New World outlines its 2022 content roadmap

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Expect new expeditions, weapons, and a bevy of QoL improvements

New World player with greataxe attacking another player
(Image credit: Amazon Games)

Amazon Games has revealed the 2022 roadmap for its fantasy MMO, New World.

While we already knew that the Heart of Madness update will drop later this month alongside the Tempest Heart Expedition, a new developer update delves a little deeper to show us how Tempest Heart "shows off the surreal and supernatural alternate reality of Isabella’s mind, which is giving way to corruption and chaos". 

The roadmap shows that spring 2022 (or Q2 for our friends in the southern hemisphere) will bring the Tempest's Heart expedition, new weapon the Blunderbuss, as well as 3v3 PvP arenas and a PvP reward track. Summer/Q3, on the other hand, introduces the Barnacles and Black Powder expedition, an expedition group finder, and an unspecified "summer event".

An infographic depicting key updates coming to the MMO later this year, including the Tempest Heart expedition

(Image credit: Amazon Studios)

Finally, the autumn/fall/Q4 update brings us Brimstone Sands territory, the Ennead expedition, leaderboards, a Nightvale Hallow event (presumably sometime around Halloween), and the Turkulon 2022 event. We'll also get another new weapon, too: the Greatsword.

The team also detailed bug fixes and quality of life improvements to "reduce friction", citing infinite ammo and the requirement to only have one player at an Expedition entrance to begin it as examples. You can see the full update in the video below:

Have you been spending any time with the latest game published under the Amazon Games' banner, Lost Ark? Lost Ark may not have been out long, but it's already one of the biggest games to ever hit Steam. Within 24 hours of release, it clocked up so many players that it now boasts the second-highest concurrent peak ever, topping games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Amazon's own New World, which currently has a peak of 913K. The only game to have ever had more concurrent record players that Lost Ark is PlayerUnknown's PUBG.

Right now, developer Smilegate is still battling bots in Lost Ark, but, the development team recently provided an update on the game's plentiful bots, saying it was "working on internal methods and tools to make it much more difficult for bots to enter the game". It follows reports Smilegate had banned over a million "bot" accounts from its servers on March 4.

Here are our picks of the best MMORPG titles you can play in 2022.

Vikki Blake
Vikki Blake
Weekend Reporter, GamesRadar+

Vikki Blake is GamesRadar+'s Weekend Reporter. Vikki works tirelessly to ensure that you have something to read on the days of the week beginning with 'S', and can also be found contributing to outlets including the BBC, Eurogamer, and GameIndustry.biz. Vikki also runs a weekly games column at NME, and can be frequently found talking about Destiny 2 and Silent Hill on Twitter.