New World’s planned server merge went off yesterday without much of a hitch. Readers will recall that Amazon originally announced the merge of nine servers into a total of seven other servers following the end of the population boom from Rise of the Angry Earth, but then the studio altered the plan, canceling the US-East and Asia-Pacific merges owing to “community feedback” (which still looks pretty mixed to us as casuals and season players clash). That left six servers merging into four, which is done now.
In the meantime, Amazon has released two more bits of information for players. The first is a dev blog for the game’s artifact system, which argues that the system’s goal is providing “engaging, alternative playstyles.”
And the second is a Q&A video with Scot Lane, David Verfaillie, and Scott Geiser – one with questions a little more pointy than usual. For example, players have been (understandably) pushing to understand why the game’s seasonal roadmap has dropped or delayed some content originally planned.
“We’re coming off a huge release, the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion, and we had a few quality mishaps there,” Lane says. “So we wanted to make sure that going forward, that doesn’t happen again. We want to focus on high-quality deliverables. And so, because of that, we decided to hold a few things back. On top of that, when we talked about cross-world expeditions, which was planned for season four, we really wanted to lean into it and go for a full PUG finder because we think that would be a much better experience for players. And that’s going to cost us a little more time as well. So we’re hearing people say they’d rather us go a little slower and deliver at a higher quality, and we’re going to do that in earnest.”
