In New World, the free weekend runs until April 11, where all players with a Steam account can try out the MMORPG. More than 60 new servers have been opened for this. However, the great influx is absent and most servers barely reach double-digit player numbers.
How is the free weekend going? Not so well. While there is a slightly positive trend and a few hundred more players are online than in the previous weekends, the event has not brought about a significant turnaround:
- The peak of concurrent players on Saturday was only 36,364 players (via SteamDB).
- Last Saturday, New World peaked at 35,112 players, which is only slightly less. However, the MMORPG also experienced a small hype because the latest update with a new dungeon and a new weapon was released the day before.
The developers from Amazon seem to have expected a larger surge. Over 60 new servers were opened for the event, but almost all of them are dead.
The trailer for the latest update Hearts of Madness:
New World seems to want to prevent server problems
What about the new servers? Currently, only two servers are able to record more than 20 concurrent players. These are the servers Eta I with nearly 60 players at peak and Phi IV with 40 players. Both belong to the South American region.
The European and American Free2Play servers usually don’t even reach double-digit numbers.
However, all Free2Play players can also visit the normal servers unless they are currently blocked for transfers. It is quite possible that the new western players have immediately gone to established servers.
Why were so many new servers opened? Amazon likely wanted to avoid a server chaos like at the release. At that time, the player numbers obviously exceeded the developers’ expectations:
- At the beginning, there were a total of 177 servers for all five regions (EU, NA East, NA West, SA, Australia). But they were already overcrowded a few minutes after release.
- Long queues formed, and many players were angry because they had to wait up to 8 hours to log in.
- Amazon reacted and opened over 120 new servers alone in Europe in the first two weeks after release.
However, many died off after the initial release hype and have since been merged with others.
New World regularly gets events and updates, but doesn’t attract new players
What is the current status of New World? New World has received a major update every month since November 2021. Highlights included the new weapon Unheilsstulpen, new opponents, the dungeon mutators, and recently the new dungeon Heart of Storms.
Although New World is developing well, bugs and issues still occur with new releases. The latest update also had to be postponed by more than 36 hours at short notice.
However, there is now a roadmap with a glimpse into the future. Planned are PvP arenas, leaderboards, new weapons, new dungeon mutators, and a new area. The next highlight will be an Easter event with killer rabbits, set to start on April 12.
How exactly New World has developed and whether it is worth starting, we will reveal here:
