The MMORPG New World opened many servers to accommodate all its players. Now that many have stopped playing, it is merging some servers. Does it make a difference?
The player numbers were very high at release in autumn 2021 (via SteamDB). However, over the months they dropped to under 20,000 average players per day. This changed with the Brimestone Sands update, which went live on October 18th. The numbers rose to 34,000 and soon after to 67,000 when the restart servers opened shortly after.
New World has lost 30,000 players again.
Already shortly after the release of the restart servers, some of the old servers were merged because it became rather quiet on them. Another merge followed on January 10, 2023.
Players on Empty Servers Benefit the Most
Each server has a capacity of 2,500 players who can be online at the same time. The rest ends up in queues. But when only a tenth of that goes online, it quickly doesn’t feel like an MMORPG anymore.
Those playing on a popular server that has been quite full since the beginning have hardly noticed the merge. This is the case for MeinMMO author Alexander Leitsch, who is active on Aaru. As an expert on New World, he provides a statement on this article:
Those who have previously played on fairly full servers hardly notice the server merges. There were already numerous active players on them before, and they are now complemented by new players from an almost empty server. However, these servers suffered at the end of 2022 due to the Fresh Start, as veterans started over again on the fresh servers with their friends or just for fun.
Meanwhile, the situation has almost balanced out again. For us on Aaru, we reach nearly 2,000 simultaneous players during prime time. Looking at the statistics at New World DB, we can see that the small server Artemis and the Fresh Start server Kronos have recently benefited from the mergers. But the real winners are indeed the players who were previously on an almost empty server. Their situation has clearly improved.
Those who were previously on almost empty servers and find themselves back on Aaru, for example, definitely benefit from the merge. There are more players, which is especially important when it comes to finding groups. Without other players, one gets stuck in it forever and cannot complete certain content.
PvP is also difficult on empty servers. For fortress battles or open-world PvP, you need players to have fun. In New World you join one of three factions that fight each other.
5 tips for beginners in New World can be seen in the video:
Restart Servers Are Also Affected by the Merge
The following EU servers were recently merged:
- Niflheim and Caer Sidi belong to Asgard
- Tir Na Nog and Dry Tree belong to Abaton
- Apophis belongs to Artemis
- Galahad belongs to Cleopatra
- Gawain and Jupiter belong to Kronos
- Fate and Morgaine belong to Crassus
- Gilgamesh and Imhotep belong to Nyx
This time, not only the legacy servers, meaning the old ones, are affected, but also the restart servers. In the last merge in December, only the old servers were affected.
Many were attracted by the Fresh Start, which is why it became quiet on the legacy servers at that time. But this did not last very long. Players returned to their previous worlds or completely stopped playing New World. Therefore, the restart servers are also affected by the January merge.
What do you think about the server merge in New World? Is your world affected? Do you play on the restart servers or the legacy servers? Have you benefited from it or not really noticed it because your server is already full of players? Feel free to let us know in the comments here on MeinMMO!
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