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

pcgamer.com:

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