New World's Latest Update Has Players Seeing Red

"New World" players can't seem to catch a break. Things are currently looking really bad for the title, as cheating is rampant on top of the game frying GPUs right after launch. Now Amazon has increased the difficulty of its new MMO's end-game content — without telling players first (per Kotaku). The sneaky adjustment has players infuriated, prompting them to review bomb "New World" on Steam. Players have remained loyal to "New World" in the hopes that Amazon can turn the MMO around, but it just got a lot harder to keep face.

The difficulty change came as part of the new "Into The Void" update that promised a new weapon, new enemies, quality of life improvements, and bug fixes. While players would have likely been fine with new difficult enemies, it wasn't the new additions that made fans stumble; it was the foes players had already been fighting since reaching end-game. Unfortunately, "Into The Void" has not proved the update Amazon and fans hoped it would be. Instead of breathing some life into "New World," it's catalyzing an outburst of frustration that's been building since launch. Here's why this could be the last straw for "New World" players.

This latest controversy has tested high-level "New World" players. Not only were existing enemies made more challenging, but lingering issues with the title's loot system have combined with this change to make "rewards" feel highly unrewarding. Before, players took solace in the fact that they could quickly dispatch enemies in end-game areas, so even though loot drops were abysmal, a player's velocity allowed lots of chances at rewards. With the way things are now, much more effort needs to go into defeating these enemies, drastically slowing players down and decreasing opportunities for minimal rewards.

What's fanned the flames most was Amazon's lack of transparency before implementing the update. The company has since acknowledged frustrations in a blog post, saying, "Recently changes were made to the Elite POIs in the end game zones and it is clear to us that proper context wasn't delivered on why those changes were made." Amazon goes on to say the changes were made in the spirit of keeping end-game content challenging and that it's looking into issues around Elite chests and their drop rates.

While it's good to hear Amazon is actively investigating loot issues, the damage may already be done. After the "Into The Void" update, players flocked to Steam and have been flooding the title's page with negative reviews since. "New World" now maintains a "Mixed" rating for its recent reviews, from a previous "Mostly Positive." Time will tell whether "New World" can save itself, or become another Amazon flop.