Don't be fooled by New World's rebranding—Aeternum is not a new game or spiritual successor, it's just an update

New World was Amazon's big swing into the world of MMOs, and when it launched in 2021 a lot was riding on it—especially after the embarrassing failure of Crucible. It couldn't have gone better. A perfect storm of Amazon marketing and an audience desperately hungry for a big blockbuster MMO led players to the shores of Aeternum in their droves. 

At its peak, around a million settlers duked it out in this new fantasy land together, netting Amazon its first proper videogame success story. Concurrent player numbers that high are rare, especially in a game with an upfront cost, but a more action-themed combat model, coupled with nods to the enduringly popular survival and crafting genre held it in good stead. 

That new MMO smell started to grow stale, however, and those numbers dramatically dropped; by spring of 2022 they had plateaued to around 20-30,000. Now, that's hardly a low number. Tens of thousands of players kept coming back and playing together, and New World managed to maintain this level of popularity until this year, where by May it had dwindled to less than 10,000 concurrent players. 

This dip was most likely due to the impending launch of New World: Aeternum, and this is where New World's story gets a bit confusing. See, Amazon immediately started treating New World: Aeternum like the launch of a new game. The initial announcement focused mostly on it launching on consoles, but it also completely omitted the fact that it was an MMO. It was an action-RPG that you could play with your friends, Amazon said. 

A dramatic pivot, for sure, but one that's almost purely marketing. During a presentation in June, I was told it was a "spiritual successor", but that's just not the case. New World: Aeternum is simply an update, and one of the only things setting it apart from your usual MMO update is the slightly frustrating way it's splitting the game up. Existing servers will become 'legacy worlds' that function like they always have. To enjoy the changes, you'll need to roll a new character on a 'standard world'. You'll be able to make new characters on the legacy servers, and even transfer standard characters over to them, but it doesn't work the other way around, meaning that you'll need to roll a new character on a new server to play New World: Aeternum.

Otherwise, it's just a pretty standard, if fairly big, MMO update—not even at the level of an expansion, let alone the major change that Amazon was initially touting. I should add, though, that the changes are broadly good things. The addition of the first 10-player raid, a free-for-all PvP zone, a gear score bump, cinematics, a new starting experience and, finally, swimming. All good stuff, undeniably, but there's nothing here to justify the rebranding or confusing messaging from Amazon—much of which it backpedalled after the original announcement.

MMOs change all the time. WoW, for instance, frequently includes big game-wide changes before the arrival of a new expansion, like The War Within's Warband system or the introduction of Chrome time—allowing players to level in whatever expansion they want—just before the arrival of Shadowlands. This is just a normal part of an MMO's lifecycle, as it adapts to feedback, changing player populations and broader gaming trends.

What this isn't, then, is a Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn-style overhaul, with the entire experience being rebuilt from the ground up. FF14 was famously awful, shut down, and then returned like a phoenix, transforming into one of the best MMOs around. I can confidently say that if you tried FF14 back in the day and hated it, you should still give ARR (and its many subsequent expansions) a shot, because there's a good chance you'll love it. It's hard to imagine saying the same about New World: Aeternum. If you didn't vibe with it before the rebranding, there's a good chance you won't vibe with it now.

If your issues were more specific, though, and you just wanted a more polished levelling experience, or PvP where you only have to rely on yourself, then maybe there will be enough here to keep you entertained. The proof will be in the pudding, and that's being served up tomorrow, October 15.

I was one of the folks who didn't really vibe with New World back in 2021. "New World's engaging crafting and faction rivalries are held back by abysmal PvE and a boring world," I said in my New World review. And despite some improvements, I wasn't too hot on it in 2022, either. "Things aren't looking good," I said in my State of New World feature. Despite this, I'll be giving it another chance tomorrow, and sharing my impressions soon after, so keep an eye out for that later this week.