New World’s Free Cross-Realm Server Transfers Aren’t Happening

During the mad rush to play Amazon’s massively multiplayer RPG New World during launch week, its developers told players not to worry about which of the game’s crowded servers they chose to play on, as free transfers were on the way. Not only have those free server transfers been delayed, the developers have also deemed previously promised cross-realm server transfers impossible.

The launch of New World was a bit of a mess. Overwhelming interest in Amazon’s colonial-themed MMO led to crowded servers with massive queues, to which Amazon Games responded by rapidly opening new servers. Players who found themselves separated from their friends were assured by a launch-day news update that they’d be able to transfer servers for free in two weeks or so, after the initial rush slowed. The game’s official Twitter account assured players that they’d be able to transfer to different regions for free as well. Some players simply opted to make characters in different regions to avoid waiting in hours-long queues to log in.

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However, in a “Server Transfer update” posted on the New World forums on Friday, developers let players know that the free transfer tokens that were supposed to be distributed this week were going to be delayed. According to the post, the transfer process isn’t quite ready for (Amazon) prime time.

During our testing, we uncovered some edge cases where the transfer experience does not meet our standards for its release. This means that we will be taking some extra time to get these issues resolved before we feel comfortable giving everyone their free server transfer token.

Fair enough. I would rather wait a bit longer than risk my level 32 character getting mangled in the transfer process and having to start over. The delay isn’t great news, but it isn’t the end of the New World…,at least for players who need to transfer between servers in the same region.

I add that caveat because it turns out that players who opted to create and level characters on servers in different regions are shit out of luck. Say you live in North America and created a character on a European server so you could play at night while most of Europe was sleeping. That character is now stuck on the European server forever because according to a server transfer FAQ posted to the forums on Friday, the original information on cross-realm servers was incorrect:

Transfers are only available within your region, each region is a separate database and it is not possible to re-assign [a] character to a different region.

So if you’ve got a character in one region and want to play with your friends in another, you’ve got to start a new character. You’ll have to re-harvest all those vegetables, re-cut all those trees, re-mine all that ore, and redo all the quests. If the idea of doing those things all over again doesn’t make you want to take a nap, you’re a stronger person than I.

Needless to say, players are angry, as they have every right to be when a developer or publisher tweets out misinformation which it later has to take back. Slow your roll, Amazon Games. New World has only been live for two weeks. Get to know the players a little better before you screw them.