New World Aeternum won’t have awful server queues, Amazon says

I remember when New World launched back in 2021. There were colossal server queues, disconnects, and a whole lot of hysterical laughter turned crying as you finally hit the shores of Aeternum, and were promptly yeeted back to the main menu. While I forged unique bonds with my then-colleagues, feeling like we’d experienced something the rest of the globe would never quite understand, it’s no secret that server issues are incredibly annoying. Speaking to New World Aeternum‘s senior producer Katy Kaszynski in an exclusive PCGamesN interview, I ask how the team is planning to ensure a smooth launch for its fresh take on its magical MMO.

“We’ve had two pretty major releases [Brimstone Sands, Rise of the Angry Earth] since launch, where we’ve gotten to test out some of our new tech,” Kaszynski tells me. “We’re making sure worlds are always available, and that queues aren’t incredibly long. We have technology that we tested out in the Brimstone Sands update that helps us with managing servers and making sure queues are low by unhiding worlds.”

She tells me the team has staff “on-site 24/7 during major launches,” and that fix times have “more than halved” since the MMO‘s initial release. All of this is music to my ears given New World Aeternum launches on my birthday, and I feel like my family wouldn’t approve of me sitting in a queue staring at the PC.

Kaszynski also notes that there will likely be server merges in order to make “worlds feel constantly full.”

“We can do that much quicker now than we could at launch without downtime for the world that’s receiving all of the new players,” Kaszynski says. “It’s just going to be an all-out better experience than what we saw back in 2021, and I think that folks are going to be pleasantly surprised.”

But, while the aforementioned queue hysteria is obviously not ideal, Kaszynski notes that day-one mania is often “part of the fun. It’s something that everyone who’s there gets to bond over and have memories of. Then it’s all figured out after that, but I find being there on day one is probably the most exciting part!”

As someone who can recall the moment she finally got into Aeternum clear as day, this writer completely agrees. As much as, in the moment, it’s frustrating, it certainly makes for some fun stories; just ask any of the PCGamesN team about trying to get into ill-fated zombie ‘MMO’ The Day Before and we’ll wax lyrical.

If you’re new to Aeternum, however, or have been away for a while and are looking to dive back in, fresh start worlds are back, this time under the guise of ‘standard worlds.’ “If you’re in one of our legacy worlds you can’t transfer into them, you have to start a new character on them,” she tells me.

So what better time to don your armor and return to the shores of this once-forgotten land? The New World Aeternum release date is just around the corner, so now’s the time. Alternatively, if you’re looking for more info on what’s changed, check out my New World Aeternum preview from Summer Game Fest 2024.

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