Amazon’s new video game, New World, has finally launched, and it appears it was worth waiting for, or at least that there are a lot of players. The game has only been out for a day and already it has half a million concurrent players on Steam. According to SteamDB, this makes it the game with the fifth-highest concurrent player count. At the time of this writing, the number had only slightly dropped and will likely climb higher as the weekend approaches.
New World is a fantasy MMO set on a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean called Aeternum, which happens to have a kind of magic on it called Azoth. This Azoth, unfortunately, reanimates the dead and makes the animals hostile, so you know, not great magic, but what can you do? Given the number of people who are playing it, I’m going to assume it’s at least somewhat enjoyable — I haven’t been able to get in yet.
Previously, New World seemed somewhat cursed — or rather, Amazon’s history with video games seemed so The game was one of three titles Amazon announced, and only New World has thus far come out — Crucible has been canceled and Breakaway has been shelved for years. Earlier this year, some unlucky beta players got their graphics cards melted by this game, and Amazon was forced to replace them. The game was delayed for more beta testing, and now it’s finally, finally out there for players to enjoy (hopefully without any more computer melting).
But Amazon has really put on the charm offensive to get everyone excited for the game, and it appears to have worked. We haven’t heard too many stories of the game having huge glitches or server breakdowns, though I have heard that the servers are a bit overloaded and players are having to wait in long queues in order to play the game. That’s not the worst possible state to be in at launch, but it’s not a great one either.