New World Expansion Community Q&A Dives into Gear, Crafting, PTR Feedback, and Future Teases

mmorpg.com:

Rise of the Angry Earth is coming in just about two weeks, and the New World team is answering some more community questions ahead of the expansion’s release.

The first question is all about how you can buy the expansion. While you can wishlist the expansion before it's out, there will be no pre-orders and It will simply go on sale on October 3rd. Players got their first taste of the upcoming new content on the PTR, with some distinct instability on the first day. Answering another question, they found the cause of that issue, patched in the PTR, improving stability, and continued work, such that they’re generally certain it won’t follow into the expansion’s live release. Of course, the devs reiterated that things like this is why a PTR build exists.

One thing from the PTR we can expect to carry over: Influence Races to encourage gathering and sparking PvP. 

Gear also got an important mention, with the emphasis on improvements and overhauls that aim to make getting your hands on solid and adequate gear to be faster and less of a grindy process. This should, in turn, make it easier to test out different builds and to feel like you have a good shot at getting what you need in a reasonable amount of time so you can just have fun. 

However, crafting Best in Slot gear is going to require a lot more work, and yes, grind. Especially with the introduction of Artifacts. With the work they've put into gear, we should perhaps expect more on this in a future video installment of Balance of Power. 

With this expansion and beyond, Amazon Games has plans for PvP and expanded options in PvE, though  we’ll have to wait a while for that. “We have major plans to improve the PVE experience. We also have major plans to improve the PVP