Amazon's new MMO New World has officially launched, but many gamers were soon caught up in massive queues while they waited for a chance to log in. One of these players was Twitch streamer Asmongold, who found himself in position 10413 in the New World queue.
This unexpected situation seems to stem from New World's apparent decision to not give streamers queue priority or unique accounts. Asmongold has previously criticized New World for bugs and gameplay flaws, but he may not have expected to be faced with long wait times on top of those existing issues.
Reddit user GoldDogYT shared a short, 50-second-long clip of Asmongold struggling to get onto New World on launch day. The video shows Asmongold waiting for New World's Aeternum setting to load and growing increasingly frustrated as the screen remains black. Although he remains relatively calm after confirming that New World is not going to give him queue priority, he becomes vocally upset when his queue position finally appears on the screen.
Streamers can act as free or cheap promotions for MMO games like New World, which is one of the reasons new games may give streamers some priority. However, this may result in perceived favoritism and potentially garner resentment from other players. Asmongold has previously run into difficulty with getting MMOs to load, but the issue is usually traced back to his many fans clogging up the servers, which may explain his apparent frustration at being blocked by the queue.
As of writing, other New World fans do not appear to be feeling particularly sympathetic to Asmongold. One Redditor joked that Asmongold would be waiting in the queue for 13 hours, while another gloated that it only took them 40 minutes to make it through a 1000 person queue. Several other users mocked him for being upset, comparing his reaction to that of a nobleman discovering he had to wait in line with the commoners and peasants.
However, opinions appeared to be more split on whether or not New World's apparently equal-opportunity server access was a good decision. Some users argued that this made accessing the game more fair, while others pointed out the potential business benefits of giving streamers special treatment. One exchange in particular had a user bring up Asmongold's many viewers, who were presumably also stuck watching a black screen with him and not playing the game themselves. The response was that New World still reportedly had 960,000 viewers on a Tuesday afternoon, indicating that the game was doing just fine.
New World is now available for PC.