This week, as part of a recent Developer Update Video, the team has released an official New World Roadmap for 2022 teasing future content!
The New World team has released another Developer Update video, this time in regard to the March Update. At the end of this Update Video, they gave us all a sneak peek into their plans for the next updates, outlining updates until into Fall 2022. So let’s hop in and talk about what’s coming and what to expect.
What a Roadmap means for New World
Before we get into the roadmap, we want to talk a little about why there’s a roadmap now of all times, as opposed to being closer to launch.
It goes without saying that New World’s Launch was pretty rocky, from server issues to bugs, bots, “false bans” and more. With all of these issues going on it seems it took a while for Amazon Games Studio (AGS) to find their footing and get a good cadence going with their updates. While it’s not a great excuse, things do happen and some of it could have been mitigated from the start.
Despite the issues, New World continues on and still has a stable but smaller community. It’s not the impressive 1 million active players that we saw at launch and is down to a modest 30k during peak hours.
While a good majority of those initial players are gone, it’s not impossible to get them back; which is likely why they’re doing the roadmap now after the launch issues have been dealt with.
A roadmap, assuming AGS is able to stick to it, means the game has a clear direction as to the cadence at which they release new content. If they manage to keep to it, it’ll make the existing player base happy and may potentially even draw players back. It’s by no means a guarantee, but they are at least being more open to their plans, instead of just shoving things onto the Public Test Realm.
This clear direction will help the game long term and help to keep players around. Despite it being later than desired, it’s a solid roadmap. AGS has made it in such a way that they’re almost saying “This content will be out in this timeframe, but we’re not going to make any promises as to exactly when or what order it gets released.” This gives them a lot of flexibility to get the content done without setting a hard deadline beyond which quarter of the year it releases.
What’s on the New World’s Roadmap for 2022
As mentioned, the Roadmap AGS has shared is a quarterly roadmap of the current quarter, as well as the two that follow. What it does establish beyond just listing upcoming content is that it also reveals the expected cadence at which they will release specific content for the game.
At a quick glance, if they keep the same pacing they have so far, here’s what timeframe you could expect new content to be added:
- Events – Near-Monthly, but added over time
- Expeditions – Once every 3 months
- Major Features – Once Every 3 months
- Weapons – Once every 6 months
- Regions – Once a year
This is also just an approximation, so don’t take it as it’s always going to be this way. It depends on if they ever need to speed up or slow down adding content. However, this is fairly decent pacing which will keep players interested for the long term.
Spring Content plans
Spring also covers March’s Major release, which includes the Tempest’s Heart Expedition and Blunderbuss. That leaves 3v3 PvP Arenas and the PvP Reward track left for the announced content for this quarter.
Looking over all the changes, they’re definitely gearing up towards balancing weapons a bit more to bring everything in line prior to adding this PvP content. With officially supported PvP and a Reward Track (which will likely end up some form of ranked PvP), they’re giving the PvP players something they’ve wanted for a long time.
In terms of PvP structure, 3v3 Arenas tend to be a staple among MMORPGs. It allows for enough flexibility to pull off interesting combos and strategies, without being as hectic as some of the large-scale PvP like Wars. Lost Ark and World of Warcraft use a similar structure and it’s done wonders for both of those, with both even having highly competitive paid tourneys.
The Blunderbuss itself is designed to offer a lot of Mobility options to Bruisers and Mages, as well as potentially cover some of the short-range woes of Mages at the same time. Only time will tell if this holds true, but nonetheless, it sounds like a great option for both sides of how it’s targeted.
Finally, there’s the Tempest’s Heart Expedition. This Expedition marks the end of the currently ongoing story. We’re not going to talk too much about this, as we’d like to keep this spoiler-free. But it will be a major turning point in New World’s ongoing Story.
Summer Content plans
There are only a few items listed here in the Summer updates, but what’s listed seems like there are plans to make it more PvE focused. As such the only listed content is the new Barnacles and Black Powder Expedition, Expedition Group Finder, and A summer Event.
It’s hard to determine where this new Expedition would take place, but if I had to guess, it’ll likely end up in the southern region of Cutlass Keys. This is because Cutlass Keys heavily leans into the Drowned faction and pirate theming. This is not certain of course, but would be a good place for it
It may end up being an optional lower-level dungeon used to help bridge the gap in the currently slow Level 30-40 area of the game, much like how Shattered Obelisk does for the Level 20-30 areas. You can likely expect it to launch with a Mutated version as well, to allow Level 60 players to experience it, as well earn rewards from it.
The Expedition Group Finder is going to be a huge boon for PvE players if it works the way I think it may. There are really two ways it could go, being LFG boards simply connecting Expeditions to nearby towns, or potentially be the start cross-server (within same server set) groups.
Regardless of the route they take with it, the Group Finder will be really helpful overall. I just hope that they also have an option that will allow for checking if a group member has an Orb or not. An option to require everyone to have an Orb, and just increase drop rates would also be super nice, but there’s probably a low chance of that happening. If it did, it’d help reduce the number of potential ways to get runs of expeditions for free.
There are not any details for the Summer Event. However, it’s safe to assume it’ll end up being some form of Firework Festival or heavily involve fireworks, as many cultures around the world tend to have some variation of Firework Festival during the Summer. The other possible variation is a general event celebrating the Summer Solstice, similar to how we got Winter Convergence.
Fall Content plans
This is going to be a huge set of patches and very exciting to experience. This set of updates will offer you a new Region, New Weapon, New Expedition, and a new minor feature.
The new region is the big highlight here, as we’ll finally be able to visit Brimstone Sands, or the desert and Egyptian-themed region. With the release of a new region is also a high possibility of getting an increased level cap as well, as they mentioned previously that it is something that was under consideration.
This new region also begins the next chapter of New World’s story content. This is why there is going to be another Expedition here. This time it’s more for the story than purely keeping with their cadence. It’ll be nice to see the world finally expand from where it’s been at launch.
They’re also releasing the much-anticipated Greatsword as a weapon. I’m honestly expecting this weapon to be the first to scale with Constitution, as there’s nothing that does currently. Since they’ve mentioned a state switching mechanic with it, I assume it may end us using health as a resource to empower attacks, hence the Constitution scaling. Beyond the Stance Switching mechanic, we know nothing about the Greatsword so this is just speculation.
Then there are Leaderboards being added. This is pretty vague, but there are a number of things they could add leaderboards for. Though I’m honestly expecting them to be for either Mutated Expeditions or Life Skills. Though a PvP one is possible, there’s a chance that the 3v3 arenas will already have something similar. While there are some other options, it’s harder to assume the way they could work.
Doing them for Mutated Expeditions would be purely bragging rights, and a way to show which groups have done them the quickest. Doing them for Life Skills would end up being a way to show off your dedication to your craft or crafts.
Finally, they mention a couple of events. The first called Nightvale Hallow will be a Halloween-themed event, which is a new event for this year. This is also followed by a re-run of the Turkulon event from last year. It’s great to see them filling out a bunch of seasonal events to keep the game lively.
Here at VULKK.com, we have a collection of helpful guides to help you learn the game as well as news and update coverage to help keep track of major happenings in New World.
