New World: Aeternum, the soft relaunch of Amazon's flagship MMO, was released on October 15. A month later, and we have yet to see a roadmap for future plans for the game. MMOs live and die by the promises they make, and the promises they ultimately keep.
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You'd expect Amazon to capitalize on the healthy spike in traffic seen in New World after its relaunch, but the development team's radio silence regarding future updates only solidifies the thought that's been lingering in the back of my mind for a while: New World is over. Doneso.
The State of MMOs
To offer some perspective, Throne & Liberty has already delivered some great updates in its first month, including the well-loved Halloween event, quality-of-life features, and a clear roadmap for future content. Granted, the game is developed by NCSoft, not Amazon, and the Korean version of the game already has a year of content enhancements. That being said, the response from the community has been very positive – surely Amazon can see how it's meant to drive the live-services game?
However, there are a few reasons I think there's a chance we'll never see the New World: The Eternum Roadmap. First, the game was performing poorly on PC before its relaunch, sitting at a very modest three or four thousand players. In fact, not much has changed between that version and what we currently have in New World: Eternum. There are console players, which I thought might be enough to keep the game alive, but we'll have to see if Amazon judges the influx of players and cash as worthy of future support.
Second, Amazon Games is working on a new Lord Of The Rings MMO. The team working on the new MMO is based in Orange County — where, you guessed it, the new world was also developed. There's probably still a core team working on New World, but now that they've shipped New World: Eternum, it could be that the studio turns its full attention to LOTR. We have no news about LOTR MMO in early development in 2023.
Finally, Throne and Liberty has been extremely popular since its western release. By all measures, it's a very different MMO than New World, but there's no doubt that some of the audience for New World has been cannibalized by T&L.
It could be that Amazon Games sees Thrones and Liberty as the future of its MMO offerings (for now), and New World: Eternum as a finished product. From a business perspective it makes perfect sense: keep your focus on the obviously more popular game.
What happened in the new world?
I've been a selfless enjoyer of New World since the game's release and I've always acknowledged its glaring problems over the years – my particular favorite was when you could crash people's games by posting jpegs of sausages in global chat – it would happen. Sad to see a new world come out. Aeternum was a great relaunch of the game but it didn't see the player spike I expected on PC – it didn't even come close to Thrones and Freedom. It may be that Amazon was a little disappointed with their efforts to improve the game, but what expectations did it really have?
I think the launch of the new world was a real flash in the pan moment. About a million players in the MMO developed by the studio that at the time worked on a game called Crucible, which ran for five months before being canceled, and a game for Top Gear's Grand Tour. The hype grew hysterical, considering how random it was for Amazon to make an MMO.
As expected, the studio's inexperience with MMOs and direct-to-service titles caused some early problems. There were massive queue times, exploits, bot issues, players looting items in the marketplace, and bugs with the hatchet that made players basically invulnerable in PvP, a problem that remarkably wasn't fixed for a few weeks. Players took a big drop after a month, and then continued to decline over the following months — increasing again with the launch of the Brimstone Sands update and the Rise Of The Angry Earth expansion.
New World has the basics of a great MMO, but its downside has always been a sense of lack of developer support. Not in terms of expansion and content – it's clear Aeternum is a completely different game than its predecessor in many ways – but rather the day-to-day management of the game, and its inability to respond to what players really want. No real end game content. No updates for the PvP aspects of the game (one of the main consistent audiences for the game has always been its hardcore PvP casuals.) Lack of clear and concise roadmaps with clear deliverables. And that brings us here, to the New World: Aeternum, in a month – the end of the New World? I'm starting to think so.
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There is one thing that New World still does better than any other MMO
The new world's PvP is fantastic, from entry-level open-world skirmishes to full-scale battles.
