Can we learn from New World?

Vulkunne · October 31

New World made some mistakes that ESO, even with its own issues, did not make.

New World is closing down because they put the companies in charge of everything and did not have the Guild mechanisms in place to unite and support the masses. Who cares if Company A takes over location B. Just to raise my taxes when shopping there? And if I want to join the fight against them and take back my home well guess what... the Company leading the War only has room for the people they like and approve of. No trade guilds, no in-house auctions, no real organization for PvE runs, no Group finder either I think. Many things that helped enable group content were just not there. A large portion of the New World player base were left with nothing to do and being excluded from many things. Even ESO has ways to get you into a Trial, but I remember that was just wishful thinking when I was playing New World.

I'm sorry New World is in the fix its in, but it starts with empowering people to be part of everything the game has to offer, instead of having us work to raise political points and then lock us out of the wars and things like that. You all worked hard on flipping Windsward, but only the cool elitist crowd can fight in the war. Go do a sloppy invasion instead and get out of the way you green menace!!! Again, I'm so sorry but while New World started out in the right direction the devs there made some harrible choices and it shows. No mounts huh? That will never come back to bite us. Nope no room in the budget for mounts. ESO had that wrong, I guess. ESO needs to keep moving forward and get ready for a better year. New World's wounds were self-inflicted, and my advice is ESO needs to learn from them by not following them into obscurity.

Necrotech_Master · October 31

Radiate77 wrote: »

@Necrotech_Master in New World there are specific requirements you must meet to queue for either Tank or Healer, you need a certain gem in your weapon for taunts, or you need 300 focus (healing stat) and a life staff.

Making these things translate into ESO is possible and would effectively eliminate fake role-queues in all content, including dungeons.

It’s just the desire to do so which is the barrier, and I don’t think “player nature” is part of that as the goal would be to bring in new players, ones who already want that kind of experience with their game. If this content became available I guarantee a lot of vets, like myself, would jump on board with it, and if you don’t believe me, look at current battlegrounds. Simply adding actual rewards has pulled in a whole new (unhappy*) generation of PvP interested players. Nothing has changed except you’re now not getting 3rd partied.

Also; you’re right… players have been suggesting the removal of Cyrodiil, and for the longest time I wasn’t one. After experiencing large scale PvP elsewhere I can definitively say that Cyrodiil is a failed experiment.

Have to say it, all of this Vengeance testing is pointless. People will not sacrifice their identity as a character to play a Temu version of PvP. I am of the mind that ZOS needs to cut the cancer out and build something new, even if it doesn’t work out, they need to keep trying new ideas with respect to the values players hold until something does work.

*Unhappy because it’s much more lopsided now.

i dont think anyone here wants to be force marked a tank for slotting a taunt skill

you can build a DPS spec with an ice staff, even though it turns one of the skills into a taunt for example
all of my toons slot heals, regardless of what spec they are, so would slotting a heal class them as a healer?
dps builds can use light or medium armor, depending if you want more of a mag or stam focus for easier sustain
you can still dps with a resto staff equipped if your only using class or guild skill lines
a lot of pvp players wear all heavy armor, even if they are healers because of the pvp mechanics

the build flexibility in this game does not allow "fixed" roles easily

i dont really have experience with vengeance since ive never participated in it (mostly because the queue times are atrocious), yes it doesnt allow as flexible builds, but having "fixed" gears and available skills actually does balance the playing field instead of having super undergeared people who dont know what they are doing trying to dip their toe into a ultra-meta community to try to experience pvp

i think the other point of vengeance is to help the devs narrow down exactly what is causing the performance issues, as something is clearly wrong with current cyrodiil

the 3 team format of cyro is fine, i dont really mind it as it does help break stalemates, or one group over dominating another

in 2 team formats, if one team is better than the other (skill, or sheer numbers) team A will always beat team B regardless of other circumstances unless team A is hyper optimized and B is not

in a 3 team format if team A is dominating team B, then team C could always take some of team Bs resources, which reduces pressure on team A (which does happen in cyro), sure sometimes team C just joins team B in beating down team A further, but when team A is basically gone, then team B and C will start fighting and team A will eventually come back

this works though only when populations are mostly even, if populations are not even, say 1 bar, 1 bar, and 3 bar, then it doesnt matter how many teams are in the picture because the population is so disproportionate

the only suggestion ive had for cyro over the years is they should learn from the game planetside 2 (FPS game using a 3 faction pvp format), and institute a type of "faction balance" queue, so that one faction doesnt get super lopsided on the population, this would overall make sure populations are more even, so that fights are more even

spartaxoxo · November 1

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

i dont think anyone here wants to be force marked a tank for slotting a taunt skill

That is not what is being suggested and not how it worked in New World. In New World, you could queue as a tank, DPS, or healer. If you queues as a tank you were required to slot some form of taunt or you didn't meet the requirements. The same was true of healers. You had to have a healing staff equipped and points into the healing stat.

