New World hit an all-time peak of 913,634 players during the weekend according to Steamdb, which certainly makes it one of the biggest MMO launches in a long time. No MMO launch is without issues though and the big one this time has been some very long queues.
Amazon Game Studios have already doubled their servers, disabled the creation of new characters on full servers, and now also improved their anti-AFK measures to boot idle players from the game. Using auto-run was one way that players were staying in-game past the logout timers but that is no longer possible.
“We have created a new solution to help us identify and action against bad faith AFK players. We will not disclose the details of how the solution works, but we will say that we have every confidence that players who are playing New World normally will not experience any issues. Initially, being caught by our detection solution will result in a quick kick to the main menu. If the behavior continues, more harsh penalties will be applied,”