Sunday 11/2/2025 Post: Packers lose to the Panthers

 The Green Bay Packers lost 16-13 to the Carolina Panthers. Once again, an early turnover for the Green Bay Packers became an insurmountable challenge for the team to overcome.

 Matt LaFleur coached teams, whether Aaron Rodgers or Jordan Love at QB, never seem to be able to adapt when the early game goes poorly. Sprinkle in some "f*ck it, chuck it" from Jordan Love, and this game was painful to watch as a Packers fan.

 The defense couldn’t get off the field, and the offense couldn’t execute. Then Matt LaFleur made the baffling decision to go for a TD on fourth down late in the game instead of kicking a field goal.

 This is the same Matt LaFleur who, a short few years ago, did the opposite in the NFC Championship Game—where he kicked a field goal instead of going for a TD. In the NFC Championship Game, it was the wrong call, so maybe that was in his brain here. But in this context against Carolina, a field goal made a ton of sense.

 Sure enough, after turning the ball over on downs with no points, the Panthers promptly gave it right back, with our defense finally figuring out how to stop Carolina. Then we marched right down and scored a TD.

 Had we kicked the field goal earlier, we’d have been up by three, but instead we settled for a tie ball game and gave the ball back to Carolina with 2:32 left in the game. A few plays later, time ticked away and Carolina kicked the game-winning field goal.

 Shocked Pikachu face. Damn, this team is dumb sometimes. Fire LaFleur or something, I guess. 

 

What Stage Are We At Today

 

 It’s been two days now since Amazon announced the end of development for New World: Aeternum, so let’s check in on where we are with our grief.

Denial
Anger
Bargaining ← we are here
Depression
Acceptance

 We speedran the denial stage. It didn’t take long to go from news of layoffs at Amazon to the announcement that New World’s development was ending. Maybe at first we could tell ourselves it wouldn’t be the entire dev team, but that was squashed quickly.

 Anger came swiftly to the shores of Aeternum. If we did a word diagram of the community feedback, the words “fuck” and “Amazon” would be big, bold, and centered.

 Now comes the bargaining phase, where each of us takes our grievances to our higher powers — for some, that is, sadly, Elon Musk. There’s a furious rumor that xAI is going to buy out Amazon Game Studios and New World. A plausible press release is making the rounds. There is some credence to this; xAI has well-known intentions of getting into gaming, and Elon has said he wanted a game out within the year. X is probably better than the game being dead, but I have some real-world grievances with Musk that I’d need to grapple with.

 So here we sit — hoping, and for some, praying — things will change and we’ll get our New World back. Tune back in tomorrow, where we stare over the edge of that slip into the depression stage.

Note: this post was edited with the help of AI (ChatGPT). The thoughts are my own.  The grammatical correctness and em dashes (—) are the AI.   Yes, I realize the irony here with mentioning xAI as a possible suitor.

 

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.
 

RIP New World Aeternum

A tent city memorial has been erected outside Windsward; remembering better times for the game

 As part of layoffs Amazon has made the decision to shutter the ongoing development of New World Aeternum and any future MMORPGs. New World is effectively dead as of the announcement yesterday.  The development studios in San Diego and Irvine were laid off.  I am devastated and this announcement is difficult to understand.

 New World was riding a high with their Season 10 Nighthaven update.  Vibes were positive and the update received widespread praise.  Players were returning and content creators were creating.  We were back baby!  

 Alas it was not meant to be and it's a hard pill to swallow with the promise that Season 10 brought.  It is such a good update with amazing concepts like Catacombs and a gearing system that was going to require for more investment than past systems.  The stage was set for a better future in the game.

 The rug pull by Amazon is as insensitive to the players as it was to the developers.  I can't imagine the crunch that likely went into getting Nighthaven ready to ship, seeing the response from the community, and then to walk into a layoff.  Then we go back to the signs that were staring us in the face the entire time and it feels worse.

• The announcement to move the Nighthaven release forward to earlier in October right before the layoff announcement
• Areas of the Nighthaven zone were unfinished; large empty spaces that in retrospect were likely cut to make the date vs being areas for future expansion
• The hesitation to add any new servers to accommodate the growing queue size

 From all accounts the end user developers didn't see this coming but looking at the items noted above it is clear some level of leadership knew which makes all of this feel even worse.  Some sort of sick swan song they maybe thought the community would be happy with to ride off into the sunset.  

My Halloween themed transmog

 The worst part of this is the game is still available but there will not be any bug fixes, balance changes, or feature updates to build on the amazing changes that Season 10 brought.  We are stuck with the entirely random gear acquisition system, gutted crafting, PvP balance questions due to the large number of changes, and now a rapidly declining playerbase. 

 While Amazon may keep the doors open to the servers through 2026 the game will not be the same.  Player count plummeted following the announcement (down to ~7,000 peak users from the ~49,000 peak on Steam alone).  Logging in the world is filled with memorials and tent cities in honor of what was.  Playing game modes like 3v3 arenas were full of folks goofing off or giving it one last go before logging off for the final time.  I don't blame anyone; it is hard to take an MMO seriously that has no plans to continue development.

One more run through Starstone Barrows; ironically helping a player that has never done it before

 

 For me personally it is the end of thousands of hours of investment. The magic of MMORPGs for me is that every thing I do is working towards a future.  That constant progression is what separates these games from everything else.  The promise of decades of an online existence is intoxicating.  Every piece of furniture in my houses tells a story.  Each old piece of gear in my storage reminds me of a past version of my build. The hundreds of thousands of in game gold I squirreled away for a rainy day is now meaningless.

 Meaningless is what hurts the most.  I've been around when other games have died like Star Wars Galaxies, but for the most part every other major MMO that I've put time and effort into are still running.  Ultima Online, World of Warcraft, Dark Ages of Camelot, Guild Wars 2, and more... all still plodding along in some form or another.  And while Star Wars Galaxies hurt to see go it was it's time as the developers had moved the game away from what made it special in the first place.  New World is different and will be different in the history of MMOs.

One more 3v3 arena with friends

 

 Thank you to the developers that brought me this game and gave us the only decent MMORPG in the past 10 years.  New World never asked for more than the box cost and was the "casual dad gamer" game of choice.  I loved every damn minute of this game.  I loved every freaking second I spent defending this game against the haters.

  Stop killing games.  Fuck you Amazon.   

Looking at my house in Windsward

So many memories tied to each item in my house.  Its a mess, but its my mess.

 

ARC Raiders Preload Is Available

 Here we go! ARC Raiders preloads are starting for the launch October 30th!

Sunday 10/26/2025 Post: Packers beat Aaron Rodgers

 Against the Steelers the Packers had a rough first half.  It was looking like the bad man himself, Aaron Rodgers, was about to bad man himself all over the team.  Then the second half rolled around and Love won.  I always love a good tale of two halves.  A meme to commemorate the occasion.