New World launch met with lengthy server queues; character transfers offered at no cost

Amazon Game Studios launched their first ever game today. New World is an MMORPG — one of the most anticipated we’ve seen in years — and it seems that gamers couldn’t wait to get their hands on it.

In fact, New World has become so popular that it is already the number one played game on Steam in 2021 and it hasn’t even been released for 24 hours yet. New World’s popularity is a double-edge sword right now as the game is suffering from the usual server issues that often greet MMOs.

Simply put, the servers are having a hard time keeping up with the rush of gamers that are trying to enter them. As of this writing, there are 233 global servers to choose from that can hold roughly 2,000 players each. That means that in theory you can have about 466,000 players playing the game at one time. It like that should be no problem right? Well, no actually, that is a problem. The peak amount of users that New World has seen upon release was upwards near 700,000 users. That is almost a quarter of a million more players trying to log onto the servers than what the game can hold.

It’s pretty amazing that in 2021, with all the experience we have with MMO launches, this sort of thing still happens. The devs are working tirelessly to resolve the situation. A launch day update on the New World website addresses the current server issues plaguing the launch:

"“We understand that some players are experiencing lengthy queue times and we are working hard on a few things to help address these issues. We are continuing to stand up additional servers and will expand the capacity of our existing servers once we have properly tested these changes.”"

Additional worlds continue to be set up to help alleviate the server stress. And to help remedy the situation, free character transfers are being offered. During the next two weeks, players can relocate their characters to a new server of their choice at no additional cost.

On one hand, it is not uncommon for MMOs to have an underwhelming launch due to the amount of players that flood the game when it is released. On the other, this should have been expected and Amazon should have had a plan in place.

These wait times aren’t short either. You may be in a queue where there are 10,000 people ahead of you. It all depends when you log on and how quickly you get into that queue. That many people can equate to potentially over days long worth of wait time and nobody wants to wait that long.

If New World is a game that you are interested in checking out, you can purchase the game on Steam now for $39.99. I have no doubt that as soon as all these server issues dissipate, New World will be a game that gamers will play for quite some time. With this being Amazon Game Studios first official video game release, they should be cut a little bit of slack. However, these problems do need to get fixed ASAP.