Windrose – in Early Access

I was expecting we would get to it at some point after our return to retail WoW started to get stale… but then Potshot bought a copy and started up a server, so maybe we’re there already.

Well, you can’t just let a friend go into piracy without helping them out, so I grabbed a copy as well and off we went… sort of.  Potshot was pretty fairly ahead of me by the time I rolled up a character, but I got there eventually and rolled up a character.

Early access and Work in Progress warnings present

From there you’re in for a short tutorial that gives you the very basics or attack and block.

I resent the pirate scum moniker, we’re all working pirates on this boat

Then, after fighting your way above decks you’re given a bit of a narrative hook then are shot in the chest, pass out, and are left for dead.

Then you awake in the washed ashore with few memories trope on small island and you have to get started on the usual survival tasks of resource gathering and base building.

A Caribbean beach all to my own!

Oh, and there is the wildlife, which also has resources you need, because you gotta eat… and boars are made out of meat.  So I went after one of those, but he had friends and…

What, dead again? So soon?

Those boars, they aren’t kidding around.  Nor are the dodos.  Sure, one is easy enough, but if they have friends… well, flightless birds aren’t all cute and cuddly I guess.  Anyway, I died a couple more times before things settled down and I made my way through the intro quests of building a few items and crafting some new gear.

Then Potshot got on with me and things spend up quite a bit.  Potshot expanded my hovel and it started looking like we had a base after not too long.

A building is a start

Meanwhile, I had managed to stumble through the first bits of the journey sufficient to award me with my first boat.

And a wee boat it is.  I have often heard discussions of where the dividing line is between a boat and a ship… which tells you mostly that I need to find a better class of establishment in which to spend my free time… but this little thing would struggle to claim status as a dingy.

That first boat you receive

While it felt in size more akin to something that one might assemble in a bottle it did have a couple of things going for it.

First, of course, it was free.  Free and summonable on demand.  Oh, and you can fast travel from it… did I mention fast travel points were a thing you can build?  Probably not, because they don’t actually matter really until you can leave the island you washed ashore on, a task that requires a boat.

Which, of course, was the second thing it had going for it, lending me as it did the ability to voyage forth, at least a little ways… which was something demanded by the game itself.  One of the first quests you get is very on point, being named something along the lines of needing a bigger boat, which is both a classic movie reference… and I saw Jaws in the theater when it was released, my dad taking me to see it when we were up at Lake Tahoe and it scared the living shit out of ten year old me and I would not get in the lake or even a swimming pool for nearly a year… even the bathtub was suspect… and an apt description of my current piratical situation.

But the game has big and obvious quest markers, so I was ready to set sail in search of another vessel… but not a nuclear vessel… that comes much later.

However, the journey has begun.  I’m sure those huge crabs on the further shore won’t be any problem at all.

Lord of the Rings Online

Here is the price increase in US dollars.

The change also only applied immediately to new subscribers.  Anybody currently on a multi-month plan will be grandfathered into their old plan until the next billing period after December 31, 2027.

The very tentative nature of this price increase… the base monthly price stays the same and current subscribers won’t face them for more than 18 months… gives one a sense of how careful SSG and Daybreak are being about this.  They are trying to spin the whole thing as a “price adjustment.”  The sense of fear is palpable in the whole post.

And the fear is justified.  Price changes are always a hot button topic in video games.  I and others have explored the idea in many posts over the last decade, pointing out that the price of nearly everything related to making games has gone up.  Here are some examples:

• Raph Koster – Some current game economics (Nov 2017)
• TAGN – How Long can the Fifteen Dollar Subscription Hold Out? (May 2021)
• Massively OP – How much should MMO subs be in 2021? (May 2021)
• TAGN – Proving Some Sort of Point about Video Game Pricing (May 2021)

But the reader response to such queries tends to be something along the lines of “if they’re going to charge more then I expect more for that money.”

And so it goes.  The visceral response to any suggestion of charging more for video games often gets a pretty blunt response from gamers.  Did you see any of the only responses recently when a Bank of America analyst said that Rockstar should charge $80 for Grand Theft Auto VI when it comes out?

Spoiler: There were not many reasoned “You know, you might have a point” sorts of responses.

