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WoW: Forever Rogue and Warlock changes: Mutilate, axes, Banes

2026-10-10T00:00:00Z

Blizzard's Rogue and Warlock class deep dive for World of Warcraft: Forever (WoW: Forever for short) went up on 7 October. Blizzard's post lists their ability and talent changes. The short version: every Rogue can now learn one-handed axes, and Sap no longer breaks Stealth. New Rogue talents include Mutilate and Venom. Warlocks get Banes and pets that scale with the Warlock's own stats.

The Rogue is a sneaky melee fighter. It moves unseen in Stealth, uses Poisons, and spends Energy, the resource behind its attacks. Its attacks build Combo Points, charges that a finishing move then spends. The Warlock is a caster of dark Shadow and Fire magic who summons demons to fight beside it. Its Curses are spells that harm or weaken a target. Blizzard says both classes may keep changing through the beta, the test version people can play before release. For the classes so far, see our pieces on the Hunter and Druid, the Priest and Warrior and the Mage and Shaman.

How do talents work in WoW: Forever?

Talents are upgrades you buy with points to shape a character inside their class, laid out in three trees for each of these classes. In our talent calculator, rows further down a tree need more points spent in it first.

Blizzard says talents start at level 10 and keep a familiar structure. The one-point milestone talents at 11, 21 and 31 points stay, and a new one joins at 16 points. Blizzard calls these gold medal talents. The tables below list the ones the post names.

To change your talents, Legacy talents included, you visit a class trainer, the in-game teacher for your class, in one of the major cities. Dual Specialization, a second saved talent setup, opens at level 40.

What changes for Rogues?

A Rogue's three trees are Assassination (poisons and daggers), Combat (hard-hitting direct damage) and Subtlety (combat tricks and Bleeds, wounds that keep hurting). Here are the baseline changes, the ones every Rogue gets.

Ability	The change
Poisons	More charges on every poison, and they now work alongside weightstones and sharpening stones
Sap	Puts an enemy out of action, and using it no longer breaks Stealth
Distract	Also lowers affected enemies' Stealth detection for 10 seconds
Feint	Twice the threat reduction (threat is how badly monsters want to hit you)
Expose Armor	Cuts armor as much as 5 stacks of Sunder Armor, an ability of the Warrior class, at about the same level
Axes	Rogues can now learn one-handed axes

Blizzard says the Sap change is because it wants Rogues to bring crowd control, a way to take an enemy out of a fight, that needs their own skills, like Stealth and Distract, to set up. It says this helps parties and raids, the small and large teams players form, when a pack of monsters is too big to tank safely. To tank is to hold the monsters' attention while others fight. The Distract change has a catch: enemy players will know a Rogue is nearby.

Expose Armor also no longer stops a Warrior using Sunder Armor on the same target, though Sunder Armor still won't replace Expose Armor unless its effect is weaker. Blizzard says that lets Warriors build threat without Expose Armor getting in the way. On axes, it says Rogues include brigands and outlaws, who often carry axes in fantasy and medieval stories.

Rogue milestone talents

Tree	Points	Talent	What it does
Assassination	16	Cold Blood	Now the 16-point talent, not the 21, and also works with Mutilate
Assassination	21	Mutilate	New: 60 Energy, strikes with both weapons (both must be daggers), more damage on a poisoned target, 2 Combo Points
Assassination	31	Venom	New finisher: 25 Energy, 30% more Poison damage and 10% more chance to apply Poisons, its length set by the Combo Points spent
Combat	16	Flawless Execution	New: Eviscerate, a finishing move, costs 10 less Energy
Subtlety	16	Premeditation	Now the 16-point talent, not the 31, and lasts 20 seconds
Subtlety	31	Thousand Cuts	New: each time Rupture deals damage, your next Hemorrhage or Backstab costs 3 less Energy, stacking up to 5 times

Vigor used to be Assassination's 31-point talent. It's now a 2-point talent on row 5 with the same total effect. Blizzard expects Assassination Rogues to spend their finishers keeping Venom and Slice and Dice up, with damage finishers like Rupture and Eviscerate a lower priority. Improved Poisons now also gives a large chance for a Poison not to use up a charge.

Combat loses four weapon talents: Dagger, Mace, Sword and Fist Weapon Specialization. A new row 5 talent, Hack and Slash, combines them and adds a bonus for axes. Axes get the same bonus as swords, a chance at an extra attack. Hack and Slash's mace bonus now lets attacks ignore some of the target's armor instead of a chance to stun. Subtlety loses Sleight of Hand and Deadliness.

Blizzard wants Combat and Subtlety to support both Backstab and Sinister Strike builds, two Rogue attacks. Aggression now boosts Backstab in Combat. In Subtlety, Quietus adds damage to Sinister Strike, Ghostly Strike and Hemorrhage against targets below 35% health. Cutthroat gives Backstab a chance to let your next Ambush work without Stealth.

Our favourite is Mutilate, the new 21-point talent in Assassination. For 60 Energy it strikes with both hands, and both must be daggers. It hits harder on a poisoned target and gives 2 Combo Points. Our reading: two daggers, two hits, two points, a talent that knows exactly what it's for.

What changes for Warlocks?

A Warlock's three trees are Affliction (damage over time and draining), Demonology (the Warlock and its demon) and Destruction (Fire and Shadow spells). Here are the baseline changes, the ones every Warlock gets.

Ability	The change
Curse of Agony, Curse of Doom	Now Banes, a separate group for damaging Curses: one Bane per Warlock on a target, and anything that worked with Curses works with Banes
Curse of the Elements	Now applies to all magic damage
Curse of Shadows	Removed
Firestone	Now a weapon imbue, a spell on your weapon: more Fire damage and critical strike chance (a critical strike is an extra-hard hit)
Spellstone	Now a weapon imbue: more Shadow damage and faster spellcasting
Life Tap	Now scales with Spirit, one of the game's stats
Drain Soul	Each tick has a rising chance to give a Soul Shard, until one is certain
Pets	Now scale from their summoner's stats

Firestone and Spellstone now stack with other temporary enchantments like wizard oil. A Soul Shard is an item some Warlock spells use up.

Warlock milestone talents

Tree	Points	Talent	What it does
Affliction	16	Curse of Exhaustion	Moves up from row 5 to row 4, and slows the target by 30%
Affliction	31	Wrack	New: Shadow damage every second, and 10% more damage from your other Shadow damage-over-time spells for 6 seconds
Demonology	11	Demonic Sacrifice	Redesigned: the effects last 2 hours and change by demon
Demonology	16	Fel Domination	Now needs Master Summoner first
Demonology	21	Soul Link	Now the 21-point talent, not the 31
Demonology	31	Demonic Pact	New: needs Soul Link; summoning a different pet no longer cancels Demonic Sacrifice
Destruction	16	Conflagrate	Moves up from row 7 to row 4
Destruction	21	Bane of Havoc	New: for 5 minutes, 15% of your damage to other targets also hits the cursed one
Destruction	31	Incinerate	New: needs Bane of Havoc; a 2.5-second Fire cast, 25% more damage if Immolate is on the target

Demonic Sacrifice gives up your demon for a bonus. Now the Imp raises Shadow damage, the Voidwalker restores Mana and the Succubus or Incubus raises Fire damage. The Felhunter restores Health. Resummoning the sacrificed pet still cancels the effect under Demonic Pact. Blizzard says Demonic Pact lets Warlocks, for the first time, have Demonic Sacrifice and Master Demonologist at once.

Affliction loses six talents: Improved Curse of Weakness, Improved Drain Life, Improved Drain Mana, Improved Curse of Exhaustion, Grim Reach and Dark Pact. Demonology loses six too: Improved Healthstone, Fel Intellect, Fel Stamina, Improved Subjugate Demon, Improved Firestone and Improved Spellstone. Destruction loses Improved Firebolt, Improved Lash of Pain, Devastation, Improved Immolate and Emberstorm.

Destructive Reach moves up to row 1 and now works on all damaging spells. Blizzard says that puts it in easy reach of every Warlock specialization. Ruin moves up to row 3 and is now a 5-point talent with the same total effect. Demonic Brand, new in Demonology, makes your pet's next 2 attacks deal Fire or Shadow damage. Blizzard says a recent change means a pet that doesn't tank, like the Imp, gets no extra threat from it. A tanking pet like the Voidwalker does.

Our favourite is Bane of Havoc, the new 21-point talent in Destruction. Put it on one enemy, and for 5 minutes 15% of the damage you deal to anything else lands on that enemy too. Our reading: two fights for the price of one spell, which is about as Warlock as it gets.

Compared: the post against our talent calculator today

Our talent calculator is built from the beta's own game files, now Forever build 1.60.1.70338 of 10 October. Every new talent the post names for these two classes is in it, and every talent the post says is removed is gone. The milestone talents above sit at the points the post gives. Here are four details side by side, and how we read them.

The calculator shows	The post	Our reading
Puncturing Wounds adds 10%, 20% or 30% Backstab critical strike chance by rank, and 5%, 10% or 15% for Mutilate	"a lesser percentage" for Mutilate	The two agree: Mutilate gets half
Venom lasts 9 seconds with 1 Combo Point, up to 21 seconds with 5	Duration set by Combo Points spent	The calculator adds the numbers the post leaves out
Demonic Brand has 3 ranks: your pet's next 2, 4 or 6 attacks	The pet's next 2 attacks	We read the post as describing the first rank
Demonic Brand says a branded attack has high threat if it deals Shadow damage	Shadow damage is high threat, and a tanking pet like the Voidwalker gains extra threat while the Imp doesn't	The two now agree on Shadow damage, after the beta's build of 8 October rewrote the talent's text, though the text doesn't say which pets deal it

We refresh the calculator as new beta builds appear. The Rogue class page and the Warlock class page show which of their abilities are new since Classic Era, the re-released original game.

Strengths and weaknesses

Blizzard sums up each class like this.

Rogues remain the masters of Stealth, with abilities like Pickpocket, Distract, Sap and Garrote usable from it. They alone get Poisons. Blizzard says they're welcome in any party or raid, the small and large groups players team up in, for Stealth and control. They also have the highest potential single-target melee damage in the game.
Warlocks are still physically weak and rely on their demon pets for protection. But Blizzard says they now deal damage to compete with any other spellcaster, in three completely different styles.

WoW: Forever Mage and Shaman changes: Frostfire Bolt, totems, Lava Burst

2026-10-10T00:00:00Z

Blizzard's Mage and Shaman class deep dive for World of Warcraft: Forever (WoW: Forever for short) went up on 7 October. Blizzard's post lists their ability and talent changes. The short version: every Mage gets Frostfire Bolt, a spell that counts as Fire and Frost, at level 40. Shaman totems with lasting buffs now last longer, and a new display tracks them.

The Mage is a spellcaster who fights with three schools of magic: Arcane, Fire and Frost. The Shaman is a class that places totems, objects it sets down that buff allies, heal and solve problems, and it can fight in melee, cast damage spells or heal. Blizzard says both classes may keep changing through the beta, the test version people can play before release. For the classes so far, see our pieces on the Hunter and Druid and the Priest and Warrior.

How do talents work in WoW: Forever?

Talents are upgrades you buy with points to shape a character inside their class, laid out in three trees for each class. Blizzard says they start at level 10 and keep a familiar structure. The one-point milestone talents at 11, 21 and 31 points stay, and a new one joins at 16 points. Blizzard calls these gold medal talents. The tables below list the ones the post names.

What changes for Mages?

A Mage's three trees match its three schools. Blizzard says Arcane bends and burns Mana, the energy a caster spends on spells, for more damage. Fire lands heavy hits and big critical strikes, the extra-hard hits. Frost controls the fight. Here are the baseline changes, the ones every Mage gets.

Ability	The change
Frostfire Bolt	New at level 40: a 3-second cast that counts as Fire and Frost, hits hard up front, then burns and slows the target
Comprehension	A new Mage-only minor tradeskill, a side skill, for reading scrolls that creatures drop in the world
Comprehend Scroll	The ability that uses Comprehension, in the General tab of the spellbook
Cone of Cold	Lasts less time
Mage Armor	More Mana back from Spirit, one of the game's stats

Frostfire Bolt always uses the better of the Mage's Fire or Frost spell damage bonus. It also uses the weaker of the target's Fire or Frost resistance. Blizzard's own example pairs two talents, Ignite and Ice Shards. A critical Frostfire Bolt then deals 200% damage, plus another 40% of that as Ignite burn damage, for 280% in all. Blizzard says it built the spell to open up builds that mix Fire and Frost talents.

