New World’s first month has required patience, with issues frequently popping up, even as Amazon quickly addresses them. And as a result, some in the community are making note of a population drop, pointing out that the number of concurrent players on Steam DB is down to an average of around 400,000 players.
While the start happened with a record of over 900,000 concurrent players, that the numbers have dropped off some isn’t unusual for MMORPGs. The number sitting at 400k on average is still a solid number if it can be maintained in the longer term. Of course, that will be up to the community, and the continued work on improvements Amazon Game Studio makes.
Speaking of the community, the enthusiasm in open beta was noted by senior producer Katy Kaszynski in her talk about how active listening helped development at Develop: Brighton last week. She highlighted some of the ways the community surprised and made an impact on the team during open beta.
As noted by PC gamesN, Kaszynski's talk included a story about a group making a company called “The Town Crier and the Town Criers literally got the news of the day and then went to the different zones, the different settlements, and yelled in the middle of the town what was going on. What Wars were coming up; when invasions were happening; where there were iron notes that people hadn’t found yet. They were just so excited to be these Towne crier’s and it was really fun and really cool to see“.
With the series of ongoing issues during New World’s first month, that enthusiasm may have been tempered a little bit. If Amazon keeps addressing matters quickly, maybe these lessons can stick in time to stabilize the population as New World enters its second month.