I have speculated in the past that this might be caused by the fact that when it comes to hard ware over the last 50 years the same amount of money will buy you more capability nearly every year, so even when inflation kicks in you still feel like you’re getting more.  Or maybe it is just Steam sales that have influence us all.  Or maybe we’re all cheapskates.  I don’t know, but it is a real thing.

And whatever is driving that sentiment, it does not change the fact that software is a labor intensive business that is more art than and individual skill than our Silicon Valley tech overlords would like to admit.  The right developers can make or break a project and you have to pay them or they’ll go elsewhere because they too like to eat and have a place to live and be able to afford the occasional nice thing.

Meanwhile, the price of video games has been stagnant for a long time.

Price of video games over 45 years in 2024 dollars

That is from the State of Video Games 2025 analyses from Matthew Ball that I have mentioned a few times before.  You can read the whole thing if you want to get into the details.

So you can see why Daybreak is being very careful.  Though you can also find tales from the SOE days when they were in a bit of a panic over raising the price of EverQuest from $13 a month to $15 a month to match what seemed to be the new norm for most MMOs.  It turns out most players were fine with it.  And I suspect most LOTRO players will be as well, but you never know.

I do wonder what this means, what is driving this internally?  Daybreak has been good at driving the in-game cash shop for their titles and adding in new “supporter packs” for its games to sell their biggest fans some special items.  And then there is the annual expansion which always has a super priced collector’s edition option with lots of FOMO items to catch people’s attention.

But a subscription hike… erm, price adjustment… seems like a new frontier.  Are they testing it with LOTRO before expanding it to other titles in the Daybreak?  Or is something going on with LOTRO that they need more money?

The thing is, the awful Embracer Group bought out Middle-earth Enterprises some time back and have been saying that they need to milk IPs like that for all they are worth, and are even in the process of spinning off the portion of the company that handles their IP contracts into their own business so maybe something Lars Wingefors has touched might make money.

It would be something of an ironic twist if somehow Embracer was forcing Daybreak to raise prices on LOTRO given that Lars Wingefors once claimed that nobody had ever tried to raise prices before.

Anyway, we shall see how this plays out.  Again, the increase still keeps everything at or under $15 a month for the game, unlike EVE Online which went for a $20 base subscription fee back in 2022, a price point so far only matched by the Life is Feudal re-launch.  And EVE Online, which depends heavily on multi-boxing players for revenue, had to work out a way to give players a discount for additional accounts.

Related:

• LOTRO – VIP Membership Price Adjustment
• Massively OP – Lord of the Rings Online is hiking its multi-month subscription fees with a grace period through 2027
• MMO Bomb – Daybreak Announces Price Increases For Lord Of The Rings Online’s VIP Membership

We’ve reached the time of year when I turn off ads on the site because the revenue potential falls off a cliff sometime in March or April usually.  So no ads on the site until we approach the holiday season.

That said, I do recommend any active viewer of the site to use a strong ad blocker.  I am partial to uBlock Origin on Firefox, but use whatever works for you.  My goal is not to force anybody who actually reads the blog to view ads.  I am just trying to tax spam bots.

Meanwhile, WordPress.com has introduced achievements.  Or more achievements.  Or maybe just different achievements.  There are certainly some silly achievements in there.

So very meaningful

Naturally, you would think that, after more than nineteen years on WP.com I would immediately rack up many of those achievements.  But you would be wrong.  The achievements only count from the day they were introduced.  So, for example, I have yet to earn the achievement for posting 30 days in a row.

Post 30 days in a row? Me?

Meanwhile, WP.com is also telling me that I have posted a few more days in a row than that.

Current posting streak – 2,248 days

Likewise, the achievement for word count… what do I even say?

My word count… after five days of achievements

At the same time I can go into the insights tab and it says I am past 200K for the year and at the last blog anniversary I had clocked a good 6.7 million words.

Not that any of this really matters.  It is just one of those things where a company thinks any achievements are better that no achievements at all.   They do put up a little “what you posted on this day in past years” thing every day now as well… but it only goes back as far as 2016, so forget the first decade of the blog.  But we’re almost done with the second decade!

One Year Ago

In WoW Classic we finally got a date for Mists of Pandaria Classic… as if anybody was still around after way too long of a run for Cataclysm.

Over on the Norrath front we got the rather tepid Fangbreaker special server for EverQuest.

EVE Fanfest was kicking off. and I summed up the keynote, which included announcing the Legion expansion and a vision of a useful in-game map.  Then I did a Monday morning review of the event and its announcements.  There was also a follow up on the mining rebalance.

