Amazon has delayed the release of its upcoming MMO New World multiple times, but its official launch is on the horizon.
Following closed beta testing at the end of July, the game’s developers wrote that they wanted “a few extra weeks” to “polish the game.”
With the announcement, Amazon has postponed the game’s release date one more time.
New World is now officially set to be released on Sept. 28, 2021.
Prior to this announcement, New World was supposed to come out nearly a month earlier (Aug. 31).
Throughout the closed beta, New World experienced numerous issues with servers and the game went through extended downtime for maintenance on a regular basis.
The closed beta for New World lasted just two weeks. But in that time, many players were able to reach the game’s max level and participate in some forms of end-game content.
Delaying the release of the game one more time allows the game’s devs to “smash bugs” and “improve stability,” presumably of servers.
New World comes into the MMO genre that’s largely dominated by World of Warcraft, which now also has legacy servers to appeal to multiple different demographics of its fan base.
The game will also be competing for attention in the space with Final Fantasy XIV and other MMOs that are in development, like Ashes of Creation.
Amazon’s team originally set that game’s release date for the spring of 2021, but the developers pushed back the release to polish the MMO’s end-game content. That led to the announcement in February that the game’s release was being moved back from May to August.
Since then, New World has made news specifically for detailing its plans to include microtransactions that give it a pay-to-win element. This led to popular content creators in the MMO genre, like WoW’s top streamer Asmongold, criticizing the company’s approach.
But following some backlash, Amazon said it’d refrain from putting those aspects into the game, at least early on.
