The New World team is looking back on 2023, breaking down some interesting player stats, while also giving a glimpse ahead and what's to come in 2024.
In a new post, Amazon Games Studios broke down the year that was, which saw quite a few changes to its flagship MMO. New World saw the release of Rise of the Angry Earth, its first paid expansion, which has gone over pretty well with the community at large. This is due to many of the quality-of-life changes brought on by the expansion, such as the revamping of questlines to streamline the experience and the long-awaited inclusion of mounts.
Speaking of mounts, while the expansion has only been out now since the beginning of October, players have taken to their steeds like nothing else, riding them for almost a combined 2.9 million hours - 1.2 million of those on the horse steed alone.
Other information broken down by the team saw the deadliest normal enemy being the Elite Sulfur Dragon (with over 300K player deaths), while the Sandwurm has a K/D ratio that would make any esports player jealous, taking out almost 800K players to its 8108 deaths.
While the New World dev team stopped short of showing off a full 2024 roadmap, they did give some highlights to players who are looking ahead to next year, including the news that they were planning on (finally) bringing gamepad support to the MMO in 2024.
Additionally, the New World team is working on cross-world expeditions to help get players into groups, regardless of server, and eight new powerful Artifact items, one of the tentpole features with Rise of the Angry Earth. Finally, the full main story questline revamp will be completed in those early months, tying together the 1-60 leveling experience to be more cohesive and streamlined compared to its launch state two years ago.
We really enjoyed our romp through Rise of the Angry Earth when it released this year. As I played through the content, it felt that this was how New World should have felt when it launched in September 2021. Mounts transform the experience, and the more streamlined quests make leveling much less of a frustrating grind. The story is vastly improved, with the Elysian Wilds questline being a highlight of the MMO as of now. It's definitely worth a look if you've not played as we head into next year.