I also had a bullet points post with more Fanfest items, a look at Legion, and the demise of the Neocom app.

Then the Legion expansion arrived… and double xp for Omega pilots doing the AIR career program.  More skill points!

Actually out in space, the Imperium announced the invasion of Insmother.  First stop for the invasion was Scalding Pass.

We were trying to see if restarting in Enshrouded would be worthwhile as the Thralls of Twilight update landed.  The update gave us a simultaneously darker and better lit shroud.

I was checking in on Stars Reach

I was well on my way to Mordor in LOTRO, with the following posts:

• Things to Do in Isengard When You’re Dead
• Neverending Dunland
• Interlude in Lothlorien and The Great River
• Learning to Ride in The Wold
• Every Thane Has a Mead Hall in Rohan
• The Trials of Eowyn
• Just Get Me Out of Edoras Already
• Arrival in Helm’s Deep

In other LOTRO news, the long dark servers were opened up for transfer to the new 64-bit worlds.

It was the end of Skype.

Meta was starting to give up on VR so they could dive into AI.  Of course Zuck would go there.  AI is awful and making everything worse.

And I was trying to describe why Andor was good Star Wars.

Five Years Ago

Nintendo finally announced the remake of Pokemon Diamond & Pearl that my daughter and I had been waiting for.

I was wondering how long the $15 subscription could hold out.  Turned out to be almost exactly one more year before EVE Online went to $20 a month.  But I was still trying to make some sort of point about pricing.

Enad Global 7 was telling us about some of the plans they had for Daybreak as well as their plan to put all their titles on their 4Games platform.

Daybreak was trying to make PvP a thing in EverQuest II again with the Tarinax server. while they launched the Mischief and Thornblade servers for EverQuest.

I finally hit level 60 in WoW Classic.  It only took 20 months.  We moved slowly… also, we got hooked on Valheim for a few months.

We gave Dire Maul East another shot.  I swapped my paladin into the group for a Dire Maul run, then one more before the big changes hit.

Meanwhile, there was a possible June 1st launch date for Burning Crusade Classic leaked, something that was quickly confirmed.  Of course, there were complications, like cloning and its associated cost.  (They rolled back the initial price later.) There was also the beta, which did not impress me.  The first load test seemed like it had problems, and the second had its own issues.

But the Burning Crusade Classic pre-patch came without delay, which changed things for us.

And, as Burning Crusade Classic loomed, I reflected on the WoW Classic experience.

The Activision Blizzard Q12021 results were in and, surprise, WoW was the key revenue driver.  There would also be no BlizzCon for 2021… and that was before the scandals started to hit.

In Valheim we were decorating our base with trophies,

I was also fiddling around with War in the Pacific.

And then there was EVE Online where World War Bee was still chugging along… sort of.  There were also some changes from CCP landing, including the big industry update that made capital ships too expensive to bother building.  The null sec slump was about to hit.

• 43 Weeks of World War Bee
• CCP Teases about a Gate to the Stain Region as part of the EVE Online Foundation Quadrant
• 44 Weeks of World War Bee
• CCP Changes to Nullification and Warp Core Stabilizers hit the Test Server
• 45 Weeks of World War Bee
• CCP Takes Aim at Cloaky Campers in EVE Online
• CCP Rushes Warp Core Stabilizer and Interdiction Nullification Changes into EVE Online
• Slugfest in 3-DMQT over iHub and Azbel
• CCP Announces the Candidates for CSM16
• 46 Weeks of World War Bee
• The April EVE Online Monthly Economic Report and the Initial Impact of the Industry Changes
• PAPI Battleship Failure in 3-DMQT

I also had a random tale about working in a grocery store back in college, we were binge watching Fear The Walking Dead, and experiencing Tenet.

And my other blog, EVE Online Pictures, turned 13 years old.

Ten Years Ago

Overwatch went live.  Still haven’t played it.

DUST 514 went offline.  Never did play it.

Landmark’s official launch date was announced.  Never did buy it… and it was shut down pretty quickly in any case.

There was word about Pokemon Sun & Moon, Civilization VI, EverQuest II prestige servers, the tribulations of WildStar, and the WoW Legion Beta, all in one bullet points post.