Blizzard didn't say what Comprehension's scrolls give you. It says players will find out on their adventures.

Blizzard says the Cone of Cold change is aimed at gold farmers and experience boosters. It says they kite, or lead around, big packs of monsters for easy gold and experience. Improved Blizzard is trimmed too: its slow now tops out at 40%, down from 65%. Blizzard says gold farmers and boosters widely used Frost Mages' area damage, damage that hits a whole group, to farm dungeons and disrupt the game's economy.

One more anti-farming rule reaches beyond Mages. Spells come in ranks, stronger versions you learn as you level. Arcane Concentration, a talent that can grant a free effect, now triggers less often from much lower-rank spells. Blizzard says farmers used cheap low-rank spells to fish for those free effects. It has made the same change to talents across many classes.

Mage milestone talents

Tree	Points	Talent	What it does
Arcane	11	Arcane Blast	New spell: a 2.5-second cast that raises the damage of your other Mage spells and its own Mana cost, stacking up to 4 times for 8 seconds or until you cast another spell
Arcane	16	Missile Barrage	Arcane Blast, Fireball, Frostbolt and Frostfire Bolt can make your next Arcane Missiles channel twice as fast for no Mana, with double the chance on Arcane Blast
Frost	11	Ice Lance	New: instant and low damage, but 300% more against a Frozen target, one held in place by ice
Frost	16	Ice Block	Moves up to row 4, one step higher in the tree
Frost	21	Cold Snap	Moves down to row 5, and its cooldown, the wait before you can use it again, rises to 10 minutes from 5

Blizzard says this Arcane Blast is a redesign of the one from early expansions. The old one encouraged Mages to cast nothing else. This one wants you to build a stack, then cash it in with other spells.

Other Mage talents in the post include Heating Up, a new Fire talent that needs Pyroblast first. Direct critical hits from Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Fire Blast and Scorch cut your next Pyroblast's cast time by 25%, stacking 3 times, down to 1.5 seconds. Blizzard says it borrows ideas from Hot Streak, a talent from early expansions. Fingers of Frost, new in Frost, gives your Chill effects, the slows from Frost spells, a chance to make your spells treat the target as Frozen.

Ignite now gives each Mage their own burn on a target. In Classic Era, the re-released original game, every Mage in a fight shared one. Winter's Chill and Improved Scorch now help only the Mage who casts them. Magic Attunement becomes baseline, and Blizzard lists no removed talents for Fire or Frost.

Our favourite is Frostfire Bolt, the new spell every Mage learns at level 40. It counts as Fire and Frost at once, so a Mage can mix both trees and feed one spell. And 280% on a critical strike, in Blizzard's Ignite and Ice Shards build, is our kind of maths.

What changes for Shaman?

A Shaman's three trees are Elemental Combat (spell damage), Enhancement (melee) and Restoration (healing). Weapon imbues are spells a Shaman casts on their own weapon. Here are the baseline changes, the ones every Shaman gets.

Ability	The change
All totems	Global cooldown, the short pause before your next ability, cut to 1 second from 1.5
Totems with lasting buffs	Last 5 minutes, up from 2
Totem tracking	A new display shows which totems are up and their time left; right-click one to dismiss it
Resistance totems	Now cover the whole raid group, the players taking on a raid together (a raid is a dungeon built for a large group)
Weapon imbues	Last 60 minutes, up from 5, and now work alongside sharpening stones, weight stones and wizard oil
Fire Nova	Now a spell that erupts at your current Fire Totem, replacing Fire Nova Totem
Windfury Totem, Flametongue Totem	No longer weapon enchantments: now buffs for your whole party, the small group you play in, which don't stack with each other or help a Shaman using the matching weapon imbue
Tranquil Air Totem	Removed
Totemic Recall	New at level 20: destroys all your totems and refunds 25% of their Mana cost
Totemic Projection	New at level 22: moves all your totems to a new spot within 30 yards, 1-minute cooldown
Call of the Elements	Level 20: a 3-second cast that drops a saved set of four totems, one per element
Lightning Bolt	Ranks 4 and up cast in 2.5 seconds, down from 3
Chain Lightning	Every rank casts in 2 seconds, down from 2.5

Call of the Spirits at level 30 and Call of the Ancestors at level 40 save a second and third totem set. Blizzard says a beta bug currently stops Totemic Recall from refunding any Mana. Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning also get less bonus from spell power, the stat that boosts spells, to match their faster casts.

Shaman milestone talents

Tree	Points	Talent	What it does
Elemental Combat	16	Call of Thunder	3% more critical strike chance on Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning
Elemental Combat	21	Earthbound	New: Earthbind Totem roots nearby enemies in place for 5 seconds when you cast it
Elemental Combat	31	Lava Burst	New spell: a 2.5-second cast that deals Fire damage, 20% more if your Flame Shock is on the target, 10-second cooldown
Enhancement	11	Shamanistic Focus	New: cuts the Mana cost of Shocks and Lightning Shield by a large percentage
Enhancement	16	Stormstrike	Now the 16-point talent, not the 31; cooldown cut to 8 seconds from 20, and it boosts your next Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning or Earth Shock by 20%
Enhancement	21	Spirit Weapons	Formerly Parry: now also lowers your threat, how badly monsters want to hit you, without the Rockbiter Weapon imbue and raises it with
Enhancement	31	Rage of the Farseer	New: 30% more attack speed for 25 seconds, 3-minute cooldown
Restoration	11	Water Shield	New: 3 globes that give Mana when an attack hits you or a heal of yours lands a critical
Restoration	16	Mana Tide Totem	Now the 16-point talent, not the 31
Restoration	31	Riptide	New: an instant heal plus more over 15 seconds, and Chain Heal works 25% better on its target, 6-second cooldown

Blizzard says Spirit Weapons lets Enhancement Shaman manage their threat now that their damage is competitive, and still serve as a temporary tank, the one taking the hits, in small groups. Rage of the Farseer borrows from Heroism and Bloodlust in early expansions, but it helps only the Shaman.

Elemental Mastery is gone. Blizzard calls it a signature Elemental talent, especially in PvP (player versus player fights). It says Elemental damage couldn't be raised enough against the game's monsters while keeping it, without making the class much too strong in PvP. So the tree got new spells instead. Restoration loses Nature's Guidance.

Other Shaman talents in the post include Lightning Overload, new in Elemental Combat. It gives Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning a chance to cast a free second copy at half damage. Elemental Alacrity, formerly Lightning Mastery, moves up to row 3 and also speeds up Lava Burst. Blizzard says the old talent sat too deep for levelling Shaman and was twice as strong as similar ones.

In Enhancement, Maelstrom Weapon is a new talent where every melee attack has a chance to stack a charge that speeds up Lightning Bolt, until it can become instant. Mental Dexterity adds attack power, the stat behind melee damage, equal to a percentage of your Intellect, the stat behind a caster's Mana, and Mental Quickness does the same for spell damage and healing. Shield Specialization, Enhancing Totems, Two-Handed Axes and Maces, Weapon Mastery and Improved Weapon Totems become baseline.

Our favourite is Call of the Elements. Learn it at level 20, set four totems, one of each element, and one 3-second cast drops all four. Our reading: that rewards planning ahead, which is very Shaman.

Compared: the post against our talent calculator today

Our talent calculator is built from the beta's own game files, now Forever build 1.60.1.70338. Every new talent the post names for these two classes is already in it. Every talent the post gives a row or point count for sits there. Two talents leave the calculator's trees that the post never names, and one number the post leaves vague is there, so here is how we read them.

The calculator shows	The post	Our reading
Storm Reach is gone from Elemental Combat, and Elemental Reach sits on row 5	Says Elemental Reach "now also" reaches further with Fire Nova, Lava Burst and Flame Shock	We take Elemental Reach to be Storm Reach under a new name
Totemic Mastery is gone from Restoration	Doesn't mention it	Blizzard hasn't said where it went
Missile Barrage gives Arcane Blast a 40% chance and the other three spells 20%	A chance, doubled for Arcane Blast	The two agree

We refresh the calculator as new beta builds appear. The Mage class page and the Shaman class page show which of their abilities are new since Classic Era, the re-released original game.

Strengths and weaknesses

Blizzard describes each class's strengths and weaknesses.

Mages deal the strongest and most varied ranged area damage of any class, and Polymorph is one of the best ways to take an enemy out of a fight. But they are very fragile and die easily if caught in melee.
Shaman are among the sturdiest classes, with Mail armor and a shield. They can deal damage or heal, but they lack an effective way to take enemies out of a fight. Blizzard says they need allies to cover that and their survival.

WoW: Forever PvP ranks: how Honor, Rank Points and gear work

2026-10-10T00:00:00Z

Blizzard has explained how PvP (player versus player, where players fight each other) works in World of Warcraft: Forever, Blizzard's new version of its online game World of Warcraft. In its post of 7 October, progression has two parts. Honor is a currency you spend on PvP gear. Rank Points climb you through the ranks, 1 to 14 in Blizzard's reward list, with a weekly cap.

A second post the same day describes a 15 against 15 battleground, the Darkspear Islands. A battleground is a map where teams of players fight each other, and Forever's ranks are the familiar ones from the original game, Blizzard says.

What are Honor and Rank Points?

Honor is the currency. You earn it from PvP, including beating other players, finishing battlegrounds and doing PvP quests, the set tasks the game hands out. Battlegrounds highlighted during their holiday weeks, special weeks for a given battleground, pay more Honor. Blizzard says it reviewed Honor gains across battlegrounds so the rates are more consistent. It wants players not to feel pushed into Alterac Valley, one of the game's battlegrounds, just for the Honor.

Rank Points are what move you up. They come from PvP activities such as battlegrounds and PvP quests, with a boost in holiday-week battlegrounds too. The top of the ladder is High Warlord for the Horde and Grand Marshal for the Alliance, the game's two sides. Ranks have a weekly cap, a limit on how far you climb each week. Blizzard calls that keeping the original system's base while making the climb more accessible.

To check where you are, open your character pane (press C) and pick the Player vs. Player tab. It shows your rank, your Rank Points and what you can buy at your rank.

What does each rank unlock?

Rank	What it unlocks	Legacy Point?
1	Tabard	No
2	PvP trinket	No
3	Cloaks	Yes
4	Necklace	No
5	Combat potions	No
6	Tabard	No
7	Battle standard	Yes
8	Epic bracers/epic belt upgrade token	No
9	Epic boots upgrade token	No
10	Epic gloves upgrade token	Yes
11	Mounts	No
12	Epic legs/epic shoulders upgrade token	No
13	Epic chest/epic helm upgrade token	Yes
14	Epic weapons	Yes

An upgrade token is an item that upgrades a piece of gear in the named slot, and epic is the higher of the two PvP gear grades. A tabard is the cloth worn over armour, a trinket is a small worn item with its own effect, and a mount is an animal you ride. The post doesn't say what the potions or the battle standard do. The last column is ours: Blizzard's Legacy post says reaching ranks 3, 7, 10, 13 and 14 each earns a Legacy Point, the account-wide points of Forever's Legacy System.

How does PvP gear work?

Honor buys two sets of PvP gear: a blue-quality set and an epic-quality set. Blue and epic are the two PvP gear grades here, and the epic set is the upgrade. To get an epic piece, you need the blue piece plus an Emboldened Seal, an item that upgrades it.

The seals have rank requirements you must reach before you can buy them. The post doesn't say whether the seals are the upgrade tokens in the table above.

Blizzard also added new and reworked items for specialisations that were missing options before. A class is a character's type, and a specialisation is the role it picks inside that class. Blizzard's example: Shamans, one of the game's classes, now get healer, melee and caster sets. That's one for keeping allies alive, one for fighting up close and one for casting spells.

What is the Darkspear Islands battleground?

Darkspear Islands sits off the coast of Dustwallow Marsh, a zone of the game's world. The Horde's Darkspear Raiders fight the Alliance's Theramore Expeditionary Force there.

	Darkspear Islands
Teams	15 against 15
Levels	30 to 60
Goal	First team to 2000 points
How you score	Hold any of the four capture points, and carry the central flag to a base you hold

A capture point is a spot on the map a team takes and defends. The more of them your team holds, the faster your points come in. The flag sits in the middle of the map. Grab it and bring it to a base your team has taken for more points.

