The new MMO New World launched with great enthusiasm and many players on Steam on September 28. 2 months later, the MMO has lost a large portion of its players. The peak number dropped from 913,027 to 119,135. The head of the MMO, Scot Lane, now shares his perspective.
How have the player numbers of New World evolved? When looking solely at the peak numbers from Steam, in 2 months, the player numbers have dropped by about 87%:
- Upon release, New World had a peak of 913,027 players. Especially in Germany, New World was extremely popular at launch.
- In November, the absolute peak was still 357,188 players.
- In the last 24 hours, on December 8, 2021, the peak on Steam was 119,135 players – that’s only about 13% of the original player count.
“We made mistakes that frustrated our players”
This is what the head of New World says: A Polish MMO site had the opportunity to ask the head of New World, Scot Lane, a question about the falling player numbers. Lane responded (via mmorpg.org.pl):
I think you are referring to the numbers from Steam and while those numbers have indeed declined, they do not reflect the active players 1:1.
All new games and MMOs lose activity after release, which is normal and to be expected. At the beginning, players had extremely long sessions, almost double compared to the Alpha. This led to problems with long queues and intensified the feeling that we lost more players than we actually did, as the length of the sessions adjusted back to what we saw in the Alpha.
We also made some mistakes that frustrated our players and are working harder to improve our processes to minimize future problems. Considering that only two months have passed, we are satisfied with the current player engagement data. Of course, we always want to improve and are trying to do so.
Scot Lane
In the rush, some mistakes were made – It will get better in the future
What does Lane say about the bugs? Addressing the many bugs in New World, Lane replied that New World is a large game and is continuously growing. Just in the rush to improve New World, some mistakes were made.
One understands what kind of negative impact the mistakes have on players and does everything to improve. In the future, updates aim to be smaller so that they can focus more on quality.
Lane hopes that players will log in again in the future to see the changes and improvements made to New World. It is said that they will always work on balance and bring new content, so Lane hopes that the players will give the team a second chance to regain their trust.
We have taken an in-depth look at the state of New World after 2 months on MeinMMO and are asking: Is the MMO still salvageable?
What’s behind it: Lane describes the phenomenon that people play significantly more in the initial phase of an MMO than later on, once they reach max level. Since Steam primarily measures the “peak player count,” meaning the number of players active at the same time, the peak numbers in this “initial phase” are significantly higher.
A heavy player is generally “more valuable” in this statistic than a casual player who might not even show up in the statistics because they are not logged in during “peak time.”
Therefore, Lane is correct that New World has not lost 83% of its players, but that some of these players still play New World, albeit not as much as before. Nevertheless, it is clear that some players have already left New World, which he admits, and Amazon is aware that the launch was quite rocky.
While some claim that New World is dead, players say: It’s back, it’s much better now