DPS didn't have requirements afaik.

Radiate77 · November 1

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

i dont think anyone here wants to be force marked a tank for slotting a taunt skill

That is not what is being suggested and not how it worked in New World. In New World, you could queue as a tank, DPS, or healer. If you queues as a tank you were required to slot some form of taunt or you didn't meet the requirements. The same was true of healers. You had to have a healing staff equipped and points into the healing stat.

DPS didn't have requirements afaik.

Right! It was so perfect, and in the 30-40 dungeons I ran, there was not a fake role among them.

spartaxoxo · November 1

Radiate77 wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

i dont think anyone here wants to be force marked a tank for slotting a taunt skill

That is not what is being suggested and not how it worked in New World. In New World, you could queue as a tank, DPS, or healer. If you queues as a tank you were required to slot some form of taunt or you didn't meet the requirements. The same was true of healers. You had to have a healing staff equipped and points into the healing stat.

DPS didn't have requirements afaik.

Right! It was so perfect, and in the 30-40 dungeons I ran, there was not a fake role among them.

I wasn't in New World long. But despite it being apparently a dying a game, I never once had trouble getting my expeditions done even as a new player. They were done quickly and with not a single fake tank or healer. As a new player, I did notice healers quietly helping me with the damage because I wasn't very strong yet. But they didn't blame me because I was low level and still kept me alive. Also the dialogue for the quests around the expeditions was largely outside of it, so I didn't have to worry about missing anything but the occasional treasure chest.

It made the dungeon experience a heck of a lot of more fun than ESO's dungeon experience despite me being a new player being rushed through.

The only thing I missed about ESO's dungeon experience was the ability to enter solo with a companion. I didn't mind as much because the story wasn't inside. But, there were still little notes in stuff on the ground that I would have liked the ability to stop and read and putter around.

DenverRalphy · November 1

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

i dont think anyone here wants to be force marked a tank for slotting a taunt skill

That is not what is being suggested and not how it worked in New World. In New World, you could queue as a tank, DPS, or healer. If you queues as a tank you were required to slot some form of taunt or you didn't meet the requirements. The same was true of healers. You had to have a healing staff equipped and points into the healing stat.

DPS didn't have requirements afaik.

Right! It was so perfect, and in the 30-40 dungeons I ran, there was not a fake role among them.

I wasn't in New World long. But despite it being apparently a dying a game, I never once had trouble getting my expeditions done even as a new player. They were done quickly and with not a single fake tank or healer. As a new player, I did notice healers quietly helping me with the damage because I wasn't very strong yet. But they didn't blame me because I was low level and still kept me alive. Also the dialogue for the quests around the expeditions was largely outside of it, so I didn't have to worry about missing anything but the occasional treasure chest.

It made the dungeon experience a heck of a lot of more fun than ESO's dungeon experience despite me being a new player being rushed through.

The only thing I missed about ESO's dungeon experience was the ability to enter solo with a companion. I didn't mind as much because the story wasn't inside. But, there were still little notes in stuff on the ground that I would have liked the ability to stop and read and putter around.

I'm gonna miss those puzzles.

And they required group participation. Players couldn't just run ahead. Well they could. But they'd hit a road block.

zaria · November 1

Radiate77 wrote: »

Freelancer_ESO wrote: »

I would point out that it looks like New World failed at this point.

As such, I would recommend not being too eager to copy them until it is 100% clear why it failed as otherwise you may end up copying elements that helped lead to it's failure.

For example, recently ZOS changed the leaderboard setup for Competitive Battlegrounds to list up to 500 accounts. If you watch it after it resets which it seems to do now after each time the server is adjusted you'll notice it takes around a full day on PC NA to get 500 accounts to do at least one Competitive Battleground match.