You can queue in two ways. Talk to a battlemaster, the person who signs you up for battlegrounds, in any major capital city. Or go to the Barrens, a zone in Kalimdor, one of the game's continents. The Horde base is at the Merchant Coast and the Alliance base is at Northwatch, and a portal there takes you into the fight. Those bases also sell reputation rewards and give out quests for the battleground.

Reputation is your standing with a group in the game, and each side here has its own. Higher standing unlocks trinkets, rings, cloaks, weapons, armour and consumables (items that get used up) to buy. Blizzard's post also ties the reputation quests to Marks of Honor, an item, but its wording doesn't make clear whether you hand them in or earn them. At Exalted, one of the game's reputation levels, a short questline, a chain of quests, earns that side's own tabard.

How do PvP seasons work?

A PvP season is a stretch of time with its own goals. During one you climb the ranks and earn Honor. Each season also has a journey of weekly tasks. Finishing them gives Honor and Rank Points. Three tasks each season also give a Legacy Point, the account-wide points of Forever's Legacy System. Because those tasks are tied to that system, Blizzard says they stay open to finish in future seasons.

Compared: the 12 PvP Legacy Points, by name

The Legacy System, Forever's account-wide progress system, gives 12 of its points for PvP. Blizzard's Legacy post lists them. Our Legacy Challenges list reads their names from the files of the beta, a test version of a game people can play before release, for build 1.60.1.70338. The beta client, the game program players install, names each one and says what it asks for. Here are the two side by side.

Blizzard's Legacy post	What the beta client calls it
Reach rank 3	Rank 3: reach Sergeant
Reach rank 7	Rank 7: reach Knight-Lieutenant or Blood Guard
Reach rank 10	Rank 10: reach Lieutenant-Commander or Champion
Reach rank 13	Rank 13: reach Field Marshal or Warlord
Reach rank 14	Rank 14: reach Grand Marshal or High Warlord
Exalted with each Battleground reputation (4 points)	Master of Alterac Valley, Master of Arathi Basin, Master of Warsong Gulch, Master of Darkspear Islands (four battlegrounds)
Weeks 4, 7 and 10 of the Field of Honor season journey	Field of Honor: Week 4, Week 7 and Week 10

The client settles one thing the posts leave open: Darkspear Islands' reputation, either side's, is one of the four battleground reputations, so reaching Exalted there is worth a Legacy Point of its own. And by Blizzard's two posts, rank 14 also unlocks epic weapons and earns the last of the five Legacy Points for rank. Our Legacy System piece does the maths on reaching the 16-point cap.

Our take: earned by playing

We like what we read. Our reading of the two PvP posts is that every reward in them comes from playing PvP: Honor, Rank Points, reputation and quests. You buy gear with Honor or unlock it through reputation, and nothing in either PvP post mentions buying a rank or gear with real money.

Our reading is that the weekly cap on ranks favours steady play over marathon weeks, which fits a game that respects a player's time.

RuneScape plugins beta: Quest Helper, Menu Entry Swapper and how to join

2026-10-06T00:00:00Z

RuneScape, a long-running fantasy world thousands of people play online together, opened its plugin beta on 6 October. Plugins are tools that players build to change how the game plays, and the beta starts with five of them on special beta worlds. The RuneScape team's launch post says anyone will be able to make one, with the plan for late October.

What are RuneScape plugins?

A plugin is "a tool created by a community developer", in the post's words. Players make them; the RuneScape team checks and approves them. They're built on the RS API, the part of the game that decides what a plugin can see and do. You find and install them in the Plugin Hub, a new part of the game's own screen.

If you've played Old School RuneScape, the older version of the game kept alive on its own, you might already know what plugins can do. The team says this isn't a one-to-one copy, though. Some things will work differently, and some will have different limits.

Which five plugins are in the beta?

Plugin	Made by	What it does
Quest Helper	Zoinkwiz, Techpure and JosTheFarmer	Guides you through quests and tracks where you are. It covers 69 quests for now, focused on early-game ones
Menu Entry Swapper	SereSelene	Reorders the right-click options for items, NPCs (computer-controlled characters), objects and more, so your favourite becomes the left-click
Tilemarkers	J3	Marks tiles on the ground with a colour and a label, and turns a set of marks into a preset you can share
Entity Hider	Rcm37	Hides things from view, with toggles for other players, your own character, familiars, spiders and more
Job Gauges	Nyu	Gathers your combat style's resources and cooldowns into overlays in one central spot during a fight

Familiars are creatures a player can summon, and a cooldown is the wait before you can use an ability again. Quest Helper currently supports the quests marked with a * in your quest list. The post expects more quests to come "when they're ready rather than on a fixed schedule".

If you came here from Old School, it has a Menu Entry Swapper of its own, and we've written up how that one works. The RuneScape plugin is a separate thing. The team says it will keep getting new features "shaped primarily by community feedback". Its developer, SereSelene, says a lot of players know the name from other plugin tools and already "have a clear idea of what it should do", and that being honest about what's possible today has mattered as much as the code.

How do you join the RuneScape plugin beta?

The beta runs on separate beta worlds (a world is one of the game's servers), and the post names world 204. It gives three ways in:

Jagex Launcher, the studio's own app for starting its games: click the link in the post and it logs you into the beta.
The plain RuneScape client: click the other link in the post, then log in as normal.
Steam: in your Library, right-click RuneScape, open Properties, and paste this into Launch Options, then close the window, click Play and pick world 204: %command% --configURI rs-launch://world204.runescape.com/jav_config_beta.ws

You start with a fresh save. Pick Import Save in the beta lobby if you'd rather copy your live character over. If you want to try Quest Helper on early quests, the team suggests a fresh save first, so those quests are still there to test. You don't need membership, the game's paid subscription. To go back to the normal game, close the game and the launcher, then start it again as usual.

Once you're in, look for a toolbox icon in the bottom-right of the screen, on the Ribbon, the game's bar of menu buttons. That opens the Plugin Hub. In the modern interface with the default Ribbon, hover over Settings to find it. Install a plugin there, then switch it on in the Manage tab.

What are plugins not allowed to do?

The post lists the rules every plugin must follow. Plugins may make the game clearer and easier to use. They may help you track, plan and sort information that's visible, public or already known to players. They must not:

Do things for you automatically.
Replace your own decisions, skill, timing or reactions in any big way.
Make a challenge trivial, or solve a game mechanic outright.
Show you hidden or future information.
Undermine fair play or competition.
Mislead you or hide what they do.

A plugin also has to ask your permission before it connects to the internet.

What happens next?

More plugins are on the way, and the post names Ground Items, Runic Attuner, Bank Evaluator, Agility Helper and Anti-Drag among them. The team plans to open the RS API to everyone in late October. After that, anyone can send a plugin in for review, and new plugins will likely come out in batches alongside game updates at first.

The Plugin Hub is English only for now, and the team will post a guide for would-be developers when the API opens. Clue Trainer and Drop Log, two plugins players are excited about, aren't in yet. The team says some plugins still have technical dependencies it is working through, and others are already in its review process.

Our take: helpers, not robots

Our reading: the "must not" list is the important part. Its first three rules keep the player's hands on the game. A plugin can point at the right tile, but it can't stand on it for you. That's the line between a helper and a bot, and we're glad to see it written down before the doors open rather than after.

We also like who gets the credit. The post names the developers behind each of the five plugins and asks players to be patient, because they build them in their own time, alongside their own lives. Neither post mentions paying for a plugin. Tools that make a game easier to read, built by players for players, are about as old school as it gets, in our book.

RuneScape Reignited: announced for 2 December, now under review

2026-10-09T00:00:00Z

RuneScape, a long-running fantasy world people play online together, announced Reignited, a new kind of character with its own fresh economy and rankings, on 3 October for 2 December. Three days later, the RuneScape team apologised to existing players and said it is re-evaluating the whole thing. On 9 October it shared early ideas, not yet promises, such as letting an existing character "Reignite" without a second membership.

What is RuneScape Reignited?

Reignited is "a new permanent character type". It comes with "a brand-new economy and hiscores", the game's public leaderboards, and "no paid progression available". That is how the team's 3 October announcement describes it. The post says Reignited "has just been announced during our RuneFest 2026 Summit", the team's own event.

Reignited characters play in the same worlds, which are the game's servers, as everyone else, and, as announced, they also get worlds of their own, which the team is now rethinking (more below). The team compares it to Ironman, an existing character type with its own rules, which already lives alongside normal characters today. The pitch to new players is a shared starting point, "almost as if the game were released for the first time today", with 25 years of content to play through.

It's due on 2 December in a single update with the Adventure Guide, a new in-game guide for players, and more remastered early-game content. The post also describes a Hall of Legends, a place in the game that honours its legends, past and new. All the world-first achievements open up again, and whoever lands one gets a permanent statue of their character.

What can a Veteran and a Reignited character do together?

A normal character today is a Veteran (the team's name for current characters, as opposed to Reignited ones). Each type gets its own Grand Exchange, the game's market where players buy and sell items with each other. The 3 October post answers what each type can do, and here it is in one table.

Can it...	Veteran	Reignited
Play in Veteran worlds	Yes	Yes
Play in Reignited-only worlds	No	Yes
Chat with the other type	Yes	Yes
Trade with the other type	No	No
Use the old Grand Exchange	Yes	No
Use the new Grand Exchange	No	Yes
Join the other type's boss instances	No	No
Join the other type's clan	Yes	Yes

A boss instance is a private copy of a boss fight, and a clan is a group of players who team up. As announced, a character can't switch types later, though one 9 October idea would let a character flip between the two. On a merge, the team says there are "no predetermined plans for a merge at this stage".

Do you need a second membership for Reignited?

As announced, yes, though that may change (see the 9 October ideas below). Reignited is "similar to Ironman and will therefore require its own membership", which is the game's paid subscription. Every Reignited character gets free access to members' worlds for the first ten days, from 2 December through 12 December. None of the three posts gives a price.

On the shop side, Reignited characters can buy cosmetic overrides, which change how a character looks. The post also says that when Reignited launches there will be "no more integrity breaking MTX items present anywhere in RuneScape". MTX is short for microtransactions, meaning small purchases made with real money.

Why is Reignited being re-evaluated?

Because existing players pushed back. The 6 October post opens with "We are re-evaluating RuneScape Reignited" and then owns the problem: "We have made you, as existing players, feel like you are no longer our focus." It goes on to say sorry, and lists eight concerns it heard, "while not comprehensive", including these:

Veteran characters would no longer matter.
Veteran worlds would empty out if players move to Reignited worlds.
Splitting what players believe is an already small playerbase would fragment it.
The limits on how the two types can interact "do not feel good".
Players feel pushed to restart just to stay relevant.
"Needing to pay for a new character subscription does not feel good."

The team says the reach of the announcement and the comments from people intending to play "far exceeded our initial expectations", and that an option to play with a fresh economy is "a big draw for new and returning players". It says it is "exploring a heavy set of revisions", and that "every option for what we do with regards to Reignited remains firmly on the table".

What did the RuneScape team suggest on 9 October?

Early ideas, and the team says so: some "haven't yet been through technical feasibility checks", so they are "not a list of guaranteed options just yet". The 9 October post takes the complaints one by one:

The second membership. The team is exploring a way to "Reignite" an existing character and play it as if it were a fresh Reignited one, within the membership you already pay for. The goal is to flip between the Veteran and Reignited versions of the same character.
Veterans no longer mattering. Every Veteran account would get exclusive rewards for the game's first 25 years, for example a special cosmetic version of the Max Cape that no one else can have. They would come with you if you Reignite.
Empty Veteran worlds. The team is discussing how long Reignited-only worlds should last after release, and possibly dropping them entirely. If they went, Reignited characters would still keep their own economy and progress on shared worlds.
Playing together. The team is looking to change the limits on playing with non-Reignited players after launch, and says it expects this would happen shortly after the new economy has found its feet and the world firsts are done.
Things left behind. Cosmetics, bank space and other items that don't affect gameplay, like holiday rewards, titles and skill pets, could come with a character that Reignites.

The post also gives a rare number: RuneScape has "hundreds of thousands of Members" today, and the team says it has been "trending on a slight decline" for a long time. It asks for feedback on each idea and says it will follow up the week after.

