Amazon's MMO New World is out now, but the servers are struggling
Watch out for long queue times and teething bugs
At long last, Amazon's MMO New World has launched. After multiple delays and two rather popular betas, folks can now jump onto the supernatural island of Aeternum and stay there for as long as they please. The EU servers are already live, with the rest of the world to follow throughout today. Do watch out if you're jumping in this morning though, because some players are reporting long queue times, while others are struggling to get into the queue in the first place.
New World is a fairly PvP-heavy MMORPG, but it has plenty of quests for PvE-likers to get on with. I played a little bit during one of the beta weekends and surprised myself with how much I enjoyed it. I'm not usually an MMO fan, but this one has fun and active hack and slash combat, and good crafting to boot. In his New World preview, Ed said it has as much in common with Valheim as it does World Of Warcraft, and I'd agree.
EU servers went live this morning at 7am BST (8am CEST), and other regions are set to go live within the next few hours. Here are the timings:
- South American Servers - 8am BRT
- Australian Servers - 9pm AEST
- NA East Coast Server - 8am ET
- NA West Coast Servers - 8am PT
You could be in for a bit of a wait to get into New World. Most boards on the forum have threads made by frustrated players waiting in long queues, and a couple of my pals have been unable to queue at all, with the game kicking them back to menu. The devs briefly took a few worlds offline this morning to solve stability issues, though it's unclear right now if those issues have been fixed.
As for other teething bugs, some players report New World isn't registering their clicks to interact with the world. Some say they've had to restart their games to resolve this, which unfortunately plonks them back into another queue.
It's worth noting that server problems and long wait times are pretty common for big game releases though. There's a lot of demand right now, and hopefully things will start to clear up as the day goes on.
If you do manage to get into the game this morning, we have lots of guides to help get you started. We can tell you how to level up quickly in New World and give you some general tips and tricks for beginners.
At the very least, New World's popularity suggests Amazon might finally have successful game on their hands. They've been cursed with cancellations up until now, ditching a Lord Of The Rings MMO, releasing then swiftly un-releasing their hero shooter Crucible, and killing off their MOBA Breakaway before it ever saw the light of day. Good luck, New World.