Earlier this month, David McKenzie, former Lead World Designer at New World: Aeternum jumped into the official New World Reddit channel and announced that he will be answering as many questions as possible about the game he possibly could.
Many, many were asked, and surprisingly, almost all of them were answered to the best of his ability! It seems like he is continuing to jump in and answer questions all he can too, so if you still have any questions, you might as well post it on the official thread and see if you get a response!
Below are some of the most interesting and popular responses that David McKenzie provided.
Q: What are the odds New World gets bought by another studio and continues on?
A: I hope for the best, because New World was the most exciting project I’ve been on. I would happily go back.
Selling NW would also require clawing back most of the devs who worked on it, which I’m guessing that ship has sailed. I do have my doubts as to NW getting purchased by another developer, as New World’s engine requires a very specific set of hands to operate.
Q: Any idea why Amazon is deciding to simply let the game die instead of allowing another company to buy the IP and possibly make it successful? There was a lot of promise with the game and it’s disappointing to see what’s happening with it.
A: Money.
Q: What are the top 3 ideas that devs wanted to implement, but kept being pushed?
A: Public Wars, Farming, and Sailing.
Q: What’s one thing you passionately fought for to implement into the game?
A: Tarot Arcana cards. I regularly pointed to franchises like Disney’s Agatha All Along as proof that the idea was cool. It was a constant fight. At first, we were allowed 7 cards of unique origin, then 12, then 20, then finally we got all 22 of the Major Arcana. Eventually I won with the concept, narrative, marketing, and leadership teams. Tarot became a pillar of the zone.
And then Netflix just completed their 2026 ad campaign with Tarot as the main theme. Kind of serendipitous and validating to see a massive company take the same risks that we did.
I’ll always love New World because we had the unique position of respecting history, anthropology, culture, and human creativity, and we will not see a game that uses our own timeline as the IP for a long time. It was extremely special to work on such a property that celebrates culture, practices, from all over the globe.
Q: Why was there such a content drought for the year leading up to the console port?
Did it really take the entire team to do the console port and not make a few dungeons or OPR maps to at least tide the player base over until then?
And then when the console port did come we only had 1 raid and 1 ffa PvP zone which wasn’t good enough for the endgame players.
A: The Console version of the game was a completely total overhaul. I don’t think the community has truly grasped the work it took. We essentially were shipping “A Realm Reborn” but for New World. That takes an enormous amount of time.
At the same time, we were also actively developing both raids and the new OPR maps.
Q: Was Scot Lane’s game direction vision vastly different from the rest of the development teams? It seemed like at every turn, whatever the community was asking for, he rarely shared that. Notably, withholding information up until the console release, and an open refusal to do a new OPR map despite outcry for one come to mind. I ask because there were very dramatic shifts in development when Katy took over that strayed a lot from previous design philosophies.
A: Scot and Katy are both incredible in their own unique ways. Scot is like Gandalf. Katy is like Galadriel. They’re both powerful wizards with their own superpowers. But how can you compare them to Frodo’s success? They both did the job they were required at the time it was needed.
The superpower they both share is knowing when to let go and let the team take the vision in a new direction. That’s the least I can ask of leadership, and they both delivered that and more.
Q: What’s the one thing you really wanted to ship but you never got the chance to?
A: Instanced ECRs for a group of 5
Q: If someone will buy New World, will you come back to NW if possible?
A: Happily, yes.
Listen in to the video below to hear some more questions recently answered.
If you’re interested in seeing more responses, be sure to check out the official thread on New World’s Reddit!
