Amazon MMO New World has officially launched. To say that the MMO has seen impressive initial success would be an understatement, as New World has quickly become the most played game on Steam as measured by concurrent players. Of course, such viral success does not come without a cost. MMO launches are almost universally overwhelmed by player totals at launch, and New World is no different. Amazon's choice to deal with this issue is familiar -- it's implemented a queue to start playing.
Queue times for capped New World servers are growing extraordinarily long as players try and join servers with their friends, Twitch streamers, or other popular online gaming communities. The length of certain queues for more popular New World servers extends over 10,000 players, with one server's total number of players in queue sitting just below 25,000. Another server sits at 8,000 players in queue, but due to players not dropping its estimated wait time stretches over 116 hours.
The issue is that, for the time being, Amazon has taken a hard stance regarding server population caps in New World. No server will have more than 2,000 players, at least until Amazon has completed "further testing" tied to raising the server cap. That likely means Amazon is waiting to see how its servers perform as players spread out in New World's open world. If New World's players spread out enough and there are no major performance hitches, expect the cap to be increased -- but not in the immediate future.
Amazon does have another temporary solution it's putting into action, however. While it's not raising server caps, it is opening new New World servers as fast as it can. That way, there should always be a server without a queue across all regions. Further, Amazon is going to open up free server transfers for two weeks past launch, so players can shift around once the initial wave of players has tapered off. For the time being, however, players will have to make the best of a challenging situation.
While the New World queue issue may seem like a grand offense to those currently waiting in one, New World's launch has otherwise gone surprisingly smoothly. Those who made it through the queues are able to play with relative comfort. And those in queue can drop and join an open New World server without one, if they choose to.
Launches for MMOs are always tumultuous. That's what happens when hundreds of thousands of players try to start an online game at the same time. That's likely to change, whether it's in a matter of days or weeks. Hopefully, the queues don't put any MMO fans off in the meantime.
New World is available now on PC.