Amazon Games has just announced that it will be implementing a Season Pass system in an upcoming update to New World, with both a Free Track and a Premium Track that players progress through gameplay and seasonal challenges. New World's Season Pass reward tracks will offer a variety of items from seasonal equipment to skins, pets, material caches, and plenty of other goodies.
As Amazon Games' debut title, the initial hype at the 2021 release led to massive server queue times in New World with thousands of players waiting to get their chance to step into Aeternum. The honeymoon phase quickly wore off, however, and populations declined rapidly as players found little to do in the endgame and were worn down by grinding and bugs. In the time since its release, Amazon Games has been constantly updating New World with reworks of entire systems, all new regions to explore, and even some new weapon classes. The game has changed significantly since those early days, and it's about to see another major shift.
Whether it's a symptom of the game's struggles to monetize and retain players or just following the footsteps of virtually all modern games like Destiny 2, Overwatch 2, Fortnite, and Call of Duty, Amazon Games has announced that New World will be implementing a Season Pass system with both paid and free reward tracks. Once players reach level 25, they'll be able to make progress on the reward track by working on the Season Journey. The Season Journey is divided into chapters each with a set of tasks such as "Complete 3 Faction Missions" or "Obtain level 60." Each task earns Seasonal XP while completing an entire chapter yields a substantial reward and large seasonal XP boost.
How Much Does the New World Season Pass Cost?
- 20,000 Marks of Fortune
The paid version of the season pass can be purchased for 20,000 Marks of Fortune, which totals around $20. Thankfully, buying the pass retroactively rewards any tiers that would have already been earned, so it may be a good idea to hold off on purchasing the pass until the end of the season and then decide if the potential rewards are worth $20. Season 1, Fellowship & Fire, will be coming around on March 28, along with another New World update that will be making plenty of changes and improvements.
Season pass systems are more common in MMORPGs than one might think. World of Warcraft's Trading Post is essentially a Battle Pass, while Star Wars: The Old Republic has Galactic Seasons, Lord of the Rings Online has the Legendary Item Reward Track, and even Final Fantasy 14's Series PvP system is functionally a Battle Pass system for PvP players. Love or hate it, this strategy for retaining and engaging players with FOMO and daily chores appears to only be growing more ubiquitous.
New World is available on PC.