It seems wild to me that New World is already up to its ninth season, but here we are: Season of the Divide is winding down now, and Season 9, Season of the Banner, is now set to launch on July 29th.

The headline feature of S9 isn’t going to be a surprise to anyone who’s been following the game’s development this year: The team has already been deep in testing the new Capture the Flag PvP mode, and it’ll finally debut for real and for true at the end of the month, with both maps: Frozen Pass and Forbidden City. Amazon says the mode “pits teams against each other in fast-paced, objective-driven battles” where you’ll “work together to control the battlefield, secure the flag, and earn rewards” in a mode that “builds on the PvP-focused enhancements of past seasons, bringing fresh competition to Aeternum.”

We’re also expecting the 3×3 Temple arena map, anti-zerg curses in FFA PvP, reward and performance buffs, new world bosses, new artifacts, the new reward track (with more tmog tokens!), and the return of the music-themed Summer Medleyfaire (running the entire season, note), plus a preview for the new OPR map coming in S10.

One thing you won’t see on the menu: season servers. “Seasonal servers will not return in Season 9 and are not planned for future seasons,” the studio says. Well, I suppose that’s not a total surprise either.

The devs discuss the season in the new video and break it down for both PvE and PvP players – clearly, they at least intend to be serving both playerbases here. There’s also a new roadmap that includes both S9 and S10 “and beyond”; frankly, S10 sounds a lot more exciting than S9, as S10 includes a new zone and raid, the customizable HUD, and a fresh take on dungeons. Beyond that, a new weapon is deep in development, along with global storage for crafting.

For what it’s worth, the mood on the game’s notoriously salty subreddit is actually relatively positive about the direction of the game under its new leadership.