Our take: what was announced, what's under review, what the posts haven't said

Announced on 3 October: the 2 December date, the ten free member days, no paid progression, a separate Grand Exchange and the Hall of Legends.

Under review since 6 October: how a Veteran's progress stays intact and counts for something, making sure "a hard split in community does not persist", and the separate membership.

Floated on 9 October: letting an existing character Reignite within your membership, Veteran-only rewards, Reignited-only worlds for a limited time or not at all, and changes to the limits on playing together.

Not said in any of the three posts: whether 2 December moves, what the membership costs, or which of the 9 October ideas will actually happen.

Our reading: a level start with no paid progression is exactly the kind of idea we like. And every concern on the 6 October list is about what it costs the players who are already there, a second membership and a nudge to restart among them. So the rethink is aimed at the right place. For us the big one is money: a fresh start is only fair if long-time players don't have to pay twice to be part of it, and the first 9 October idea aims right at that. We'll cheer properly when "exploring" becomes a decision.

ESO Crown Store October 2026: Nightfall and Hollowjack crates, and eight in-game drop notes

2026-10-02T00:00:00Z

The Elder Scrolls Online's October 2026 Crown Store showcase, which is the monthly list of what its real-money shop will sell, went up on 1 October. Its schedule names two returning Crown Crate lines, meaning two ranges of paid boxes whose contents are random: Nightfall from 15 October and Hollowjack from 29 October. It also marks four items as new.

ESO, the usual short name for the game, lists 59 dated entries on the full schedule. Eight of them carry a note saying where matching pieces can be found in game. Our reading is that those eight are the part worth reading first.

The two crate lines

Crate line	Window
Nightfall	15 October to 29 October
Hollowjack	29 October to 12 November

Our maths on those windows puts both on sale on one day, 29 October. The schedule lists no crate line before 15 October. The same page does link a 29 September post about the new Harbingers of the Divine Crown Crates, and gives no end date for them. It does not mention free crates this month.

What is new

Four entries on the schedule are tagged new. The Abecean Sea-Crystal Wolf mount runs 8 to 22 October. A mount is a creature your character rides. The Voidcaller Scarecrow Sabre Cat mount, the Voidcaller Scarecrow Garb costume and the Zhekleg Arms Pack all run 22 October to 5 November. An arms pack is a matching set of weapon and shield looks.

What is coming back

The highlights lead with a returning home and a returning bundle. A home is a player house you can decorate, and a bundle is several shop items sold together. The Exorcised Coven Cottage home is back 5 October to 2 November. The Ascending Tide Collector's Bundle is back 5 to 12 October. The Bastion Sanguinaris home returns 15 to 29 October, beside the Nightfall Crates.

Then come the returns the page ties to Lord Hollowjack, a figure of the game's spooky season. The Hollowjack Crown Crates, the Hollowjack Indrik mount, the Hollowjack Netch pet and the Elder Scrolls Artifact: Fearstruck style all return 29 October to 12 November. A style is a look you can put on your gear.

Of the 59 entries, 47 are marked as an ESO Plus discount item. ESO Plus is the game's paid monthly membership. Four entries are listed as available for Gems and Seals, which are two of the game's in-game currencies. One, the Painting: Lair of Maarselok (22 October to 30 November), is free to ESO Plus members.

The eight notes on finding matching pieces in game

Eight entries carry a note about matching pieces you can find in game: six arms packs and two crafting motifs. A motif is a pattern book that unlocks a style of gear. A page, in these notes, is an in-game item that unlocks one part of a look, such as the mask.

Four of the arms packs point at a dungeon boss for the matching mask page:

Arms pack	Boss	Dungeon
Bloodspawn	Vorenor Winterbourne	Veteran Spindleclutch II
Pirate Skeleton	Captain Blackheart	Blackheart Haven
Vykosa	Vykosa the Ascendant	Moon Hunter Keep
Balorgh	Balorgh	March of Sacrifices

Veteran is the game's harder difficulty setting for a dungeon. For each of those four, the shoulder page has two routes. Buy it for 50 Undaunted Keys from a named vendor, or try that vendor's Mystery Coffer for one key. Undaunted Keys are one of the game's reward currencies. Each of the four also names an achievement that raises the drop chance, such as "Compassionate Hero" for Bloodspawn.

Both motifs follow the same boss pattern. Drowned Mariner chapters can drop from Zelvraak the Unbreathing in Graven Deep. Silver Dawn chapters can drop from Vykosa the Ascendant in Moon Hunter Keep. In both cases the page says drop chances are much higher in Veteran or Hard Mode, which is a tougher version of a boss fight.

The last two arms packs point at the Witches Festival, a returning seasonal event. Zhekleg pages have a small chance to drop from new Dremora Plunder Skulls, which are event reward boxes, during the event. Bound versions, which cannot be traded to other players, sell from the Impresario, an event vendor, for 500 Trade Bars each. Trade Bars are another of the game's in-game currencies. Crowborne Hunter pages can drop from Dremora Plunder Skulls during the event too, and their bound versions cost 200 Trade Bars each. The page gives no date for the Witches Festival.

Our take

Two crate lines sit on this month's schedule, against the four September's showcase listed. Our maths says October's two overlap for a single day.

In our view the best part is the drop notes, as it was in September. Six times, a shop page stops to tell you which dungeon boss drops a matching piece of what it is selling. Twice more it points at an event instead. Our reading is that this is the earn-it-instead line a shop has little commercial reason to print, and here it is in the publisher's own copy. Eight of 59 is not most of them. We would rather it were.

What the crates actually hold, this page does not say, and we are not going to guess. In our view, that is the thing most worth listing. Each crate line gets a window and no list of contents.

What's next

The page closes by pointing at Season Two's upcoming solo dungeons (a Season is a named stretch of months with its own story and rewards) and the return of the Witches Festival. It gives no date for either. Our calendar carries ESO's autumn dates, each with its source, and our September piece is still up for comparison.

WoW: Forever beta level cap is now 30, with a new Wetlands dungeon

2026-10-10T00:00:00Z

Beta players in World of Warcraft: Forever (WoW: Forever for short) can now reach level 30. Blizzard's notes for the 1 October beta build also add a new dungeon, Excavation Site: Wetlands, for levels 26 to 31. Razorfen Downs and Uldaman open too. Dungeon quests now give less experience, and Blizzard has done another pass on Fury, one of the Warrior's talent trees.

The beta is the test version people can play before release. A character's level is a number that rises as they play, and a quest is a task a character takes on for a reward. Experience is what a character earns to reach the next level. The Warrior is one of the game's classes, the kind of character you play. A dungeon is an instanced area, a private copy of a place, built for a small group to fight through together. The full notes run long, so our patch notes page has every line, with buttons to filter them by class and topic.

What changed in the 1 October beta build?

The headline is the level cap, the highest level a character can reach. Blizzard says players can now level up to a maximum of level 30. The other big lines, in plain words:

Change	What the notes say
Level cap	Players can level up to 30
New dungeon	Excavation Site: Wetlands, for levels 26 to 31
Dungeons opened	Razorfen Downs (25+) and Uldaman (30+)
Dungeon quests	50% less extra experience beyond normal quest values
Barbershops	New ones in Darnassus and Thunder Bluff, and all barbershops now have barbers
Honor	Most gear and upgrade token costs up by about 50%, and the cap raised from 15,000 to 25,000

Darnassus and Thunder Bluff are two of the game's capital cities. A barbershop is where a character changes how their hair looks. Honor is the currency earned by fighting other players, spent on PvP gear (player versus player, where players fight each other rather than the game). Gear is the armour and weapons a character wears. The notes price both PvP gear and upgrade tokens in Honor. Blizzard also says city guards now give directions to barbershops, which we think is the most old-fashioned kind of help there is.

Which dungeons can you run in the beta now?

The 1 October notes name 14 dungeons in all: the new Excavation Site: Wetlands, Razorfen Downs and Uldaman, and 11 that were already open. That count is ours, made from Blizzard's list. The 8 October notes add the new City of Dalaran dungeon for testing.

Dungeon	Status in the notes
Excavation Site: Wetlands	New, levels 26 to 31
Razorfen Downs	Newly open, 25+
Uldaman	Newly open, 30+
Ragefire Chasm	Already open
Hall of Thanes	Already open
Ruins of Lordaeron	Already open
Wailing Caverns	Already open
The Deadmines	Already open
Shadowfang Keep	Already open
The Stockade	Already open
Blackfathom Deeps	Already open
Gnomeregan	Already open
Razorfen Kraul	Already open
Scarlet Monastery	Already open

Our dungeon list reads every dungeon and raid (a dungeon built for a large group) on the beta's own list, with the boss fights, the big set-piece enemies, inside each one.

Why do dungeon quests give less experience now?

Experience, or XP, is what a character earns to reach the next level. Blizzard thanks players for their feedback on leveling speed as its ongoing discussions about the beta go on. It says that as part of those discussions it decided to cut the XP from dungeon quests in this build. Dungeon quests now give 50% less extra experience beyond normal quest values, and some quest rewards were recalibrated.

The same notes raise the respawn rate, how fast things come back after being killed or picked up, for many creatures and objects in Hillsbrad Foothills, Ashenvale, Wetlands, Duskwood and Thousand Needles. Those are five of the game's zones, the regions of its world map. Blizzard asks players to keep reporting areas where quests are hard to finish.

Has Blizzard fixed dungeon XP in the beta?

Yes. Blizzard's notes for the 8 October beta build fix a bug that cut XP for players in a group with higher-level players killing lower-level enemies. Until then, that cut was based on the group's highest-level member. Now, as in Classic Era, the re-released original game, only your own level counts.

The same notes raise the XP from killing monsters in dungeons by about 20%. Blizzard believes the two changes together will dramatically increase dungeon XP for most players. One rule stays: if someone in the group is far above the enemy's level, nobody gets XP.

Also on 8 October Aggrend, one of Blizzard's game developers, posted on Blizzard's forum that the team was fixing a bug with XP in dungeons. In earlier beta builds, the XP for each kill was based on the highest-level player in the group. With the fix, Aggrend says, you should now get XP based on your own level against the monsters you fight.

Aggrend's example of the bug is The Deadmines with four level 20s and one level 25: in those earlier builds, the level 20s got very little XP per kill.

Aggrend also mentions a 20% increase to base kills in dungeons, which we take to be the same change, and says the fix and the increase together should make dungeon leveling feel better and more even.

Don't expect Era's pace, though. Aggrend says dungeon XP won't be what it was in Era, the version of the game Aggrend's post compares Forever against. Some players want to "dungeon cleave" to 60, which we read as leveling all the way by running dungeons. Aggrend says making that the best way to level doesn't fit Blizzard's core goals, which it calls pillars, and that the team needs to hold firm on its balance changes. Two pillars are named: "World is the Main Character" and "Nurture and Protect Social Experiences". Once dungeons become the clear winner, Aggrend says, it has a knock-on effect on how players behave.

So how fast is it now? With perfect XP-per-hour play, Aggrend says, leveling in dungeons will be very close to the speed of the best questing, if not equal to it. Our view: a world you quest through beats the same dungeon run ten times over.

Aggrend posted the fix in the forum thread for episode 3 of Blizzard's WoW: Forever podcast, saying the episode didn't mention it. In the episode, host Countdown To Classic and guest Hammerdance talk dungeon leveling, questing and more with three of Blizzard's senior game designers: Josh "Aggrend" Greenfield, Jay Hartman and Rowan Ryder. Blizzard's post for the episode has the video, and so does this page, from the World of Warcraft YouTube channel.

What changes for Warriors and Druids?

The Warrior is a melee fighter built for close-up combat who spends Rage, a resource built up in a fight.

The notes have two lines on a Warrior's Rage from a critical strike, a hit that lands extra hard. One says Warriors now get 75% more Rage from a critical strike with a basic attack, an ordinary weapon swing. A later line says the extra Rage from critical strikes goes up to 100%, from 75%.

Talents are upgrades you buy with points to shape a character inside their class, laid out in trees. Fury, one of the Warrior's talent trees, gets another pass. Blizzard says it wants Fury to have more useful tools and real choices early in the tree while leveling. A new talent, Lingering Rage, adds time before your Rage starts to drain after combat. Improved Cleave and Boundless Rage are removed.

