To say people have been excited for New World has been an understatement as the MMO officially hit its long-awaited closed beta today. As a result, thousands upon thousands of players descended upon the MMO, with SteamDB showing nearly 200K people jumping into Aeternum as the floodgates opened this morning.
The long-awaited MMO is steadily heading towards its August launch, and with it comes this two week-ish beta period which will allow players who pre-ordered to jump in and soak in as much of what Aeternum has to offer ahead of the August 31st release. This morning the MMO opened the beta doors, seeing tens of thousands of players rush to join the MMO in its opening moments, with SteamDB reporting that almost 200K players on Steam have joined in already. This is in addition to the more than 700K viewers taking it in on Twitch alone as big name streamers coupled with Twitch drops have drawn in the audiences.
New World, for those who haven't been paying attention, is an upcoming action MMO from Amazon Game Studios set during the twilight years of the Age of Exploration. Players find themselves shipwrecked on a mysterious island called Aeternum where you'll need to survive and uncover the mysteries the island has to offer.
New World is primed to release (finally) after having been delayed multiple times since its initial announcement a few years ago. The team at Amazon delayed the MMO from its 2020 release to add more mid-to-late game content to the MMO, something which they've certainly done with the addition of more PvP game modes as well as their expeditions, which are akin to an MMO's instanced dungeons.
New World isn't the only MMO to see a surge in interest, as it seems the genre as a whole is feeling like its under a mini-rennaissance, most specifically how Final Fantasy 14 has seen a surge in its popularity. New World's closed beta is scheduled to run through the 2nd of August, giving players plenty of time to get their feet wet in the new MMO to make sure that it what they are hoping for before the official launch.