New World was absolutely huge at launch yesterday, to the point where it became very hard to actually play the game. Thankfully Amazon Games has been working on lowering queue time across the globe to help get new players into the MMO.
The developer has been updating the New World forums throughout its first day of release. So far, the EU Central, North America West, North America East and Australia servers have had additional worlds added, with the aim of offering more of an even spread of players. With the team promising to monitor world congestion, you can likely expect more expansions as time goes on.
If you're looking to jump in while the hype is hot, a new fan-run website, New World Status aims to offer live data for player counts across the world, including numbers of people waiting in the queue for any given in-game world, and an estimated average wait time.
It's quite possible that even Amazon was taken by surprise with New World's launch day popularity. It very quickly became Steam's most-played game of the year, reaching over 700,000 concurrent players, smashing Valheim's huge record from earlier in 2021.
We've begun a review-in-progress for New World, praising its looks and player-based economy, but expressing some early worries about combat and character customisation. It will be updated as time goes on, but initial impressions feel positive.
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