New World blasts past concurrent player record following Brimstone Sands update and Steam sale
Does the MMO have a second chance at life?
New World has blown past its concurrent player record, reaching upwards of 100,000 adventures exploring the world of Aeternum last weekend. This is thanks in large part to the new Brimstone Sands update, as well as a 50% sale on Steam.
Amazon Games’ MMORPG first launched back in September 2021. While it started life with a damn healthy initial playerbase, server population started to dwindle as the months went on. However, it seems as though with the major events occurring in-game over the past few days, a surge of new players have given the game a second chance.
Not only does this mean they’re able to experience the new content, they may find some of the rough edges that pushed them away have been fixed (or at least improved) over the past few months.
If you’re thinking of jumping back in again, but are rightfully worried that you’ll just run into a server full of max level characters, inflated markets, and dominating faction imbalance, fresh servers have also launched alongside the Brimstone Sands update, allowing you to have a new adventure with other like-minded players.
Whether or not New World can maintain this momentum remains to be seen. We’ve seen before how the game can draw in a sizable community, only to lose it over the following weeks. If nothing else, the immediate future will help determine once and for all whether it was server issues, bugs, or other launch issues that pushed players away, or the core New World gameplay just wasn’t palatable for a major audience.
For what it’s worth, I hope New World manages to retain a sizable community post Brimstone Sands. The dev team has steamed on ahead long after many had called the game off, and it’s clear from content updates they’ve released over the past months that they were aware of at least a sizable portion of the problems players had. Ultimately, more healthy MMO games can only be healthy for the genre, and it would be a shame to see this one fizzle away.
But what do you think? Will you be jumping in and giving New World a go while it’s on sale? Let us know below, as well as whether you think the game will maintain this momentum.
For more New World content, we have a rundown of all the new Brimstone Sands content that’s been added to the game!