New World’s Population Nearly Doubled As The Brimstone Sands Expansion Goes Live

New World has seen a surprise resurgence in its playerbase over the past few months as players flocked to the open-world MMORPG in preparation for the release of its Brimstone Sands expansion. It’s even gotten to the point where Amazon had to open several new servers to try to accommodate everyone as nearly all of its servers began to fill up. Now that the expansion is live, concurrency numbers have nearly doubled, peaking at just over 65,000 players in a 24-hour period, the highest its been since early February.

The marquee feature of the expansion is the massive Ancient Egypt-inspired Brimstone Sands zone which comes with its own quests and the brand-new Ennead Expedition. The highly-anticipated expansion also introduces Heartgem abilities, the Greatsword weapon line, and a fully-revamped new-player experience.

“We’ve completely redesigned the early levels of New World so players who start the game or roll a new character will experience brand new stories and quests,” Amazon said. The expansion also kicks off Halloween festivities in the form of the Nightveil Hallow event.

Amazon has opened eight new servers across the globe in anticipation of the launch rush with more servers on standby just in case things get crazier than expected. The studio granted players two free transfer tokens back in February that players can use to transfer to any of the new servers, and are allowing players who haven’t logged-in since then one free chance to transfer without using up any tokens they have saved up.

For those who’d rather wait for the launch rush to die down and don’t mind starting from scratch, Fresh Start Worlds are set to open their doors in early November.