Amazon’s journey with New World

  • 2021-11-15

New World, a game that you can get from Gamecamp, created by Amazon, after long delays were finally released on September 28, 2021. The game is a mix of an MMO with survival elements within it and does not have a prebuilt storyline and relies on its players to create stories, similar to Rust. It was highly anticipated by the community as being one of the best MMOs to launch in a few years. However, the excitement it brought with it was soon left with disappointment overshadowing. This was something observed previously with Amazon’s previous game, Crucibles, which was a free-to-play game but was quickly removed from Steam and put into closed beta. The reasoning for this was due to its low player base from the launch of the game which drastically kept going down as time went on, no matter what Amazon tried to do. The cause of the low amount of players was because Amazon did not do any advertising for the game. Lack of marketing resulted in not many people knowing about the game or its release.

New World, on the other hand, was failing due to the complete opposite reasons. The game, when it launched, had an immense amount of eager players waiting to play it. Anticipation was so high that it even topped the steam charts for most concurrent players at that time, overtaking all-time popular titles such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2, which are always present on the top. New World quickly became Steam’s most played game of the year taking the record from the previous holder of this title, Valheim.

However, when it launched, things started to look bad. This is because as soon as the players went on to open the game, the players were sent to a waiting screen as there were no open servers at that time. The reasoning behind this was the initial player cap and an overload of players. In New World, the servers had a cap of 2000 players per server and almost a million players were waiting to play the game. On launch day the queues were so long that the estimated time for most players to be able to play was more than 12 hours at least. This caused a huge uproar amongst the people and made many people quit from the start but this didn't cause its player count to go down instead it kept going up for a few days while the servers couldn't support them all. The reason for the increasing amount of players even though its servers had problems, was the unique gameplay it provided in comparison to other MMOs which were already present.

The gameplay of New World is like a breath of fresh air for those people who have been playing MMOs for years. New World consists of the standard MMO features but also enhances and diversifies its gameplay by adding survival elements such as gathering resources and crafting your weapons, an element similar to the game Rust. The combat of New World is also different from most MMOs as it requires you to take an active part in it rather than just clicking on an enemy and waiting for your character to defeat them. In particular, your player can attack an enemy using regular or combo attacks, and defend against theirs using shields and other methods. The player can also dodge rolls to avoid lethal attacks. For ranged attackers, skill is a greater requirement to aim for the target, as there is no auto-aim for players, adding to the level of difficulty the game has to offer.

However, adding to the realism, the game does offer critical damage for headshots. Factions, clans, or other divisions are often found in many MMO games today, and New World is not behind on that. There are three factions in the game, and players have the choice to join one of them to join the fight between factions to take control of different regions in the world. Typical MMOs assign characters and players to a particular class, often associated with the type of weapons they can use or have more skill for. These class systems are often strict and chosen before starting with the gameplay, and not allowed to be switched out later on. However, in New World, the player's character also does not have a class assigned to it. If the player, after using a sword for a while, wants to change their play style to that of an archer or a mage, they can easily do just that by changing their weapons and start acquiring skills for their new preferred weapon, instead of having to create a new character from scratch and starting over; which is the traditional way players change classes in MMOs. Each weapon will level up and gain experience and skills upon defeating enemies, and your character can master as many weapons as they like.

These features along with many others were the reason behind New Worlds' ever-increasing popularity. This even took Amazon by surprise, as they did not expect such a huge turnout, and caused the servers to not be ready to handle such a huge amount of players. Amazon came out to address the situation and to accommodate for the overpopulation of certain servers. They allowed the players to transfer their characters to entirely new servers for free for a short while to fill up some of the less inhabited servers and lessen the burden from the more popular servers. Whilst this was being done Amazon also started to work on creating more servers and increasing the player count on existing servers. This would allow their entire player base to hop into New World simultaneously on various servers instead of having to queue up and wait for long periods for their turn to play.

New World may turn out to be this generation's biggest MMO title. Due to it being relatively new, it has its setbacks but Amazon and the team are doing everything to counteract them. Therefore, if you are a gamer fond of playing MMO titles then this game is meant for you to try out. And to assist you to get a head start as you start on your journey on Aeternum, we at Eldorado.gg have the perfect set of merchandise, namely New World Coins, items, accounts, and boosting. Pick your pick to what suits you best.