New World: Aeternum

New World: Aeternum is Amazon Games' action MMORPG set on Aeternum, a supernatural island in the twilight of the Age of Exploration. You wash ashore as a settler chasing fortune and find a land where no one truly dies: the island itself corrupts those who inhabit it and blurs the line between life and death. That's the underlying hook, but what really sets it apart is how it plays.

Aeternum's signature is its classless combat: you don't pick a mage or a warrior at character creation, you build one out of the weapons you choose to master —sword and shield, musket, war hammer, bow, magical fire or ice gauntlets, among others. Each weapon levels its own mastery and unlocks abilities, so you can swap roles on the fly: tank one fight and switch to ranged damage in the next without rerolling your character.

And it's active combat, closer to an ARPG than to the classic auto-attack-bar MMO: you aim manually, dodge, block and manage your stamina. On that foundation, the game blends a broad PvE offering —the story, co-op expeditions, raids for up to 10 players and solo trials— with the large-scale, territory-control PvP that defined its identity, where entire companies clash in massive sieges to dominate regions of the map.

The game launched in 2021 for PC only as New World, and in 2024 Amazon relaunched it, rebuilt, under the Aeternum name. That relaunch brought it to PS5 and Xbox Series X|S with crossplay, reworked much of the progression and the script, and —most important for solo players— added a campaign playable solo from start to finish, unusual for the genre. It's not a new game: it's the definitive version of New World, with all its content and expansions folded in.

Aeternum was always buy-to-play: you paid once, with no monthly subscription. The standard edition ran around US$59.99 and the Deluxe about US$79.99, and the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion ended up bundled with the base game. It had a cosmetics store with premium currency (Marks of Fortune) —cosmetic, not pay-to-win, monetization. The key caveat: Amazon pulled the game from sale in early 2026, and neither the game nor its currency can be bought anymore; today only players who already owned it can download and play it.

This is the point to be clear about before starting. Amazon Games announced it is stepping away from MMO development and confirmed the permanent shutdown of all servers on January 31, 2027. The game is already in maintenance mode: no new content, just bug and performance monitoring. What's left of the roadmap is a quality-of-life send-off —a raised gold cap, all transmogs unlocked, higher mutation limits— meant to let those still playing enjoy it without friction. The population dropped accordingly: from peaks of hundreds to a few thousand concurrent players, with servers merged to concentrate whoever remains.

If you already own it, Aeternum is still an MMORPG with excellent combat and a cohesive world, ideal for anyone who wants to wring out the solo campaign or enjoy its final months of PvP with a small but passionate community. But let's be honest: this is not the moment to start from scratch with the long term in mind. It can no longer be bought, there will be no new content, and it shuts down in January 2027. As a persistent MMORPG, its story is ending; as an action experience with an expiration date, it still has something to offer anyone who takes it for what it is. You can find the details and the shutdown announcement on the official site.