Following the launch of New World’s paid expansion, Rise of the Angry Earth, the game is once again on an upward trajectory in terms of population – once again with a few unwelcome side effects.
As we noted on Wednesday, Tuesday’s launch saw New World spike in popularity on Steam; at the time, its peak concurrent had hit 50,000 players, the highest it’s been since last December. We’re expecting that number to continue climbing, as last night it neared 57,000, and now the weekend is upon us and the real test of server caps begins. As we type this, the game has nearly 40,000 people online ahead of EU prime time. If a large chunk of the total active population picked up this expansion, Amazon is sitting on a nice chunk of change.
Of course, the rise in population has meant the rise in multi-hour queues of many thousands of players, some already unceremoniously booted off their original servers if their accounts had lapsed long enough. Amazon has been bringing fresh servers up left and right; by midweek, it had added four, and now it’s added another batch of four (Fornax and Canis for Europe and Pollux and Octans for US East), bringing the total to eight (unless we missed one!).
Last night, the company reiterated its list of known issues and promised a hotfix “very soon.” The most notable issue appears to be bugs that block the main story quest from functioning – kind of a big deal. “A fix is being worked on for this issue and does not require contacting customer support,” the studio says.
Worth noting is that while the expansion alone runs $30, the Elysian edition of the game – which includes the base game and the expansion – is on sale for $46, while the base game alone is $15.
🌞 Expansion News 🌞
Looking to avoid the queue? New worlds just opened up across multiple regions!World Name:
‣ Fornax (Europe)
‣ Canis (Europe)
‣ Pollux (US East)— New World Game Status (@NWGameStatus) October 5, 2023
