Yesterday, Amazon Games launched their new MMORPG New World to some really eager players. I guess the desire for a new MMO was extra strong because damn did this game ever take off. As we reported yesterday, there were several hundred thousand people stuck in server queues for multiple hours. These were in addition to the some 427,000+ players that were already actually playing at the time.
Part of the problem for New World is the fact that servers are capped at just 2,000 players each. Each server is then grouped together as part of what Amazon calls a "World Set." I think the idea is that further on down the line, if individual player counts on these servers dip too low, Amazon Games can combine servers within these World Sets to keep servers nearer to capacity. What happens if the overall populations within World Sets starts to get too low? Well, who knows. I assume that just means the game is pretty dead at that point anyway.
But that's hopefully in the far, far future. In the here and now, the game is very much alive and thriving.
Starting late yesterday evening, Amazon Games started to roll out dozens of new servers across the globe to try to meet demand for the game. This ongoing thread on the New World forums has been updated several times with word about new servers being rolled out on a fairly regular basis.
It's probably a good thing that they did because the player counts have only increased since yesterday. According to Steam's stat page, New world currently has over 692,000 people playing and hit a peak player count of almost 734,500 players. The relatively low cost of entry (the Standard Edition starts at $40) and the lack of a monthly subscription are undoubtedly major driving factors for the immediate success of the game.
