New World's first patch does more to stop AFK players hogging servers
It comes with a bunch of important and amusing bug fixes too
A week after launch New World continues to see hundreds of thousands of players logging on to get a piece of that sweet new MMORPG action. Just this weekend, the game nearly hit a million concurrent players on Steam. But with that popularity has come long queues, and some players are going AFK once they get in so they don't lose their spots if they can't play immediately. It should be harder for them to hog server space now though, because Amazon Games released New Worlds' first post-launch patch last night, changing some AFK rules.
In the 1.0.1 patch notes, Amazon say they've added "additional AFK prevention to ensure players cannot fool the existing system with simulated mouse movement". They've also shortened the AFK warning message from 20 minutes to 15, and players will now be disconnected from the game after 20 minutes, rather than 25.
Look, I understand that once you get into the game you don't wanna leave because you'll have to wait ages again, but if lots of people are AFK that only makes the queue worse! Be the change you want to see in New World.
From what I've seen, things are starting to ease up though, with queues are mostly at their worst during peak times in the evenings and at the weekend now.
Amazon have previously added more servers, disabled character creation on full servers, and plan on offering players server transfers to improve queue times. While there's no exact date yet on those transfers, they should be available in the next week or so.
This patch comes with a whole host of bug fixes too. Here's a selection of the more important-sounding and slightly amusing ones, including frozen legs and aggressive pastors:
- Fixed a rare issue causing the interact key to not properly function on various objects in the world.
- Fixed a bug where interrupting the fast travel animation may cause the player’s character to become stuck inside of a house.
- Fixed an issue causing leg animations to freeze.
- Fixed game crashes related to the New World Twitch integrations.
- Fixed a rare issue where players could enter a state where they could not be hit by most attacks.
- Fixed an issue causing Pastor Walsh to spawn aggressively at the Walsham point of interest.
If you need a little help with the game, we've put together some guides to the best New World character builds and the fastest New World levelling methods.