Amazon Games' New World has begun preventing players from creating new characters in full servers as it continues its efforts to bring queue times down for the hugely popular game.
In an update on Twitter, the MMO developer announced that it has created a new system to help it better manage server capacity going forward.
"Whenever a server is full, the server will be greyed out with the messaging 'Character Creation is temporarily disabled on this server to prevent overpopulation'," says Amazon Games. While the change means that new players to the game will be limited in terms of the severs that they can join, the studio went on to confirm that the system will not affect pre-existing characters within a server, who will be able to log in as usual.
We are implementing a new feature to indicate if a world is full.
You can check if a world is full on the server status page!
🧭 https://t.co/ApBPXyPC90 pic.twitter.com/ai8GzNmQ1y
— New World (@playnewworld) October 2, 2021
For those hoping to get into the game, you can check out which of New World's servers are currently at capacity on the game's server status page. The studio finished its post by thanking fans for their "patience and understanding" as it pledged that it would continue to work toward bringing a more optimal experience for players.
Since its launch, Amazon Games has been battling with server capacity issues across New World. Last week, the studio said that despite doubling server capacity for the game, there was more work to be done. At that point, the studio's strategy for redistributing new players across the game came during an update where it asked new players to join quieter servers as it continued to work on the problem.
The studio's decision to automatically prevent players from joining overcrowded servers comes as the game continues to grow in popularity. Last week, New World became Steam's most played game of 2021, surpassing Valheim's previous record of around half a million concurrent players by some margin. However, according to Steam DB, New World once again broke its all-time high player count yesterday when 913,634 players jumped into the MMO.
If you're currently one of the many players flocking toward the shores of Aeternum, then make sure to check out our recently updated review-in-progress for the game. Alternatively, if you're concerned about the game's longevity, then check out this article detailing a number of things that you can do after hitting New World's max level.
Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.