Amazon Game Studios announced sweeping server merges for New World: Aeternum on July 22nd that go far beyond typical consolidation efforts. The company will completely eliminate the AP Southeast and SA East regions, forcing all players in these areas to relocate to US West servers thousands of miles away.
This marks one of the most dramatic restructuring moves in the MMO's history. Players who've been gaming on local servers will now face potential latency issues as they're pushed to servers across continents.
Two Entire Regions Getting Axed
The AP Southeast and SA East regions aren't getting typical server merges. Instead, they're disappearing entirely. Every player in these regions gets moved to US West, creating a massive geographical shift that could impact gameplay quality.
Community backlash forced one change to the original plan. After player feedback, Amazon decided to keep one server in both AP Southeast and SA East regions instead of wiping them completely. The announcement came just one day after the initial reveal, showing how much pushback they received.
Console Players Losing Platform-Only Options
Xbox players are getting forced into cross-play whether they want it or not. All Xbox-exclusive servers will merge into cross-play environments, mixing console and PC players together permanently.
PlayStation gets different treatment. One PS-only server stays active in US East, but every other PlayStation server across all regions funnels into that single destination. Players can stick with the PlayStation-only experience or jump into cross-play servers.
This consolidation affects servers spanning multiple continents. PlayStation players from EU, SA East, AP Southeast, and US West all get moved to one server in US East.
Which Servers Are Merging Where
The specific moves break down like this:
- US West sees Aquarius and Pleiades folding into El Dorado
- AP Southeast combines Cerberus and Crux into Delos
- SA East merges Alkaid and Chertan into Devaloka
- Europe gets Iroko absorbed into Aries
- US East folds Sundew into Pangea
The PlayStation consolidation creates the most dramatic moves. Tumtum becomes the single PlayStation server, pulling in Nihal from SA East, Taiyi from AP Southeast, Mardi from EU, and Kronomo from US West.
Timeline Shows Rushed Implementation
The merge schedule moves fast. July 22nd brought server restarts and disabled character creation on retiring worlds. July 27th cancelled all Wars on affected servers with refunds. July 30th shuts down the retiring worlds completely.
Character transfers and companies move automatically to new servers. Territory owners get refunded for their holdings. Anyone who bought transfer tokens in the past 14 days gets their money back.
Inactive players don't get a choice. Xbox users land on cross-play servers while PlayStation users go to the dedicated US East server based on their platform.
What Players Keep and Lose
Most player progress survives the transition. Companies stay intact, housing transfers completely, and all housing items make the move. Trading post items won't transfer automatically though. Players need to pull everything out before the merge or risk losing it.
Leaderboard data gets handled differently depending on the merge type. Non-platform merges keep the data but might see delays before it shows up. Platform-specific merges wipe leaderboard history entirely, resetting competitive standings.
Amazon timed these merges close to Season 9's launch to minimize leaderboard disruption. They're also temporarily disabling Outpost Rush to focus queue times on the new Capture the Flag mode.
Population Problems Drive Drastic Action
These moves signal serious population issues across New World's server network. Amazon needs healthier player counts to support game features and the upcoming Season 9 content.
Amazon says they'll monitor populations after the merges and stay "adaptive as Aeternum continues to grow and evolve." Translation: more changes could be coming if these don't work.
The company clearly hopes consolidation will create more active servers with enough players for PvP modes, dungeons, and territorial warfare. But forcing players across continents and eliminating platform choices represents a gamble on whether better population density is worth the potential performance and preference trade-offs.
For a game that's already struggled with player retention, these massive server changes could either revitalize the community or push more players away entirely.
