On the first weekend after the launch of New World Aeternum, Amazon Games can celebrate a new record for player numbers on Steam, at least for the gaming year 2024.
How many players are playing New World Aeternum? On Saturday, October 19, 2024, there were temporarily 56,769 Steam users online simultaneously in the MMORPG from Amazon Games (via steamdb.info). On launch day (October 15, 2024), the peak was “only” 52,580 concurrent active Steam players.
This last happened about a year ago, in October 2023, when the expansion Rise of the Angry Earth was released. At that time, the online role-playing game reached concurrent players on Valve’s distribution platform.
What is the all-time high for New World? At the original launch of New World in September 2021, there were up to 913,634 players online simultaneously on Steam. The current numbers are still quite far from that.
At the same time, it is unclear how many players have joined with the Aeternum launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series – New World was not available on consoles in 2021. Accordingly, there was a clear focus on the PC community.
The launch trailer for New World Aeternum:
New focus leaves PC players frustrated
Why isn’t New World taking off on Steam again? The reasons for the previously very high player numbers of the MMORPG were recently analyzed by MeinMMO, although the article was mainly about comparing the player numbers of Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark. The key factors:
- First new, ambitious MMORPG from a prominent Western studio since 2014.
- Exciting, unused setting that was strongly promoted through the first trailers.
- Due to the Corona pandemic, many online games still benefited from unusually high player numbers in 2021.
- Through streamers and the Twitch synergies, Amazon Games managed to build significant hype ahead of the release.
The initial situation for New World Aeternum shows a noticeable change in October 2024.
- Instead of benefiting from a pandemic, the gaming industry has been in a crisis for almost two years. Many service games are having disappointing launches.
- Anyone who wanted to try New World and owns a PC has already had ample opportunity to do so in the past three years.
- The Aeternum version offers PC veterans few arguments to return – a 10-player raid, solo challenges, and an open PvP zone. All other adjustments are primarily aimed at the new console community (and even annoy many PC enthusiasts).
- To try out the Aeternum innovations, players need the main game AND the expansion on PC. This is likely to deter some from trying out the new version of the MMORPG.
- Currently, there is competition from Throne and Liberty from within the same house (Amazon Games is the publisher). Additionally, this year all major MMORPGs received extensive expansions.
What does the community say about the current numbers? On Reddit, many players are confident that the player record for New World Aeternum will be set today (October 20, 2024). After that, the trend is likely to show a gradual downward trend, according to predictions in several posts.
Some PC players take this opportunity to highlight their disappointment again. Shamesticks writes on Reddit: “All they really care about is the number of copies sold for consoles. This is only for PC and most of those people probably already own everything, so it cost them nothing to come back and try it out.”
The fact that there is currently tension between the PC and console communities in the Amazon MMORPG has already been reported by MeinMMO. Particularly one of the two sides is currently not showing its best side: The “PC Elite” of New World Aeternum is behaving poorly, greeting console newcomers with toxic behavior
