New World is implementing new measures to crack down on players going AFK

New World's popularity continues to be a thorn in Amazon Games Studios' side, ironically enough. Though there are many upsides to having a huge concurrent player count on Steam at any given time, there are also myriad logisitcal problems that come with that.

For starters, New World's full servers won't accept new character creations, with full servers will appearing greyed out, preventing players from accidentally picking them as a home for their new characters.

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Now, Amazon is going a step further and introducing measures that will quickly kick players out of the game and back to the main menu if they’re detected by the game's AFK tools.

In a forum post, community manager HardcoreHenry noted that the team has “seen a lot of frustration around individuals who may be artificially remaining active enough in servers to avoid the automatic AFK mitigation that is built into New World” and are upping the severity of penalties that you'll be subject to if you AFK consistently in New World.

Amazon Game Studios “certainly agree[s] that this is not acceptable behaviour, especially when there are droves of individuals who are waiting patiently to get into a world”, hence adding the new detection measures.

“This effort is going to be rolled out over a period of time, so results may not appear immediate,” the post continues, “but this is something we are dedicated to bringing online as quickly as we feel comfortable.”

But players aren't happy: a thread has been created on the game's official forums saying that Amazon is treating AFK players 'like cheaters' and accuses the developer of 'bullying players'.

A cursory look at the Twitter replies to Amazon's tweet about AFK measures shows a raft of dissatisfied players, too – many complaining that server sizes are too small, and that they shouldn't be punished for having to work, eat or carry on their lives around the game and not be able to log back in.

If you can get into the game, you may enjoy knowing that we recently updated our New World guides with new content. Some answer quick questions like where to find the Rune of Holding and where to find Boatswain Ambrose. Others go deeper, like our PvE and PvP build recommendations and this guide covering armour crafting and gear score.