The release of New World has been postponed. Both the beta and the MMO itself will only be released in spring 2021. MeinMMO editor Leya Jankowski is sad about it. However, she also believes that this decision is the right one for the players and the MMO.
Oh, New World, what are you doing to me?
The new MMO from Amazon Game Studios and I have a tumultuous relationship. Here’s a quick outline:
- Originally, the MMO was supposed to be a survival sandbox game with mandatory PvP.
- It was precisely the strong focus on PvP that made me write off the MMO. I even publicly wished that New World would offer something for PvE MMO players like me.
- Then New World made a drastic turn in 2019 and quickly became an open-world MMO with optional PvP – still in closed early access. My wish was fulfilled.
- I began to develop a certain cautious excitement for New World, as it evolved into a game that appealed to me more and more. Especially the new PvE content, which focuses on exploration, sounds cool and made for me.
So, New World catapulted itself from complete indifference to the point where I could hardly wait for the release in August 2018!
The news that made me sad
I had already laid out a plan for when I must have completed Ni No Kuni (via GamePro.de) to be ready for the beta starting in two weeks. A single-player RPG that I planned to play in the meantime. After that, full focus on New World.
Suddenly it is: Release of New World postponed to spring 2021 along with the beta.
Once again, Amazon Game Studios played with my feelings. This time, however, I was sad, and my doubts about the game became apparent.
New World has not been postponed for the first time. Originally, the release date of New World was in May 2020 – but Amazon postponed it on April 9, citing the outbreak of the novel coronavirus as the reason. Now New World is delayed by more than half a year. This time, the reason is said to be missing content for the mid and end game.
The postponement is actually no surprise
The news about the postponed release was initially a small shock for me. It would have been good for MeinMMO to manage a new MMO from the West again with a publisher like Amazon backing it.
Amazon had even recently been drumming up interest just before the release. As part of the Summer of Gaming event, they released a new combat trailer, which was sharply criticized. The question arose whether such an MMO should look like this in 2020.
Why the postponement was to be expected: Let’s look at another game from Amazon: Crucible. The free-to-play hero shooter had a pretty bad launch. The game is technically still unpolished, the gameplay still has a lot of room for improvement, and it could generate only limited interest among players. All this led to the un-release of Crucible. The hero shooter started in a delayed beta after release on July 1.
I strongly suspect that the catastrophic start of Crucible is partly responsible for New World pulling the emergency brake and radically halting the release in August.
New World has already undergone closed alpha phases. Although there is an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) in place, some alleged players occasionally spill the beans. It is often claimed that the game is not yet ready. Too much content is still missing, and also technically the MMO is not yet in a release-ready state. However, there is no evidence for this due to the mentioned NDA.
In an interview with MeinMMO, however, Amazon stated that alpha players indeed want more PvE content – more quests above all.
The postponement of the release is the right decision
I told you at the beginning of the article about my tumultuous relationship with New World, not just to show you my feelings towards the game. As you can see, Amazon has completely changed its vision with New World.
As much as I am excited that New World now focuses on PvE content and rewards exploring the world, I am also acutely aware that such a radical change carries a risk. At the beginning of the MMO, there wouldn’t even have been quests. Everything was supposed to revolve solely around large-scale battles, building your own economy, and conquering territories.
The mystical lore, the NPCs, the factions, the housing, the deep RPG systems, the arena bosses – all of this came later. All of this came after the game changed its direction towards the end of 2019. This aligns with the developers’ statement that the release of New World is being postponed again due to missing content in the mid and end game.
The developers probably know why they are taking more time until spring 2021 to get New World ready for release. The launch is immensely important for an MMO to survive. Server issues and technical hiccups are usually forgiven. However, if fundamental things are off and players burn through content too quickly, then a service game can hardly recover or not at all.
The problem was also observed with the MMO shooter Anthem from BioWare – the fundamentals were correct and fun, but it was simply an unfinished game at release. We know that did not end well for Anthem.
I believe we can all agree that the postponement, under all these circumstances, can only be a good thing.