The Druid is a class that changes shape into animal forms. Tiger's Fury, a Druid ability, is removed. A new talent in Feral, the Druid's tree for fighting in animal form, is Shifting Power. It works in Cat Form, the Druid's cat shape, only and turns Mana, the fuel for spells, into 40 Energy, the fuel for Cat Form's attacks. All Druid shapeshift forms are now immune to Disarm effects, which knock a weapon out of a character's hands. Blizzard says a Druid disarmed before changing form still deals less damage while the disarm lasts. It says the change matches how it felt in original WoW, the game as it first launched.

Our talent calculator has Shifting Power, though it shows a question mark for the Energy number, because the beta's own files don't carry it. It now has the Fury talents named above, since the beta's build of 8 October: Lingering Rage sits on row 2 of Fury, and Improved Cleave and Boundless Rage are gone.

Compared: Blizzard's levels against the beta's own dungeon list

Our dungeon list reads each dungeon's level from the beta client's own files, published by the wago.tools site, for build 1.60.1.70338. The client is the game program players install. The client gives one level for each dungeon, and the notes give a range or a "+" level. The two don't always match.

Dungeon	Blizzard's notes	The beta client's own level
Excavation Site: Wetlands	26 to 31	26
Razorfen Downs	25+	34
Uldaman	30+	35

Our reading: go by Blizzard's numbers when planning a group. For Razorfen Downs and Uldaman the client's single number sits above Blizzard's, by 9 and 5 levels. The client's list also names City of Dalaran as a dungeon, which the 1 October notes don't mention and the 8 October notes open for testing.

WoW: Forever Hunter and Druid changes: Lone Wolf, Foxes, Berserk

2026-10-10T00:00:00Z

Blizzard's first World of Warcraft: Forever (WoW: Forever for short) class deep dive covers the Hunter and the Druid. Blizzard's post of 30 September lists their ability and talent changes. The short version: Hunters get Aimed Shot at level 20 and traps in combat. Druids can drink potions without leaving an animal form.

The Hunter is a ranged class that fights beside a pet. The Druid is a shape-shifting class that can heal, tank or deal damage, and tanking means drawing the enemy's attacks onto yourself. Blizzard says both classes may keep changing through the beta, the test version people can play before release.

How do talents work in WoW: Forever?

Talents are upgrades you buy with points to shape a character inside their class, spread over three trees for each of these two classes. Blizzard says they start at level 10 and keep the old structure, with the same number of rows. The one-point milestone talents at 11, 21 and 31 points stay, and a new one joins at 16 points. Blizzard's post calls these gold medal talents.

Some talents are exactly as they were in patch 1.12, a version of the original World of Warcraft. Others are changed, and several class buffs that used to be talents are now given to every player of the class. Blessing of Kings and Improved Mark of the Wild are the two examples Blizzard names.

What changes for Hunters?

A Hunter's three trees are Beast Mastery (pets), Marksmanship (ranged attacks) and Survival (traps and melee, the close-up fighting). Here are the baseline changes, the ones every Hunter gets.

Ability	The change
Aimed Shot	Every Hunter gets it at level 20
Arcane Shot	No longer shares a cooldown with Aimed Shot
Multi-Shot	Now shares a cooldown with Aimed Shot
Disengage	Its threat reduction is doubled
Aspect of the Beast	Now also grants melee Attack Power
Traps	Usable in combat, with a 30-second cooldown
Frost and Fire traps	Now on separate cooldowns
Scorpid Sting	Lowers the target's chance to hit by 2%, in place of Strength and Agility

Threat is how badly a monster wants to hit you. A cooldown is the wait before you can use an ability again.

What's new for Hunter pets?

Pets now get more stats from their Hunter's gear, and they can no longer take player buffs that raise their stats. Blizzard says every family can learn Bite or Claw, sometimes both, and Dive or Dash. Foxes are a new family with a new ability. Blizzard lists Trickster's Dance right beside them: it raises a pet's dodge chance and attack speed for 12 seconds.

The beta's own files also list a Core Hound family, which Blizzard's post doesn't name: it has Bite but neither Dive nor Dash, and the files don't say whether players can tame one.

Each family also gets one ability nobody else has.

Family	Its own ability	What it does
Bat	Sonic Blast	Damage, and slows the target's spellcasting
Bear	Swipe	Hits 3 targets
Bird of Prey (the old Owl)	Mine!	Damage, and disarms the target
Boar	Charge	Charges in, pins the target and powers up the next attack
Carrion Bird	Demoralizing Screech	Hits nearby enemies and lowers their melee Attack Power
Cat	Prowl	Stealth, and a harder first hit from it
Crab	Pinch	Damage, and slows the target's movement
Crocolisk	Dismember	Damage, and cuts the target's healing received by 50%
Gorilla	Thunderstomp	Hits enemies in an area
Hyena	Tendon Rip	Slows the target and makes it bleed
Raptor	Savage Rend	Makes the target bleed
Scorpid	Scorpid Poison	Stacking damage over time
Spider	Web	Pins the target and deals damage over time
Tallstrider	Dust Cloud	Lowers the target's armor
Turtle	Shell Shield	Less damage taken and slower attacks for 12 seconds
Wind Serpent	Lightning Breath	A 20-yard ranged attack
Wolf	Furious Howl	Raises the party's melee Attack Power

Picking a pet? Our hunter pet reference lists the families and abilities in the beta's own files, now with Sonic Blast for the Bat. The Hunter class page has more on the class.

Hunter milestone talents

These are the gold medal talents the post names by point count.

Tree	Points	Talent	What it does
Beast Mastery	16	Summon Hawk	Instant damage, and a Hawk attacks your target for 18 seconds, up to 2 at once
Marksmanship	11	Lone Wolf	20% more damage with all attacks while you have no pet out
Marksmanship	21	Trueshot Aura	Moved up to row 4, with new lower ranks
Marksmanship	31	Sniper Shot	A 4-second cast, 45-yard base range, and the next 3 Shots reach 10 yards further
Survival	16	Counterattack	Moved up to row 4
Survival	21	Strider Kick	An instant weapon hit, and 30% faster movement for 3 seconds
Survival	31	Lacerating Strikes	Mongoose Bite also makes the target bleed for 21 seconds

Lone Wolf is our favourite. Blizzard says the talent trees let a Hunter choose not to have a pet at all, and this talent pays 20% more damage for it.

One snag: Blizzard calls Trueshot Aura the 21-point talent, but also moves it to row 4, which is the 16-point row. Our talent calculator, read from the beta, has it on row 4.

What changes for Druids?

A Druid's three trees are Balance (spellcasting), Feral Combat (shapeshifting, turning into an animal form) and Restoration (healing). Blizzard says the class-wide changes aim to make shapeshifting feel more fluid.

Potions: all potions and almost all similar consumables work in form without cancelling it. Rage potions and Thistletea are usable by Druids too.
Bombs: most Engineering bombs still don't work in form, but some new recipes do.
Weapons: weapon enchantments and procs, the effects that sometimes fire on a hit, now work in form.
Doors: most doors and objects can be opened without leaving form.
Racials: abilities that come with a race, like Shadowmeld and War Stomp, now work in form.

Several abilities also become baseline. Nature's Grasp comes at level 10 and Omen of Clarity at level 20. Revive, a new resurrection spell for use out of combat, comes at level 12. Lacerate comes at level 42, a bleed that stacks up to 5 times. Tiger's Fury is removed, and a new Feral talent called Shifting Power replaces it.

Druid milestone talents

Tree	Points	Talent	What it does
Balance	11	Nature's Splendor	Longer Moonfire, Rejuvenation, Regrowth and Insect Swarm
Balance	16	Insect Swarm	Nature damage over 12 seconds, and lowers the target's chance to hit
Feral	11	Feral Charge	Now also has a Cat Form version on a 30-second cooldown
Feral	16	Shifting Power	Cat: instantly grants 40 Energy at a big Mana cost
Feral	16	Primal Bite	Bear: a 20 Rage attack with very high threat, chosen over Mangle
Feral	21	Leader of the Pack	Its critical strike bonus now covers all spells and attacks
Feral	31	Berserk	15 seconds in Bear or Cat Form: Fear immunity, and Primal Bite hits up to 3 targets
Restoration	11	Gift of the Earthmother	0.5 seconds off the global cooldown of three heals
Restoration	16	Swiftmend	Moved up to row 4, and no longer uses up the heal it rides on
Restoration	31	Wild Growth	A heal over time on the target's whole party, pets included

Rage, Energy and Mana are the resources a Druid spends, depending on the form. Feral gets two gold medal talents on its 16-point row, one for cats and one for bears.

Furor, a Restoration talent, now lets a Druid with 5 points in it build Energy, the resource Cat Form spends, outside Cat Form. Going into Bear Form throws all that Energy away, and Blizzard says that is there to stop "bear-weaving". It says the change also took away "power shifting", a playstyle some players prize, and Shifting Power brings it back "in a much more approachable way".

Compared: the post against our talent calculator today

Our talent calculator is built from the beta's own game files, now Forever build 1.60.1.70338. Every milestone talent in the two tables above is in it by name and row, Shifting Power included. Some of the beta's talent descriptions still read differently from Blizzard's post, so read the two side by side.

Blizzard's post said three Feral changes weren't in the beta yet: Shifting Power, Improved Shifting Power and Shredding Attacks moving up to row 3. All three are in the calculator now. Shredding Attacks sits on row 3, Shifting Power on row 4, and Improved Shifting Power, which needs it, on row 5. One gap: the beta's own description of Shifting Power has no readable Energy number, so the calculator shows a question mark where Blizzard's post says 40.

Our reading: a cat Druid plan built in the calculator now has every talent the post names. We refresh the calculator when a new beta build appears, and the Druid class page shows which Druid abilities are new since Classic Era, the re-released original game.

What they still can't do

Blizzard says both classes keep weaknesses.

Hunters deal damage only, though a pet can tank in solo and small-group play. They have the longest range of any class. They can't use ranged attacks inside 8 yards of an enemy, and they can't Stun or Interrupt, the moves that freeze an enemy or cut off its spell.
Druids can fill any role, but they can't snare (slow an enemy), Silence or Interrupt, and their crowd control, the moves that take an enemy out of a fight for a while, is weaker. Blizzard says they'll rely on others for the full toolkit in raids and dungeons.

Hunter and Druid come first. Blizzard says more class deep dives follow as the beta goes on.

WoW: Forever Priest and Warrior changes: Penance, Victory Rush, Rage

2026-10-10T00:00:00Z

Blizzard's Priest and Warrior class deep dive for World of Warcraft: Forever (WoW: Forever for short) went up on 30 September. Blizzard's post lists their ability and talent changes. The short version: every Priest gets Shadow Word: Death at level 32. Warriors no longer lose Rage to their own armor, and every Warrior gets Victory Rush at level 20.

The Priest is a spellcaster who heals, shields allies or deals Shadow damage. The Warrior is a melee fighter, built for close-up combat, who spends Rage, a resource that builds up in a fight. Blizzard says both classes may keep changing through the beta, the test version people can play before release. For the Hunter and the Druid, see our piece on that deep dive.

How do talents work in WoW: Forever?

Talents are upgrades you buy with points to shape a character inside their class, laid out in three trees for each of these classes. Blizzard says they start at level 10 and keep a familiar structure. The one-point milestone talents at 11, 21 and 31 points stay, and a new one joins at 16 points. The tables below list the milestone talents the post names.

What changes for Priests?

A Priest's three trees are Discipline (shields and support), Holy (healing) and Shadow (damage). Here are the baseline changes, the ones every Priest gets.

Ability	The change
Fear Ward	Every Priest gets it at level 20, whatever their race
Devouring Plague	Every Priest gets it at level 20, whatever their race
Divine Spirit	Baseline, learned at level 30
Shadow Word: Death	New for every Priest at level 32: instant Shadow damage, but the Priest takes 10% of their max health if the target survives
Prayer of Healing	Now heals the target's whole party and their pets, not the Priest's own
Renew	Can now be active from several Priests on the same target
Fade	Its threat reduction is doubled

Threat is how badly a monster wants to hit you. A cooldown is the wait before you can use an ability again.

What changes for Priest racial spells?

Every Priest race has two spells of its own, and Blizzard says it went over all of them again. Gnome Priests get two new ones.

