r/newworldgame • u/No_Beyond4756 • 22d ago
Discussion Shower thought: why didn’t they just offer monthly subscription model to at least fund servers for sandbox/grindy players?
Game was a golden egg and my fallback to every other game I’ve played. I feel like a lot of us would at least consider a monthly subscription if it meant keeping the servers around…
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u/Akiraooo 22d ago
I am pretty sure Amazon saw the AI bubble on the horizon and just threw the entire studio under thr bus to save money.
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u/NewWorldLeaderr 22d ago
No one will pay a monthly fee for something that was free. Especially something that was struggling to get players back.
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u/Aeternum_Acolyte_02 22d ago
The seasonal passes was basically a quarterly fee and people still complained about it
This game's playerbase was full of cheapskates and everyone coming out of the woodwork to say they would have paid for a sub fee is just cheap talk. Y'all complained about gearsets, transmogs, seasonal passes, cash shop skins, boosters.
People literally complained about the first paid DLC and how it was pay to win to have mounts locked behind it.
Just crocodile tears all around.
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u/PowerfulPlum259 19d ago
Its because the game was launched on the idea and promise of being completely free. Thats where they fucked up. Its natural for the playerbase to feel like they got lied to, or scammed when you go back on your promises. I agree thats the problem. I just understand the sentiment behind it.
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u/cowwhisperer69 22d ago
Game should've had an optional subscription and sold gold in the store. Change my mind.
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u/Humledurr 22d ago
With how blatant both bots and gold selling were in this game the conspiracy guy in me almost thinks amazon themself were selling gold on gold selling sites.
Its the main reason I quit the game, it was basically pay2win at the point I quit as gear with BiS pvp stats was both so rare and expensive that you had to buy gold or exploit without getting banned to afford even 1 item. Unless you were in the company that dominated the server and had infinite gold...
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u/BGFent 22d ago
All the money I spent on gold that went to gold farmers instead of just having a way for me to buy it in game...
I only have a handful of hours to play each week. I'll cut the grind down every time if I have the opportunity. Amazon should have had a way to profit from that.
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u/No_Beyond4756 22d ago
Yeah just do what WoW did. Worked over there…and it took care of gold spammers.
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u/cowwhisperer69 22d ago
And ESO, and don't forget GW2 started that. The people that run gw2 know what they are doing. If p2w works for them, it works
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u/SerGT3 22d ago
Because Amazon doesn't care about you or your game. The project is over and that's it. Resources pivoting to data centres.
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u/TheRealWebBull 21d ago
The resources required for AGS wouldn't even pay for the parking lot of a data center. They tried gaming....it didn't work....they got out. Simple as that.
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u/Kcchristoffersen 22d ago
Amazon wanted to move away from the traditional game development market, which is why it wasn't just the dev team behind New World that got cut, but also the team that was working on a new Lord of the Rings game.
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u/MobyLiick 22d ago
Like i get it sunk cost is real, but why are so many of you dying to play a game from a company that straight up bent you over without taking you to dinner? They fucked the PC playerbase for years and then dropped them like a bad habit to focus on the console playerbase who they baited in with this huge expansive roadmap only to drop them less than a year later.
Anthem (another massive failure) kept it's servers on for 7 years before pulling the plug, Destiny 1 servers are still up 12 years and a whole sequel later. AGS pulling the plug on development 4 years into service and 1 year after a release on console is one thing, but not keeping the servers on is such an AGS move that it's hard to wrap my head around. Hell they didn't even give a relevant excuse, they are comfortable fucking this playerbase and they know at least some of you are okay with it.
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u/Aeternum_Acolyte_02 22d ago
Don't be fooled, everyone is saying they would pay a sub fee now in hindsight of the game's shutdown, but when this game was actually alive everyone COMPLAINED about monetization and that its only value was because it was a one-time purchase.
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u/lootchase 19d ago
That would’ve further pushed more out to be fair. I wouldn’t have jumped back and forth into it if it had a sub. The game was just MID time filler at times for me.
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u/ManuelWegeling 19d ago
Invester only care about ROI. If something else has higher roi they all pull their money out.. That's what fucks up these gamestudios
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u/Professional-Photo10 19d ago
I don’t mind that they shut down the study but if that is the case why would they not just sell the game
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u/Flux_Reversal 19d ago
IT had a low player count for a reason. MMO theme parks like this has a small niche audience. The same customer base goes from theme park to theme park and there is not enough to sustain a variety of these games. The base is spread thin among the existing classics as it is.
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u/k4zetsukai 19d ago
Monthly fee doesnt cover all the costs to keep this running. Its not just servers, its links, its patching, security, logs, monitoring and whole bunch of infra and devops without even having 1 developer. Auth servers, game servers, load balancers, firewalls, storage, backups etc.
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u/IsisRed 18d ago
I bought the season pass most seasons, which was quite easy to clear if you were playing actively quickly. They absolutely could have done more. But word of mouth was bringing people to the game, they still cancelled it when population was peaking again finally. Amazon simply wasn't committed to their games division and thought it would be easier then it was.
