Day: September 30, 2021

I've spent so much time in New World since it launched on Tuesday that I can't close my eyes without seeing a parade of musketeer hats, wolves and trees. I'll be entrenched in Amazon's MMO for a while yet, but I'm ready to take a quick break from my job as a stylish, wolf-hunting lumberjack to return to my other calling, writing too many words about videogames. It's review-in-progress time!

There's nothing quite like a big MMO launch. The scale alone is absurd. Hundreds of thousands of people suddenly popping into existence inside countless parallel worlds, which keep growing in number to accommodate yet more people, all questing and hunting and arguing 24-hours a day. And since it's been a while since we had one, this launch is all wrapped up in an extra level of anticipation.

Full house

With everyone exploring the world for the first time together, it's the most an MMO ever gets to feel like a proper adventure, and all this potential and anticipation creates a buzz of excitement that echoes through the starting zones, the hubs and the crowds waiting around for bosses to spawn. Even the dullest stuff becomes slightly more palatable because the bustle of a fresh MMO is weirdly energising. 

If you can get through the queues you'll find New World heaving with life. I've been playing some older MMOs lately, and it's a real trip to go from ghost towns to watching hordes of players charging out of towns or groups trying to figure out a queuing system so everyone can eventually skin a unique creature. This liveliness is evident even when you think you're alone. Thousands of players mining, chopping down trees and shooting helpless woodland critters creates a constant cacophony that cuts through everything.

Very little of what I've encountered so far requires a group, and you can solo nearly everything up until you start getting access to dungeons at level 25. Other players can still be a boon, however, helping you out of a jam and getting experience for it even if they aren't in your group. There's a lot of competition for resources, too, which adds a dose of excitement to the humdrum tasks of gathering and hunting, but can also lead to frustration when you kill an animal and watch helplessly as another player skins it and scarpers. It's a real pain in the arse.

I've mostly been busying myself with the task of finding larger and fancier headgear for 20-odd levels, but other players have bigger ideas, and it looks like I'll be embroiled in a war by the end of the week. New World has three factions vying for control over the island, you see, and on my server the churchy Covenant quickly became the dominant outfit. I'm in the Syndicate, which is cool and purple and maybe does crimes. We don't get along with the Covenant, and it doesn't look like we're going to end things diplomatically.

PvP is entirely optional, but those seeking brawls will find themselves well supported. You can ignore it entirely, or turn it on while in a sanctuary and then head out into the world to start crushing some skulls. It's open, but centred around forts, which can be besieged and taken by opposing factions. There are PvP quests, too, which players have to perform on behalf of their faction to build up to a war declaration. 

Two tribes

I've not fought many players yet, but even now the faction rivalry is a big presence. Every town can be controlled by a guild, known as companies in New World, which benefits both the players in said company and the faction the company is part of. You're constantly reminded whose territory you're in, and boy does that do a good job of fostering resentment. 

My server's chat is now full of inter-faction smack-talk and would-be generals trying to marshal the troops. Two zones were claimed for the Syndicate yesterday. Things were looking up. We got bold. We started squaring up to the Covenant. We fought a few big battles, and we did not come out of it with our dignity. I say we, but during most of this I was hunting boar. I watched some of it from a safe distance. Anyway, now we're in trouble. The Covenant has declared war on one of our zones, and shit is kicking off on Friday.

I'm excited! I've already signed up for it. It's a very polite way to conduct a war, giving everyone time to get ready and invite their mates. I will be there as a reporter, naturally, but also as someone who has developed a strong desire to stab some Covenant goons.

We're in the honeymoon period where everything is new and ahead of us are all sorts of possibilities. I've got to fight a war, buy a house, carve furniture for that house with my own two hands—there's a lot to look forward to. I'm going to build such a great table. What I'm up to in the present is running my arse off doing the most basic, bottom-of-the-barrel MMO quests.

New World's quests are a slog that have so far maintained a consistent level of trite tedium. I wish they were terrible in a more interesting way, but sadly they're just vacuous tasks that fill up time. There's almost no difference between the generic, repeatable quests, regular quests and important story quests, aside from some brief bits of dialogue, and so far all I've done is kill things, skin things and pick things up. A common refrain is that all MMOs suffer from rubbish quests, but that hasn't been true for a long time.