Race	Spell	What it does now
Gnome	Confounding Flash	New at level 10: confuses up to 5 nearby enemies for 3 seconds
Gnome	Contingency Plan	New at level 20: a 30-second ward that shields and heals an ally who drops below 35% health
Dwarf	Chastise	Level 20: damages the target and pins it in place for 2 seconds, Humanoids, the game's person-shaped enemies, only
Human	Divine Grace	Level 10: an instant heal on an ally below 50% health that also clears Weakened Soul
Night Elf	Starshards	Much more damage, now on a 30-second cooldown
Night Elf	Elune's Grace	Cuts the chance of melee and ranged attacks hitting you by 50% for 15 seconds, or until 3 miss
Undead	Dark Sacrifice	Level 20: trades your own health for Mana over time

Desperate Prayer, Feedback, Hex of Weakness, Shadowguard and Touch of Weakness are unchanged. Weakened Soul is a lingering effect some Priest spells check for, and Mana is what a Priest spends to cast.

Priest milestone talents

Tree	Points	Talent	What it does
Discipline	16	Soul Warding	A shorter cooldown and a lower Mana cost on Power Word: Shield, the Priest's shield spell
Discipline	21	Penance	Cast over 2 seconds: damages an enemy or heals an ally every second, 12-second cooldown
Holy	16	Binding Heal	Heals the Priest and their target at once, with no cooldown
Holy	31	Prayer of Mending	A heal that jumps from ally to ally until it has healed 5 times
Shadow	16	Vampiric Embrace	Now lasts 30 seconds on a 1-minute cooldown

Other Priest talents in the post include Divine Aegis, where a critical heal, an extra-strong one, also leaves an absorb shield, a barrier that soaks up damage. Litany of Light refunds some Mana when you switch between healing spells. Devouring Contagion makes Devouring Plague jump to a new enemy when its target dies. Shadowform, a shadowy form a Priest takes on, now allows every non-healing spell while in it, and halves the Mana cost of Shadow spells.

Holy Precision is a talent built for healers. Blizzard says it's there so a healing Priest doesn't need hit chance on gear it isn't expected to wear. Lightwell and Improved Prayer of Healing are removed.

Our favourite is Shadow Word: Death. It's instant Shadow damage, but if the target survives you take 10% of your max health. On a 15-second cooldown, it grades your judgement every time.

What changes for Warriors?

A Warrior's three trees are Arms (weapon mastery), Fury (raw damage) and Protection (tanking with a shield). Tanking means drawing the enemy's attacks onto yourself. Stances are the fighting modes a Warrior switches between.

Start with Rage. Blizzard kept the old formula for Rage from taking damage, with one big change: armor is ignored. It now counts every hit as if your armor always cut its damage by 50%. Wearing armor no longer cuts the Rage you gain, and neither does a damage-absorbing shield like Power Word: Shield. Rage from dealing damage now depends on your weapon's speed. Critical strikes, the extra-hard hits, give 75% more Rage than normal ones in the post, and Blizzard's 1 October notes raise that to 100%.

Blizzard also says players are hitting some bugs with Rage generation in the beta. It's hunting the root cause, and that may take a couple of weeks. Its notes for the 8 October build then say several bugs in the Rage gained from taking damage are fixed, and that the typical Warrior or Druid should gain more Rage from taking damage.

Ability	The change
Tactical Mastery	Baseline at level 14: keep 10 Rage when changing stances
Victory Rush	Learned at level 20: an instant attack on a 30-second cooldown that heals you for 10% of your max health, unlocked for 20 seconds each time you kill a non-trivial enemy
Recklessness, Retaliation, Shield Wall	No longer share a cooldown
Retaliation and Shield Wall	Cooldown cut to 15 minutes
Rend	Its damage now scales strongly with Attack Power
Thunder Clap	Usable in Defensive Stance, with a 6-second cooldown and less threat
Battle Shout	A smaller Attack Power bonus, with Improved Battle Shout built in
Sunder Armor	Can be used even if the target has a more powerful Expose Armor, another armor-cutting effect, and its threat scales with Attack Power

Attack Power is the stat that makes melee hits land harder. Blizzard says Battle Shout was trimmed because both factions, the game's two sides, now have both Shaman and Paladin buffs. Shamans and Paladins are two more classes, and buffs are the helpful effects they cast.

Warrior milestone talents

Tree	Points	Talent	What it does
Arms	16	Spearing Strike	15 Rage, 20-second cooldown: a weapon hit that knocks the target off its mount, double damage on a mounted target, a Dragon or a Giant
Fury	16	Raging Blows	In the post: Whirlwind hits with both weapons when dual-wielding, and Cleave costs less Rage (since changed, more below)
Protection	16	Vanguard	Charge now works in Defensive Stance

In Arms, Weaponmaster replaces four talents. The four weapon talents for Axes, Maces, Swords and Polearms are gone, and this one talent gives a bonus based on the weapon you hold. Improved Slam moves from Fury to Arms, and Slam no longer delays your auto attack, the swing your weapon makes on its own.

In Fury, Bloodthirst no longer heals. It now grants 10% movement speed for 10 seconds. In the post, Boundless Rage raises your maximum Rage and Precision raises your chance to hit, though the beta's newest build drops both (more below). In Protection, Shield Specialization now has a chance to give 5 Rage on a block, up from 1. Bastion adds damage while a shield is equipped, and Focused Rage lowers the Rage cost of every offensive ability.

Our favourite is Victory Rush. Kill an enemy that counts, and for 20 seconds you can land a hit that heals you for 10% of your max health. That's welcome healing on a class Blizzard says can't easily recover from taking too much damage.

Compared: the post against our talent calculator today

Our talent calculator is built from the beta's own game files, now Forever build 1.60.1.70338 of 10 October. Every new Priest talent the post names is in it, on the row the post gives.

The Warrior's Fury and Protection trees have moved on since the post. Improved Cleave, Boundless Rage and Precision are gone. Furious Precision, which raises your chance to hit with your off-hand weapon, sits on row 3 of Fury, and Raging Blows now just lowers the Rage cost of Cleave and Whirlwind. Blood Craze no longer mentions Bloodthirst, and Dual Wield Specialization raises off-hand damage and Rage, not your chance to hit. Bastion is on row 6 and Focused Rage on row 5, the other way round from the post. Three more lines of the post place or name a talent differently from the calculator, so here is how we read them.

The post says	The calculator shows	Our reading
Vampiric Embrace moves to "row 3" as the 16-point talent	Row 4, the 16-point row	The row number looks like a slip, since row 4 is where the 16th point lands
Iron Will moves "to row 2 of Arms", in the Fury list	Row 1 of Protection	The calculator puts it in Protection, and row 2 of Fury now holds Lingering Rage, a new talent
"Unbridled Rage" gets a higher chance	Unbridled Wrath, on row 2 of Fury	We take this to be the same talent under its old name, though its text in the files doesn't have the post's 2 Rage for a two-handed weapon

Where the two differ, we go by the beta's own files. We refresh the calculator as new beta builds appear. The Priest class page and the Warrior class page show which of their abilities are new since Classic Era, the re-released original game.

What they still can't do

Blizzard says both classes keep weaknesses.

Priests are the most flexible healers, with both heals over time and direct heals, plus shields that soak damage. But they wear cloth armor and have few ways to escape. As Shadow, they deal strong damage over time but lack the full range of extra tools a class like the Warlock brings.
Warriors remain the masters of melee combat. They are unique among melee classes at steady damage to several enemies at once. But they lack easy ways to recover after taking too much damage.

Blizzard says it will keep reviewing how these changes play in dungeons, PvP (player versus player fights) and the open world.

World of Warcraft: Forever camping explained: campfire buffs and objects

2026-09-27T00:00:00Z

Camping in World of Warcraft: Forever turns the simple Cooking Fire into a Basic Campfire, says Blizzard's Deep Dive recap. Place one and it becomes a campsite: sit a few moments to get rested and pick up one-hour buffs, use vendors, repairs and profession workspaces, and let nearby players add up to three crafted objects.

The recap is dated 13 September. Our release date piece has launch day.

What does a Basic Campfire give you?

The campfire grows out of the Cooking Fire from the Cooking profession, one of the game's crafting skills. Placing one makes a campsite where players can:

Rest and take one-hour buffs. To get the buffs, you slow down, sit by the fire for a few moments and get rested.
Use vendors and repairs.
Use profession workspaces, the stations some crafting needs.
Refresh food buffs. Blizzard says those got a major update in Forever.

Our reading: it's a reason to stop on the road next to a stranger instead of racing them to the next herb, which is the whole pitch of the recap and a very old-school one.

Campsite objects compared: how they and their buffs work

A Basic Campfire takes up to three special crafted objects, added by nearby players. Each player can add one, and Blizzard says "those objects share a one-hour cooldown". Every profession has three objects, and a profession gives its own buff or utility whichever of its three you place.

These are the objects the recap names:

Profession	Object	What it does
Blacksmithing	Sharpening Wheel	Increases Attack Power
Tailoring	Faction Banner	Increases Spirit
Herbalism	Incense Candle	Increases Intellect
Alchemy	Alchemy Lab	Not stated in the recap
Leatherworking	Tanning Rack	Needed for more advanced Leatherworking recipes

One catch: Blizzard says the Sharpening Wheel, Faction Banner and Incense Candle effects are variants of buffs that some classes already give, and don't stack with them. Our reading: if your group already has that class buff, the matching object adds nothing on top.

Cooks can also learn upgraded Campfires that allow five or 10 objects to be placed at a camp, instead of the Basic Campfire's three.

Where do you learn campsite objects?

The first objects come once a profession reaches skill level 20. You learn them from special non-player characters who introduce you to camping, or from your profession trainer.
More advanced objects come from Blueprint recipes, which drop from specific dungeon bosses.

Professions are getting more depth too: Blizzard counts over 600 new recipes across professions and level ranges, and says crafted food has been adjusted and can give a small experience bonus and stat boosts. Leveling another character? Our Legacy system guide covers the account-wide rewards for that.

Does it matter where you camp?

Blizzard hints that it does. Its only word on it is to "choose your campsite carefully", because some parts of Azeroth, the game's world, suit a quiet rest better than others. It names no places.

What Blizzard hasn't said yet

The recap gives no buff sizes, no sit time, no cost or burn time for a campfire, and doesn't say whether you need Cooking to place a Basic Campfire. It doesn't say what the Alchemy Lab does, which bosses drop which Blueprint, or at what skill the second and third objects come. The other professions' objects aren't named. If Blizzard's development notes add any of that, it'll show up in our patch notes tracker.

Will your graphics card work with World of Warcraft: Forever? The cut-off

2026-09-27T00:00:00Z

World of Warcraft: Forever drops support for older graphics cards at launch, says Blizzard's GPU post. Your card has to be built on AMD Graphics Core Next 1 (2012), NVIDIA Maxwell (2014), Intel Skylake (2015) or something newer. Older cards need an upgrade before you can play.

The post is dated 17 September. Our release date piece has launch day.

Which graphics cards does Forever support?

A graphics card, or GPU, is the chip that draws the game on your screen. Each maker builds its cards in families, and a microarchitecture is the design one family shares. Forever needs one of these families, or a newer one:

AMD: Graphics Core Next 1, from 2012
NVIDIA: Maxwell, from 2014
Intel: Skylake, from 2015

Blizzard says most World of Warcraft players already have compatible hardware.

Blizzard's example cards, compared

Maker	Supported (example cards)	Not supported (example cards)
AMD	Radeon HD 7850 (2012)	Radeon HD 6950 (2010)
NVIDIA	GeForce GTX 9xx (the 900 series), GTX 750 and 750 Ti (2014)	GeForce GTX 760, 770 and 780, and GTX 8xxM (2014)
Intel	HD Graphics 530 (2015)	HD Graphics 6000 (2015)

The catch is in the supported column. Blizzard says those cards are "still well below the minimum requirements for the game." Our reading: clearing this cut-off isn't the same as meeting the minimum, so don't expect a supported card from that list to run it well.

Our reading of the NVIDIA row: the number on the box isn't the test. A GTX 750 Ti clears it while the bigger-numbered GTX 780 doesn't, so don't go by how big the number is. Look for your exact card in the table. If it isn't one of Blizzard's examples, the post doesn't settle it.

How do you check your graphics card in Windows?

Blizzard gives two ways:

Open Settings, select System, then Display, and choose Advanced display. It shows your card's make and model.
Open Device Manager and expand Display adapters to see the graphics hardware you have.

