First, my personal feelings on the matter: I am disappointed, but tentatively supportive of the delay. As I wrote in my previous article, the game needs minimal polish and would be fine at launch (as evidence I cite the ongoing disappointment that people have to wait, that the beta test broke stream and twitch records, etc). However, if my UI bugs less, then I suppose I will support it. If I find out that the delay is so they can enact significant changes to the PvP scaling then I will not support it.
I preordered New World on February 19th 2020. At that time, it was still being billed as a more hardcore, PvP focused game. I was unable to access the alpha tests that year. I read the articles and watched the videos though, explaining that high level players had become such a force of grief by slaughtering lower level players that it was causing people to abandon the test previews. I wanted a hardcore PvP MMO, I missed the days of chaotic battles in Hilsbrad in vanilla WoW. Even though it wasn’t perfect back then, I was sure that in the year of our lord 2020 they’d find a way to balance it somewhat.
I was wrong though, and toxic bads were so abusive to lower level players that the test preview was unplayable.
This led them to change things subsequently to the version we got familiar with during the closed beta last month. They introduced a stat scaling feature, which softened blows from high level players and put a bit more edge on low level characters when they were fighting people who vastly out leveled them.
This was not implemented perfectly, but overall was a great idea. Since the game still revolves around territory control, PvP will be a source of content for the games foreseeable future; and any contest between players must be competitive.
The forums filled with topics calling for the scaling to be removed, that it had ruined their game, and that they should be able to annihilate or at least scare low level players. These threads would usually end up buried in comments supportive of the scaling, which is justice in its own way, but one of the biggest arguments tangential to this feature, as well as many other features, was the amount of work needed to implement these features, and how much work would be needed to fix the bugs or tweak the degree these features affected competition, progression, and enjoyment.
I feel like this PvP scaling issue is going to be the point of contention for a a very loud minority of players who want to be able to no-life it and then one-shot lower level players. They argue that since they put in more effort that people who haven’t put in as much should fear them. This is exactly what killed open world, PvP games in the past and its what killed it for New World.
Make no mistake; if this game launches as it is (albeit with a few less bugs) on September 28, unchanged from players experienced this month; the game will be a success, at least for the near future. If it causes itself to be delayed even more in a last minute attempt to change core systems or playstyles, it will kill itself.
For now I am cautiously optimistic, where as, upon beta launch I was just optimistic and excited.
Their official statement just said that they were going to “smash bugs, improve stability and poish the game.”
I sincerely hope that is accurate, because New World is a hell of a lot of fun.
TYFP 
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