In World of Warcraft you can become a quest giver or demolish entire armies while riding a dragon; Guild Wars 2 is full of dynamic public events, sprawling jumping puzzles and races; and Star Wars: The Old Republic litters its quests with ethical dilemmas and character-building opportunities. Loads of MMOs have found ways to give their quests texture and alleviate some of the repetitiveness that is inherent in any game this size. New World has not.

Perfect match 

Fighting, at least, I'm coming around to. The fact that it's action-based rather than hotbar-obsessed makes me very happy, but I had a lot of trouble getting into it during the betas. It felt stiff and imprecise, and I just couldn't get its rhythm. It feels identical now, but there's one difference: I've swapped my musket for a staff, and now I'm playing with magic. Switching between my speedy rapier and a stick that can summon a meteor storm has really spiced up my scraps, and now that I've got quite a few abilities to choose from I've been able to find my flow.

I'm a big fan of tying abilities to weapons, too. New World doesn't have classes or restrictions on gear. You can deck yourself out in heavy armour and magical weapons and become a tanky battlemage, or make a ranger out of leather armour, a bow and a spear. Armour class determines its weight, and thus the impact on your stamina and how much defence it offers, so you probably don't want to drape your nimble archer in metal, but you can if you want.

Your weapon skills level up as you get kills, and at a pace that encourages experimentation with different loadouts. After a couple of hours with my new staff I'd earned plenty of experience and was able to unlock three abilities and some passives, so changing my weapon choice didn't put me at much of a disadvantage. It's like a buffet—I'm trying hammers next. 

New World is very good at tickling the part of the brain that gets giddy at the thought of numbers increasing and meters filling up. You'll constantly be earning experience, weapon experience, tradeskill experience, faction reputation, faction currency, territory influence and, of course, a mountain of resources. God, the amount of ore you will carry. Harvesting nodes are typically generous, and a quick loop around an abundant area will fill your inventory and get you ready for a bunch of crafting projects.

Importantly, these big numbers aren't illusory. You won't hit up a crafting station and find steep crafting requirements that negate the size of your haul. The same goes for all that experience. Making the bars go up usually gives you a new ability or a meaningful boost. And this does more than make levelling empowering. When you level up your influence in a territory, you get to pick permanent buffs that increase your experience gain in the area, give you more storage space or speed up gathering. All this stuff is incredibly handy, but its smartest trick is the way it nurtures loyalty towards specific locations.

Loyalty card 

I'm a Windward lad. That's where I arrived when my ship sank—there are a few different starting locations, which you're dumped in randomly—and it's where I've done most of my questing and hunting since. I know all the NPCs—even if I don't really like any of them—and I can tell you where all the best gathering spots are. Thanks to my influence level, I'm the best version of myself when I'm in Windward. My loyalty has paid off. This is also why I'm enraged by the fact that it's controlled by the Covenant. It'll be flying purple colours one day. 

Though I've grown fond of Windward, I can't say the same of Aeternum as a whole. Aside from the colonial aesthetic, there's little sense of place, or anything that suggests it has an identity beyond being an MMO. So far the main quest has mostly sent me running around a bunch of ruins. There's a curse of immortality, a bunch of magical “ancients” who are important probably, and just a whole lot of generic fantasy rubbish, which is utterly incongruous with the rest of the otherwise very grounded game.

It's trying to have its cake and eat it too, but it's making a terrible mess of it. One minute, you're a pioneer hunting for deer, searching for ore and helping your settlement flourish; then you go back to the main quest where you're a prophesied hero who has to stop the Corrupted—yes, the Corrupted—from taking over Aeternum. Look, I'm a lumberjack, I ain't got time to go looking for old gods and magical seeds and arcane artefacts. 

Given the amount of exasperated comments I've made in our virtual office, I thought this review-in-progress was mostly going to be a big moan. I've been frustrated by the grind of fighting an endless array of animals and zombies, and I've spent a lot of time being pretty bored, running through nothing but forests and wishing horses had been invented. But what stands out just as much, now that I've taken a much-needed break, are the faction rivalries, the friendly crafting system and my anticipation about getting stuck into my first war. 

