Amazon's MMO New World celebrated its rebirth earlier this month with the mass opening of its "fresh start" servers (open in new tab). The game's legacy servers are not as busy as they used to be, as many people have left for the lush and fertile lands of the new servers. So Amazon decided to mash up these servers.

The server consolidation will take place on Friday, December 2 at 7:00 a.m. GMT/2:00 a.m. EST (11:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time for those on December 1), when 13 servers will be consolidated into 6 during 2.5 hours of downtime. The list of servers to be merged is as follows:

These servers were chosen based on "a combination of average concurrent connections, active characters, faction population, etc." so if your server wasn't chosen, it's probably because it's too popular. Or it could be based on some mysterious category that falls under "other". It would be tarot readings.

Player reaction to the merge announcement has been mostly positive. Others recall past mergers, such as when a French-speaking server merged with an English-speaking one (open in new tab), resulting in a protracted and frustrating Monty Python skit until things settled down.

When it was released in 2021, we were less than enthusiastic about New World, giving it 60% (open in new tab) and criticizing it for feeling "scattershot and undercooked." Despite its phenomenal launch, it struggled to maintain its initially large player base, necessitating mergers like this one. Nevertheless, it would be foolish for Amazon to pass this up, as they are not exactly strapped for funds to continue the game.