One thing I did end up playing was Stellaris, which launched back in 2016 as well.

In EVE Online I saw my first citadel.  Now they’re everywhere.  There was also a free weekend on Steam that got a lot of accounts created, but which still faced the wall of the new player experience.  There was a Blog Banter about Project Nova and that brief experiment with recurring opportunities that granted skill points. There were also details from the CSMXI election and that whole 85% thing, which did not add up for me.

In space the Casino War was still a thing.  We were huddled up in the back room of the Quafe Warehouse in Saranen plotting ways to strike back and keep the war going.  We threw industrials at sovereignty.  That got us a foothold back in Fade for a bit.

Mostly though it was battles in low sec.  Asher led us out to battle in his Phantasm, we squared off against capitals, blew up some fax machines.  There were battles over structures in Saranen and we managed to anchor an Astrahus to face the citadels arrayed against us.  Lots of shooting, but not much changed.

Oh, and SynCaine joined KarmaFleet.  I even saw him on an op.

Outside of New Eden Blizzard could only talk about MAUs after renouncing discussion of subscription numbers.  Given the whole Nostalrius situation I was wondering what Vanilla WoW really was.  And the Warcraft movie was approaching.

In Minecraft I was planning a rail line and finding a path for it to run.  Aaron’s project of the month was a facility in the nether to make the collection of Ghast tears easier.

I was also momentarily nostalgic for Starsiege: Tribes… or for what I could remember of it.

And in TorilMUD the elves were no longer restricted to the isle of Evermeet until level 20.

Fifteen Years Ago

May 2011 was the time of the great Sony outage, with the PlayStation Network down for 24 days and Sony Online Entertainment down for 13 days.  It was a communication fiasco from start to finish, with bad updates almost daily.  About all they could do was promise us all goodies for when they finally came back up.

CCP was starting the build up to the Incarna fiasco with the introduction of Aurum.

On the Fippy Darkpaw time locked progression server, there was agitation to vote NO on unlocking the Kunark expansion.  Such agitation showed up with nearly every unlock vote.  But no vote failed until Gates of Discord came along.

The instance group was in EverQuest II… when it was up… and trying to get the hell out of the starter area.  We managed it, but it took a lot more time than I would have thought.  We started in on some dungeons and got ourselves a guild hall.

World of Warcraft subscriptions started to decline, down to 11.4 million (those were the days!) while Trion started offering free server transfers in Rift.

My daughter was asking me about Dungeons & Dragons.  There was a thread going around about making better MMO players.  There were clearly some bad players about.

And finally, as hot as things seemed to be around here, there was no rapture.  You just couldn’t buy a break that month.

Twenty Years Ago

World of Warcraft lead designer Rob Pardo was named as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people for 2006.

The Wii “steals the show” when it comes to the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3.  Despite a drop in attendees, there are long lines to try out Nintendo’s new console.  This was the last E3 before the “new format” of 2007 and 2008.

The ESRB changed the rating for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion from “Teen” to “Mature” in part due to topless female art assets in the game that could be accessed by mods.  Former California Assemblyman Leland Yee (later Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate number 19629-111) took time out of his organized crime activities to slam the ESRB for missing these hidden art assets.

Most Viewed Posts in May

1. Planning my Platinum Medal Strategy for Pokemon Go Level 49
2. The EVE Online Capsuleer Day XXIII – Warpath Event Kicks Off Today
3. This One Simple Trick will Up Your Pokemon Go Steps Dramatically!
4. Cat Catching in Enshrouded
5. Building My First Corvette in No Man’s Sky
6. Capsuleer Day XXIII: Warpath and the Event So Far
7. Making Level 75 in Pokemon Go and Onward to Level 76
8. No Man’s Sky – Playing with Friends
9. Outbound Demo – Trying the Co-Op Angle
10. EverQuest Legends Announced… But What is it Exactly?
11. The Altar of Zul and Jintha’alor
12. The EverQuest Frostreaver TLP Poll Results – Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Game Time by ManicTime

I was a bit focused on New Eden in May.

• EVE Online – 57.83%
• Forza Horizon – 21.64%
• Valheim – 6.03%
• World of Warcraft – 9.66%
• Windrose – 1.99%
• NetHack – 1.47%
• Project: Gorgon – .45%
• No Man’s Sky – 0.36%

That said, there were some new items on the list and some that are clearly fading for now.

