My understanding is that this is a rage-baitey misunderstanding.

Yes, they are renaming the base game (to improve search results, it is speculated) but otherwise this is more of a soft-reboot, a free DLC(for owners of current DLC) with some core mechanic overhauls.

It’s not even going to stop being an MMORPG, the marketing team was just allergic to the acronym for some reason.

In fact, it was confirmed that for base game players without DLC, this is all just a big nothing. We’ll still keep our progress and data, just not get any new DLC content(obviously), though the rebalancing will still trickle down.

New World isn’t shutting down, it’s getting a new DLC and a less generic name, the marketing guys just tried to oversell it like a new game. Guess they earned their bonus because everyone is talking about it now…

The secret works launches when?

I honestly thought it was a new DLC for their previous game which I thought it was shut down a while ago.