This it it folks: The Europe and Oceania New World servers opened up in the wee hours of this morning, and now at 9 a.m. EDT, just as this post is going live, the North and South American servers are joining them for the full launch of Aeternum.
It’s been a long road to get here over the course of 2024. This past summer, the content and comms drought for PC players finally coalesced into an announcement for a console launch and a marketing rework that claimed this MMORPG, with its obviously massively multiplayer RPG content, should instead be called an ARPG. In response, content-starved and annoyed PC players just kept on leaving, sinking to a record low peak of just 3285 average players this summer.
That makes Aeternum a chance for a do-over and a fresh start for the game, which has come a long way since its original launch in 2021. It’s also a chance for Amazon to prove it deserves that PC playerbase.
While we can’t see the console numbers, we can see the PC numbers for the non-American servers so far, and even on a Tuesday, it’s pushing past 23,000 players, a number it hasn’t seen since the top of the year. Obviously, that number will go up today when all regions are underway, and it’ll likely peak again this weekend.
Fun fact: Yes, people on the European servers beat the brand-new 10-person raid before North and South Americans could even log in. Fun!
A few things to note if you’re jumping in today.
- If you own the game on PC, you’re going to want to buy Rise of the Angry Earth – that’ll get you access to the new content added with Aeternum. Non-ROTAE players can keep playing as they are, however. Console players will need to buy Aeternum straight up.
- If you’re an existing PC player wanting to play with console buddies or make a fresh start, you’ll want to roll a new character on the new crossplay standard servers. If you’re content on the legacy servers, you can stay, but you can’t move old characters from legacy to standard. Do note that while there’s crossplay, there’s no crossprogression, so you can’t play the same toon/account on both PC and console.
- If you’re hopping to the standard servers, you can take advantage of Amazon’s streamer-studded crossplay promotional event, Trials of Aeternum. Yes, it’s silly, but if you want the cosmetics, you may as well.
- Finally, MOP’s Vitae Aeternum columnist Tyler has penned several pieces to acclimate players to the new version of the MMO as well as help you pick a build if you’re determined to solo your way through it.
It’ll be a bit buried by today’s festivities, but last night Amazon released a dev blog on Blur Studio’s Secret Level “adult animation anthology,” which features a New World-themed episode – apparently the series’ “only episode based on an online RPG.” The series kicks off on December 10th – on Amazon Prime Video, of course.
