With our August 25th launch approaching, we have been scrutinizing our feature list, taking input from our Alpha audience, and listening to what they enjoyed (or didn’t!) about the current game. We're incredibly grateful for all of the support and suggestions from our Alpha players, ranging from the folks who spent thousands of hours in New World to those who just sampled -- it's all valuable.
I’m proud of the hard work the team has done, making the game ready for launch with the features we intended for release. We also have a list of features that we planned to start working on once we were in live development, as that is part of operating an MMO. When we examined the feedback we received over the last several months from our Alpha audience, we saw that players like the game, and they would like to see even more of it. In particular, we want to ensure that the most dedicated players have plenty of middle and endgame experiences as they venture through Aeternum. We want our players to feel completely immersed in the game, and know that our studio stands for quality and lasting gameplay you can trust — and that means added time to get things where we want them before we fully release.
As a result, we will be changing our launch date - and correspondingly, our final beta test - to spring 2021. We don't make the decision lightly, and we have urgency about getting the game to you as quickly as possible at the best quality -- with some additions that will make the experience even better.
We’re passionate about the game we’ve been making and want to add more features and content before we share it with a wider audience. As a thank you to our community, we will be providing a special opportunity for our Beta sign-up and pre-order customers (plus our Alpha testers, thank you!) to play the full game of New World - in its current state, for a limited period of time starting on August 25th. We will send an email directly to those customers detailing the process to participate. We’re confident that you’ll feel that the game has as much promise as we do, and will understand why we want to take the extra time to make this experience the best it can be at release.
- Rich Lawrence, Studio Director