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New World Classes and Races
Choosing a race and class in MMORPGs is one of, if not the biggest decision a player can make when starting. It typically defines a playstyle and role within PvE and PvP activities. If that player decides midway through that they want to play as a healer instead of a warrior, they usually have to start an entirely new character. A lot of MMOs allow players to spend real money and reset their race and class while retaining experience points. While it’s not uncommon for any combination of traditional races and classes to be good at any role, certain combinations still reign supreme. New World seems to be aiming for a fluid approach to these traditional roles by allowing for on-the-spot character changes.
New World is avoiding the race and class choice completely by making character builds determined by a player’s favored weapon class and point distribution. Using certain weapons such as a war hammer will level that weapon style, which unlocks more passive and active abilities. Every weapon in New World has two different skill trees usually focusing on different goals. The war hammer’s “Juggernaut” tree is purely focused on raw damage, meanwhile the “Crowd Crusher” is all about crowd control. This allows players to easily pick different roles in different groups, as one can go from the main DPS to a healer almost instantly assuming that both styles of weapon are adequately leveled.
Alongside weapon choice, the other major choice players will have to make is how to distribute points. There are five attributes for New World characters: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Focus, and Constitution. Everyone on New World’s Aeternum starts on the same playing field and has five points in each, and they receive more every level up. These attributes go hand-in-hand with weapon skills, as for example Strength gives huge bonuses to war hammer damage while Intelligence gives none - it increases magic damage.
While it may seem like the exclusion of the typical race and class selection is limiting, there will still be plenty of build-related choices for fans of New World to make. Given New World has been consistently adding new weapon classes, it seems the hardest choice players will have to make is which two to use. Due to this, it seems unlikely that people will feel forced to create multiple characters, as they can instead just swap around weapons and attributes to create their own unique ‘class.’ Whether this unusual design choice will create enough build variety in New World is unclear for now, but there is a lot of potential.
New World releases for PC on September 28, 2021.
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