New World: Amazon's foray into video games is an enjoyable anachronism

I'm back in one of my happy places: loitering in an hours-long queue, twiddling my thumbs, waiting to log on to the overloaded servers of a massively multiplayer game. Soon enough I'll be back inside Amazon's latest video game, New World, where I'll be mining ore veins, skinning animal pelts and turning over 10 ghoul heads to a featureless character who promises a reward of experience points and a longsword juiced with a modest dexterity bonus. It's been a long time since the mid-00s apogee of this genre, when countless World of Warcraft facsimiles broke on to the scene, eager to replicate its runaway success. All of them failed, it was a bloodbath.) The business model was declared dead as studios pivoted to the Guild Wars or Destiny multiplayer format – a few hub zones populated by the spectres of thousands of players that you scarcely see or hear.