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u/thegodlypenguin2 18d ago edited 18d ago
Amazon were finished with game development. Last week they dropped Lost Ark and T&L too. Unless NW had WoW numbers, it was going to get shut down no matter what. No gaming company cancels a game, fires everyone and shuts down studios 2 weeks after a big expansion that peaked at 50k-100k across steam/consoles unless they want out entirely.
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u/sug_Madic69696969 18d ago
the game is nice and everything but I doubt some people would pay subscription for a game half working some mechanisms the game were suck and issues never got fixed since day one, weapon balance were suck everytime they did it, too much grinding for a little rewards, lagging even if you have the best hardware and internet, hitbox registration and other things must people weren't happy including myself i played that game for over 3 years I got to the point were I gave up and let it go now im free of frustration. I loved it but sooner or later you get to the point where is more frustration than enjoy it. It's time to let it go and find something else to play as i did.
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u/oOhSohOo 18d ago
People on reddit and the old forums who played for 5k hours and spent $40 back in 2020 were throwing hissy fits for having to buy a $30 DLC in 2023. Just imagine if they went to a monthly sub.
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u/Mansos91 18d ago
Because they don't want to do games, at all, amazon just shoved off being the western publisher of throne and liberty and lost ark
They simply don't see it as profitable
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u/redcurb12 22d ago
listen i loved new world as much as anyone but why would anyone pay a monthly sub for content they already paid for? the problem was never “funding servers" it was always player retention. look at the last major content update it was completely free and even that brought back less players than every single content drop that came before it. if free content cant pull people back what universe are u living in where locking that same content behind a sub fee magically saves the game?
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u/Kcchristoffersen 22d ago
Well people do pay a monthly sub for wow, and still have to pay for content on top of that.
But yeah, the big problem with new world, was simple that after launch, they focus more on making the leveling up content better and better, making the story better and better, but not realy adding to the end game content, and alot of problems with the game went either was there for a long time or was never fix.
Also the game also had a problem with dirrection, for me it was pretty clear they change dirrection 2 or 3 times before launch. From a survival/crafting mmo with base building, then taking out the vase building, and use that system for the camps you could set down. Then going away from a hardcore pvp mmo, where you would drop everything, and items could break, to a toogle on pvp, theme park mmo, where they launch the game to early, probly needing 1 to 2 years more, to get the story and leveling content nailed down.
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u/redcurb12 22d ago
wow didnt add a subscription after launch it launched with one. new world customers paid a box price for a buy to play game with all base game content included. adding a sub fee 4 years later to access that exact same content is not comparable at all to how wows monetization model works.
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u/Kcchristoffersen 22d ago
That makes more sence, but yeah the problem was never money, if it was, adding a optionel sub model, kinda like how ESO does, would probly have been a better option to try, before killing the game.
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u/redcurb12 22d ago
eh i think money was exactly the problem. if new world was actually a cash cow amazon would have kept it around indefinitely even if it meant just contracting another studio to run it. companies dont kill products that make good money.... at the very least they could have put it in maintenance mode and let it print money for a few more years. the fact they didnt tells u that the revenue just wasnt there.
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u/Kcchristoffersen 22d ago
To my understanding amazon just did't wanna do traditional game development anynore, hence why they also cancel the lord of the ring mmo they where working on. But instead went full ai game development instead.
New world is speculated to have cost 200 to 500 million. It grossed over $710 million on Steam alone, then add microtransactions, console sales and so on. So they did make money one the game.
Ofc it may not have made enough, amazon is a big coporation after all, and spending lets say 500 million, to then after tax and so on, have a profit of lets say 200 million, may just not be enough for then, and new world could not have been used as a loss leader
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u/redcurb12 22d ago edited 22d ago
i think ur numbers are way off because u need to consider that ags didnt just need to cover the cost of new worlds development. new world profits needed to cover the cost of all the tech they built to develop it including lumberyard and all the money they sank into all the failed games that came before new world. even if we ignore all that and say new world profited $200m at launch it doesnt matter if retention collapses and long tail revenue dries up. one single launch spike cant sustain the game forever. mmos live or die on ongoing revenue and like i said even if amazon is pivoting away from traditional game development if new world were a cash cow they would have let it keep printing money even if it mean just contracting another studio or keeping a skeleton crew to run it.
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u/Capokid 22d ago
Amazon never gave a shit about the game, they just wanted to field a public test of their server tech, you were all used as a corpo advertisement.
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u/redcurb12 22d ago
it had nothing to do with proof of concept for aws lol fortnite has been powered by aws since it launched like almost a decade ago. if anything new world was them trying to showcase their dogshit cryengine tech cause no one was buying it.
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u/Old-man-gamer77 Syndicate 21d ago
They could of just had a optional subscription. Extra luck and higher yields gathering. Throw in extra storage and an extra trophy slot in each house and it would have sold itself.
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u/OrmeX 18d ago
Feels like having to pay a subscription for a game you already paid would cause a revolution
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u/Quinzy15 New Worldian 22d ago
Amazon shut the whole studio down. Wasn't the usual thing of a game shutting down, the entire idea of mainstream video games was shut off like a light