When you load up New World for the first time, you’re met with a list of regions, worlds, and something called world sets.
World sets differentiate worlds and will ultimately be used to merge them in the future. If a world has a low population, if absolutely necessary, Amazon will merge two or more worlds that share a world set into one.
You’re currently allocated two character slots per region and are restricted to using separate world sets. Amazon is aiming to find a balance with this system and prevent players from clogging up the servers with multiple characters.
If you create a character in the U.S. West region on the Westernessse Zeta world set, for example, your next character will have to be on an Eta, Mu, Nu, Rho, Tau, Theta, or Xi world set in the region. But you could, if your ping allows it, also create two new characters on the U.S. East region and use one of the Arkadia world sets.
If you’re desperate to play with your friends, choose the same region, world, and of course, world set. If they’re playing on a popular world with a long queue time and you want to get stuck into the action in any old world, it’s worth picking the same world set just in case.
Related: How to transfer characters in New World
In the future, Amazon plans to enable a character transfer feature that will allow you to transfer your characters from one world to another. “Our team has been working incredibly hard to get this feature tested and to a place where we are confident that it will perform exactly as intended,” Amazon said in a forum post on Oct. 9.