On October 3, the new expansion Rise of the Angry Earth for New World was released. Such a launch should ideally cause player numbers to explode. However, MeinMMO editor Alexander Leitsch finds the success to be modest. He even expected a weak start.
55,429 players were online in New World on October 4 (via SteamDB). This is the best figure in 2023, and the numbers from August were more than doubled. On the weakest day, only 18,173 players were online in Aeternum.
The figure will likely go up a bit over the weekend, but one is far from old records. I’m not only talking about the launch with over 910,000 concurrent players, but also about the big update in combination with the Fresh Start in October/November 2022. Back then, the game had over 137,000 users and was able to record over 100,000 players daily for more than two weeks.
However, I’m not surprised by the lack of hype. Amazon made three mistakes right away.
No marketing, confusion during pre-sale, and the usual problems
The first major problem is the lack of marketing. While there was an event in August where invited guests could test the expansion, several blog posts and videos were published afterward. However, many MMORPG players who do not regularly visit the New World website missed this.
For example, there were several people in the Discord for my podcast MMO News who were surprised that New World is hardly present in media or advertising. Without us, they stated, they would not have noticed the launch.
An event around Twitch streamers was only half-heartedly organized this time, and the numbers on the platform are also lower. With the exception of Shroud, there is no really big name participating in the event.
Finally, a sale completely came out of nowhere at the start of the new expansion. The base game was discounted there. However, this should have happened much earlier with the announcement in August, allowing people to try the game for €15 and then decide if they wanted to invest more money in October. Here, a great opportunity was missed, and it seems more like a small panic move due to the lack of hype.
Problem number two was the great confusion surrounding the sale of the expansion. Players could not simply purchase Rise of the Angry Earth in advance on Steam or order it on another platform. The purchase was only possible on the day of release.
Even now, you can only get the expansion on Steam or Amazon itself. Third-party providers often don’t even have a note or a landing page for Rise of the Angry Earth.
You almost get the feeling that Amazon wanted to keep the expansion a bit smaller, perhaps to avoid the old queue problems.
At the start of the expansion, players sometimes had to wait hours to enter their own server. An hour after release, I had to queue for about 4 hours on the German server Aaru before I could even touch the new content.
The whole queue and server problem is my criticism number three.
The developers opened only one server for new players – Hercules. Since new accounts are not allowed to create a character elsewhere, it seems Amazon didn’t expect a large influx.
Just under €30 for good but not outstanding content
Besides the problems outside the game, it is also noticeable that the content of Rise of the Angry Earth did not convince many. The new level cap provides a bit of work, the new equipment solves old problems, and the mounts are a long-awaited feature.
But otherwise?
The new area Elysian Wilds is just a rework of First Light. Brand new areas are therefore not included – unlike the Fresh Start in October, where players got the Sulfur Sand Desert.
A new dungeon, a new weapon, and a few quests were added to the game for free since release. This isn’t much of an incentive for new players either.
Rise of the Angry Earth caters to the veterans who are willing to pay €28.99 for it. Personally, I enjoy the content, look forward to the new gear, and the adjusted mutations.
However, returnees who are currently doubting whether New World is the right MMORPG for them will wait skeptically at first. New players, on the other hand, will hardly be attracted by the expansion – they would have to pay around €70 to acquire the base game and the expansion.
Is Rise of the Angry Earth bad because of this? Absolutely not, I find the price of €28.99 completely reasonable, especially considering how much content has come for free in the meantime and how fair the shop of New World is.
But the numbers around the expansion are sobering. Amazon will not be satisfied with this, even though in my opinion, they are to blame for the lack of hype.
If you are still considering returning to New World, here’s what has changed in the past two years and up to the expansion:
I also have some concerns, because the New World team is also supposed to work on the upcoming Lord of the Rings MMORPG. So it is rather unlikely that the game will receive more content in the coming years. A large renaissance for New World will therefore become increasingly difficult.
What do you think about Rise of the Angry Earth? Why are you playing it or why not? Feel free to write it in the comments.
