New World addresses PvP, mounts, and solo content as merges begin this afternoon

Amazon game director Scot Lane and live lead Katy Kaszynski helm another episode of New World’s Forged in Aeternum this week – outside, standing up, and absent fan-favorite creative director Dave Verfaillie. Here are the highlights:

• Solo dungeons aren’t on the table, but Amazon is says it’s putting more effort into solo content over the rest of 2023. Kaszynski notes there was a new solo instance in season one and there are a few others throughout the questline.
• A revamp of the party UI for visibility is planned.
• Amazon is reviewing all the settlements to improve them, particularly for performance issues (in PvP too).
• Lane says the team is doing a full revamp of PvP reward tracks through 20 (including more umbral shards).
• The sandworm elite trial will begin at a high difficulty, but the team expects to revisit it for accessibility in the future as gear score creeps up.
• The devs discuss mounts as a separate concept from fast travel. (Yay mounts!) Unused travel shrines might be removed in the far future. Mounts are meant to be cool, not just fast. “There was always the plan to bring mounts in,” Kaszynski says.
• Amazon has heard your feedback about how wards and banes suck. The studio agrees, but it’s not sure how they’re going to fix them yet.

Meanwhile, today’s a big day if you’re on one of the 11 servers undergoing a merge today in US East, Central EU, and South America. The merges are set for noon EDT today, and if all goes well, you’ll be settling in your new land by 4 p.m. EDT.