New World Open Beta Returns Next Month: How To Join Up
Amazon's upcoming MMO, New World, was at one point supposed to launch in a few days, but Amazon recently decided to delay the game to September 28th following a recent closed beta. While that delay is certainly annoying to fans who have been waiting for New World's launch, it isn't all bad news, as Amazon has announced that it will be hosting one more beta before the game arrives.
Even better is that this one will be an open beta, meaning anyone can play regardless of whether or not they pre-ordered the game. The beta that Amazon hosted in July was a closed beta that was only open to folks who pre-ordered the game, so the fact that this upcoming beta will be open is good news indeed for anyone who didn't get the chance to take New World for a spin earlier this summer.
Amazon says that the open beta will occur from September 9th at 7 AM PDT/10 AM EDT to September 12th at 11:59 PM PDT/September 13th at 2:59 AM EDT. The open beta is taking place in part because over-populated servers made it difficult for some people to play the game during July's closed beta, so Amazon wanted to give everyone who's interested a chance to play New World before launch. As a result of those server issues, Amazon says that it will increase capacity for the open beta. Still, capacity won't quite reach the maximums that will be available at launch.
Since this is an open beta, there won't be any NDA associated with it, so expect to see streamers playing the game and a fresh batch of gameplay videos on YouTube. As for what's changed between July's closed beta and this open beta, Amazon says it will publish patch notes to the New World forums, but unfortunately, the forums won't be live again until the open beta kicks off.
Amazon says that players will need to request access to the open beta client through the Steam Playtest tool, which will be available on the New World Steam page. Unfortunately, it seems that the Playtest Tool isn't live on the New World listing at the moment, but we'll look for its arrival as we get closer to the beta kick-off date.
Interestingly enough, the FAQ Amazon has put together for this closed beta says that the company will be reaching out to folks who participated in the New World alpha test with invitations to closed technical tests that are under NDA. While we obviously don't know what the subject of those tests will be, the fact that they're under NDA suggests that Amazon is looking to test new features. In any case, check that FAQ for more information, but otherwise, look for this open beta to kick off on September 9th.