As such, I would have a degree of skepticism regarding ESO's ability to field sufficient players for PvP battles in every zone or 50 vs 50 arenas.

New World failed because it was half of a game, ESO has been supporting PvE since launch, but gave the illusion that PvP had support with balance updates every quarter, which is why they’ve survived much longer. When those balance updates iced a few years ago, that illusion was shattered. To compensate, Battlegrounds were shuffled… simply shifting Battlegrounds around to 2 teams did nothing to address why 3 teams were failing.

And that’s where New World comes in… they left no illusion, PvE was not their focus. As soon as they began to implement PvE into their game in the form of new Raids and then Catacombs, the game saw a monumental tone shift and a huge, more steady population.

After 2-3 years of loss though, Amazon cut the cord on a high note so the IP has more value, in turn, increasing their own valuation.

All that said, I firmly believe the three parts of New World I referenced would make an incredible addition to the experience of ESO, and I’m eager to hear what other parts of the game people would love salvaged.

As I understand New World was designed as an always full pvp with full loot game. Then the player testing started they found that the hard core PvP player base is pretty small, way smaller than the customer base they wanted.
Well some marked research could tell you that, hard core pvp has an marked but it's much smaller than the hard core PvP players think and don't match so well with an MMO I think.

So they tried to add PvE in some months, who will not work, It was mostly daily quests as you can imagine.
I say most of the work in ESO is making the PVE as in quests and dungeons also trials who ESO did not have in the start.
As I understand leveling up was fun but like so many MMO it was not much real endgame outside dailies and PvP.

And New World was classic TES game buggy in an competitive MMO focused on PvP.
Multiple game breaking bugs, like duping and invulnerability exploits active at once at least on launch.
And main PvP tactic was mass reporting enemy players to ban them before an PvP fight.

https://youtu.be/F3ZMly9YAPA?t=744
I assume they solved most of the bugs, but the lack of PvE is not something you can solve easy.

Onomog · November 1

I think the real question is not what we can learn from NW, but what ZOS is taking away from NW's demise.

spartaxoxo · November 1

DenverRalphy wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

i dont think anyone here wants to be force marked a tank for slotting a taunt skill

That is not what is being suggested and not how it worked in New World. In New World, you could queue as a tank, DPS, or healer. If you queues as a tank you were required to slot some form of taunt or you didn't meet the requirements. The same was true of healers. You had to have a healing staff equipped and points into the healing stat.

DPS didn't have requirements afaik.

Right! It was so perfect, and in the 30-40 dungeons I ran, there was not a fake role among them.

I wasn't in New World long. But despite it being apparently a dying a game, I never once had trouble getting my expeditions done even as a new player. They were done quickly and with not a single fake tank or healer. As a new player, I did notice healers quietly helping me with the damage because I wasn't very strong yet. But they didn't blame me because I was low level and still kept me alive. Also the dialogue for the quests around the expeditions was largely outside of it, so I didn't have to worry about missing anything but the occasional treasure chest.

It made the dungeon experience a heck of a lot of more fun than ESO's dungeon experience despite me being a new player being rushed through.

The only thing I missed about ESO's dungeon experience was the ability to enter solo with a companion. I didn't mind as much because the story wasn't inside. But, there were still little notes in stuff on the ground that I would have liked the ability to stop and read and putter around.

I'm gonna miss those puzzles.

And they required group participation. Players couldn't just run ahead. Well they could. But they'd hit a road block.

Yup. They could only clear ahead so much. Although not being able to rez in place did mean I feel too far behind to get to see the bosses sometimes. So I actually think ESO's solution of letting players rez in place alongside join encounter in progress is superior at making sure everyone gets to see the bosses.

Mesite · November 1

Did people complain all the time about New World on their forums? There is a lot of negativity on ESO forums if management is looking for an excuse.

I'll try to be more positive.

rsciw · November 1

Radiate77 wrote: »

Tyralbin wrote: »

I like the idea of different instruments and songs to collect.

Imagine having a class similar to Alan Dean Fosters Spellsingers

For a good two days of those two weeks I had created a band and we would travel town to town and play songs together, and people would walk up to us and start dancing, asking to join our band or tipping us. It was unreal.

An updated music system like this would work so well within ESO and would help foster community by adding more healthy player interactions.

