New World players threaten refunds as Amazon backtracks on region transfers

New World players are threatening to refund their purchases after Amazon backtracked on a launch day promise of allowing characters to be transferred across regions.

When New World launched on September 28, it did so with fairly significant server issues. As millions attempted to join the highly anticipated MMO all at once, queue times exploded for many of the more populated regions.

As a result, devs provided an update 24 hours later, one that enticed players to jump across and join different servers.

Initially, players were concerned that starting a character on one particular server, perhaps even one outside of their region, would leave them restricted to that server moving forward. 

“We’ll offer an opportunity in the next two weeks for all players to relocate their characters to a new server of their choice at no cost,” the devs explained at the time. “Yes, you can move between regions if you want.” 

Naturally, thousands jumped at the chance to get grinding, knowing full well the option would be there to transfer their progress to a desired server across regions in the near future.

11 days into New World’s release, however, and that is no longer the case.

Amazon has backtracked on this promise with many now threatening to refund the game.

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“Can we transfer from region to region?” an October 9 FAQ on the New World forums asked.

“Transfers are only available within your region,” the Community Manager answered, a clear reversal from Amazon’s original statement.

“So the ‘transfer to any server’ statement issued earlier was not true? Unfortunately, the original information provided was incorrect.”

It didn’t take long for players to chime in with their frustration. After more than a week of grinding in most cases, various high-level characters have already been made redundant with this backtracking. 

“Guess my level 40 is garbage now,” one player responded. “They were a bunch of liars,” another added. “Many of us listened to you and tried to do the right thing and don’t want to be punished for that.”

“We chose characters on NA servers based on this,” an unhappy EU player stressed on Twitter. “We need to be able to transfer back to EU. We’re only here as queues were ridiculous on EU and you stated we would be able to change regions. You need to fix this.”

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Some even suggested ‘mass refunds’ in order to make a statement and force a change.

“They were luring you to play with false promises,” others lashed out.

New World devs are yet to issue another response in light of the backlash. There’s no telling if players will ever be granted the opportunity to transfer characters across regions.

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Far from the only major issue sticking out in New World’s first days, various bugs and technical issues has bogged the experience down. Here’s our review-in-progress for the ambitious MMO.