Why is Blizzard cutting older cards?

Forever gets a new visual look, and Blizzard says that look relies on a graphics feature cards picked up around 2012, "RGBA16F UAV support in compute shaders". It says the change also gives players a more consistent experience.

What Blizzard hasn't said yet

The post doesn't list the full minimum specs; it points to the Battle.net Shop for those. It says nothing about recommended specs or Macs, and it only explains how to check your card on Windows. Our patch notes tracker follows Blizzard's development notes.

World of Warcraft: Forever name reservation: 27 October to 3 November, and how two names work

2026-09-26T00:00:00Z

Early name reservation for World of Warcraft: Forever runs from 27 October to 3 November 2026, Blizzard's post of 21 September says, for "eligible upgrade purchases". Names go first come, first served, and none is guaranteed. Every character will have two names, and it's the full pair that has to be unique in your region.

Name reservation timeline: when it opens and closes

Date	What happens
27 October 2026	Early Name Reservation opens
3 November 2026	Early Name Reservation's last day

Which purchases count? The post doesn't say. It names "eligible upgrade purchases" and stops there, so we won't guess. The window is on our calendar, and our release date piece covers launch day.

How the two-name system works

Each character has two names, which Blizzard compares to a first name and a surname.

The pair is what counts. Somebody else taking the first name you love doesn't necessarily rule it out: two characters can share a first name as long as their full names are different.
Unique across your region, not one realm. Forever is realmless: a name is no longer tied to one realm, one of the separate game servers, so your full name has to be free in the whole region.
Shared surnames are fine. Blizzard's own example gives Asha, Thalen and Mira the same family-style second name, Brightvale. A guild could use a shared naming theme too, as long as each full name is free.

Will my name pass? A checklist

Is the full pair free in your region? Only the pair has to be unique.
Does it follow the code of conduct? Names still have to meet the in-game code of conduct for names.
Could it confuse people, pose as Blizzard or the World of Warcraft team, or clash with existing naming policies? Those may be restricted.
Does it use certain words, spellings or repeated-character patterns? Some of those may be restricted too.
Did you split a restricted word across the two names? Blizzard can check both halves together, so that won't necessarily get through.
Did you get there first? Reservation is first come, first served.

If the pair is taken or fails the rules, you pick another one, or roll the in-game random name generator.

What happens when a name breaks the rules

A Blizzard staff post of 24 September says the beta, the test version before launch, is getting forced name changes for characters that broke the naming policies. Some testers whose names were far outside Blizzard's code of conduct lost beta access altogether.

The post says the World of Warcraft development team carried out those actions itself, and each one was individually reviewed. Customer Service can't and won't help with appeals. The post adds that Blizzard's system for enforcing naming standards will come online "very shortly", and asks testers not to go poking at it, because that risks losing beta access too.

How to hide your second name

Press Escape to open the Game Menu.
Pick Options, then Nameplates.
Click the checkbox for "My Secondary Name".

Your second name no longer shows in the game world, but it still shows in chat.

Our take: easier names, one open question

Our reading is that two names make a favourite first name much easier to get, because nobody can own it outright anymore. The open question is who gets to reserve early. Blizzard's name post doesn't list the eligible purchases, so we'd plan a few backup pairs either way.

Planning the character itself? Our talent calculator and hunter pet reference help with that.

World of Warcraft: Forever Skyborne guide: Horde or Alliance, classes and racials

2026-10-08T00:00:00Z

The Skyborne, a playable race new to World of Warcraft: Forever, get one class that depends on the side you pick. Blizzard's post of 22 September says Horde Skyborne get the Shaman and Alliance Skyborne get the Mage. Both sides share the other four classes and three of their four racials, the abilities that come with the race, and both start on Zephras Isle, a new starting area and their home.

Zephras Isle covers levels 1 to 12. In Blizzard's story, exiled Highborne, an ancient line of elves, made a pact with wind spirits and built a civilization in Skywall, one of the elemental planes. The spirits have vanished, and you arrive to find that civilization in crisis.

Horde or Alliance compared: the two Skyborne side by side

	Windshaper Skyborne	High Order Skyborne
Side	Horde	Alliance
Class only this side gets	Shaman	Mage
Classes both sides get	Druid, Hunter, Rogue, Warrior	Druid, Hunter, Rogue, Warrior
Racial only this side gets	Skysight: 10% more run speed	Read Ley Line: 100% more Health and Mana regeneration
Racials both sides get	Walk on Air, Wind Blessed, Elemental Insight	Walk on Air, Wind Blessed, Elemental Insight
Where you start	Zephras Isle, levels 1 to 12	Zephras Isle, levels 1 to 12

Blizzard frames the split as two outlooks. Windshapers keep the elemental traditions. The High Order wants back the arcane knowledge their people lost, so they don't depend on the spirits.

Picking by class? Planning a Shaman or a Mage, our talent calculator has both. Planning a Hunter, our hunter pet reference lists the pet families. Skyborne Druids get new forms made just for the race.

Every Skyborne racial

Racials are abilities that come with a race. Here are all five, in Blizzard's own numbers.

Racial	Who gets it	What it does
Walk on Air	Both sides	Glide downward through the air for 10 seconds
Wind Blessed (passive)	Both sides	1% more melee, ranged and spellcasting Haste
Elemental Insight (passive)	Both sides	5% more damage to Elementals
Skysight	Horde only	An Elemental Blessing that adds 10% run speed
Read Ley Line	Alliance only	Activate a ley line for 100% more Health and Mana regeneration

Passive means it's always on. Haste makes attacks and spells come faster. Elementals are a kind of creature in the game.

What you can change about how they look

Two body types, each with 10 faces and the same nine skin colours, from sky blue to light peach to darker tones.

Body Type 1 has 21 hair styles and 13 facial hair options. Body Type 2 has 25 hair styles and six earring styles, in silver or gold. Both can wear feathers in their hair, face tattoos and a choice of two body tattoos, Zephyr and Wayfinder. A barber shop in the cities lets you change things later, for a little in-game coin.

Skyborne also get their own /dance, the emote your character does when you type it.

Will the Skyborne get Standard Definition models? Blizzard says early 2027

Forever lets you switch player characters between Standard Definition (SD) and High Definition (HD) models, two levels of detail for how a character looks. In Blizzard's post of 7 October, the team says it built that switch around the races from the original World of Warcraft, since many people are attached to those models. Our reading is that the Skyborne, being new, come only in HD for now.

Blizzard says it has heard feedback that the HD Skyborne can look jarring next to the SD models and the SD world, and it agrees. SD Skyborne characters are in development and arriving early 2027, along with SD versions of their Druid forms, the animal shapes a Druid can turn into. Blizzard says it looks forward to sharing more closer to that date.

The HD Skyborne Druid forms are getting a rework too. Blizzard's example makes them a bit less soft, with more detailed fur and adjusted colour saturation, so they don't clash with the look of other creatures in the world.

Our take: a small edge, and one open question

Our reading is that the stat racials are modest: 1% Haste and 5% more damage to one kind of creature won't decide who wins a fight. Pick the side for the class you want.

The open question is access. Our release date piece covers what Forever's paid upgrade packs include and what the Blizzard posts we've read don't say about playing a Skyborne without one.

WoW: Forever Legacy System: can one character reach the 16-point cap?

2026-09-25T00:00:00Z

World of Warcraft: Forever gives every account a Legacy System, and Blizzard says every perk in it can be unlocked on a single character. Blizzard's post of 23 September says each character can spend up to 16 Legacy Points at launch. It also says one character can earn up to 29.

Legacy Points are the system's account-wide points: earn one on any character and all your characters can use it, except in Hardcore (covered below), where death carries lasting consequences. An alt is a second character on the same account.

How do you earn Legacy Points?

You finish Legacy Challenges, which work like achievements tied to how a character grows. Each one is worth one point, and there are 65 in six groups. Your first point switches the system on. For most players that's reaching level 25. Taking a primary crafting profession to 150, or exploring the whole world map, also does it. Then open it from the shield icon on the menu, or press Y, the default key.

Group	Points	What earns them
Classes	27	Reach level 25, 45 and 60 with each class
Tradeskills	18	Take each primary crafting profession to 150, 225 and 300 skill
PvP (player versus player)	12	Five PvP ranks (5), Exalted with each Battleground reputation (4), and three Field of Honor season quests (3)
Adventure	2	Explore the whole world map on one character, and finish the Lord Valthalak dungeon set questline
Dungeons	3	Beat the last boss of every dungeon in three level bands: 15 to 25, 26 to 45 and 46 to 60
Raids	3	Beat Onyxia, all 13 bosses of Hyjal Summit, and all 8 of the Barrow Deeps

Three notes on that table. Tradeskills count only primary crafting professions, not gathering ones. The five PvP (player versus player) ranks are ranks 3, 7, 10, 13 and 14, and the three season quests are the ones for weeks 4, 7 and 10 of the Field of Honor PvP season's quest track. Exalted is one of the game's reputation levels, and there is one challenge for each Battleground reputation.

Can one character reach the 16-point cap?

Yes, but how you play decides how. Each character can spend at most 16 points at launch, however many your account holds. Blizzard gives two reasons. New players won't be too far behind to catch up, and 16 is reachable on one character, so alts aren't required.

Blizzard's own tally for one character is 3 from levelling, up to 6 from tradeskills, 12 from PvP, 2 from Adventure and 6 from dungeons and raids. That makes 29. Our reading is that the 6 means two primary crafting professions taken to 300, since each is worth 3.

Our maths, from that tally, for a one-character player:

How you play	Points	Reaches 16?
Level to 60, two crafting professions to 300, both Adventure challenges, all three dungeon bands	14	No, 2 short
The same, plus 2 of the 3 raid challenges	16	Yes, exactly
The same, plus all 3 raid challenges	17	Yes, 1 spare
Level to 60 and all 12 PvP challenges	15	No, 1 short (add any one more)
Level to 60, one crafting and one gathering profession, all dungeons, raids and Adventure	14	No, 2 short. Only PvP is left to fill it

Our maths also says this: skip PvP and the most one character can collect is 17, so you can miss only one point. Miss a raid and every other challenge becomes a must. If you love PvP, it covers most of the cap by itself. If our two-profession reading holds, we'd make both professions crafting ones, because a gathering one earns nothing here.

What can you spend Legacy Points on?

Perks, sorted into three trees, the branching menus you spend points in. The points belong to your account, and each character spends up to 16 of them on its own perks, independently of your other characters. Blizzard's post doesn't list what each perk costs. Wowhead, the big community database, has a guide and a Legacy calculator for planning a build.

Tree	Perk	What it does
Professions	Working Overtime	Better odds of a skill point in every tradeskill, including skills only some classes have, like Lockpicking
Professions	Bountiful Harvest	Helps you find extra Scarce resources while mining, gathering herbs or skinning
Professions	Bartering	Vendor items cost less gold
Professions	Performance bonus	Sometimes more Merchant's Favor from the two new trade factions
Professions	Master Chef	A chance for cooking recipes to make extra
Professions	Luremaster	A chance to catch extra fish
Professions	Dedicated Study	A daily boost to level tradeskills faster, or free Elemental Essences once all are at 300
Adventure	Well Rested	A higher cap on rested experience, and it builds faster
Adventure	Thrill of Adventure	A little health and mana back after each kill that isn't trivial
Adventure	High Alert	Better stealth detection outside Battlegrounds
Adventure	Field Guide	Cuts the one-hour wait between placing camping features
Adventure	Field Medicine	Shortens Recently Bandaged, the wait between bandages, except in dungeons, raids and Battlegrounds
Adventure	Talented	Unlock talent points up to 5 levels lower than normal
Adventure	Frequent Flier	Cheaper, faster flights
Resourcefulness	Gourmand	Food buffs last longer
Resourcefulness	The Quick and the Dead	Dead players run back to their body faster, and group buffs cost nothing after you're revived
Resourcefulness	Reinforce	Less durability damage to your gear when you die
Resourcefulness	For Great Honor	More Honor from PvP
Resourcefulness	Permanence	Party, raid and camping buffs last longer
Resourcefulness	Diplomat	More reputation gained
Resourcefulness	Reagent Economy	Class abilities stop needing purchasable reagents, and tier 1 camping features need no materials to craft

Two terms from that table are new to Forever. Merchant's Favor comes from the Azeroth Commerce Authority and Durotar Supply and Logistics (Blizzard calls them two new Alliance and Horde factions). Camping is a new system: Blizzard's Deep Dive recap says placing a campfire creates a campsite where players can rest and get benefits such as vendors, repairs and one-hour buffs.

