New World is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) created by Amazon Games Orange County and published by Amazon Games. It was released on September 28, 2021. Originally planned for May 2020, then August 2021, the game was delayed until its worldwide launch on September 28, 2021. Set in the mid-seventeenth century, players explore the fantasy world of Aeternum, inspired by the Americas, where all who visit become immortal.
Initially, the game was intended to be free-to-play, but it now uses a buy-to-play model, which differs from many older MMORPGs that used subscription systems for regular content updates. The game also includes microtransactions for skins and a limited number of decorative and gameplay-impact items used in the player housing system.
PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions, titled New World: Aeternum, were released on October 15, 2024, along with major updates for PC players. A television adaptation, "New World: The Once and Future King," aired on December 10, 2024 as an episode of Secret Level, featuring voices from Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Pacey, Gabriel Luna, Arazou, Dana Haqjoo, and Carlo Rota.
In October 2025, it was announced that Season 10 will be the game’s final season. Amazon confirmed servers will remain active through 2026. In January 2026, it was announced the game will shut down on January 31, 2027.
Gameplay
Players can form groups of up to five members, join one of three factions (Marauders, Syndicate, or Covenant), gather materials like wood, stone, ore, and animal skins from resource nodes, craft items, take control of settlements, complete quests, explore the world, or fight other players or monsters.
The game requires players to aim manually, as there are no automatic targeting attacks. As players level up, enemies become stronger and use more complex attack patterns. Players must use their mana, stamina, and health to counter these attacks through timed actions like dodging, blocking, retreating, or crawling stealthily. Weapon skills include bow, hammer, hatchet, great axe, fire staff, life staff, musket, blunderbuss, spear, sword/shield, ice gauntlet, void gauntlet, flail, and great sword.
Players improve their character’s personal attributes, weapon skills, and trade skills. Trade skills are divided into three categories: "crafting" (weapon smithing, armoring, engineering, jewel crafting, arcana, cooking, and furnishing), "refining" (smelting, woodworking, leather working, weaving, and stone cutting), and "gathering" (logging, mining, harvesting, and tracking and skinning). There is also a "camping" skill for wilderness survival.
Three fast travel methods are available. While the base game does not include fast mounts, players can use skills for short bursts of speed. Players can dodge or climb most objects or use the fire staff to cross large gaps in the air.
Mounts, such as horses, dire wolves, and lions, are added in the "Rise of Angry Earth" expansion released on October 2, 2023. A new Riding Trade Skill allows players to upgrade mounts with faster speeds, buffs, and attachments.
The game economy uses gold coins. Players can sell unwanted items to other players for gold, break items down for resources, throw items away, or trade directly with others. Players who die do not lose their items, but their items can get damaged during combat or use. Damaged items can be repaired using repair items and gold coins.
Players can buy personal housing and add furnishings for both appearance and utility. Housing also provides a way to quickly travel to their settlement.
The game includes player-versus-player (PvP) combat with or without quests. Before leaving a safe zone, players can choose to set their "flagged state," making them attackable by other flagged players. The flagged state becomes active 30 seconds after leaving a safe zone.
Synopsis
New World takes place in a made-up world during the 17th century, a time when explorers discovered new lands. The game is set on a fantasy island in the Atlantic Ocean called Aeternum. Anyone who travels there becomes immortal and cannot leave. The world has many resources to collect and enemies to fight, including dangerous creatures and other players. Players can move around on foot, by riding a mount such as a horse, wolf, or lion, or by using teleportation between "Shrines" found in important towns and famous places. The economy is controlled by the players.
Development
New World was first introduced in September 2016 at TwitchCon. Amazon Game Studios announced they would develop three PC games: Breakaway, Crucible, and New World. In March 2018, Breakaway was canceled, and teams focused on the other two games. On October 9, 2020, Relentless Studios canceled Crucible, stating they could not see a long-term future for the game. The studio then shifted its efforts to support New World. On February 16, 2021, it was announced that New World would release on August 31, 2021.
The game was originally planned as a free-to-play game. However, in 2019, before its release, the business model changed to a standard paid model. Players who signed up before this change received the game for free.
On July 20, 2021, the game entered a closed beta test. The next day, reports said many high-end Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards made by EVGA stopped working while running the game. It was suggested that the game’s menu screens did not have a limit on frames per second, causing the GPUs to process over 9,000 frames per second. This exceeded the cards’ limits, leading to damage. Amazon said it would add an FPS limit to menu screens but claimed the game itself did not harm the cards. A tech YouTuber named Jason Langevin, who first reported the issue, noted that other GPUs, such as the RTX 3080 Ti and AMD models, were also affected. EVGA agreed to replace all RTX 3090 cards damaged by the game at no cost. Langevin tested an EVGA and an MSi RTX 3090 card and found that the MSi card stayed within its power limits, while the EVGA card exceeded its limit by 20%.
On August 4, 2021, the game’s release was delayed again to September 28, 2021, to allow more development based on beta feedback. The final open beta began on September 9, 2021, and ended on September 12.
On September 28, 2021, Amazon Game Studios released New World globally. Five server regions were available at launch: Australia, the East Coast of the United States, Europe, South America, and the West Coast of the United States. These regions launched at different times, with all regions becoming playable at 8:00 a.m. local time, except Australia, which launched at 9:00 p.m. AEST to account for time zone differences.
On the day of release, Steam recorded over 700,000 players logged in at the same time. This overwhelmed the servers, causing long wait times for players. Some servers reached their 25,000-person limit because each server could only support 2,000 players at once. Amazon responded by adding more servers in all regions within two days of release and testing ways to increase the player limit. They also allowed players to transfer characters between servers for free, helping reduce wait times. However, players still expressed dissatisfaction, with PC Gamer calling the issue “far from solved.”
In October 2021, it was reported that players who used Steam family sharing received the game for free. A month later, Amazon disabled family sharing due to an increase in bots, gold sellers, and players avoiding bans. Amazon said it would provide instructions for players who used family sharing for valid reasons and allowed some players to continue using accounts where the game was never purchased.
In October 2025, Amazon announced that New World would stop receiving new content after Season 10 and the Nighthaven update. The company said it would keep servers running until 2026. On January 15, 2026, the game was removed from digital stores, and in-game currency purchases ended on July 20, 2026. The game was scheduled to shut down on January 31, 2027.
Reception
New World received "mixed or average" reviews according to the review website Metacritic. It was nominated for Best Multiplayer Game at The Game Awards 2021. At different times during its release, New World was one of the most played games on Steam.
Adaptation
In August 2024, it was announced that the game would be adapted into an episode of the anthology television series Secret Level. The episode, titled "New World: The Once and Future King," was released on December 10, 2024. It was written by J. T. Petty and Philip Gelatt. The episode was directed by Maxime Luère, Léon Bérelle, Dominique Boidin, and Rémi Kozyra. The voices of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Pacey, Gabriel Luna, Arazou, Dana Haqjoo, Carlo Rota, and Matthew Gilbert were used in the episode.