EVE Online

I spent quite a bit of time running through the Capsuleer Day XXII: Warpath event, largely because it was something mellow I could do in the late evening while listening to a podcast or two.  Otherwise there was the move op home from Geminate and the usual routines of defense fleets and whatever.  I have to log in every week to update my planetary industry!

Forza Horizon 6

I was not 100% committed to this until it launched, then decided it would be fun.  I have put in quite a bit of time in the last ten days.  It is another title that is easy to pick up in the late evening to do a few things, though I tend to listen to the in-game sound track with it.

Pokemon Go

• Level: 75
• XP Progress: 84.7% of the 203,353,000 xp needed for level 80
• Tasks for Level 76
  • XP: Done
  • Platinum Medals: 34 of 38
  • Defeat 100 Team GO Rocket Grunts – 27 of 100
  • Explore 300 km – 0 of 300km
  • Catch 200 Pokemon in a single day – incomplete
• Pokedex status: 932 (+3) caught
• Pokemon I want: Basculegion
• Current buddy: multiple as I work on parallel buddies

Valheim

I made it past Yagluth and started poking around in the mistlands, which kind of put an end to my interest in a quick review of the game.  I have fond memories of everything up through the plains, but after that… not so much.

Windrose

So this showed up in the last few days of May.  It was already on our list of things to try out at some point, then Potshot jumped on board and, you can’t just let your friends go off to be a pirate alone.  I don’t have much to say about it today, but I am sure there will be posts coming up.

World of Warcraft

I was playing this fairly regularly, then I was gone for a week and when I came back I picked up Forza Horizon 6 and… I haven’t really been back into it.  I still want to get at least my main to level 90 in Midnight, but for the moment I have been idle in Azeroth.

Coming Up

It is June tomorrow, which will put us 30 days away from the midway point of the year and three weeks shy of summer.

Summer will mean the Steam Summer Sale of course.

June will also see the next EVE Online expansion, Cradle or War, launch on the 9th.  We shall see if CCP/Fenris can continue to focus on faction warfare to spur growth.

There is also the new expedition in No Man’s Sky to look into.

And there is Windrose.  Expect some posts about that.

Fantasy Critic League – Like Fantasy Football, but for Video Games

Also, this post is going out on Saturday night rather than Sunday morning because Sunday is the last day of the month, so there is a month in review post already set.  No need to crowd all the posts into a single day.

As for the week, we got all of the above and more, but first to set the stage we have to look at where we left off on the scoreboard last week.

Week 21 Scores

Right out of the gate, on Sunday night, we did get that missing Warhammer score from week twenty-one.

• Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus II
  • [Picked by Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)]
  • Now has a score of 81.7

Archey, who is still waiting for a score on Ghost of Yotei: Legends, was feeling the pain as his Warhammer pick passed through its opening week without enough reviews for a score.  But it came through and was enough to bump Archey up a few spots on the board.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)
    • Score has gone UP from 14.8 to 26.5
    • Moved from 10th place to 7th place
  • S Class Warfare Studios (p0tsh0t)
    • Moved from 7th place to 8th place
  • Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)
    • Moved from 8th place to 9th place
  • Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)
    • Moved from 9th place to 10th place

Meanwhile Ghost of Yotei: Legends remains short on reviews so still has no score.  Corr noticed that the league created a page to track titles most in need of more reviews and Ghost of Yotei: Legends tops the list by a fair margin.  We’ll see if that does any good, but there are a fair number of titles out there with insufficient reviews to get a score.

Then on Tuesday we got the first score to land for 007 First Light.

007 First Light

This was one of the two titles launching in week twenty-two.

• 007 First Light
  • [Picked by Anthania Interactive (Ula)]
  • Now has a score of 89.1

That was a solid score out of the gate, though like so many titles it did take a bit of a hit as more reviews came in.

• 007 First Light
  • [Picked by Anthania Interactive (Ula)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 89.2 to 87.9

Still, that wasn’t a huge drop and left the game with a good score, enough to pop Ula up into first place on the board.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Anthania Interactive (Ula)
    • Score has gone UP from 70.1 to 88.0
    • Moved from 2nd place to 1st place
  • TAGN HQ (Wilhelm)
    • Moved from 1st place to 2nd place

The next day that score was topped by Mina the Hollower, which started to get reviews.

