New World Offers Insight Into Merge Decisions And Nerfs Several Seasonal Bosses

The New World dev team is merging a handful of servers today as it offers a bit of insight into how they decide on which servers should be squished together. Maintaining a healthy population, of course, is the main goal of server merges, although there have apparently been times when they decided to skip low population servers to give new players less competitive worlds to learn the ropes.

“We recognize that low server populations can present challenges in maintaining a strong company, achieving success in Wars/Invasions, and forming groups for Expeditions, particularly during non-peak hours,” Amazon said in a bonus community Q&A embedded in this week’s patch notes.

“Our last set of merges occurred in late November. However, at the time we omitted some smaller/mid-tier worlds based on substantial player feedback, to enable newer players to experience end-game competitive modes in a more forgiving and accessible environment. […] Our latest checks signal that some of these worlds have outlived their initial goal.”

“As the game evolves and more cross-world features are introduced, we anticipate a reduced need for merges, or at least a reduced urgency,” the studio added. “We hope that different sub-communities will be better accommodated on specific worlds without adversely affecting the availability or accessibility of certain game modes.”

The patch itself introduced a balance update for seasonal content which nerfed several key bosses to make it easier for less-experienced players to experience New World’s over-arching narrative to its full extent. It also marked the end of the Legacy of Crassus event, fixed a bow exploit, and added a minimum luck stat to catch legendary fish ahead of next season’s cooking revamp.

You can check out the full patch notes and the community Q&A on the New World official site.

🛠️ Upcoming Downtime for Retiring Worlds to be Merged 🛠️
Downtime for Hercules, Orion, and Pollux will begin on 1/25 at 9AM PT for the planned world merge. Characters from these retiring worlds will available in their corresponding new home worlds after approximately 3 hours.

— New World Game Status (@NWGameStatus) January 24, 2024