Amazon Games has given New World its first update, making it a wee bit trickier to go AFK to save your spot in one of the MMO’s bustling game worlds. Alongside tweaked warning and disconnect timings, you’ll find additional measures to combat “simulated mouse movement”.
The developer has posted the complete set of patch notes to its website, delving further into the topic. Amazon has added additional AFK prevention to ensure that players can’t fool the system by using simulated mouse movement. You’ll also find that the AFK warning message pops up after 15 minutes now instead of 20 and that the AFK disconnect has been shortened to 20 minutes from 25.
In case you haven’t heard, Amazon’s new kid on the block is proving to be quite popular. At the time of writing, New World has peaked at 913,634 concurrent players on Steam, according to SteamDB. Naturally, though, that has caused server congestion, leading some players to use various methods to stay in the game so they don’t have to rejoin the queue after they leave. That’s not quite how Amazon Games wants New World to be played, though, so the developer swiftly addressed the issue.
Amazon has other plans to tackle the server congestion, too. The number of available worlds has already been doubled, while server capacity on existing servers has also been increased. The team is also working on a feature that’ll let you transfer your character to a different server, and it’ll be “available soon”.
New World’s 1.0.1 update also changes how turret projectiles in its War mode work. You’ll find that physical projectiles now use hitscan detection, which the devs hope will help performance in War, as fewer objects will be spawned in the world.
The update went live at 3am PT / 6am ET / 11am BST today (October 6), so it should be with you now.
If you haven’t taken the plunge into Amazon Games’ latest yet, then our New World beginner’s guide has everything to get you all set up.