Despite the publishing deals it's making for other MMOs (the latest one for NCSOFT's Throne and Liberty was announced just a few hours ago), Amazon Games hasn't given up on New World. The MMORPG was the first successful game produced by the company's internal studios, even if player figures have long since waned after the lofty heights reached around launch.

　　At a recent remote meeting with the press that Wccftech was able to attend, Amazon Games announced that a seasonal model will soon be introduced to the game, including a Season Pass featuring two tracks, free and premium (the latter available only for level 25 characters and higher). Season Pass unlocks from the free track include skins, a pet for the house, Marks of Fortune, boost tokens, Umbral Shards and Gypsum Orbs for endgame players, and caches of materials for crafters.

　　The premium track (which can be bought at any point, even later during the season, to get all the rewards retroactively) costs 20K Marks of Fortune, which amounts to $20, and it will unlock an additional premium skin set, a tent skin, additional Marks of Fortune, even more boost tokens and unique cosmetics.

　　Seasons are expected to last around three months in New World, delivering new threats, festivities, features, and gameplay experiences to the game to keep it fresher. At the end of a season, rewards that haven't been unlocked by the players will be 'vaulted', with the developers hoping that would make them more enticing (although they didn't deny they could be un-vaulted at some point, as you'll read below).

　　There are three ways to progress in the Season Pass. The first is simply to follow the Season Journey, which consists of five chapters of directed goals that go through the whole narrative and the season. Then there's Season Challenges, high-difficulty challenges that players can complete at any time to receive Season XP. Lastly, there's something called Activity Card, which was described by Amazon Games as a bingo-like mini-game of sorts that allows players to progress through the Season Pass at their own pace.

　　The first Season, called Fellowship and Fire, is set to start on March 28th. The narrative will focus on players helping a mercenary group called Silver Crows (founded by fan-favorite NPC Grace O'Malley), who are hired by Skye the Speardaughter to stop the encroaching Varangian horde and halt the plans of an evil Warlock.

　　The Fellowship and Fire update will also add the new Empyrean Forge Expedition and a new Heartrune. Amazon also shared a preliminary look at the full 2023 roadmap, which includes some interesting items. As you can see below, Season 2: Blood of the Sands will include a so-called Trial for 10 players, raid groups, a new Heartrune, cross-server Outpost Rush matchmaking, and transmogrification. A new expansion will drop in the Fall, adding mounts, another Expedition, another weapon, another Heartrune, increasing the Gear Score, and 'transforming' an existing zone. Lastly, the Winter season will introduce another Expedition, another Heartrune, cross-server Arenas and Expeditions, and mutators to the aforementioned Trial.

　　Following the presentation, we joined a roundtable Q&A with fellow press colleagues, where Creative Director David Verfaillie answered several questions. You can read its transcript below, edited and condensed for clarity. By the way, the Public Test Realm (PTR) for Season 1 goes live tomorrow, and you can find the update notes here.

　　How much playtime can players expect from this content when it drops into New World?

　　Season one will launch with a variety of content. Obviously the main storyline we talked about, but it will also launch with additional features and content. For instance, I mentioned the Empyrean Forge a dungeon that will launch alongside it.

　　Depending on how you play and if you get into mutators, the content can have varying lengths. In terms of the season pass, we're still tuning how long it will take to fully level up, and we'll tune further on the PTR. As general guidance, the season is three months, and we don't expect it to take anywhere close to three months. We want to find a time that feels good for the 100 levels. The goal is not to make it too grindy, we want it to feel like you're making progress with every session.

　　Is the Season Pass bound to one character or to the whole account?

　　The Season Pass is bound to the whole account. As you get rewards or play on different characters, it will move up in tandem.

　　Is this new storyline intended to bring players back to different areas of the world? How are you dispersing that across the current zones?

　　Let me just talk a little more about the whole seasonal story structure in New World. As I mentioned, we're gonna be forming a group called the Silver Crows with Grace O'Malley. That group will grow and change throughout the course of seasons. The Silver Crows will recruit new people to join it in some other seasons, so one may leave or get killed off. But that core concept of the Silver Crows and that mercenary group will remain, and each season players will go on different adventures with that group.