• Mina the Hollower
  • [Picked by Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss)]
  • Now has a score of 91.9

That felt like good news for Bhagpuss who, after getting as far as seventh place on the board, fell back under the weight of Outbound and Mixtape slipping a bit.  And the reviews seems to hold in a positive vein, with even Yahtzee grudgingly praising it… though the mirrors thing was annoying I bet.

Mina the Hollower

And, unlike some recent titles, more reviews seemed to boost Mina the Hollower, which rose up as the week went along, making it… for the moment… the highest scoring title of the season so far, passing Forza Horizon 6.

• Mina the Hollower
  • [Picked by Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss)]
  • Score has gone UP from 92.3 to 93.4

Looking strong, we were just waiting for it to release to hit the scoreboard.

In the mean time, we had a few other score updates land.

• Yoshi and the Mysterious Book
  • [Picked by Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)]
  • Score has gone UP from 79.2 to 80.8
• Everything is Crab
  • [Picked by TAGN HQ (Wilhelm)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 78.9 to 77.8
• Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus II
  • [Picked by Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 81.7 to 78.8

With those titles already in play, that was enough to cause an update on the scores.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • S Class Warfare Studios (p0tsh0t)
    • Moved from 8th place to 7th place
  • Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)
    • Moved from 9th place to 8th place
  • Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)
    • Score has gone DOWN from 26.5 to 23.6
    • Moved from 7th place to 9th place

That was more an indication of how tight the mid-pack race is currently, where a 3 point shift changed things up.

Then Mina the Hollower released and that shook up the bottom half of the scoreboard.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss)
    • Score has gone UP from 8.0 to 33.7
    • Moved from 13th place to 7th place
  • S Class Warfare Studios (p0tsh0t)
    • Moved from 7th place to 8th place
  • Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)
    • Moved from 8th place to 9th place
  • Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)
    • Moved from 9th place to 10th place
  • Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)
    • Moved from 10th place to 11th place
  • Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais)
    • Moved from 11th place to 12th place
  • Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)
    • Moved from 12th place to 13th place

Bhagpuss is now back in the mid-pack again.

That was about all that was expected of the week, so the scoreboard ended up looking like this come Saturday evening.

Week 22 Scores

Again, the top three swapped positions, while the mid-pack was shifted down by the rise of Bhagpuss.

We also had some bids this week, with two titles in play.   Here is how that played out.

• Bids in TAGN League
  • Star Fox (2026)
  • Won by TAGN HQ (Wilhelm) with a bid of $4
• Unannounced The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake
  • Won by Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr) with a bid of $17

I got Star Fox, the available title with the highest hype that also a solid ship date for a mere $4, while Corr picked up an unannounced Legend of Zelda remake.  We shall see on that one.

Then there were some updates to ship dates.

• Out of Words
  • [Picked by Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)]
  • Estimated release date changed from ‘2026’ to ‘Early 2027’
• Fable
  • [Picked by Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais)]
  • Estimated release date changed from ‘Fall 2026’ to ‘February 2027’
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Songs of the Past
  • [Counter Picked by Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)]
  • Game name changed from Unannounced Witcher 3 DLC to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Songs of the Past.
  • Estimated release date changed from ‘Unannounced’ to ‘2027’.
  • Announcement date changed from ‘No Date’ to ‘Wednesday, May 27, 2026’.
  • Note removed: ‘There are rumors that CDPR is planning a Witcher 3 DLC in 2026’.
  • Tags changed from Expansion Pack, Unannounced Game to Expansion Pack.

So Out of Words and Fable look like hot drop prospects and missed counter pick opportunities, while the DLC for The Witcher 3 is also out of 2026 but turned out to be a nice neutral counter pick for Shilgrod.

And two of those were dropped as the news came in before the bid/drop deadling.

• Drops in TAGN League
  • Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais): Fable (Drop Successful)
  • Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr): Out of Words (Drop Successful)

That leaves the next ten titles for the league looking like this.

Week 23 coming up

That gives us one new title for next week, Gothic 1 Remake.  We will see how that works out for Pallais.  Otherwise we’re on the lookout for the influence of more reviews and maybe some additional ship dates.

Related:

• TAGN Fantasy Critic League
• TAGN Discord Server
• Fantasy Critic Site
• Fantasy Critic How to Play
• Fantasy Critic FAQ
• Fantasy Critic Most Desired Reviews
• Open Critic Review Site

Frostreaver… either him or the axe I guess… though could be both

The user base essentially came back with “faster and easier and multi-boxing please… and no PvP” which was completely unsurprising given the current climate around EQ and the whole thing with The Heroes Journey.

