Amazon Says It Remains Committed To New World Despite Delays And No 2024 Expansion

There’s been quite a bit of grumbling from the nearly month-long delay of Season of the Guardian and Amazon’s recent revelation that it won’t be releasing an expansion this year. Game director Scot Lane, senior gameplay engineer Scott Geiser, and live lead Katy Kaszynski address those concerns and the big reveal coming in June in a new Forged in Aeternum video from GDC 2024.

“First, nobody is giving up on the game from the developer standpoint,” said Scot lane. “We are working long hours and really hard toward a big goal this year, which we can’t wait to share with you in June. It destroys us that we can’t give you the information that you want.”

“We’d love to talk about this, but sometimes you have to look at what’s best for the long-term health of the game against some of the short-term gains. And it’s awful, and I know it’s not what you want to hear,” he added. “That said, we’re not allowed to give any real details about what’s coming out or what we’re going to announce in June. But we’re trying to figure clever ways we can give you some information and at least let you have kind of an idea on what’s coming.”

As for Season of the Guardian’s delay, the team its that the game’s history is marked with numerous problematic releases and that they want to make sure that the next season will be a clean release. That includes addressing the bugs and exploits that they discovered while testing the Slayer Script on the public test realm.

The team also assured players that more expansions are planned in the future, they just won’t be releasing one this year. They also revealed plans to invest more on PvP going forward, which will include the addition of cross-server 3v3 arenas later this year.

They also said that as much as they’d want to accommodate all feature requests, they’re working on a budget and that development costs vary greatly between each feature. As such, they need to consider which ones will offer a better return on investment compared to others based on player data.

That being said, Lane reiterates the entire team’s commitment to ensuring that New World has a long and prosperous life ahead of it. “We’re putting our heart and soul and life into this and on top of playing it all those hours, we’re working on it all those hours, and it’s really, really important to us. So we’re going to do everything in our power to keep it here as long as we can,” he said.