Star Wars Galaxies had something like that 20 years ago. Group leader chooses a song and the whole group played it with their instruments of choice. Often these musicians played in bars and other players came to watch, iirc also receiving buffs from that. On top of that you could tip the musicians money as well, so it was a form of income for those players.

It baffles me that 20 years later this game still does not have a group play function for music... Three players in a group, playing a song, all out of sync, no rhythm or anything, it's ridiculous.

StihlReign · November 1

We've given tons of compliments on the forums and beyond about ESO over the years.

merevie · November 1

There's an opportunity of a lifetime for ESO leads that's been handed to them on a platter. NW PvPrs are looking for another game and lots have links to the PvP community here. Dune PvPrs are also just chilling their jets atm. If Zos was able to pivot quickly and refocus, they could do VERY well off this. But they will need to create actual change that players want -pretty sure that is clear from the thousands of Streams, posts and feedback over 10 years from the community. And don't fool yourselves -NW PvPrs are very aware of the current issues here.

This game is unique in that ESO PvP has a stable community which is, while passionate, not toxic. There's a wide range of ages, gender balance, many play styles, it's easily accessed from Pve and it's pretty inclusive This is not true of other PvP offerings at the moment -

So while the Dev team has a new team lead, let's see if the opportunity can be seized and ESO will become the PvP game of choice 2026. Do want needs to be done in that office- you got given a hail Mary moment.

Necrotech_Master · November 1

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

i dont think anyone here wants to be force marked a tank for slotting a taunt skill

That is not what is being suggested and not how it worked in New World. In New World, you could queue as a tank, DPS, or healer. If you queues as a tank you were required to slot some form of taunt or you didn't meet the requirements. The same was true of healers. You had to have a healing staff equipped and points into the healing stat.

DPS didn't have requirements afaik.

i never played that game cause wasnt interested

im guessing they had no way to check or you just couldnt change gear after you entered or the content required ideal roles

the main reason we get fake roles in here, is because normal content is so easy, but it gives the same rewards as the vet queue

as an experienced player i can solo basically any dungeon on normal that doesnt have some kind of forced grouping mechanic

so it makes sense people fake role in here to get quick queues because theres 1) no incentive to do harder content which actually requires correct roles and 2) normal content is just that easy for experienced players

a better option would be to increase vet rewards commensurate with the difficulty, or just lower normal rewards also commensurate with the difficulty

another problem with disallowing fake roles is that if your in an organized 4 person group and people have to intentionally fake role in order to use the queue, forcing roles would prevent that and make it a hassle by basically telling people to just manually find and enter the dungeon instead of just queuing

there are groups that do non dlc dungeons on vet with no healer because most of those arent that difficult anymore, and with a group of 4 its just easier and faster to use the queue than manually port into the dungeon

so what your saying is just a different way of saying what i said, instead of it auto adjusting your role, it wont let you queue as that role if you dont meet requirements

in this game, not all healers need a resto staff, does it help sure, but you dont NEED a resto staff to be a healer, so requiring a healer to equip a resto staff is not the way to go

Gabriel_H · November 1

Mesite wrote: »

Did people complain all the time about New World on their forums? There is a lot of negativity on ESO forums if management is looking for an excuse.

I'll try to be more positive.

Yes, of coursed they did. It's what forums consist of on every MMO. Go to the WoW forums right now, the biggest MMO, and you'll see a litany of complaints that mirror these. People are much more likely to give a complaint than compliment. It's why posts like "everyone on the forums agree" are always nonsense - it represents a tiny fraction of the player base.

Here are 3 pages from the Steam NW forums, just before the shutdown announcement.

Looks familiar, right?!

spartaxoxo · November 1

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

im guessing they had no way to check or you just couldnt change gear after you entered or the content required ideal roles

Idk about that but most people aren't going to do such things with a requirement so I'm not convinced a check would be necessary. And the expeditions I did were definitely easy enough that the high level players didn't get very far. But I was new when it announced shut down so maybe things would have been different with the high level expeditions.

All I know is that the playerbase as a whole seemed to love expeditions. They didn't need to have excessive rewards for fast queue times.

DenverRalphy · November 1

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

im guessing they had no way to check or you just couldnt change gear after you entered or the content required ideal roles

Idk about that but most people aren't going to do such things with a requirement so I'm not convinced a check would be necessary. And the expeditions I did were definitely easy enough that the high level players didn't get very far. But I was new when it announced shut down so maybe things would have been different with the high level expeditions.

