The Day After

 

 My nonexistent heart is still aching from the New World Aeternum end of development announcement.  I logged in and played last night; trying to pretend nothing was different but that was a fools errand.  It is hard to take the game seriously with development stopping and I can't blame those players that take the opportunity to goof off.  Lots of thoughts came in and so I needed to get some things out of my head and onto digital paper.

 First; I need to take the time to lay some thanks down:

• Thank you New World development team for bringing this game to us.  Thank you for making the daring call to transition from survival sandbox to an MMORPG.  You brought the only western developed MMORPG of note in the last decade.
• Thank you to this game for bringing me together to my new core gamer friend group.  Indestructible, Dback23, and even Tep... we met on Aeternum shores and will keep on keeping on wherever we find ourselves.
• Thank you to the content creators; more than I can likely remember but I'll try here:
• Mecrow - the mad scientist himself
• Atlas Fishmo - I'll miss Fishmo corner in the original OPR map; I'll miss yelling FISHMOOOOOO as I ran past.
• DukeSloth - man that broke my heart to hear your Ahoy in the shutdown video
• KristoferESO - for all of the PvP builds 
• Nyce Gaming - thanks for the heavy tank love brother 
• ThaCousin - best dollar I ever spent; thanks for the laughs 
• Redbyrd and BDLG - the OG content creators for New World; thank you for shepherding the community from well before launch through the first couple of years 
• To the rest I didn't list; thanks for all the fish 
• And lastly; thank you to the haters.  I will keep pressing one button, flamethrower on, until the day I can't log into the game anymore to burn you down.  Much respect. 

<3 to LoadingUsername / Valhalla

 In other "the day after" news we got some updates from NW Kay as she is still employed at Amazon.  She indicated there are additional updates and bug fixes still in the hopper and we should get a fix patch soon.  She also alluded to some "shenanigans" that may happen in the future. This was good to hear as it gives a little more life to the game, at least for me anyways.

 For many others though; they are gone.  Peak concurrent players cratered last night.  Down from a peak close to 50k down to a 8k.  Heavily populated areas were far more barren.  Many players are just standing around to chat which makes previously bristling hubs eerily still even though there are players.  Queues for things like arenas and OPR are still popping but the wait was longer.  At least the queue to login is gone now :(

 I'm not sure what my plan is.  I really did try to play like nothing happened thinking I could ride out the immediate storm and settle in with the core playerbase that was going to ride into the final sunset with the game, but I'm not sure I can do it.  My history with dieing games is I get off the ride early.  The only difference here is the game was actually getting better... not worse.  Sigh. 

 I'll leave off today with a message shared by NW Kay:

 

I couldn't agree more NW Kay; New World is a great game, still is, and we did build something special.  Respectfully; fuck you Amazon.