Everything Wrong With New World

I’ve avoided, for the most part, doing videos on all of the New World drama going on recently. There are other content creators out there that have done a far better job at detailing the almost endless number of issues the game has had over the last month as they arise.
But I get messaged repeatedly asking what my thoughts are on all of it. Asking why I’m not covering it as well. And you know what? That’s a good question. The more people discussing it, the more attention brought to it, the better.

So today’s video is going to be a little different. I’m not going to board the “hate train” that so many players seem to be on, attempting to bring the game down. No. On the contrary, I’m going to discuss every issue I’ve been made aware of over the course of the last month. 30 days.
That way, we can see what has been plaguing the game, we can see what steps Amazon have made to remedy the issues running rampant, and make certain players know exactly what’s out there.

Let’s start this off with one of the first bugs I noticed while browsing online: On October 15th, it was reported that players were abusing an exploit to allow for them to become completely invulnerable. I covered this, and included the video used as reference.
This involved playing in windowed mode, and required players drag the game window at a certain moment, which put you in a temporary state of suspended animation, preventing you from taking any additional damage.
There was a small hotfix to this introduced that caused you to crash if you attempted to drag the window while in window mode. But by October 28th, a full update was rolled out to address not only this, but several other issues.
Yes, players were abusing this for almost 2 weeks straight.

On October 28th, it was reported that players weren’t receiving Gold after their Auctions ended while offline. This is a bug that affected the entire community – not just cheaters in PvP.
In essence, if you were offline at the moment that your auction ended, you wouldn’t receive the gold. It wouldn’t matter if you had just logged out, or relogged. You’ll receive a notification that your items were in fact sold, but you’ll be refused the funds directly from that sale.
On October 30th, Amazon reported that they’d rolled out a hotfix in an attempt to remedy the issue. While many players had reported they were successfully receiving their Gold once again, there were still a number of players that reported the opposite continued even after the fix.

November will likely go down as the “month of dupes,” with a bug that allowed players to duplicate gold being brought to players’ attention on the 1st of the month.
How you triggered this dupe was to engage another player in a trade, click, hold, and then drag the window around while confirming the trade, have the other player cancel the trade while you’re doing this, after which their trade would be canceled, they would keep their gold, yet you’d receive the Gold they were attempting to trade you as well.
Players were livid when learning of this, with many people asking for Amazon to do a roll-back. To fix this as soon as possible. I mean, a game is only as successful as its in-game economy. If everyone has limitless Gold, then money has no purpose.
In an effort to stall players from abusing the duplication exploit further, Amazon disabled trading between players. This was a good move in theory, as it would’ve temporarily halted any additional Gold from being duplicated and injected into the community.
However, upon disabling trading, they created something just as bad: Another duplication bug.
This time, if you attempted to trigger any type of town upgrade – like a kitchen, as an example, you would be charged a set amount of Gold to upgrade it, however, it wasn’t functioning as it should have been and instead, results in an error message.
If you reconnected to the game, not only would you be refunded the canceled upgrade, but you’d have the cost of the upgrade added to your Company wallet as well.
Then there was another exploit concerning the Storage shed, where if you took an item from one Storage shed and transferred it to another, and reconnected during the transfer, not only would you possess the item in your original Storage shed.. but you’d also possess it in the Storage shed you were attempting to move it to. Two items in total.

2 weeks later, a week ago from today on November 13th, a new duping exploit was confirmed. While Amazon had banned a portion of the abusers responsible for duping in the past, there were many left without punishment.
This new exploit was posted about on the official forums, and even had video footage dedicated to showing how to reproduce it. According to players in that thread, it was a dupe method that had worked in the past, resurfacing once again.
Amazon quickly responded to this, and once again disabled all types of wealth transfer a day later, preventing players from once again trading amongst one another. Something they did earlier this month in an attempt to prevent players from further damaging the economy.

4 days ago, on November 17th, there was a new thread created on the New World subreddit, detailing 7 new exploits running rampant on the live version of the game, after Amazon restored the ability to trade with one another.
Yes, 7. It’s genuinely difficult to even imagine that being possible. First, there’s the “trade dupe,” which is achieved merely by trading items with another player.
Second, the “crafting dupe,” which is achieved by attempting to craft an item and forcing the game to cancel it, not only refunding, but also duplicating the materials used.
Third, the “bound item exploit,” which is achieved by selling bound items on the Trading Post if you first place them into your Storage.
Fourth, the “recipe dupe,” which is achieved by salvaging a recipe while in combat. If you allow yourself to die, the recipe will be restored within your inventory after respawning.
Fifth, the “gold dupe,” which is achieved by trading gold to another player while in the Outpost Rush. Both you and the other player will retain the gold traded. Or, attempted to be traded.
Sitxh, the “outpost rush food buff,” which is achieved by using a food item while participating in the Outpost Rush, logging out after you receive the buff applied, then logging back in. What this does is provide the food buff to you permanently, and stacks infinitely, without limit.
Seventh, the “furniture dupe,” which is achieved by allowing your housing to expire, it adds the entire content of your home to your storage. You pay tax, and then your home keeps the original furnishings.
And those are only 7 that players were aware of at the time of posting.

And finally, the most recent exploit: The ability to reset your influence to 0. According to players on Reddit, companies that own territories are capable of changing their name to reset their influence.

Now I’m not listing these exploits here so players go out of their way to abuse them. I’m posting these here so players know they exist. So Amazon know they exist. So something can be done about them.

New World could have been an amazing MMORPG. It’s a lot of fun. There’s plenty to do in the game. But how poorly this game is handled is laughable. It’s become a meme online, Amazon Game Studios has become a massive meme online. Players that were excited for Lost Ark are now cautious, even given the fact that Smilegate are still in charge of development.
Sure, concurrent player numbers are down. That’s partly due to the fact that so many players are fed up with all of the issues that seem to arise almost daily, but also due to things as basic as burnout and running out of things to do.
It happens to every MMO, to every game. New World isn’t anything special – it’s no exception to the rule.

Amazon have a long way to go before New World is capable of giving any of the large MMORPGs any type of long-term competition. But I have faith they can still turn this around. Maybe..