New World: Aeternum isn't even the Amazon MMO's most dramatic update, let alone a new game, but it does make it better—slightly

New World: Aeternum—Amazon's rebranded MMO—is out now, welcoming a host of new players from the realm of consoles to the shores of this heavily-forested fantasy land. These new players are getting to see New World in the best light, after three years of tweaks and improvements, but what about returning players? Well, it's a bit better now, but the Aeternum update doesn't even feel like New World's most dramatic shake up.

This is, despite the questionable marketing, a patch. A pretty big patch, to be clear, but not the "spiritual successor" or separate game that Amazon initially pitched it as. It feels like the kind of update that might accompany an expansion, but without an expansion's main hooks—there aren't any new weapons, meaningful mechanics or zones.

Fresh off the boat

Since the character I created at launch is now sequestered in a legacy server, I rolled a new one on a standard world, immediately bumping into one of the update's new twists: there are classes now, called archetypes, but this doesn't mean that New World has tossed out its old system. Instead, these archetypes start you off with two weapons that synergise well, along with some gear that you'll almost immediately start swapping for new stuff. Since gear still determines your abilities, and you're free to upgrade any of your attributes, you still have the same level of freedom as before.

The most important consideration are the tradeskill bonuses: each archetype has three bonuses, bumping up specific crafting and gathering abilities, which makes it easier to pick an early specialty. That said, it doesn't take long to get other tradeskills up to those levels, so this early decision won't come back to bite you on the arse.

Archetypes should be a boon for new players, though: classless systems can be great, but it can make the early game a bit messy as you try to find the right weapon combo. Archetypes give you a wee bit of helpful structure when you're first setting out. But there are benefits for returning players, too. At launch, I really wanted to muck around with rapiers and muskets, but I didn't get my first musket until hours into the game; this time I started with the combo right away.

With a quick combat tutorial out of the way, I soon found myself up to my neck in water and, miraculously, had to swim to shore. Despite the island of Aeternum having plenty of bodies of water, swimming wasn't on the cards originally. When you walked into the water, you just kept walking, even once you were completely submerged. It was bizarre. Now you can cross lakes without fear of drowning. Not a major change, but certainly a welcome one.

That really typifies the levelling experience. New World is better now, but not substantially so—unless you bounced off the game early. In my New World review, I bemoaned the atrocious PvE experience, which I had to force myself to play through when really I just wanted to murder my fellow players in rival factions. Outside of the engaging gathering and crafting loop, it was a miserable journey with an incoherent storyline, a ridiculous amount of backtracking, and a combat system that couldn't really maintain my interest for the whole slog.

Most of this has changed, but that's not down to the Aeternum update. Last year's Rise of the Angry Earth expansion not only added a bunch of new stuff—including mounts and a new weapon—it also started overhauling the base game's quests, introducing a new critical path, new characters and better dialogue. It was an improvement across the board. This made the story easy to follow, the new beats were significantly more compelling, and you no longer had to keep running between the same locations to pick up the drip-fed quests. That overhaul finally concluded earlier this year.

Movie magic 

Aeternum's main contribution is making the quests more cinematic. Conversations with NPCs are now presented more like you'd find in a singleplayer RPG, with the little dialogue boxes tossed out in favour of genuine dialogue scenes. The quality of these scenes, writing and voice overs sometimes leaves a bit to be desired—check out this lunatic below—but I've actually found myself making time for these chats and stories now, instead of rapidly clicking through them so I can get back to harassing boars.

Despite the most important work being done before Aeternum, the cinematic overhaul is still impactful. It's the last piece of the puzzle, bringing it all together. Cutscenes, cinematic dialogue, fully-voiced NPCs—they all contribute to making New World's quests more than just loot vending machines or a way to bump your stats. Back in 2021, dragging myself through the story made me utterly miserable—it made me hate myself and the game—but now I'm actually enjoying myself.

The levelling experience is also meant to be more solo friendly now, too, according to Amazon, but this change is less obvious. New World was never a hardcore MMO that demanded a group outside of expeditions—its name for dungeons—so there hasn't been much to change. The only difference I've noticed is that dungeon-delving is now optional, rather than something you need to do at specific junctures in the story. It's a weird choice for an MMO. Waiting for a group to complete a mandatory dungeon is no fun, of course, but I much prefer WoW and FF14's alternative: NPC followers who will help you out in lieu of a human party.