　　As I mentioned, the season one adventure is about trying to help out Skye and tackling the Empyrean Forge. In terms of how we play out those quests, yes, we will be going to places you've been already, but often times there'll be changes in terms of the new enemies, new mechanics, and new puzzles to solve in those areas.

　　So you'll have been to the areas, but there will often be changes. In Season one specifically, there's a couple of new Points of Interest that were introduced that replace areas where they either didn't have PoIs or we're replacing a small one with a new big one.

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　　In terms of the content that's coming with each season, are Seasons meant to replace the larger content drops like the Brimstone Sands update, or are they going to be stop gaps in between those larger drops?

　　I think releasing seasons every three months means they'll be meaningful content that is sort of expected to keep people engaged between those larger updates, as you mentioned.

　　Some of the rewards you listed were things like weapons or crafting materials. How do you combat the inevitable fears among the New World player base that this might feel somewhat pay-to-win, especially on the side of the premium track?

　　I think the number one way we combat that is there is absolutely nothing in the Season Pass that is exclusive to it. Anything you can get in the Season Pass is available in the game. So there's nothing exclusive. Secondly, there is a free track that gives almost all of the same stuff as the premium track. The thing with the premium track, is that you definitely get more stuff,  and it has different visuals at times. There is a speeding up with the premium track is what we call it, but definitely no unique or specific advantages are given.

　　A new Heartrune was mentioned to be coming to New World in the Fellowship and Fire update. Is it acquired from the seasonal track? More broadly, are there any plans to make Heartrunes more accessible to people who don't run a lot of dungeons?

　　There will be a new Heartrune in season one. It will be tied to the Empyrean Forge, the new Expedition. The lore and gameplay around Heartrunes is this idea that you're capturing an ability from a boss or enemy in an Expedition. For the moment, Heartrunes are tied to Expeditions, and that will be where you get them.

　　Are there Marks of Fortune given in the free and premium tracks, and how does that equate to the cost of the reward track?

　　The answer to that question is yes, there are Marks of Fortune that you can earn by progressing your season pass both in the free and the premium track. There's 2500 that you can earn on the free track and an additional 5000 on the premium track, which is pretty nice because it gets you almost half of the way toward the purchase of your next Season Pass if you can fully level up your Season Pass in the previous season.

　　The skins and weapons you can earn, can those also be unlocked via the store, or would those be simply Season Pass exclusive items?

　　The cosmetics are often exclusive to the Pass. There's no sort of gameplay impact in the things that are exclusive, but the visuals are gonna be oftentimes tied to the exclusivity of the Season Pass.

　　And I think one of the things we'll do to further cement that value is, as we talked about, potentially vaulting things after that season. We want people that have been around to be able to show off and say hey, I was there for the Fellowship and Fire season, so here are my Inferno weapons. That's the name of one of the skins because it's all very fire-themed. You'll be able to show off those weapons and your participation in that season.

　　You mentioned that the Season Pass starts at level 25. What was the reason for not making it available right from the beginning?

　　There are things you can do earlier on, but for the premium track, you have to be level 25, and for the Season Pass journey, you also need to be at 25 with your character. The main reason, especially with our recent leveling changes and improvements, you level up to 25 very quickly and I think we want players to be able to focus on learning the game and experiencing that part without having to worry about the Season Pass.

　　We want New World players to be educated enough in the game before they make a purchase decision like that.

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　　Is there any update on whether you're still considering PvE raids, that is to say, endgame activities featuring larger groups than the Expeditions currently available?

　　Raids is something that we haven't explicitly discussed, but what we have discussed is that we do want harder PvE content. I think New World needs more of that, and more is coming. And I think in the road map that will be shared with you very soon, we'll show some of that harder content coming.

　　Is there any chance of vaulted cosmetics being available for sale later, or if you don't earn them during the season, are they gone forever?

　　I think we're never going to say never here. I think even with Destiny, sometimes the vault gets unlocked for special occasions, and I can see us doing something similar. No specific plans yet, but I would never say never on something like that.

　　Thank you for your time.