Amazon MMO New World has now been available for four days, but things continue to rapidly change as players strive to find the server they'll make a home for the foreseeable future. The issue isn't that servers aren't available, as Amazon's continued to open new servers as New World's player count rapidly climbs. Rather, the issue is joining a server with friends that doesn't have outrageous queue times. Amazon's promised a server transfer function in the next week, but in the meantime, a different feature has only created a new serious problem.
The root of New World's server issues is that each server has a completely inflexible server cap. Only 2,000 players can be on a given server at one time. Any players more than that will be sent to a queue, waiting for another player to drop offline. Amazon's solution at the moment is to introduce a new feature. The feature prevents any new characters from being made on a "full server." The server's name will be greyed out and players are told to choose another server if they try and make a character.
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What triggers a server to go into a locked state isn't obvious. For example, there are a number of servers right now that are below 2,000 players with no queues, but remain locked from creating new characters. It's possibly related to total characters created on a server rather than characters currently online, but that hasn't been confirmed by Amazon.
No explanation for the decision was provided by Amazon, despite a statement being issued announcing the new feature. The obvious justification is that Amazon wants to avoid exacerbating queue issues. If a server is closed to new characters, then queues won't grow beyond already existing characters on the server. However, in doing so it's made it impossible for new players to join friends on already existing New World servers. It's an understandable but frustrating decision.
The decision has already led to negative feedback from New World players. On day one, Amazon told players to avoid joining full servers and that it'd offer server transfers at a later date. Now players are worried that when server transfers open, they won't be able to join locked servers where their friends are despite Amazon's early encouragement. Server transfers are planned to open next week and details about their limitations haven't been revealed yet.
Suffice to say, Amazon is in a difficult position right now. It's not only working on server transfers and possible server population cap increases, but it has to evaluate how to best implement each system without overwhelming servers. On one hand, New World being so successful is a great problem to have. On the other, New World could be building toward its first major post-launch controversy depending on how server transfers function.
New World is available now on PC.