All I know is that the playerbase as a whole seemed to love expeditions. They didn't need to have excessive rewards for fast queue times.

And it has chat lobbies so you can discuss everybody's expectations before launching.

JimT722 · November 1

New World wasn't doing bad. it was actually really popping off. It was killed for ai luna games. Snoop dogg killed it.

spartaxoxo · November 1

JimT722 wrote: »

New World wasn't doing bad. it was actually really popping off. It was killed for ai luna games. Snoop dogg killed it.

That's not on Snoop. Snoop is just doing voice acting work.

JimT722 · November 1

spartaxoxo wrote: »

JimT722 wrote: »

New World wasn't doing bad. it was actually really popping off. It was killed for ai luna games. Snoop dogg killed it.

That's not on Snoop. Snoop is just doing voice acting work.

that's kinda a joke lol. i'm not saying he literally killed it. Amazon killed it so they can bring us more games like snoop dogg courtroom chaos.

Necrotech_Master · November 1

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

im guessing they had no way to check or you just couldnt change gear after you entered or the content required ideal roles

Idk about that but most people aren't going to do such things with a requirement so I'm not convinced a check would be necessary. And the expeditions I did were definitely easy enough that the high level players didn't get very far. But I was new when it announced shut down so maybe things would have been different with the high level expeditions.

All I know is that the playerbase as a whole seemed to love expeditions. They didn't need to have excessive rewards for fast queue times.

a large majority of the reason people run random normals here is purely BECAUSE of the rewards, a lot of high level players dont want to be running FG1 for the 10000th time unless their getting the big bonus xp for it, and because they can queue in quickly as any role and just dps the whole thing basically solo in less than 5 minutes, thats why the "fake role" problem is an issue here

random normal bonus is literally the carrot to get players to run the content, can almost guarantee if that was reduced or removed, dungeon queue times would probably increase a bit (due to less players queuing without the rewards), but also there would be less people doing fake roles

if it was just needing to get the dungeon quest done, most experienced players would probably just end up soloing the dungeon instead of queuing in

from my personal experience and opinion, i dont bother using the queue hardly at all unless im 1) queuing for specific dungeons because im trying to farm something faster or 2) in a premade group

i dont care about the random normal rewards (im almost cp3000, so the xp is meaningless, and most of the other rewards are not worth it), nor do i prefer playing with the people i see as trolls (fake roles/speedrunners), and if i needed to do the dungeon, most dungeons i can solo on normal anyways

Anumaril · November 1

Regarding your music suggestion, I really think ESO should take inspiration from the way Lord of the Rings Online handles it in their game. You have a few generic songs your character cycles through if you use the default instrument emotes, but you can also press numbers on your keyboard to play specific notes.

There are entire Guilds in the game dedicated to going around doing concerts, playing together live, each with a different instrument.

Even individual players can get in on the action by uploading a single txt file (kind of like sheet music) into their addon folder, allowing them to automatically play specific notes.

Elvenheart · November 1

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Mesite wrote: »

Did people complain all the time about New World on their forums? There is a lot of negativity on ESO forums if management is looking for an excuse.

I'll try to be more positive.

Yes, of coursed they did. It's what forums consist of on every MMO. Go to the WoW forums right now, the biggest MMO, and you'll see a litany of complaints that mirror these. People are much more likely to give a complaint than compliment. It's why posts like "everyone on the forums agree" are always nonsense - it represents a tiny fraction of the player base.

Here are 3 pages from the Steam NW forums, just before the shutdown announcement.

Looks familiar, right?!

Thanks so much for showing this! It’s something I always know in the back of my mind, but since I only go to the ESO forums now since it’s the only game I really care about I sometimes forget. Some of those forum topics are definitely universal. All the complaints and negativity I read on the ESO forums sometimes start to get me down and I consider stop looking at the forumsso it’s a good reminder.

Gabriel_H · November 1

Elvenheart wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Mesite wrote: »

Did people complain all the time about New World on their forums? There is a lot of negativity on ESO forums if management is looking for an excuse.

I'll try to be more positive.

Yes, of coursed they did. It's what forums consist of on every MMO. Go to the WoW forums right now, the biggest MMO, and you'll see a litany of complaints that mirror these. People are much more likely to give a complaint than compliment. It's why posts like "everyone on the forums agree" are always nonsense - it represents a tiny fraction of the player base.