So this was a somewhat obvious sop to the installed base that seemed unlikely to be wholly satisfying as it mostly exposed exactly which parameters Daybreak was ready, willing, and able to tinker with for a special server.

I am not sure why they bothered, and all the more so once EverQuest Legends was announced back in March, which was essentially doing the THJ thing but without all the theft of code and intellectual property, so seemed much more likely to appeal to the expected audience.

But EverQuest Legends is still a couple months away and they’ve done all the work on Frostreaver I guess, so we’re getting it no matter what.  Or got it on Wednesday.  And I am sure it will be somebody’s cup of tea.  In general though, it feels like Daybreak has gone to the TLP well a little too often… and they’re going to do it again later this year.

I can hardly wait.

The basics of the expansion unlock plan for the server, which I have edited a bit for clarity from the FAQ I have linked at the end of this post.

• Scars of Velious will be the starting point.
• Expansions will unlock every 8 weeks after Planes of Power.
• This server will continue to unlock expansions until reaching Live.
• Beastlords and Berserkers will be available at launch.
• Gates of Discord will unlock faster.
• Legacy of Ykesha will unlock with Planes of Power.
• Prophecy of Ro will unlock with Depths of Darkhollow.
• Dragons of Norrath will unlock with Omens of War.

There is a list of expansion unlock dates in the FAQ which show the server getting to the current live expansion Shattering of Ro, in November of 2030.  But by that point, if the usual cadence is maintained, there will be four more expansions available and a fifth about to arrive, so this server will get well into 2031… and maybe to 2032 if they opt to just roll in the 2031 expansion.

I also think this “we’re going to do ALL the expansions!” point of view might need some data to support it going forward.  All of these servers experience diminishing returns after a certain point, and they all get rolled into the Vox server eventually.  Maybe sooner would be better?  I don’t know.  Maybe the incremental cost of letting a small population server linger is too small to care about.

There are also a series of other special features for this server, which I will summarize briefly as the FAQ goes into detail if you need it:

• Resource Hunter – a new version of the old “hot zones” concept
• Legacy Characters – xp bonus for alts if you have a char at level cap
• Evolving Ruleset – new modifiers with every expansion unlock
• Encounter Locking – this is desirable for reasons I don’t quite follow
• Challenge Achievements – defeat bosses at 10 levels under norm for special achievements
• Free Trade – Most all loot can be sold or traded
• Randomized Loot – loot tables are shared within an expansion
• Early Item Focus Effects – caster buffs I won’t pretend to understand

So, lots of things.

There is also a trailer for the server launch.

I am not sure that tells you much, being mostly various Norrath locations you might visit at some point with some vague pronouncements in a text overlay.

But the server is off and running and the server status page shows that it is running at “high” capacity.  That is generally the norm for these servers.  Lots of excitement through the initial launch is to be expected, but will that last? For example, the Teek and Tormax servers launched two years ago and while Teek still strays into “high” capacity, Tormax is in the “low” range these days.  I don’t remember all the special server names, but there are clearly a few more lingering in the “low” zone there.

(I am also a bit skeptical of what constitutes “High,” “Medium,” and “Low” on that page given that H1Z1 says it is at “Medium” for PC, but Steam shows 24 players in game and I seem to recall that you can only play that through Steam… so how medium is “Medium” I guess?)

And there is still the question of what happens EverQuest Legends lands during the summer?  I guess we’ll have to wait until summer to see how that plays out.

Related:

• Daybreak – Frostreaver is Live!
• Daybreak – Frostreaver FAQ
• Daybreak – Let’s discuss 2026 TLPs! 
• Daybreak – The Forum Polls
• Daybreak – Votes are in! Frostreaver is taking shape.
• Massively OP – EverQuest announces a new progression server for 2026 – and players can vote on the ruleset
• Massively OP – EverQuest lays out the ruleset for new progression server Frostreaver
• Massively OP – Classic EverQuest has officially opened Frostreaver
• Inventory Full – Frostreaver, Lethar And You – EverQuest Goes To The Polls
• TAGN – The EverQuest Frostreaver TLP Poll Results – Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!