Amazon's New World launched on September 28th, 2021, achieving a record-breaking number of concurrent players on Steam at its peak. Unfortunately, as the weeks went by, players were steadily coming to the conclusion that Amazon Game Studios released a game that should have been given a few more months of development time before it graced the gaming world at large.
The population in New World dwindled significantly over the coming months, as the game dropped to just 4% of its concurrent players – compared to its former peak of over nine hundred thousand – and it was becoming clear to the developers that New World's shortcomings would need to be fixed before its population could return to some semblance of what it used to be. Amazon Game Studios toiled patiently, teasing New World's community with the 2022 roadmap, and the first part of that roadmap is due to launch on March 30th, 2022.
A lot of former players are wondering if the March update is game-changing enough to justify coming back to the lands of Aeternum, and the answer probably relies on how much they enjoyed New World's basic gameplay loop and premise. The patch notes promise a great deal of quality of life additions, such as a storage rework that doubles the weight capacity of all Storage Chest tiers, or the removal of player-to-player collision in Open World, Expeditions, and Invasions.
Brand-new content is also arriving in the March update through the addition of a New World weapon that scales with strength and intelligence: the Blunderbuss. Ideal for mage or bruiser archetypes, the Blunderbuss will allow players to specialize in two distinct playstyles – one focusing around closing the gap, and the other about keeping one's distance. The Blunderbuss will also launch with its own Legendary Quest series, available to players upon reaching level 60 with their new weapon.
On the subject of quests in New World, the game's storyline introduced at launch will finally reach a conclusion through the Heart of Madness update, allowing players to confront Isabella by pursuing the Tempest across the twisted capital city of Myrkgard and into a corrupted dimension of reality. The Tempest's Heart, an endgame 5-man expedition, will seemingly cap off the main story, and is recommended to be undertaken by a group of level 60 heroes with a gear score of at least 550.
While many are positive that this New World patch is a step in the right direction, one can only hope that new duping methods in Aeternum will not come with it.
New World is available now on PC.