Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

Amazon’s New World MMO is delayed again, this time for a year

Jon Silman
By

New World, Amazon Game Studios’ ambitious massively multiplayer online game, has been delayed for a second time until the Spring of 2021.

The game was originally scheduled for a May 2020 release, but it was delayed until August 25 with its closed beta set for July. Those dates were moved because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recommended Videos

“When we examined the feedback we received over the last several months from our Alpha audience, we saw that players like the game, and they would like to see even more of it,” Studio Director Rich Lawrence said in a blog post. “In particular, we want to ensure that the most dedicated players have plenty of middle and endgame experiences as they venture through Aeternum.”

Related

He said accomplishing that goal meant “added time to get things where we want them before we fully release.”

People who signed up for the beta will now get a chance to play the game in its current version for a “limited period of time” on August 25. Those players will get emails telling them what they need to do to participate.

New World is Amazon Games’ big foray into the MMO world, and it made a splash when it was revealed during The Game Awards in December of last year. It’s set in the 17th century during the Age of Exploration on an island called Aeternum, and it’s going to be huge, with the ability for up to 100 players to fight each other all at once in special battles called fortress sieges.

“We love the thematic ideas of a newly discovered world, crude technology that might advance and mature over time, and the role that faith and superstition play in establishing an enduring settlement,” said Patrick Gilmore, Studio Director, Amazon Game Studios Orange County, in an interview with Digital Trends. “And more than anything, we loved the idea of a frontier—a sort of boundary between the known and unknown, implying there would always be something new to discover.”

The game won’t have combat similar to World of Warcraft, but it will instead offer something that allows for more direct control. Veterans from World of Warcraft and Everquest, however, are on the game’s development team.

Digital Trends has reached out for more information about the delay and will update this story when we hear back.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Jon Silman
Jon Silman
PS Plus adds Evil Dead, OlliOlli World, and more in February
A still from Evil Dead: The Game showing a man holding a gun in a supermarket.

PlayStation Plus Essential's February game lineup was announced today, and it consists of four titles: OlliOlli World, Evil Dead: The Game, Mafia: Definitive Edition, and Destiny 2: Beyond Light. These games will be available to download starting February 7. Overall, this is a really solid batch of games.

OlliOlli World was one of my personal favorite games of 2022 because of its amazing level design and 2D skateboarding gameplay that only becomes more fun as you get better with the game. "Like the best games of the genre, it knows that easy-to-learn-but-hard-to-master mechanics, rewarding obstacles, and high speeds that test one’s reaction time are the hallmarks of a great platformer," I wrote in a four-and-a-half star review of the game last February.

Read more
Wordle’s wild year: New York Times breaks down the phenomenon’s big 2022
Close-up of Wordle up on a smartphone.

If you logged onto Twitter exactly one year ago, you can probably recall the moment you began to see your feed fill up with gray, yellow, and green boxes. Though it launched in 2021 and gained mainstream popularity in December of that year, Wordle became a sudden cultural phenomenon in early 2022 that was inescapable outside of a muted words list. It was a rare gaming success story, one that could reach a broad audience thanks to its elegant simplicity.

Wordle’s fortune would escalate just as quickly as its user base. In late January 2022, the New York Times announced it had acquired the puzzle game from creator Josh Wardle in an undisclosed, low-seven-figure deal -- a left-field move that almost eclipsed Sony’s announcement that it was acquiring Destiny 2 developer Bungie just hours earlier. The move would spark some worry among fans, who feared that a corporate takeover of the most independent game imaginable could steal its soul.

Read more
I love Fortnite again thanks to its new chapter’s best change
The Mandalorian with Fortnite's new crystal gun

I find myself taken aback when comparing Fortnite's original 2017 release to what it became in 2022. It's wild to think that substantial, game-altering updates are coming to Fortnite all these years later. As if Zero Build mode wasn't enough change for one year, its most recent changes have completely altered the game in a positive way yet again.

Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 1 Launch Trailer

Read more