Here. We. Go. Brimstone Sands is here!

 Brimstone Sands is coming to New World and the patch notes are HUGE and if you are reading this as of 9:30 AM EST on 10/18 you can get the patch and get logged in.  There is a ton to unpack with this update so I will share my thoughts on different aspects as I play through them over the next few days.  For this post I wanted to toss out my prediction for player population expectations and if we will see a bump here or not.

There is a lot of buzz around this update and New World has seen an increase in peak concurrent players since its announcement (15k to 40k peak).  This is a good sign that the changes announced are taking the game in the right direction as it seems many of the returning players came back to get ready for it.

Even with the buzz I am still leery on whether we will see a large bump in players beyond what we've already seen.  Here are some of my reasons why we may not see a bump:

• The previous free weekend event was a total bust and registered no bump to peak player counts
• The big PvP arenas update had good buzz (nothing near Brimstone Sands but still some buzz) and it had no impact to peak players.  The first "official PvP arena tournament" was a total bust.
  
• As mentioned already, many players already returned to get ready for the patch, so we may be at the bump peak.
• Fresh Start Servers, which are the biggest draw for a bump, don't come out to 11/2.  We may not see a real bump until then.
• Last: we may see the big streamers bring a crowd, as they always do, but I am sure it will be short lived albeit painful queues on the servers they end up on.

I may be proven wrong and we return to six figure peak concurrent players and I'll be fine with that outcome, but I also wanted to prepare myself for the possibility the game's popularity is at or close to its peak.  Time will tell and I look forward to finding out!

What are your predictions?  Leave a comment.