Of course, the purpose of an open beta is to let players test the game’s boundaries. One New World player appears to have taken that literally, finding the edge of the map and revealing what happens if players go out of bounds.
Reddit user Glorf_Warlock made the discovery and uploaded a short video to Reddit. The clip shows his character approaching a semitransparent glowing yellow wall demarcating the edge of the game’s world. Their health begins to drain rapidly on the other side, completely disappearing within about two seconds. The player is then left in a downed state where they can technically be revived, though it’s unlikely another player could get there to lend a hand.
If going out of bounds does that much damage that quickly, it begs the question why not just kill the players instantly upon passing through the wall. Alternativity, New World’s developers could have made the boundary wall impassible, as many games do. Even if most players will never have the problem, it seems a little harsh to let the player walk through it but give them so little time to escape. Granted, the giant glowing yellow wall makes it unlikely many players would wander out by accident.
New World launches later this month and has undoubtedly attracted much attention, despite the mixed response to its closed beta earlier this year. Criticisms included a lack of enemy variety, an unbalanced in-game economy, frequent crashes, and a litany of bugs. One of the latter involved a Twitch streamer receiving an automatic ban for milking a cow.
New World releases on September 28 for PC.
