New World – December Team Update

If you wouldn’t mind knowing more about the current state of Amazon Game Studios’ MMORPG New World, the upcoming in-game events, and the team’s plans for the future, you should check out the latest “Team Update.” The main part of the update is an hour and a half long video, so if you’ve got nothing better to do, you can check it out below:

Then, there’s also this quick letter from the game’s director Scot Lane:

Hello, Adventurers!

As we close out 2021 and look ahead to the new year, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the first few months of New World and what’s next. I hope you take time to watch our conversation about the state of the game, the Winter Convergence festival, our vision for the future of the game and more, in our December team update (sorry it is so long).

While we were thrilled by the enthusiastic response to our launch in September, we knew launch was just the beginning. Aeternum is a living world, and it’s all driven by you, the players. We’re watching closely as you make it your own—from battling for territory to opening in-game taverns, or even recreating the food of New World in your own kitchens—and taking every opportunity we can to hear what you have to say. When you post on our forums or social media, we’re reading your suggestions, taking note of the things you love and the things you don’t, and using it to guide our next steps. We’ve dedicated every resource we can to making New World a more fun and engaging experience. We’ve also made some mistakes that didn’t match our standards for you, and we’ve subsequently changed our development process and timing to reflect a feature pace that helps prevent such issues.

We’ve made progress on both features and bugs. From spinning up new servers and implementing server transfers and merges, to introducing new events and weapons, we’ve worked hard to give you a great play environment. We’ve also taken steps to be more transparent with players, including keeping our forums updated with thorough details on the status of bugs, exploits, and other issues, and the steps we’re taking to improve New World. In November, we started our Public Test Realm, and we’ve learned how to better use it to gather your player feedback, adjusting our publishing schedule to maximize that value. And of course, we’re hard at work creating brand-new content to add to New World as well.

Today, we’re pleased with the player engagement we’re seeing, showing hours of entertainment for the average player per session. We’re excited to keep introducing new content to the New World community to continue that value. With our Winter Convergence event underway, we’re excited about celebrating the holidays with you, Aeternum-style. We’ve heard you loud and clear about more mid-game and directed content, and more end-game activities while keeping bugs at a minimum. Over the next few months, we’ll be focusing on a new end-game feature that will include new rewards, we’ll spend an entire release on fine tuning balance. More quests for the mid game are on the way, as well as a steady pace of new features and fine-tuning for existing ones.

We’re going to continue working as hard as we can to make New World a game you’ll keep coming back to for years to come. Sometimes we will make mistakes, but we’ll always remain committed to listening to the community and improving the game.

Thanks for joining us on this journey. You play a meaningful role in making Aeternum a living world that grows and changes every time you log in, and your feedback and support means the world to us.

Happy holidays!

Scot Lane, Game Director