We’re finally getting some movement on New World that involves PC players: Amazon has just formally announced its Aeternum open beta, which smooshes together PC, Xbox S|S, and PS5 players in the Americas, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific regions, with full crossplay. The whole shebang kicks off September 13th and runs through September 16th (noon EDT both days), with preloading beginning on September 11th.
“This Open Beta test will give players a taste of New World: Aeternum before the full game launches on October 15, as participants will be granted access to the opening experience and questline through level 30,” Amazon says. “While venturing into the vast and supernatural world of Aeternum, players will unlock mounts, arenas and some expeditions.” They’ll also pick up a bunch of tester rewards, including titles and gear for their live accounts depending on how far they level during the test event (though it’s capped at level 30).
The PR doesn’t mention an NDA, unlike the documentation for the closed beta earlier this summer, so we’re assuming it’s fully dropped, being an open test and all.
As readers will know, Amazon rather unpopularly announced Aeternum earlier this summer; it’s a console port with lots of revamped content, which ought to be a good thing for a game that’s suffered significant population drops, but the studio unfortunately sidelined PC content most of 2024 while working on the port, and then it attempted to remarket the game as anything but an MMORPG, both of which annoyed PC players as it’s still very much an MMORPG. Here’s hoping that the test turns the game’s fortunes around.
