Just after having server transfers, New World is set to have server merges to combat the abundance of low-population servers.
Since New World is officially past its initial surge and free server transfers are available for all players, some in the community have requested that Amazon should offer server merges instead of free transfers. Amazon Game Studios replied with an ambiguous statement, saying that it’s something that the team is considering adding to the MMO, along with the usual updates concerning New World items and New World gold. All of this discussion originally came from a New World forum thread from November 6. Getting to the nitty-gritty of the request, players were asking for server merges due to the issue of some content being gated behind server population. The thread then went on to speak about the possibility of a server cap increase. With the development team’s recent pledge to communicate frequently and be more transparent, perhaps this is Amazon’s chance to earn the trust of their player base back.
A Working Formula
More and more companies are considering transferring to different servers since some are seeing a dwindling population. This concept isn’t new–it’s been used by other MMOs with declining server population and is proven to work. Content such as quests that reward New World items being gated behind player numbers is a problem that New World players have been having, especially for those that are in low-population servers. This means that players from those types of servers can’t even access certain content. Server mergers would help offset that problem.
A server merge is where multiple servers in an MMO join together to boost the overall player population on the resulting server. One of the most prominent titles that have done this is World of Warcraft. Amazon has already added server transfers starting last month, but despite those efforts, there are still plenty of New World servers that are being plagued with the problem of having a small population.
Combatting the Problems of a Falling Player Base
Population decline in New World has been a thing for the past month for several reasons. One of the main things that ultimately put off a lot of people from the MMO was the game-breaking bugs and exploits. The most recent one that we know of is the gold dupe exploit where players could easily take in millions of New World gold by using a “hack”. Another reason why the player base of New World is falling is due to a lack of viable endgame content. New World is still on its baby legs in terms of endgame content. And with Amazon busy trying to get all of the technical issues out of the way first, there’s not a lot going for the players that want to take on new content. Thankfully, the devs managed to fix a lot of those issues in the 1.0.5 Update, which has been dubbed as “game-saving” by the community. Despite their efforts though, the player base is still down. The addition of the server transfers also effectively killed what’s left of the low-population servers.
Server Merges When?
With all the major hubbub happening in the New World thread concerning server merges, one of the devs jumped into the conversation to let everyone know that it’s not a question of will they or won’t they, but more of “when will they?”. This response notes that server merges are on the horizon and Amazon’s most probably currently testing it before enacting the merge on the live worlds. When it’ll be coming to New World and how server merging will work remains to be seen as of now, but it’s at least confirmed that the idea will become reality soon.
Could Server Merges Save New World?
Having a consistent decrease of players in an MMO is usually a bad sign that the game’s on its way to the grave. It’s especially sad when that MMO is still in its infancy and has yet to show its full potential. With a promise that Amazon Game Studios will be listening more intently to the community’s feedback and communicating better towards their player base, the server merges are a first step to what could be the redemption arc of New World. It’s still unclear how they’ll be implementing it in the game, but it’s great to see that they’re finally eager to hear what their community wants. Maybe we can also expect endgame content and New World items soon?
What do you think about the possibility of having server merges soon? Let us know down below!