I'm ambivalent, then, and still waiting for it to show me something new, or something it excels at, but I'm genuinely looking forward to heading back in and seeing where New World goes from here. First, though, I've got a queue to get through. 

Microsoft is making every effort to dissuade you from running Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, but if you don't meet the requirements for any reason, you can get the OS up and running anyway and still receive updates, despite the company's roadblocks. 

Some of which feel rather arbitrary, like not supporting the bulk of Intel's 7th gen Core processors, save for some Xeon chips and the Core i5 7640X, which happens to be found in Microsoft's Surface Studio 2. How…convenient.

Whether your PC meets the full requirements or not, there's an easy way to check—just grab and run Microsoft's PC Health Check app. It's a simple tool that audits your PC to make sure it has enough RAM and storage, that it's running a compatible CPU, and that it meets Windows 11's security requirements. Namely, that both TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot are supported and enabled.

One of the reasons why your PC might fail is because TPM 2.0 is either not present or, more likely, that it hasn't been enabled in the BIOS. This was never an enforced requirement before now, and so motherboard makers by and large never bothered with enabling the feature by default in the BIOS.

Supposing you fall short of Windows 11's requirements, what then? Well, the option to upgrade will never show up in Windows Update. Microsoft would prefer if you stayed on Windows 10, in that situation, but you can also go the clean install route. It comes with an ominous warning that “Damages to your PC due to lack of compatibility aren't covered under the manufacturer warranty,” but as long as you acknowledge and accept the terms, Windows 11 will begrudgingly install on your PC.

The bigger caveat is that Microsoft reserves the right to withhold updates to your PC, if your system doesn't meet the requirements. Like maybe you're running a Core i7 7700K processor (not supported) instead of the Core i5 7640X (supported, go figure). Or TPM 2.0 is not enabled. Whatever the case, you're at risk of being denied security and/or feature updates.

I have a hard time believing Microsoft will actually withhold security updates, because it's in everyone's best interest if all PCs are secured as best they can be, lest they be more susceptible to becoming part of a botnet. But feature updates are another story. I'm running a preview build of Windows 11 on my virtual machine, which doesn't support or emulate TPM 2.0, and the latest test build is unavailable to me. This is likely how the public release will play out.

That is, unless you employ the aforementioned workaround. Over on GitHub, you can download a script (via WinFuture) that will fetch Windows 11 from Microsoft's servers, and allow you to install it while bypassing checks for compatible hardware, including TPM 2.0. It's part of the Universal MediaCreationTool wrapper.

Veering off the official course and running a user uploaded script is inherently sketchy. However, this isn't some random corner of the web—it's an open source project, and it's grabbing Windows 11 from Microsoft.

The bigger risk in this scenario is that even though this bypasses the initial compatibility checks, Microsoft could implement further measures in a future update, leaving you in the same situation. But that's a bridge you can cross later, if you're determined to run Windows 11 unfettered today (or next week, when it launches) on an unsupported PC.

Graphics card maker Asus and cooling specialist Noctua have held up their side of the bargain with their previously rumoured GeForce RTX 3070 collaboration. According to new photos from an Asus representative in Vietnam, the Asus X Noctua GeForce RTX 3070 is all kinds of beige and brown—like, so brown.

The card was first spotted over on the EEC as “RTX3070-8G-NOCTUA”, but even before that time rumours were bubbling to the surface about a collaboration between the two. What can I say, the people want brown graphics cards—that includes me.

And, boy, are there shades of it here. Images of the card were posted to the ROG Vietnam Facebook page by an Asus employee (spotted by WCCFTech), although have since been taken down. That's likely a sign that these images were shared a little too early.

While it was still up, at least, the post also estimated a launch price of roughly 26 million Vietnamese dồng, which is around $1,100. A tall price to pay for a GeForce RTX 3070, which carries an MSRP of $499. That said, we don't yet know if Asus intends to sell the graphics card beyond Vietnam, and it's unlikely to be priced in line with the current exchange rate if it was.

