there yesterday it was held by Covenant, and now is held by a Syndicate company with a pending War. I am impressed that Cutlass Keyes has been taken, but not shocked given that zone has a lot of higher-end resources in it and is ultimately in heavy contention. The rest of the zones are probably not held simply because folks are too low level to reasonably venture there.
As for me, I rushed ahead to start the company started and then idled in the background since I knew there was no way in hell of getting back into the game. It took me about 30 minutes in the morning and then I spent several hours last night leveling and managed to hit 18. There is something to be said about familiarity and knowing more or less where various resources are. I’ve had so many starts in this game in all four of the territories, but I think I lucked out and Windsward is probably my favorite. As a result, though I pretty much knew the critical path to get what I needed, and for example by the time I hit the first town I had already collected my 40 stone, 40 wood, and 40 leather for the later quests.
My real focus however has been getting my trades up so I could start making my own gear. Given that they changed things up quite a bit I am now focusing on Engineering because I really want to be able to make my own crafting tools. Ultimately I want to be able to craft Azoth Extraction tools in order to keep a steady flow of that for crafting or teleports. At some point, I will probably focus on Weaponsmithing and Armorsmithing, but with everything being so freaking cheap on the market board I can pretty much buy whatever I want without denting my bank account. My hope is by the time I do get up there in skills… the glut of cheap items will have ended and I can actually start making goods for profit.
All in all, for a launch day it went pretty smoothly. The only larger concern I have going forward is that I am not sure Amazon fully understands the importance of being able to play with your friends. Right now it appears that the servers are capped at around 2000 players, combined with Companies, in general, being capped at 100 players… makes me question if they understood properly the scale of a large MMOPRG or if we misunderstood what sort of game they were going for. 2000 players and 100 per player unit… is more like a larger Rust or Ark than a proper MMORPG and I wonder if that is ultimately what they thought they were building here? My hope is that the 2000 player thing is an artificial metric to help force players to spread out a bit, and that given time they will increase that limit. However for pretty much all of the servers last night, the queues were as large if not larger than the population of the server based on what I could see from this third-party tracking website.
My hope is that they do some shifting and buffing of resources and that we can all actually get on the server we want to be on and play together. Ultimately that is the most important part of the MMO experience, is being able to play with a group of people that you enjoy playing with. I am glad I started Greysky Expedition, and I am happy that we are going to have room for folks… pending they can actually get on the server. So this was not a bad launch but there are some structural concerns I have going forward that would keep me from calling it a perfect launch. Did you manage to get in? What server are you playing on and what was your experience? Drop me a note below.
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