Forums » News and Announcements

New World’ Has Been Losing 135,000 Players A Week Since Launch

    • 629 posts
    December 1, 2021 3:50 AM EET

    New World' Has Been Losing 135,000 Players A Week Since Launch

     

    Amazon had a successful launch for its MMO New World, charting as one of the most concurrently played games in Steam's history. And yet it is now finding out how hard it is to retain players in this genre, and New World is shedding players worryingly fast.To get more news about buy new world coins, you can visit lootwowgold official website.

    Tracking New World's concurrent player peaks on Steamcharts, that reveals that on average, New World has lost 135,000 concurrent players every week since launch, and the downward trend is continuing.

    Here's what the trend has looked like since launch. I've picked Sundays, which usually seems to be the weekly high point:The declines are slowing, but that's an average of 135,000 dropping out a week, and it's not clear where the bottom is. It's not Sunday yet, but New World's weekday player peaks are around 377,000 at the moment.

    For most games, a decline like this wouldn't be a problem, but for an MMO where the entire purpose is to sustain a playerbase over a long period of time, dropping to almost a third of your peak after your first month is somewhat alarming, and shows that something has to be done about player retention.At lower levels, players may be finding the game overly grindy and tedious, burning out before they reach max level or endgame.

    At higher levels, there are numerous bugs affecting PvP wars, and there's a lack of a meaningful PvE endgame. And in many ways, the grind only gets worse as you get higher, especially when it comes to crafting.

    I would also say an underappreciated problem that New World has is its complete and utter lack of story and worldbuilding. Mechanically, the game gets a lot right, and yet unlike say, World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV which are in established worlds and contain a lot of key story moments, New World is almost entirely devoid of story completely, each zone a copy paste of the last, and as a new IP, has done nothing to build its world or any characters within it. Maybe that's a "sandbox' thing to a certain extent, and yet I think it hurts retention as players don't feel the need to finish a storyline that isn't engaging in the least.

    It's clear at some point New World will find a "floor" of a playerbase, but it's unclear when these declines might stop. Does it settle at 200,000 concurrent players? 100,000? 50,000? And if so, is that enough for Amazon to pursue years-long development for it? Is there anything that could create a surge to get back even remotely close to those eye-popping launch window numbers? I'm not so sure.

    Right now, New World is scrambling to fix game breaking bugs every few days, but players are leaving in the interim. I'd still consider the game's launch a success, but it cannot continue losing players at this rate.