Increasing player numbers, queues for the servers, positive discussions about new content – New World unexpectedly rises like a phoenix from the ashes. MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz analyzes the sudden rebirth of the MMORPG from Amazon Games.
Actually, New World should have switched back to the success track with Aeternum and the console launch last year. But that didn’t happen. We will discuss the reasons later. More importantly, the reason for this article: About a year after the Aeternum relaunch, Amazon Games’ MMORPG seems to be making a comeback:
- New World was suddenly back among the best-selling games on Steam just before the start of Season 10.
- The player numbers are rising after a long dry spell, allowing New World to climb several places in the list of MMORPGs on Steam with the most players at the beginning of October. More than 40,000 players were online at the same time on Steam, exactly one year ago during the Aeternum relaunch (Source: steamcharts.com).
- Players are even reporting queue times for New World servers at times, such as here on Reddit.
- While Aeternum was able to increase player numbers briefly, the relaunch received a lot of criticism early on, especially from the PC community. Currently, the community is discussing the recent changes very positively on social platforms and is even showering praise in some cases.
But where does the upswing come from? Is only the new Season 10 the reason? In the following, we analyze the surprising turnaround and shed light on what Amazon Games is doing right.
The trend pointed downwards for a long time
First, let’s look at the situation that Amazon Games maneuvered itself into in recent years. For the big plan of Amazon to become a big player in the gaming industry, the ambitious AAA project New World played a significant role.
The historically impressive launch of the MMORPG reflected less the quality of the game and more the desire of genre enthusiasts for a new, large online role-playing game from the West. Moreover, New World initially benefited greatly from the COVID-19 pandemic and the synergies with Twitch as well as the collaborations with various streamers.
The many problems caused by the turbulent development (including a shift in focus from survival PvP to theme park PvE) and the inexperience of the Amazon Games team quickly began to take effect. The player numbers fell.
Major releases like the expansion “Rise of the Angry Earth” in October 2023 and the Aeternum relaunch last year were only able to reverse this negative trend for a very short time. This was also due to the fact that developers never managed to solve all the major issues of the MMORPG in Aeternum.
With Aeternum, the big restart for New World was supposed to succeed:
A restart that disappointed
The Aeternum version from 2024 is a good example of this. The restart not only brought the MMORPG to consoles, but also improved many areas of New World, including the entry, campaign, and quest experience. This was great for all newcomers, but the PC community, which had been waiting for new endgame content for ages, was left out.
The first seasons of Aeternum even worsened the situation. On the one hand, because the seasonal servers did not fit the player experience of New World and because they further fragmented the already shrinking community. Additionally, the regular servers received hardly any new content through the first seasons.
On the other hand, because the focus of the seasons was on areas like PvP or hardcore rules, which only a small part of the community felt addressed. Many new players attracted to the servers by Aeternum were primarily lured by the theme park and improved PvE content.
The little surprising result: Neither Aeternum nor the regular seasons were able to have a sustainably positive effect on player numbers. According to Amazon Games, for example, only 434 players have mastered all achievements of the hardcore servers, although that could be done in just a few hours of playtime.
New head brings fresh wind with new strategy
The probably most important step for the current turnaround took place in May 2025. In that month, Katy Kaszynski took over the position of Game Director from Scot Lane. Before that, she was Release Manager and Senior Producer for New World – so she knows the MMORPG inside out. She has been with Amazon Games since 2020, before that she worked for more than 3 years as Program Manager at Amazon.
Already in the first Q&A with the community, the lead developer explained, that they want to focus on the endgame of New World. After leaving the seasons behind, which had been initiated under the old management, Amazon Games also stated that they want to abandon the concept of seasonal servers in the future.
The freshly launched Season 10 is likely the first content package that was completely developed under the leadership of Katy Kaszynski. And this season finally addresses perhaps the biggest remaining weakness of the MMORPG: the endgame.
However, not only new content like the Catacombs dungeons or the Night Island raid have arrived on the standard servers of New World, but also comprehensive adjustments for the overall character progression as well as the rewards available in the endgame. The goal: to create long-term motivation to regularly and continuously attract players to the servers.
All this is supplemented by a new area with story and quest content as well as a new map for the Outpost Rush. PvP fans and casual players will not be forgotten.
In short: Katy Kaszynski and her team have found a simple solution for a long-standing problem of New World: to listen to the community and provide the type of content and improvements that are in high demand.
The trailer for Season 10 of New World:
Fewer hurdles for entry = more players
The delicious cream of the Season 10 ice cream is garnished with 2 cherries, one of which is very fresh and the other a bit older. Both ensure that New World is accessible to many more players in all its glory:
- New World has been part of the PlayStation Plus game catalog since July.
- The long-time paid expansion “Rise of the Angry Earth” is now a free part of New World on PC, so that all owners of New World finally have access to all the content of the MMORPG. For clarification: On console, the expansion has been part of the Aeternum version from 2024 from the beginning.
Both are clever decisions to attract more players to the game’s servers and to eliminate reasons for not being able to play together like “I don’t have Aeternum/Rise of the Angry Earth”.
Additionally, all players of New World are currently playing on the standard servers, as there is no fragmentation due to seasonal worlds. The result: Aeternum feels alive. An important plus for any MMORPG and the search for teammates for group content.
Now free with New World – the “Rise of the Angry Earth” expansion:
Outlook for the future of New World
Amazon Games seems to be on the right track with New World. Who would have thought that a few months ago? The big question now is, of course, whether the developers can continue on this path. There is potential for improvements and a demand for new content like sand by the sea.
Since the last roadmap update was in July and many of the confirmed content revolved around Season 9 and Season 10, it is currently unclear what Amazon Games is planning for Season 11 and beyond. New weapons, additional difficulty levels for raids, new challenges, scaling of areas, account-wide progression, and new PvP content have been hinted at.
However, it is clear that Katy Kaszynski’s team has to keep up the momentum so the current positive trend doesn’t evaporate immediately. Whether that will succeed is interesting not only for New World but also with regard to the new MMORPG based on the Lord of the Rings that is currently being developed by Amazon Games.
We all surely hope that Amazon Games learns from the mistakes of the past for the new MMORPG project and develops a game that can excite fans of Middle-earth. How great the anticipation for the online role-playing game based on the Lord of the Rings is can be seen in our survey results from the summer: The Lord of the Rings is such a strong brand that even Amazon Games cannot harm it – these are the MMORPGs you are most looking forward to
