The MMORPG New World (Steam) received a new update on May 26: Arenas are new to the game. The update generates a boost in Steam reviews, but player counts in May 2022 are now at a weak level.
This is the highlight of the new patch: On May 26, a fresh patch went live in New World, the “Arenas Update”.
The highlight of the patch is new 3vs3 arenas, a “Small Scale” PvP mode in a game that once attracted players with massive battles. The gimmick of the arena: a fire ring pushes players to the center of the arena. Either you fight or you die.
The patch also brought a “PVP reward series” and “New expedition mutators” to New World, along with “Varangian Knights – Episode 2”, which introduced new enemies for players in the 25-30 range.
A much-discussed small feature of the patch was that the selected pronouns of players now appear in the chat. The “preferred pronoun” is taken into account when someone uses an emote in the game, according to the patch notes, which you can read here in German (via New World).
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How does this affect Steam reviews? There is a slight uptick in Steam reviews to notice:
On May 26, the day of the patch, there were 53 positive reviews, which is much more than on any other day in May. There were 19 negative reviews.
The reviews from May 26, if only this day were considered, would result in 73% positive reviews.
A significant boost compared to the 60% positive reviews that New World has collected over the last 30 days.
New World is losing more and more players on Steam – Unable to stop the bleeding
What does it look like for player numbers? It looks really bleak. New World still cannot really recover (via steamcharts).
They are now averaging 16,750 players. The player loss experienced since release still cannot be effectively stopped.
Also, the update on May 26 does not bring any noticeable upswing. The player numbers on May 25 and May 26 do not differ practically. The peak remains around 21,500 concurrent players.
New World today is far from the peak values at release.
Only in April could the player counts be kept “somewhat” stable compared to March, but since then it has fallen by 5,000 from 21,000.
New World gains players on Steam for the first time since release – Current player counts
