New World
New World is a buy-to-play open world MMORPG that takes place on Aeternum, a mysterious island filled with the supernatural and the dangerous. Instead of locking you into rigid classes, it leans on a weapon-based progression system where your loadout defines your role, and your character can master multiple playstyles over time. With three rival factions fighting over settlements and territory, the game’s identity sits at the intersection of exploration, crafting-driven progression, and opt-in open world PvP.
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Publisher: Amazon Games Playerbase: High Type: Buy-To-Play MMORPG PvP: Faction Territory Control, Duels, Open World (Flagged) Release Date: September 28, 2021 Pros: +Flexible, classless weapon progression. +Robust gathering and crafting loops. +Action combat feels weighty and responsive. +Character growth is consistently rewarding. Cons: -Questing can feel samey over long sessions. -Servers only support 2,000 players. -Endgame variety is limited. |
New World Overview
New World drops players into Aeternum, an open world built around faction rivalry, territory ownership, and a strong crafting economy. Moment to moment, the game encourages you to roam between settlements, gather materials, hunt dangerous creatures, and improve your gear through trade skills, all while the political map shifts as companies and factions contest control of regions. It is an MMO that often feels closer to an action RPG in combat, but still keeps the long-term progression and social structure expected from the genre.
A major hook is that one character can develop essentially everything. Rather than choosing a class at character creation, you level weapon mastery and build around the abilities and passives of whatever you have equipped. Swapping weapons is effectively swapping your job, which makes experimenting easy and helps groups adapt without forcing rerolls. Crafting and gathering are equally central, with multiple professions to level and a steady demand for raw materials and finished goods.
PvP is important to the overall world, but it is not forced during normal play. Open world PvP requires you to flag, meaning you decide when you want the risk of being attacked by other players. The game incentivizes that choice with extra experience and access to faction PvP missions. At the top end of the conflict are 50 vs 50 wars, where factions fight for settlement ownership, and the winners gain meaningful control, including benefits tied to the territory and the ability to set taxes in towns. Faction choice matters too, since switching sides is limited to once every 120 days.
New World Key Features:
- Weapon-driven character building – Progression is classless, with each weapon leveling separately and offering its own ability trees. Weapon types: Swords, Rapiers, Hatchets, Spears, Great Axes, War Hammers, Bows, Muskets, Fire Staffs, Life Staffs, and Ice Gauntlets.
- Skill-based action combat – Fights emphasize timing, positioning, and reading animations, with dodges and careful ability use rewarding good execution. You carry two weapons, allowing fast swaps between complementary roles.
- Crafting and gathering focus – Build up 7 crafting skills (Armoring, Arcana, Cooking, Engineering, Furnishing, Jewel crafting, and Weapon smithing) and 5 gathering skills (Fishing, Harvesting, Logging, Mining, and Skinning), giving crafters a clear progression path.
- Persistent world adventuring – Most activities happen in the shared open world, from resource routes to faction objectives, with instanced content mainly reserved for dungeons and housing.
- Faction warfare and territory ownership – Choose between Syndicate, Marauders, and Covenant, then take part in the larger territorial struggle, including organized 50 vs 50 wars that shape the map and provide settlement advantages.
New World Screenshots
New World Featured Video
New World Review
New World’s best quality is how cohesive its core systems feel once you settle into the rhythm. Exploration, harvesting, crafting, and combat are tightly linked, so even a simple trip between towns can turn into a profitable gathering run, a detour to clear enemies for weapon experience, and a stop at the crafting stations to turn raw materials into upgrades. For players who enjoy building their character through practical, hands-on progression rather than quest dialog and cutscenes, the game’s loop can be very satisfying.
Combat is one of the strongest differentiators. It plays with more weight and commitment than many tab-target MMOs, and it rewards learning enemy tells, managing stamina, and picking the right moment to use abilities. The two-weapon setup adds flexibility, letting you cover weaknesses or bring utility without changing characters. When it clicks, especially in group content or chaotic open world skirmishes, the action orientation makes encounters feel more personal than the typical MMO rotation.
The classless approach is also a genuine advantage. Because your role is tied to your weapon choices and the skills you invest in, you can pivot over time, level new weapons, and adapt to what your group or the current meta needs. That freedom makes the game approachable for newcomers, and it gives long-term players a reason to keep experimenting. It also pairs well with the crafting economy, since gearing up and improving your loadout naturally encourages engagement with gathering routes and profession leveling.
Where New World struggles is in the structure that carries you through the world. Questing often relies on familiar MMO patterns, and extended sessions can start to feel repetitive even if the combat remains enjoyable. The faction and territory systems create compelling server-level stories, but the moment-to-moment PvE objectives do not always match the ambition of the world conflict. The game’s server cap (2,000 players) also shapes the social experience, for better or worse, since it can make communities feel more tight-knit but limits the scale many MMO players expect.
Endgame is another mixed area. The foundations are there, wars provide long-term competition for organized groups, and crafting progression can remain a goal for a long time. Still, players who reach the top quickly may find the variety of high-level activities thinner than they want, particularly if they are not interested in faction politics or repeatable loops. In practice, New World is at its best when you enjoy a blend of crafting, open world roaming, and occasional PvP, rather than treating it as a purely endgame-driven theme park MMO.
New World Links
New World Official Site
New World Steam Page
New World Twitter Page
New World Wiki
New World Subreddit
New World System Requirements
Minimum Requirements:
Operating System: Windows 10 64 bit
CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-2400 / AMD CPU with 4 physical cores @ 3Ghz
Video Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 670 2GB / AMD Radeon R9 280 or better
RAM: 8 GB RAM
Hard Disk Space: 50 GB available space
DirectX: Version 12
Recommended Requirements:
Operating System: Windows 10 64 bit
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-2600K / AMD Ryzen 5 1400
Video Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 970 / AMD Radeon R9 390X or better
RAM: 16 GB RAM
Hard Disk Space: 50 GB available space
DirectX: Version 12
New World Music & Soundtrack
Coming soon!
New World Additional Information
Developer: Amazon Games
Publisher: Amazon Games
Platforms: PC
Engine: Amazon Lumberyard
Final Closed Beta: July 20, 2021
Official Launch Date: September 28, 2021
Development History / Background:
New World is a buy to play open world MMO developed and published by Amazon Games, and it stands as the studio’s first broadly successful commercial release. Following its official launch on September 28, 2021, it exceeded 900,000 concurrent users on Steam, making it the biggest MMORPG launch in the last decade by that measure.
The project was initially shown publicly at TwitchCon in September 2016 alongside Breakway and Crucible. Earlier versions were positioned more as a harsher survival experience with full-loot PvP, but after delays and major shifts in direction, New World arrived as a more conventional open world MMORPG. The final design kept faction conflict and territory warfare as a centerpiece, while making open world PvP optional through the flagging system.