What’s up with all the slander? just curious

I just felt like making this post as someone who played New World back at launch and really enjoyed it. The core gameplay hooked me right away, combat felt great, PvP was exciting, and the trade skills were surprisingly rewarding. But like many others, I eventually dropped it. The content felt thin, and the game seemed unfinished overall.

Since then, I always kind of thought of the game as a “flopped” MMO. That changed recently when I started seeing YouTubers covering it again, and then I watched the devs Season 10 preview (which is basically a free expansion). It actually looked really good, so I decided to give it another shot about four days ago.

Now that I’m freshly max level, I can honestly say the game feels like it’s in a great place. The new zones are beautifully designed, the gameplay still feels as tight as ever, and the overall polish is miles ahead of launch. I haven’t reached the deep endgame loop yet, but from what I’ve seen, Season 10 is supposed to address a lot of those issues, including a new 10-player raid and the new Catacombs system (a procedurally generated dungeon that ramps up in difficulty the deeper you go).

If you’ve been itching for a new MMO or thinking about returning to New World, I’d highly recommend checking it out right now. It’s genuinely worth your time again.

EDIT: It's had a massive reassurance of players the last month(s). Back in june/july it barely reached 9-10k on pc (keep in mind there's console players unaccounted for). This weekend they reached approximately 25k on steam.

I am probably jumping into something I know nothing about, but I bought New World on the Steam sale for $15. I took the risk because I really love MMOs and wanted a new experience. So far I've found it to be an enjoyable game. Obviously nothing earth shattering but the environments are interesting and the combat is decent. I don't really understand the overwhelmingly negative reviews it's getting. It was well worth my money and I am considering getting the expansion when it is on sale.

That being said, I use a dollar/hour spent scale to determine if a game was worth the money spent and the amount I have already put in already exceeded the dollars spent. I am sure that number might be different for other people and I can respect that.

I like the game for what it is and I feel like I am missing something or am just ignorant to what's causing the negative reviews.

Its been a couple years since I stepped foot into NW. any current players have any advice to a potential returning player?

In a sweeping layoff, Amazon is getting rid of 30k+ people today, and in the future they will remove more and more to replace them with AI.

New World is feeling these layoffs, some people are missing from the discord, and artists are posting on Twitter talking about being laid off. We don't know the full extent of the layoffs yet, as they're going out this morning.

I'm worried for the future of the game.

Edit Update: The Amazon Employees subreddit is saying the entire Irvine AGS studio is gone. That's the one that runs New World.

Edit Update 2: Amazon Games jobs listings do not have the Irvine site listed. Probably confirmation New World is cooked.

Edit Update 3: The AGS LinkedIn page no longer exists. I think we might be cooked cooked.

I’ve heard a lot of talk and recommendations towards playong New World. I’ve always thought its a bad MMO. Has a new good update been released or what?

Edit: i know the game died off. I was never gonna try it out. Was just curious about all the fuzz

No more barrier other than just buying the game, mounts are now part of the base game and with the upcoming free content drop, I see a healthy future for New World.

Something’s cooking 👀

What's the current status of New World? Is it worth to come back? I have a feeling it's half dead and will close soon.

The shutdown of New World should not be such a surprise to those who have followed this game since it was first announced. New World was originally designed as a sandbox survival game similar to Rust. That is a huge reason why the game was so hyped and millions of players showed up on launch day.

Unfortunately, to the frustration of millions of players, that is not the game they received. I will provide some backstory about the development of New World. New World throughout most of its development time was never intended to be a theme park style MMO. It was a sandbox survival game with PvP elements. That was the core design of the game, and the Lumberyard engine was used to specifically caters towards that. If you ever wondered why New World is so bug ridden and janky, it's largely due to them converting the game from a small scale sandbox to a large scale theme park mmo. The engine and tools that built the game were never intended for anything large scale like an mmo.

The decision to turn New World from a sandbox survival game into a themepark mmo is what ultimately doomed it. The millions of players who came to play a higher quality Rust were essentially hit with a bait and switch. New World was a broken game at launch, because so many of the gameplay and technical systems which were intended for the survival game were now stitched together and or gutted.

Why AGS ever thought they could compete with other theme park mmorpgs is baffling. That is what killed the game. The cold feet and cowardice that caused the game to be redesigned during the alpha is what ended the dream. Scot Lane was not the original design lead. The original design lead was a guy who directed a Dreamworks film from the early 2000's. He, along with several other key developers left New World during the early alpha stage after the decision was made to turn New World from a survival game into an MMO. I completely understand why he and many others abandoned the project. New World was no longer the game that it was originally intended to be. To put it succintly, it was intended to be a survival game with crafting, gatheting pvp, and building where players battled against the environment and Native American NPC populations. Instead, what we got at launch was a bug ridden half baked MMO. It was still incredible fun however, due to the survival game skeleton that still existed.

No MMO does a theme park MMO as good as WoW. Trying to copy it is so astoundingly foolish, and AGS ruined what could have been the best survival game on the market. New World cratered from almost 1 million concurrent players on steam to less than 10,000. A 99% player drop, and this happened years ago. Any other game that had the budget, development time. and support that New World had would have been shutdown years ago. This game has literally been bleeding money for years, and I hate Amazon as much as the next person, but even I was perplexed at how long they left the lights on at AGS. No amount of bug ridden "content" could have ever saved this game. The game died the day they decided to betray the millions of survival game players that it was originally designed and marketed for.

AGS has known for a long time that the studio was closing. The announcement to convert New World to console was a sign of the end. The recent Nighthaven content patch was not delivered in earnest, it was just scheme to milk the playerbase one final time.

If you want to know who killed New World, then find the players who demanded the game become another boring WoW clone, but also don't forget the company that caved to such petulance.

New World didn't die today, it died around 5 years ago when the heart and soul of the game was ripped out so that the 385th WoW clone could be one day be sunset.

Rest in peace New World.

I have a little over 4,000 hours in New World. I played about a year after release, then left shortly after Brimstone Sands came out due to having nothing else to do. I came back around Thanksgiving 2024 and left again around May—once again because there was nothing left to do.

At this point, it feels like New World has become a cycle: log on, create a new character, play for a couple of months, then log off again. A big part of that is the lack of meaningful endgame content.

Think about it: on the PvE side, there are only two endgame raids. One of them takes 20 people, and good luck getting that many well-geared players together consistently. The other eventually becomes repetitive and easy.

Then on the PvP side, let’s be honest—there’s really only 50v50 Wars. Influence races can be fun, but I wouldn’t consider them endgame content. So that’s basically it. Three “endgame” activities once you hit max level, and even then, I’ve heard most average players don’t bother because the content is so heavily gatekept.

So you really only get around 3–4 months of actual content before boredom sets in and you log off again. That can’t be the future of this game.

And after watching the recent dev Q&A stream, I’ve basically lost all hope. Most of the answers boiled down to “we’re looking into it” or “maybe in the next season,” which probably won’t even drop until the end of the year. The devs just don’t inspire any confidence anymore.

Honestly, I think the only reason people haven’t completely given up on this game is because of the combat and the freedom you have—there still isn’t anything else quite like it. But with Chrono Odyssey and other alternatives coming out, unless the devs seriously step up, New world really will die.

PS**:** I’m posting this here because I can’t get this through on the New World subreddit.

Edit: because people refuse to read, lets get this straight, I love this game I just hate the way the devs are treating this game they refuse to make endgame content just look at WOW that population still holds up because they make meaningful endgame content that keeps players that have more hours than I on that game that's my point.