Amazon Game Studios had the potential for a big new MMO on their hands when New World dropped in September. But we’re not even 8 weeks in, and the game is showing signs of trouble. To show what we mean, lets look at player numbers.
At its peak, the game had around 913 thousand concurrent players. After only a month the player base shrunk down to 508,000 players, and in the most recent week, the player base peaked at only 377,000. Based on these numbers, Forbes was able to calculate that the game was losing an average of 135,000 concurrent players every week, really not good.
So why is this happening? The simple reasons are two-fold. The game is a mess technically, and that’s a big reason why this is happening. Bugs are constant. That’s true of any new release, but some of these are pretty crippling to gam balance. Players have been able to infinitely stack buffs and damage, completely breaking combat. And now, a new bug has caused a big problem with trading, where some New World players are basically being scammed out of their items, by the game itself.
And it’s not just bugs that are the problem. Many New World players are noticing that the game is very content-thin. The endgame is basically non-existent right now, as raiding isn’t really widespread. PvP being the focus of the game has hurt its appeal to the PvE-focused crowd. And thanks to that nasty invincibility bug, the PvP is a huge mess right now.
Many gamers have little hope that Amazon will be able to right the ship in time. Many hardcore fans estimate they only have weeks until they’ve done literally everything there is to do in the game. A lack of content that keeps players engaged is a huge problem for any MMORPG. And a new team with this many issues is going to find it hard to keep adding content as players continue to leave.
