New World Opening PTR For New Seasonal Model With Season 1 - Fellowship & Fire

mmorpg.com:

Today, Amazon made its big announcement about the future of N ew World . Going forward, the game will be kicking off a seasonal model with Battle Passes for more consistent content, and the first seasonal update, Fellowship & Fire, will be on the PTR tomorrow at 10 AM PDT.

So what's in this update? Fellowship & Fire will introduce the first seasonal story, The Silver Crows. You’ll have to assemble a group of mercenaries–The Silver Crows–to help a client and take on a Warlock and the Variagian horde, who have some ambitious plans you’ll want to cut off.

The test build will also feature combat balance updates, which have been on the developers’ radar and promised for a while. Since balance is something that needs to be dynamic and responsive, expect the work to be ongoing. This balance update will impact magic and ranged weapons to help them be more viable in PVE content. Overall weapon balance for PVP will also be given a tuning pass, especially as melee and ranged weapons tens to be more powerful than they should be. 

It's a pretty classic MMORPG issue, why have so many options if only a few of them are generally viable? Another thing getting a pass in this patch is equip load balance, to increase diversity among equip loads and to make more weapons more viable for different play styles. so these should affect players who might not necessarily play more traditionally, to give more options for success in New World. 

Empyrean Forge,the next Expedition, is also in the test build. This will be for 60+ characters and be set in the Great Cleave, where you will  work to “stop the flow of mysterious magic deep within a necropolis”.

Amazon is also introducing a security update for the issue of gaming the Faction War system