New World
As is well known, the starting signal for the closed beta of the online role-playing game New World was fired on July 20, 2021. Amazon Game Studios not only ushered in an important phase on the way to the release of the MMO, but also triggered an enormous influx of players. This can be seen very well in the statistics of Steam.Accordingly, New World (buy now 39.99 €) reached a peak of a little more than 190,000 simultaneously active players yesterday evening. Exactly there were even 190,811 users who cavorted on the servers of the MMO at the same time. That's an impressive number in and of itself - especially when compared to another game from Amazon Game Studios. The hero shooter Crucible "only" had a little over 25,000 simultaneously active users on its release day - significantly fewer. Accordingly, Amazon can at least consider the start of the closed beta as a success in this regard.
The beta start of New World also caused quite a stir on the streaming platform Twitch. At its peak, the online role-playing game had more than 721,000 simultaneously active viewers and thus landed a long way behind in first place. The game benefited from the fact that some prominent streamers reported on the closed beta and that some in-game items could be tapped using Twitch Drops. Still, these numbers show how popular New World is right now. Even at the current time, the MMO from Amazon Game Studios can still be found on Twitch in the top 5 games with the most viewers.
Source: SteamDB
Warning: Amazon’s ‘New World’ Is Bricking A Specific Type Of GPU
New World
AmazonAn extremely serious warning today if you are trying out Amazon’s new MMO, New World, now that it’s entered a beta testing period. If you own a certain type of GPU, you are at a high risk of having it be totally bricked by the game.
The card in question is the EVGA 3090 FTW3, a roughly $2,000+ card, and one that for some reason, is specifically getting destroyed by New World, when lesser, cheaper cards are not.
I first heard about this from streamer Gladd, who says he lost his own card late yesterday. This is not an isolated incident, as there’s a forum post and reddit thread with many, many other players saying the same thing happened to them and their 3090s.
This appears to be a problem that’s been ongoing since the alpha. Here’s one user describing that this is the second card they’ve lost this way:
“So after hitting the play button for New World beta the game started to load, followed immediately by fan speeds increasing to 100%, fps dropping to 0, and then my monitors turning off and my video card is no longer detected. So I reboot the PC and everything seemed to work fine, I even tried a few other games to make sure and I had no problems. So I hit play on New World again and same thing happen but this time I heard a loud pop and now my 3090 won’t get past POST on bootup.
This is the 2nd 3090 FTW3 Ultra directly from EVGA to die while playing or attempting to play New World, my first one died during Alpha, but I was able to play that for a week or so before that happen. But the same exact thing happened with that card, it just happened while I was actually in the game.”
I have not heard any response from Amazon from this other than an automated bot telling people to check the “Common Issues” section of the Graphics and Performance Section of the game, but clearly this is a problem that isn’t going to be cured by an FAQ page.
The prevailing theory about what’s happening here is that something within New World is creating unusual conditions to trigger this total failure. One idea I’ve seen proposed is that New World does not frame limit its menus, so those shooting up to thousands of FPS is doing something to these cards and causing them to fry, though that’s not confirmed, as of yet. The game is reportedly drawing a ton from all kinds of cards, but I’m only seeing reports of 3090s as the ones actually outright dying. I’ve reached out to Amazon for comment, and will update if I hear back.
This is a very, very serious issue, and while this does not seem to be affecting every single person with a 3090, I would highly, highly recommend not playing the game until we know more information about the conditions causing this, or some sort of fix is issued. Right now, it seems possible you may end up losing your very expensive card and having to start some sort of refund/replacement process. You have been warned.
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