Can you elaborate on what about it you love? I've been trawling through peoples early impressions, which as you can imagine is a mixed bag but each time I find someone who says that its really good they dont then say why, they just say "its excellent" etc and never give any explanation on why. Makes it kind of hard to make an informed decision on the game.
Sure. So will start with the obvious. For me I love the look of the game, graphically it's one of the best mmo's there is, maybe the best, the style is fantastic, the UI gorgeous, fits perfectly into the New World tag, it all looks very new frontier'ish. Anyone saying it looks rubbish are comparing it obviously to games like RDR2, Gears Of War, Destiny 2 etc which is simply dumb, probably just salty kids that have never played an MMO with tens of thousands of other people on the same server. Also, the performance is great, I get around 120fps maxed out on my rig in sig. It's well optimised even on a USEAST server with a ping of 90 - 100ms, there's zero lagging or rubber banding, to get that on another continent server is something you don't see often. (I'm there as the queues on EU servers were crazy yesterday, there are very small queues on the USEAST servers and I'm playing with my Twitch followers and friends).
So levelling skills is what these games are about right. There are skill wheels for pretty much everything you do. Whether that be on a tanning rack, smelter, carpenter bench, forgery, stonemason, jewel crafting, weapon crafting, armour crafting, food station, potion station etc etc. The levelling and grinding is clearly there, there's a lot to progress to, there's a a real sense of progression through the grind which I like. Then you've got harvesting, skinning, hunting skills, basic gathering. Everything pretty much goes to your progress.
Combat IS NOT CLUNKY, not at all. I've no idea where that comes from. There are no crazy hotbars with dozens of skills to manage on timers, there's no lock on combat, its all totally free flowing. You can carry and use any weapons, you are not locked into certain weapons or skills determined by your class, same for wearing armour. Oh yeah, and AUTORUN keybind haha, I joke but damn more games need this.
I also love the extra levels of immersion, small details in the game make me smile. Mine a rock or an iron ore node in a canyon and you'll hear the echo of the hit through the mountains. If someone is doing the same a little further you'll get that audio echo but will give you a great clue as to where or how far away they are. Same for cutting down trees, you'll hear tree creaking and falling in the distance, audio isn't just instanced to you in other words. Bigger rocks, bigger nodes will take longer to mine, sawdust and bark chippings are added to the overall effect of cutting down trees. Fishing is a nice mini game, not just a simple case of lobbing your line out and catching a fish after a few seconds, you will have to control the line and how you deal with certain size fish. In essance it just feels like a little more thought has been put into the smaller details, but they all add up.
Also, love the way how settlements and areas you are questing in are tied to factions, I think that's where the PVP will come into it. You kinda level up the regions you're questing in, you can purchase houses in those towns, store goodies all that standard stuff. Notice boards will give you a variety of quests for providing for the settlements you are based at. Once you get to certain levels you can add points to lower tax rates, higher XP gains etc all again done as a progressing type level where the more points you put into a settlement the lower the tax rate will be for selling buying etc, or the higher XP you gain for doing everything in that area.
However, the story is a bit average so far, the quests yes they are basic MMO type quests as you see in every MMO nothing really exciting or ground breaking there but how many other ways can you do it?? No different from one shooter to the next all doing the same conquest style or deathmatch maps with levelling guns, this is just the MMO tried and tested ways.
Overall at the minute it's a bunch of fun. There's no thought from me of any refunding come full release. All I want to do is play this game, I wouldn't say I'm addicted, far from it. But you know that feeling you get when you just want to play for an hour more because you're close to unlocking something. Or wanting to turn the PC on ASAP because you're thinking of an unlock?? that's where I am with it. It's a really fun game so far.
Obviously I'm no reviewer, just my own opinions on it right now. I like you can also play the BETA up till launch as much as you like and still be able to refund the game at full release (Aug 31st). As long as you don't play for more than 2 hours after full release, you'll be golden for a refund if you don't like. One mans meat is another mans poison and all that.