That Noctua branding is bound to count for more than looks alone, though. There are two NF-A12x25 fans loaded up onto the outside, and beneath that appears a sizeable heatsink too.

So, love it or hate it? Asus and Noctua have leaned in to the beige styling we've come to expect from Noctua's coolers. While that's sure to be a divisive look, there are plenty of sci-fi looking GPUs out there, just be thankful someone's catering to other tastes.

Uh oh, it looks like New World might be the catalyst for a few more bricked GPUs. During the recent ill-fated beta test it was discovered that a combination of factors were resulting in high-end Nvidia GPUs getting bricked while playing Amazon's MMO. And now there are anecdotal reports that it's happening again.

The original issue surrounded New World allowing uncapped frame rates in its menu screen, which lead to spiking power draw for big boi GPUs, and those, primarily EVGA-built cards subsequently popping their chips with a crackle and fizz. 

For its part EVGA fessed up, and said that some dodgy soldering on the MOSFETs of a small batch of cards was responsible, and that in reality it had only received around two dozen dead GeForce RTX 3090 cards as a result of the New World GPU catastrophe. Those were replaced without issue, as soon as the problem was reported, which is a pretty solid response from the company.

On the Amazon side, while it contended that “the New World Closed Beta is safe to play” it did quickly implement a patch which capped the frame rates in the menu screen anyways.

So, it's strange to see reports that it's happening again in the final release. Our Alan has been elbow deep in the game's innards, testing New World's best settings and performance, and hasn't bricked any GPUs so far, though is seeing a few oddities.

Even with fps caps enabled in the Nvidia Control Panel, and in the game, players are reporting graphics card failures, and not necessarily on EVGA cards either. At the time of the closed beta there were a few reports of Gigabyte GPUs having a similar issue, and that seems to be rearing its ugly head again.

Winfuture reports that it's had issues with a Gigabyte RTX 3090 because of various trigger points that can reportedly put extra strain on the graphics card in your machine. It cites an spike in load when changing graphics card settings, and that in its case simply closing the game bricked its card. “The fans howl to 100 percent, the screen goes black, the PC says goodbye.”

Not fun.

In our testing Alan has noticed that when changing the graphics settings the game does go through a hard refresh, where the engine seems to want to draw the whole scene again, from low poly models, adding more and more detail from there. That seems to put a lot of strain on your system, often hitting 100% GPU load just from switching around some graphics options.

It does bear saying that we've not seen a card fall over in our experience yet, and a lot of people on the team have been playing New World out of morbid curiosity. There's also the fact that even under 100% load your GPU should be able to cope, which again speaks to potentially already existing, underlying factors in the manufacturing of the graphics cards that have actually bricked as a result of running the game.

This is something that we're going to need to keep an eye on, and if you've experienced any issues with New World and your graphics card please get in touch and let us know what's been going on with your setup.

If you're looking for briar branches in New World, you've no doubt picked up a quest from Matthias Cormack, the barkeep in Windsward. The objective might not seem complicated, but with numerous plants in the world, it's not always easy to know what to look for until you stumble across it.

There are a lot of resources to gather in Amazon's new MMO, but finding them can be pretty tricky with so many players vying for the same materials. So if you're having trouble completing The Prickly Request objective, here's where you can find New World briar branches in Aeternum.

New World briar branches: Where to find them 

The briar bush is pretty tricky to spot amongst all the other plants you come across in New World. Your best bet is to head to a riverbank and look along the water line for a thorny looking bush with sparse green leaves. The image at the top of this guide gives you a good idea of what to look out for.

I found briar branches along the short river directly east of Windsward—there were a few rivercress stems here, too. The plant also favours grassy areas rather than forests, so look for rivers that cut through grasslands.

Also, bear in mind that other players may be trying to complete the same quest, so the further afield you go, the more likely you are to find briar bushes—and resources in general.

You'll still need to find the skinned rabbits and plucked turkeys to complete this quest, but the briar branches are by far the most difficult to locate. Once you've grabbed all the required materials, head back to Matthias Cormack in Windsward to complete the Prickly Request.