We haven’t heard a whole lot out of New World since before the new year, when Amazon first revealed its so-called living roadmap for the newly multiplatform MMORPG. At the time, Amazon had announced its seventh season of play with a seasonal PvP world, new Outpost Rush map, and daily solo trials, in addition to a slew of additions in development for later in the year. Now, the studio is back with a deep-dive into its upcoming PvP ruleset.
“The first iteration of Seasonal Worlds introduces a PvP-focused ruleset where players are flagged for PvP at all times after reaching Level 15 or choosing a faction,” the team says. “This design encourages open-world conflict and strategic decision-making, while new Ethereal and Conquerors gear amplify the stakes with their drop-on-death mechanics. But beyond the rewards, Seasonal Worlds offer something deeper: a fresh and exhilarating way to experience the game.”
Amazon team further explains that seasonal worlds have demanded “rethinking server architecture and gameplay systems from the ground up,” to avoid wrecking the economy while still adding a compelling risk-vs.-reward gameplay loop with mechanics like powerful ethereal items that drop on your corpse for players who kill you. The season server will also allow players to level their experience, weapon mastery, and tradeskills 25% faster to get people into the action with less grind. And finally, mounts will be significantly easier to acquire.
Launch is expected on the 21st. In the meantime, you can immerse yourself in the disgruntlement of the players on social media, as vocal players aren’t enthused – at least in part because the seasonal rewards from the season server are locked behind the premium pass.
“Seasonal-exclusive rewards like titles, mount attachments, and skins are designed to make your time on these worlds unforgettable. They are obtained through a new Journey for the Seasonal Server inside of the Season Pass and Seasonal Server specific leaderboards. To obtain rewards from the Seasonal Server Journey, you must purchase the Premium Pass.”
Checking in on the game’s Steam population, we see that it’s lost some of the momentum it gained on the platform with the release of Aeternum, having dropped from 22K to 11K average concurrent and from 61K to 18K peak concurrent. It’s almost exactly where it was back in February 2024 before updates petered out as the team focused on the console launch; its low point was last August, when it saw just over 3K average and 5K peak. Of course, we don’t have clear numbers from console to get the full picture.
Finally, one more bit of New World news: The team released the full series of its Discovering Aeternum videos all in one long video.
