New World was first on my list because I was dedicated to the game and had high hopes. As a player who loves freedom in games, building, and hardcore PVP, I came with several friends to New World, whom I knew from other games. Initially, the game was announced as a sandbox MMORPG where players rule the world. However, after a few alpha tests, the developers quickly changed the game from being a hardcore PVP game to a casual PVP game. Despite this, most players did not lose hope in the project as it was a serious MMORPG made by a Western developer for a Western audience.

It was Amazon, yes, that Amazon, with millions of euros to invest and create the best game we ever played. This mindset was shared by millions of players interested in such a game until the first public beta tests. Unfortunately, the game was missing content, had optimization issues, was laggy, and boring. It was a repeatable kind of running simulator with the mission of running 10-15 minutes to a place, talk with an NPC, or kill a few monsters, then run another 10-15 minutes to another place just to talk with another NPC. Those scenarios were repeated over and over again, but they were changed a year after the game’s release.

At that moment, I was still talking about beta times. There was another heavy drama on the forum with the NDA when one of the testers published information about the upcoming item shop in the game and its pay-to-win features. A few big YouTubers and streamers reviewed those comments and agreed that pay-to-win mechanics were prepared to be implemented when the release came. So many players refunded the game, including myself. After seeing that massive refund, AGS decided to send a statement about a future business model. In their letter to the community, they promised they would never sell power for money. We were told that for a few months after release, they would not place anything in the store, not even exp boosters or any other things. As promised, they did.

Players ignored numerous bugs, a terrible desync issue, a boring end game, a terrible user interface, cringeworthy events, and, in general, everything was bad. But people still had hope because Amazon was able to fix the game over time. The game was bad but fun in many places, so it was definitely worth waiting for and supporting the company with its appearance. Finally, it was a game without pay-to-win. We knew we would get all the possible paying options, like quality of life improvements, season passes, DLC, appearances, mounts, etc., but nothing paid to win.

Sadly, together with the first season pass, they placed a full set of legendary items in the season pass. There were still so many other things to fix and improve. A lot of players were regularly buying ugly skins from the shop to support the game, but we paid for the core game, it’s not free to play…