New World’s open beta officially begins this morning – are you playing?

Here we go, folks: There’s one more New World test event before the launch on September 28th, assuming we don’t see another last-minute delay, and that event begins today in the form of the open beta starting today at 10 a.m. EDT. Invites began rolling out last night, though Amazon has said it’s using Steam Playtest, so you won’t be messing with keys. There is no NDA during this test, so you can chatter and stream to your heart’s content, but everything you do will be wiped ahead of the final launch.

As we’ve previously noted, Amazon posted patch notes for this leg of the testing a week and change ago; there are fixes for expeditions, the newbie beach, damage and health scaling, bosses, PvP scaling, multiple weapons, town projects, drop rates, gear score, and so forth.

There’s also a server list, though Amazon stresses this is not necessarily the final launch list – just the open beta – so don’t panic yet if you don’t see servers in your timezone, central US folks. Definitely check out the website’s list, which includes language designations.

New World is expected to be the biggest MMORPG to launch in quite a long time, so we’ve been giving it its due, with impressions pieces along its development and testing:

We’ll be updating this post as the day goes on as Amazon’s sure to make more announcements!