The game is set on a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean known as Aeternum Island.

Before leaving a safe-zone settlement, players have the option whether to set the 'flagged-state', which activates after leaving the settlement and then a cooldown period. The game mechanics offer PvP combat with and without questing. The player may purchase personal housing and erect furnishings to achieve aesthetic and utility bonuses, as well as obtain a means for fast traveling to the settlement site. This damage can be repaired with repair items and gold coins. Characters that die do not drop items, but with each combat encounter, use, or death, the player's items undergo damage. The player can dispose of unwanted items through a trader between players in exchange for gold coins, they can 'salvage' (dismantle) the items for resources, they can discard the item on to the unsecured ground, or they can make a direct transfer to another player. The player may dodge or climb most environmental objects or use the fire staff to cross large aerial spaces. Three quick travel methods exist and, although no fast speed mounts are available, there is a set of skills for intermittent forward speed boosts. There is also a 'camping' skill (wilderness survival). The trade skills are divided into the three categories of 'crafting' (weapon smithing, armoring, engineering, jewel crafting, arcana, cooking, and furnishing), 'refining' (smelting, woodworking, leather working, weaving, and stone cutting), and 'gathering' (logging, mining, harvesting, and tracking and skinning). The player's character also levels up weapon and trade skills. Diminishing returns scale as an attribute's skill level increases. The character levels up personal attribute skills.

The weapon skill tree choices are currently for bow, hammer, hatchet, fire staff, life staff, musket, spear, sword/shield, and ice gauntlet. With each level, the hostile mobs are programmed with increasingly complex and strong sequences of attacking behavior skill sets that will require the player to counter using their mana, stamina, and health with timed attacks, dodges, weapon blocks, retreats, or crawling stealth. The gameplay involves no auto-locked targeting attacks and, therefore, a steady hand at aiming is required. The players may form groups of up to five members, join one of three factions (Marauders, Syndicate, or Covenant), use node resources, craft items, gain control over settlements, quest, explore the world, or fight other players or monsters. ( September 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This section needs additional citations for verification. The game also offers microtransactions in the form of skins along with a limited selection of both decorative and gameplay-impacting functional items for use within the player housing system. While New World was initially planned as a free-to-play game, it currently employs the standard business model of a buy-to-play game, a point of historical difference in comparison to many-mostly much older-MMORPGs that traditionally utilized subscription models in service of significant regular content updates. Set in the mid-seventeenth century, players colonize a fictional land modeled after the Americas. The game was previously scheduled to release in May 2020 and subsequently August 2021, but was delayed to its current date. New World is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Amazon Games Orange County and published by Amazon Games released on September 28, 2021.

New world gameplay