New World is emblematic of the fortunes of Amazon's ill-fated foray into gaming. The MMO's announcement was met with fanfare — Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world, and it was prepared to pump millions into New World. The future was bright... but then New World released. It was undercooked and unfun, and the goodwill immediately evaporated.
The MMO community is a long-suffering one. Many fans of the genre are looking for a new MMO that evokes the feelings they had when they first played their favourite MMO, be that World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Final Fantasy 14, RuneScape and so on. Unfortunately, New World's blundered launch hurt the long-term prospects of the game, and the MMO never recaptured that initial wave of anticipation.
However, New World was growing in popularity thanks to a couple of promising updates. However, just as the future looked bright, Amazon Games announced a massive round of layoffs and confirmed that New World would no longer be updated.
A glance at the game's concurrent player numbers reveals that New World's player count had increased by 200 per cent before the layoffs, from an average of around 17,000 to one of...