It's a minor quibble, though, and if it makes things easier for people who don't want to engage with other humans but still, for some reason I can't explain, want to spend 60 bucks on an MMO, then that's probably a good thing. Crucially, for players who like expeditions, nothing has changed.

For the most part, the update is a welcome one, but I'm not really seeing anything that justifies the rebranding. Rise of the Angry Earth did a lot more to change New World, while Aeternum largely just adds an extra veneer of polish until you get further in—where you can start getting stuck into the new free-for-all PvP zone or grab nine pals for the new 10-player raid. The latter isn't even that notable of an addition—there were already raids, they just required more players.

It's not all improvements, though. One thing I really loved about New World was the player-run economy—specifically, the way it was localised. Each settlement had a bespoke trading post, and items players put up for sale there were specific to that post. If you wanted a certain, rarer resource, you'd usually have to hoof it to a settlement closer to the source of said resource. But as a trader, you could also put it up for sale in a more distant settlement, hoping that folk would be willing to pay more for the convenience of avoiding travel.

This extra layer of complexity made the system feel more like the historical economies it aped, as well as giving each settlement a stronger sense of identity. In 2022, that system was scrapped, and now every trading post is the same. So this isn't the fault of Aeternum, but it does mean that it's missing something that the launch version of the game had, which I liked a great deal.

Aeternum also includes a DX12 preview, and oh boy is it bad. While it may improve performance for some players—it's not had a noticeable impact for me—that comes with a cost: it looks like shit. New World has never had a dedicated anti-aliasing setting, but using the very high quality preset applies it. At least in the DX11 version. If you use the DX12 preview, though, you'll be looking at a lot of jagged edges. The only solution is turning on FSR, but this is FSR 1.0, which is an atrocious upscaling option. Even when using the quality setting, it completely destroys textures, leaving them hideously pixelated.

The long game

While the new player experience and the journey from 1-65 has been gussied up, the question still remains about whether or not the endgame will keep people around. It's here where New World becomes a lot more focused on PvP and the faction rivalry, but it doesn't look like there's much included in this update in that regard—unless you're up for some free-for-all action.

That's all going to happen down in the revamped Cutlass Coast zone, which is now a 60-65+ area, with new quests and enemies, while a new section has been added for players to beat each other up in unfettered combat. I'm not convinced that it plays to New World's strength, though, which is in the tug of war between factions—the wars for control over settlements and the big sieges. That said, a bit of diversity isn't a bad thing, and extra endgame diversions should keep things from getting stale as quickly as they used to.

On the PvE side of things there's the aforementioned 10-player raid, as well as endgame soul trials—essentially repeatable boss fights plucked from the main quest and made trickier. While the soul trials are effectively recycled fights, this is a necessity for any MMO: some challenges are worth repeating and reframing, and making the most out of existing activities is the mark of a good MMO developer.

I'm not sure it's quite going to be enough for New World veterans who were already bored of the endgame, but taking into account all the existing stuff—the raids, mutated expeditions, PvP modes and 65+ zones—there should be more than enough to keep new players busy for a while after they reach max level. And there seems to be a lot of them: the servers are nice and busy.

While PC concurrents are still quite a bit below what they were during the launch of the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion, they've been bolstered by console players, and Amazon has smartly allowed both groups to play together. The game hasn't felt this lively in a long time—which, granted, can be a double edge sword, with chat now filled with petty bickering and weird platform rivalries.

The way Amazon marketed Aeternum as an action-RPG, however, does make me wonder how many of these players will actually stick around once they finish the story, and if the MMO will end up being in the same state it was last week in a few months time. If you're more of a PvPer—with your fewer options—you might be more inclined to stay for the long haul, even though Aeternum doesn't meaningfully change much here. For PvE players, though, I'm not sure if the improvements will translate into more permanent residents when the competition—particularly World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14 and Guild Wars 2—offers so many more elaborate diversions, deeper build potential, arguably better combat and more tantalising settings.