Here are 3 pages from the Steam NW forums, just before the shutdown announcement.

Looks familiar, right?!

Thanks so much for showing this! It’s something I always know in the back of my mind, but since I only go to the ESO forums now since it’s the only game I really care about I sometimes forget. Some of those forum topics are definitely universal. All the complaints and negativity I read on the ESO forums sometimes start to get me down and I consider stop looking at the forumsso it’s a good reminder.

I have issues with the game, I have my opinions on how things could be made better, and I visit the forums to stay abreast of what is happening, as well as to offer advice and help; but I always take what is here with a pinch of salt.

That's not to say there aren't a lot of legitimate complaints, and of late ZOS do seem to be one step forward, two steps back. It's very easy to fall into a negative spiral, and find even the slightest problem a massive issue. If you are playing the game and enjoying it that's what really matters at the end of the day.

twisttop138 · 12:50AM

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Elvenheart wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Mesite wrote: »

Did people complain all the time about New World on their forums? There is a lot of negativity on ESO forums if management is looking for an excuse.

I'll try to be more positive.

Yes, of coursed they did. It's what forums consist of on every MMO. Go to the WoW forums right now, the biggest MMO, and you'll see a litany of complaints that mirror these. People are much more likely to give a complaint than compliment. It's why posts like "everyone on the forums agree" are always nonsense - it represents a tiny fraction of the player base.

Here are 3 pages from the Steam NW forums, just before the shutdown announcement.

Looks familiar, right?!

Thanks so much for showing this! It’s something I always know in the back of my mind, but since I only go to the ESO forums now since it’s the only game I really care about I sometimes forget. Some of those forum topics are definitely universal. All the complaints and negativity I read on the ESO forums sometimes start to get me down and I consider stop looking at the forumsso it’s a good reminder.

I have issues with the game, I have my opinions on how things could be made better, and I visit the forums to stay abreast of what is happening, as well as to offer advice and help; but I always take what is here with a pinch of salt.

That's not to say there aren't a lot of legitimate complaints, and of late ZOS do seem to be one step forward, two steps back. It's very easy to fall into a negative spiral, and find even the slightest problem a massive issue. If you are playing the game and enjoying it that's what really matt iters at the end of the day.

That's a wise statement. The mess from the wall event really has gotten me into an angry spiral. I will say though that it doesn't make my love for the game any less. That's the benefit of strong guild connections I think. I've been playing since console launch, with breaks, and my wife and I would never think of leaving. But they have a large amount of problems they need to improve. We need to see communication around that.

Nemesis7884 · 3:36AM

Gabriel_H wrote: »

The lesson to take away from NW is that if you don't have consistent player numbers, and they only spike on content drops, you won't have much support from upper management.

While the points you make are reasonable, the content in NW was not holding the players interest.

If you want consistent nr you need and/or consistent content releases and persistent new game systems that are engaging...

Worst thing to do are temporary events that drain and demotivate players...

Rungar · 9:15AM

Same old same old, if your ideas and implementation suck, it doesnt matter how much money you have to throw at it. You will still fail.

licenturion · 9:54AM

I played New World since release on and off when there was a new content release.

Contrary to most people in this tread, every time I played New World at some point during every play session the thought 'I wish they did this like ESO does' went through my mind. Almost all my big annoyance with New World were solved problems in ESO.

The one thing I liked in NW is that the main quest (including free and paid expansions) was 1 clear long signposted journey. This felt really like one big adventure. Combined with no loading screens this felt fun and much more immersive than ESO. I also like the weapon skill trees more than the way ESO unlocks skills all at once. New World felt a lot more like an actual RPG game while ESO has devolved into a big 'anything goes' sandbox game overtime.

New World failed because they were unable to produce PvE content at a reasonable rate. I usually dropped the game after I did the new zone content and so did many others. When they released PvE content like the 3 expansions, I always ended up in player queues of 4000+ because a lot of games lives or die by their PvE audience that spends money for cool content. If ESO should learn something, it is that their new terrible drip feed year pass model is not the way to go and will put a lot of PvE players off. I hope they course correct next year because Solstice + wall event + dungeons all have been been a cash grab with lazy reused assets everywhere, a dolmen 2.0 event and subclassing system which is basically unlocking old content for a character. If there is nothing substantial released next year, more and more people will lose interest and hop to other games.