Proposed changes to how players earn gear, and how effective it is, in Amazon's MMORPG New World has its players up in arms.

　　As revealed in the game's latest public test realm build and detailed in an official blog post from Amazon, New World's upcoming December patch will bring some major changes to the game, including changes to endgame content and the game's current High Watermark system. Watermark will become a new system called Expertise, and while it will largely function the same as it once did, with players having to earn progressively better items with higher gear score through participating in endgame activities, there is one major change that is causing a whole lot of controversy.

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　　As it currently stands, the High Watermark system only affects item drops, and has no effect on the actual effectiveness of that item. That means that players with a low Watermark on a particular gear slot could still equip and use higher gear score items--such as crafted items--at maximum effectiveness, as long as they met the level requirements.

　　That won't be the case following the release of the upcoming December update. Players using gear of a higher gear score than their Expertise level will see those items essentially downgraded to match their Expertise level, meaning players that crafted high-level armor, earned a high-gear score item from a quest, or bought max-level gear from another player will still need to participate in the endgame grind in order to get maximum use out of their gear.

　　It's become a major topic on the New World subreddit, where players who have gone the crafting or purchasing route for their endgame gear are, unsurprisingly, not thrilled about the coming changes.

　　These players have spent a lot of time and money crafting some of the best gear in the game, and are now effectively being told that unless they dedicate dozens of hours to grinding their Expertise level, the gear they have already put so much time and effort into making is worthless. The market for high level gear sold by other players will also plummet, seeing as they will be much less effective unless the buyer has put in the required time and effort to raise their Expertise levels.

　　As the system has only just now become available for testing on the game's PTR, there is still time for Amazon to make changes before the update comes to the live version of New World. So far, however, Amazon has yet to comment on the controversy.

　　It's just the latest issue to plague New World following its massive and somewhat rocky launch. In recent months, multiple game breaking exploits have caused Amazon to shut down the game's entire economy on two occasions, and the game's last big patch introduced a whole slew of problems, like time-traveling servers, that caused all sorts of issues.