Amazon has paused feature development to instead focus on improvements to the live game, tweaking existing systems and squashing bugs. A new PTR went live on February 2 to test the upcoming February update.Expedition Mutators and Umbral Shards were added on January 25.Every month, tens of thousands stop playing, and there haven't been any noticeable spikes around update launches, suggesting that they aren't tempting people back. Unfortunately, Amazon's efforts do not seem to be keeping people around. But even with this being the case, New World has seen a steep decline, going from a peak of nearly a million concurrent players in September to around 30,000 now. They never do! Launches, including expansions, are always when the most people are playing. It's easy to read too much into player numbers, and it's almost a rite of passage now for online games to be slapped with the 'Dead Game' label just because it's not managed to maintain its launch population. Being a trader just isn't very engaging now.Įconomy changes aside, New World does seem like it's in a better position than it was when I finished my review in October, but that hasn't been reflected in the player population. It's certainly streamlined, but at the cost of dynamism. It's reasonable to assume this would have changed as more players hit the level cap, but rather than waiting for that Amazon just ditched local economies entirely, making one unified trading post. New World does seem like it's in a better position now than it was when I finished my review in October, but that hasn't been reflected in the player population. But this also meant that settlements in higher level areas had comparatively empty trading posts. This encouraged people to invest in settlements that had easy access to the raw resources they required for their business or crafting ventures. Plenty of boars around? The trading post would be full of pork. Loads of hemp nearby? You'd see it by the truckloads when shopping. Initially, every settlement had its own economy, with their trading posts filled with things you could get in the region. The death of local economies has been a less fortunate-though Amazon would argue essential-change. Naturally, many players complained about Amazon not adding brand new dungeons or fixing bugs they found especially egregious, but I think the team had its priorities right. As well as the aforementioned Umbral Shards and Expedition Mutators, they also introduced a new weapon type, new rewards, and a new group of enemies. January's update, like the winter update before it, aimed to give New World some much-needed variety.
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