Former New World designer shares scrapped plans, from lightning gauntlets to sailing

Former New World lead world designer David McKenzie has been answering fan questions on Reddit about what Amazon’s MMO might have looked like if development had kept going. The big takeaway is that the team had a lot more mapped out, including new regions, weapons, and systems, even though the game ultimately shifted to maintenance mode.

According to the AMA, the studio had a 10-year plan for the game and knew what it wanted to do with the unrevealed parts of the map. McKenzie said future zone themes would have included areas inspired by southeast Asia, Japan, and Vikings.

• The next major zone was reportedly set to be the Jungle of Sound, the region teased in Nighthaven.
• The weapon planned after daggers was the lightning gauntlets.
• Farming and sailing were both on the team’s wishlist for future updates.
• Nighthaven’s mostly unused northeastern area had originally been planned as a free-for-all PvP zone with a vampires-versus-werewolves theme.

McKenzie also shared a rough timeline for some of that cut content. Thanks to workflow improvements, he believed Jungle of Sound could have arrived about six months after Nighthaven.

One of the more revealing details was about Nighthaven’s voice work. McKenzie said Amazon leadership had cut the game’s voice-over budget and wanted the team to use AI voices. He said the developers pushed back on that and ended up recording the voices themselves instead, which helps explain why some players thought the performances sounded rough.

He also said developers weren’t formally told about the move to maintenance mode and layoffs before the public announcement. Some apparently learned about it through Reddit posts at the same time players did.

As for any comeback, McKenzie said he doesn’t have inside information on revival efforts and put the odds of another company buying the game at “abysmal.” Not exactly encouraging news for players still hoping New World gets a second life.