Recent reviews by Ziggybee

The best W40K RPG to date. Gimdark at its finest with a strong narrative direction and an expansive game system that goes beyond the simple tactical RPG and expose to the player all the complexity of the 40K universe.

I was initially worried about bugs but the game has been really fine for me until now. Maybe is the setting, maybe is the variety of builds and the complexity of the system but I'm finding myself going to Rogue Trader more than Baldur's Gate 3.

The idea to keep the most complex scenes in a well written literary form is a win for me, since 3D puppets talking to each other with generic animations couldn't convey the right dark and horror vibes of some choices and narrative pivotal sequences.

A strong praise to the lettering and readability of dialogues. The choice of fonts and formats to convey dialogs and extended ethical events is masterful and really enhance the masterful writing skills of the authors.

The game is still in a very early stage start. The most pressing concerns are related to repetitive and cut & pasted contents (even certain cities has been replicated with minor variations), lack on variety in environments and enemies, poorly designed quests (maybe fully procedural ones could have been a better choice, instead of three types repeated over and over?) and unbalanced PVP.

The latter is the most worrying: New World is a PVP game. The problem is there's no scaling and the few pvp activities are mostly related to 50+ content, compelling players to grind quests for factions, with PVP disabled (because is slower but easier). Griefers abound and a high level PVP character in a low level zone can literally get the influence on the region at a stand-off. PVP is also poorly designed in terms of factions: most of the servers simply stalls with two equally-powered factions or a single faction owning it all. It is not helping that factions are chosen early in the game and the only information most players have are the colors of the regions, and who will chose a losing faction? I really hope they will came up with something to put balance in the game, like bonus for the lower performing faction or periodical resets.

In the end the game could be promising but the grind required to have the real fun is a chore, crafting is interesting until you realize most of the high level stuff is low level materials with a couple of extremely rare components, and that once you reach cap you have only two activities to rely on to keep the community growing. The lack of direction for the player-drive economy is baffling: since materials are tiered only until a certain point, prices are mostly related to territorial/faction exploitation than real economy.

Another matter to be fixed is server side and pupulation. After the intial boom, servers are depopulating as fast as possible, 2000 players per server are too few to keep the stuff going and even on still mostly full server low-level areas are starting being abandoned for the required quests and expeditions, since most of the population is focused on reaching cap as soon as possible to be able to experience PVP.

The game has potential and no subscription model, so I'll keep going at my pace. At the moment I won't recommend anyone to sink time to grind to top tier content, since there's not enough to experience and the basic balance features are not there in any form.

Deep strategy game in the 40K Universe. Can you ask for more?

A perfect mix of accessible and layered gaming content. You can play it as a casual player or a dedicated hardcore player and the game always has something for you.

What is really surprising is that everything you want to do can be done without downtime or needless complications. The community is fun, caring and lacks the spite and fracture within hardcore and normal players. The game system helps a lot because there are countless circumstances in which older players are encouraged to help and play with newer ones.

It's fun, and despite my decade-long experience with MMOs, still manages to have a grip on me after years.

Just a quick update after Stormblood / Shadowbringers. The game changed a lot (and for the better). The Main Story Quest is now mosty narrative content that can be experienced without being absorbed in the main MMOG mechanics. I liked a lot the choice to move all the repetive and ordinary questing OUTSIDE the main story and keeping only the most relevant combats and events inside the main story arcs. The latest episodes also removes generic questing in favour of set-pieces and scripted combat / adventuring events to give more depth to the storytelling. Very nice choice.

The questing / crafting / doungeneering / raiding remains accessible and nuanced, with countless of choices fitting any game style. With hundreds of choices, there's such variety that rarely you need something else to progress. Basic Raids are pretty casual and can be undertaken without so much attention to gear progression. Hard, Extreme and Savage instances are for more hardcore players. There's also a New Game+ option to re-experience the main story with additional challenges.

A note on leveling: while for your first characters questing is a viable choice to understand the game and the lore, it is not strictly required to finish every quest you run around. Since the game tries to steer clear of the most boring MMO mechanics, the mandatory quests are the meteor ones (Main Story Quest) and the Plus one (these unlocks new mechanics / content). Everything else is optional.

You can alternate questing with FATEs (world events), dungeon roulettes, deep dungeon (a quite nice roguelike between the game) or trials for faster rewards and progression. Since level 40s faction quests are a bit more consistent in rewards (albeit a bit repetitive) and unlocks special items.

But if you prefer to kill just 10 rats after 10 rats, you can do it, since most of the exposition and storytelling even for the most ordinary quest is a lot better than the average MMOG out there.

My suggestion is to get outside the box on the classical MMOG mindset to click on everything has an exclamation point and grinding everything in sight and focusing on the classes and story progression / unlocks (quests are more rewarding), intermixing occasional questing with other (and more rewarding) multiplayer experiences such as instance running via the duty finder. Keep in mind that you have 28 jobs, 17 of them quest/combat oriented ones, so you'll eventually clear everything as soon as you'll try other classes and roles.

FFXIV is often hailed as one of the most focused and dedicated game on the evolution of the genre: the removal of time-sinks, the integration of rich single-player experience, an ever-changing world that evolve for real. Yet it has a minor setback: during the MSQ you will travel a LOT. Lots of transitions, most of them frankly avoidable with automated scripting. They are pretty nice in post-expansion episodes, since they are used to show you around and take notice of new content but if you have lots of contest to catch up, the required warping in and out of regions could be a bit frustrating.

Stil, it is a good sign when the only shortcoming you can fin in a MMO is that will require you to travel a lot during hundreds of hours of dedicated narrative content to make the experience epic and memorable (and it is, belive me).