New World: What we’ve learned during our first year
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The following is a guest post from New World game director Scot Lane.
There is a saying that live games are owned by the development team until launch, and then at launch they become the players’ game. I couldn’t agree more. Over the past year, we’ve had great success and made some mistakes. We learned a lot and are excited to apply those learnings going forward.
Before we launched New World a year ago, we did extensive alpha and beta testing in a live environment with tens of thousands of players and drew heavily from data and their feedback to help shape the game. Those early days saw New World’s transition from a survival/crafting game into a full-fledged PvPvE MMO — an evolution that was guided in large part by what we heard from players.
Of course, running a game at scale is an entirely different beast, and when millions of players poured into New World at launch last fall, we learned a lot. That learning has continued during our first 12 months as a live game, as we’ve observed player behavior and listened to feedback. We’ve made many changes to New World during its first year, and while some of those are new content like expeditions and quests, many are quality of life changes that are directly based on what we’ve observed and what players have asked for along the way. Things like easier leveling, accessing inventory while running, removing orbs (keys), low-cost fast travel, increased run speed and many more have all come about based on player feedback.
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