New World remains offline as 'technical difficulties' force extended downtime

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The planned four-hour maintenance period is now up to seven hours.

New World PvP
(Image credit: Amazon Games)

Amazon's MMO New World is a major hit, but it's also had some struggles since it went live last week. Long server queues have been the biggest issue, but it hit another bump in the road today with some unspecified "technical difficulties" that have forced multiple extensions to downtime for maintenance.

New World was taken down at 6 am ET for what was expected to be about four hours to roll out the 1.01 update. "As each world finishes their maintenance period, we will be bringing up these worlds in order to ensure that everyone will be able to return to Aeternum as fast as possible," Amazon said in the initial announcement.

"Unfortunately, we are having some technical difficulties and need to extend the maintenance for two more hours," Amazon said. "We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and support!"

A one-hour extension isn't a big deal on its own, but another two hours—seven in total so far, with possibly more to come—is definitely unusual, or at least unexpected to the game's legions of players patiently waiting to wage war (or just do some 'relaxing' fishing). Amazon hasn't said what exactly is holding things up, but I've reached out for comment and will update if I receive a reply.

Andy Chalk
Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.