On September 28 at 8:00 AM, the servers of New World finally went online. MeinMMO editor Alexander Leitsch was right in the middle of it and stood in queues for hours. He expected problems, but the way the queues were set up frustrated and angered him.
How did the release of New World go? The launch by Amazon went well for some, terribly for others, as you can read in our live ticker.
Those who managed to get onto one of the few EU servers directly at 8:00 AM probably experienced an interesting and perhaps even very fun release. Because the servers were very stable.
Only between 10:20 AM and 10:45 AM was there maintenance on almost all servers. Individual servers also had crashes, but spots were reserved for players who were already logged in. This allowed them to bypass the queues without any issues.
However, those who were not so lucky stood in queues. And sometimes for 10 hours or longer. Because Amazon only allowed a certain number of players on each server. And that extremely frustrated me.
Some players had the day of their lives, others just stared at queues
What was and is the problem with New World? When a new MMORPG is released, everyone expects server crashes or queues. This is completely normal, and that is exactly what I expected with New World. I fully assumed that I would play for only a few hours – if at all.
But Amazon uses a rather atypical system for their servers.
While most online games artificially create the queue so that not too many players flood into the starting areas at once and crash the servers, the servers of New World were actually full. Those in the queue had to wait until a player truly left the server.
Although there is no exact player number per server, it is estimated that there are around 2,000 players per server based on company sizes. Thus, the 63 EU servers at launch only offered space for about 126,000 players.
Given the fact that over 250,000 players were already online early in the morning, the long queues were almost pre-programmed. It was also to be expected that players who were early on a server would not leave it the entire day.
“I was jealous of those who could already play”
What frustrated me so much? Basically, it was two things:
- On the one hand, I hoped that Amazon would do better than other MMORPGs. After all, they delayed the release by 4 weeks specifically to address server and queue issues.
- On the other hand, I could watch and listen to streamers and friends having the day of their lives in New World. At the same time, I had NO CHANCE to ever enter one of the servers. Because to get access at queue position 5,000, all 5,000 players before me would have had to log off.
Players who were online once could essentially play all day without major downtime or issues. That felt worse to me than if the servers had been offline all day.
Feel free to call it jealousy at this point, because that’s all it was. I was and am jealous of those who could play. They could finally experience the MMO I have been waiting for years and that I enjoyed so much during the beta. But that joy was denied to me.
I also heard a lot of anger from some colleagues who even planned to control a settlement with their company. The server was actually irrelevant to them, but they couldn’t play together anywhere. If they start together now, all settlements on all servers will already be taken.
In the end, the servers also led to New World receiving poor reviews on Steam:
Server issues okay, but please with a warning
Did it have to go this way? Basically, I don’t want to blame Amazon because a surge as immense as the one New World experienced at launch is hard to handle.
I expected problems and downtime, but not that some could play all day while over half of the interested players were stuck in a queue all day.
I would have liked to see more open communication from the developers to be really prepared for this. Amazon could have:
- Already explained their plans at launch, including regarding new server openings
- Immediately clarified the cap so players wouldn’t get in line for position 10,000 in queue
- Announced the now announced free server transfers before launch. So players could have queued on small servers and then switched to the large servers later. Also, the “subsequent increase of server capacity” is important information that came much too late.
These three aspects would have made my launch much more pleasant, although a bit of jealousy would probably still have remained.
What else is there to criticize? I would have liked more servers right at launch. The hype surrounding New World was widely known. I myself reported on MeinMMO that due to this hype, Lost Ark would have been overshadowed by New World.
Of course, behind the decision of how many servers to launch with are many technical aspects we have no insight into and that are difficult to criticize. But Amazon took too long with statements about queues and new servers, which also led to frustration.
From my perspective, Amazon also could have spared themselves some trouble by not making the naming globally available. This led to players from other regions creating characters in Europe at launch just to secure their names.
How is New World itself? Since then, I have managed to play New World for several hours last night and this morning. And I am still convinced of the MMO. The entry was successful, and the first endgame is present. Much also depends on how Amazon delivers additional content after the release.
The criticism in this article is therefore not directed against the game itself, but against the way the servers functioned at launch.
If you want to get an overview of why New World is a suitable game, you can find our quick check here:
New World at launch: Why should one play it? The quick check