Talents are upgrades a character buys with talent points as it levels. Our talent calculator doesn't include the Talented perk. With it, our reading is that a build can come up to 5 levels sooner than the level the calculator shows.

What are Legacy Rewards?

Account unlocks. Legacy Points build up across your whole account, and the total unlocks toys and cosmetic items. There are four at launch, and Blizzard plans more with each content update:

Replica Ironforge Air Rifle, a toy gun that stuns other players and keeps score.
Spectral Bear Cub, a pet, which Blizzard says was inspired by the Dwarven Hunter, a character in Forever's cinematic, and his companion.
Spectral Bear Tabard, a tabard, the cloth worn over armour.
Reins of the Spectral Bear, a mount, the animal you ride.

How does Hardcore change it?

Hardcore, a mode where death carries lasting consequences, is one of Forever's rulesets, the kinds of world a character can live in, and it isn't there at launch. When it comes, challenges you finished elsewhere won't show up in it. A challenge finished in Hardcore counts in every other ruleset too. PvP challenges can't be done there, so Blizzard says Hardcore will launch with 12 challenges of its own.

Our rulesets piece covers all four rulesets.

Our take: earned by playing, and capped

We like this. Every point in Blizzard's post comes from playing: levelling, crafting, fighting, exploring. Nothing in the post mentions buying one. Blizzard says the 16-point cap keeps new players from falling too far behind to catch up. Our reading is that it's the right call, because a veteran with a dozen alts still can't spend more than 16 on any one character at launch.

We read the perks as modest. Cheaper flights, longer food buffs, no more buying reagents for class abilities. We'd call that respect for a player's time rather than a power race. Blizzard plans new challenges and perks with each content release, and new trees later. Whether future perks stay this modest is the open question. For the launch date, see our release date piece.

WoW: Forever rulesets: which to pick, and can you play with friends

2026-09-25T00:00:00Z

World of Warcraft: Forever moves away from the realm list, the old screen where you picked a server before you made a character. Each character picks a ruleset instead, which is a set of rules for how you want to play. Blizzard's post of 21 September names four. Choose with care: characters can't freely hop between rulesets, and friends on different ones can't group.

The four rulesets, side by side

Normal is the baseline ruleset, the plain version of the game where fighting other players is something you opt into. PvP, short for player versus player, where players fight each other rather than the game, is for people who want every trip into contested ground, the parts of the world where both sides roam, to carry more danger.

Roleplaying is for people who want to lean into the fantasy of Azeroth, the world the game is set in, and find others who do too. Hardcore, a mode where death carries lasting consequences, will be available sometime after launch.

Ruleset	What it's for	Characters on both factions?
Normal	Exploring, questing and working together, with player fights when you choose them	Yes
PvP	More danger and more fights with other players out in the world	No, one faction only
Roleplaying	Leaning into the fantasy and finding like-minded players	Yes
Hardcore	The hardest challenge, where death carries lasting consequences. Not at launch	Yes

Blizzard describes each ruleset as working like "a broad player ecosystem" rather than a single server. For a second read, MMORPG.com, which is a news site about online role-playing games, has its own piece on the ruleset choices.

Can I play with friends on a different ruleset?

For grouping, dungeons and raids, only if you pick the same one. Settle this table before launch.

Your friend is on	Group, dungeons and raids together?
Your ruleset and your faction	Yes
Your ruleset, the other faction	No, Horde and Alliance still can't group
A different ruleset	No, cross-ruleset grouping isn't supported

Battlegrounds, the game's team matches where players fight each other, work differently. Blizzard says they may include players from other rulesets, except Hardcore, which stays separate. Our reading is that this helps fill matches. Blizzard's post doesn't say you can sign up for one with a friend on another ruleset, so we wouldn't plan on it.

There is also a language setting, so you run into players who share your language. Press Escape, pick Options, then Languages and Social under the System heading, then set Preferred Online Language. It covers every character on your account. Once set, it can't be changed again for 24 hours.

The PvP catch: you pick one side

On the PvP ruleset you can only make characters for one faction. Make an Alliance character there and you can't make a Horde one there, and the other way round. Normal, Roleplaying and Hardcore let you play both sides.

Blizzard also says Forever will have systems intended to help keep Horde and Alliance numbers closer on PvP. It points to the approach it used in Season of Discovery, where making new characters on one faction could be limited for a while when the balance needed help.

Can I switch rulesets later?

Not freely. To play under a different ruleset, you make a new character in it. Blizzard names one exception, and it's for Hardcore. When it arrives, Hardcore characters live in a fully closed world of their own, but a Hardcore character that dies can move to another ruleset, PvP included.

Your collections, the things your account has gathered, and Legacy Points, the game's account-wide progress points, carry across rulesets, with Hardcore handled differently. Progress, collections and rewards earned there can become available elsewhere, but progress from other rulesets won't flow back into Hardcore.

Our take: fewer wrong turns, fewer names

Blizzard says the realmless setup is meant to reduce the pressure of choosing the right launch realm. Our reading is that this goes after a real headache. We think picking a server was often a bet made before you knew who you'd play with. Now the choice is about how you want to play, which we'd guess is the part most people already know on day one.

Our worry is losing something this site is openly fond of: servers with names, which in our experience gave guilds, the player-run clubs, and rivals a reputation you could learn. Blizzard says it doesn't want a place that "feels anonymous", and wants the world to feel "active and lived in". Whether a space that big still feels like a neighbourhood is something we don't think any post can settle, and we'll judge it when people are playing.

The one-faction rule on PvP reads to us as a fair price for a war worth fighting. We also expect it to be the rule most likely to split a group of friends, so agree on a side before launch on 4 November.

When is Hardcore coming, and what's next?

Blizzard gives no date for Hardcore beyond "sometime after launch". Until then, three dates matter. The beta, a test version people can play before release, runs through 21 October, which Blizzard calls the last full day of testing.

Forever launches on 4 November 2026, and Blizzard's panel recap says new raids unlock on 9 December. Our release date piece covers the launch hour. The beta and the December raids sit on our calendar, and the launch sits on our release tracker.

While you wait, two of our tools are built from the beta's own game data. The talent calculator plans talents, the upgrades a character buys with talent points as it levels. The hunter pet reference covers the animal companions of the Hunter, one of the game's playable classes.

WoW: Forever release date is 4 November, beta starts 17 September

2026-09-25T00:00:00Z

World of Warcraft: Forever launches on 4 November 2026 at 3:00 p.m. Pacific, worldwide, per Blizzard's announcement and its panel recap. The beta (the test version) runs until 21 October. You don't buy the game itself: it comes with a World of Warcraft subscription or with Game Time, which is subscription time paid for up front.

The dates Blizzard has given

What	When	Blizzard's own wording
Beta	17 September to 21 October 2026	"The beta will be available through October 21, the last full day of testing"
Friend invite codes sent	From 20 October 2026	"Codes will be delivered by email beginning October 20, 2026, PST"
Launch	4 November 2026, 3:00 p.m. PST (23:00 UTC, our maths)	"globally on November 4, 2026, at 3:00 p.m. PST"
Invited friends can play	4 to 11 November 2026	"during launch week, from November 4 through November 11, 2026, PST"
First new raids	9 December 2026	"New raids unlock on December 9"

Where Blizzard's wording carries no year, the year is ours. Early name reservation has its own row on our calendar.

Converting the launch hour, and this part is our maths rather than Blizzard's. Clocks on the US west coast go back an hour on 1 November, so launch day falls on Pacific Standard Time. That makes 3:00 p.m. PST 23:00 UTC, 6:00 p.m. in New York, 11:00 p.m. in London, and midnight going into 5 November in Paris. Blizzard's announcement wrote the hour as PDT once and PST once. The panel recap and the 24 September post, the other two that give the launch hour, both say PST, which is the label that matches the date.

What Forever is

Blizzard calls it a permanent home that sits alongside modern World of Warcraft and WoW Classic (the re-released original game). It says Forever is neither a mode, nor a season, nor another version of Classic. The story sits after Warcraft III Reforged: Forsaken Kingdom and before Molten Core. Players go back to the original continents, Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, and level to 60.

The design rules are blunt about what is missing: no flying mounts and no level scaling (monsters quietly adjusting to your level). Blizzard's four stated pillars are being approachable and familiar, treating the world as the main character, putting the journey before the destination, and protecting the social side of the game.

Watch the panel yourself

Blizzard's panel recap embeds the BlizzCon replay (BlizzCon is Blizzard's own convention), and the recording below is that same one: "World of Warcraft: Forever - What's Next Panel | BlizzCon 2026", published on the World of Warcraft YouTube channel.

What is in it

More than a thousand new quests are woven through the level 1 to 60 journey, and Blizzard names four places to go.

Hyjal deals with the aftermath of Archimonde's defeat. Shen'dralas is a hidden mystery between Mulgore and Desolace. The Riverglades is a frontier of rivers and trade routes with more than 150 quests, across much of what Blizzard calls the mid-30s to mid-40s experience. Zephras Isle (a starting area in the sky) covers levels 1 to 12.

Zephras Isle is home to the Skyborne, a new playable race. You pick a Skyborne character's side when you make it, and the side decides one class: Horde Skyborne get the Shaman, which Blizzard ties to elemental traditions, and Alliance Skyborne get the Mage, tied to an arcane legacy. Both sides can also play Warriors, Hunters, Rogues and Druids.

There are nine new dungeons, and eight are named: the Hall of Thanes beneath Ironforge, the Ruins of Lordaeron, the City of Dalaran, Blackmaw Hold, the Drowned City, Krol'dok Stronghold, Alcaz Prison and the Shaper's Terrace.

Two raids are named (the Barrow Deeps, planned as a challenge for ten players at the level cap, and Hyjal Summit, built for twenty). Across the two, Blizzard names new tier sets and a legendary reward it has not detailed.

For player versus player fights there is a new 15 versus 15 Battleground (on the Darkspear Islands), and Blizzard says updates to that side of the game carry on after launch.

Blizzard names two new systems among others. It pitches Legacy progression at players who love levelling alternate characters; our Legacy System piece covers how it works for a player with just one. Camping, which is new, lets you build a campfire out in the world so other players can stop by, help through their professions and share campsite buffs. Transmog is opt-in. There are also modern and Classic visual presets, high and standard definition character models, and controller support.

What it means for your wallet

Blizzard names three optional digital packs (our reading: Heroic in the first name is a product label, not a difficulty) plus a physical Collector's Edition.

Edition	What it adds
Skyborne Heroic Pack	The Skyborne race and the Zephras Isle start, Early Name Reservation, the Cerulean Prideclaw ground mount, cosmetics, housing decor, one Invite-A-Friend Launch Code
Skyborne Epic Pack	Everything above, plus beta access from 17 September, 30 days of Game Time from 4 November, more cosmetics, pets, tabards, and three Invite-A-Friend Launch Codes in total
Warcraft Forever Collection, limited time	Everything above, plus Warcraft III: Reforged, its Forsaken Kingdom campaign, and Forsaken and Human figurine decor for housing in modern World of Warcraft
Collector's Edition	A physical box from the Blizzard Gear Store and some retailers: a Warcraft Forever Collection code, a 13-inch Dwarf and Bear statue, a Zephras Isle mousepad, art prints, pins and a journal

Each digital pack starts with everything in the one above it. Blizzard's 24 September post adds that orders from its Collector's Edition restock are expected to ship in February 2027, after launch, with a limit of one per household on its store. No Blizzard post we read gives a price for any of them, that one included.

Our reading of that table, in three parts. First, the good news, and it is genuinely good: anyone already paying to play owes nothing extra on 4 November. Nothing Blizzard lists in those packs is described as a stat, damage or gear boost, and that is worth saying out loud.

Second, that is still not the same as saying the packs are all paint. The base pack carries a playable race, and Blizzard's panel recap says the Skyborne come with class access that depends on the side you pick, plus racial abilities of their own. Whether those abilities are any stronger than another race's is a thing none of the posts we read says, so we are not saying it either. What we will say is that a playable race reaches into how a character plays, and calling these packs cosmetic would be wrong.

Third, the Cerulean Prideclaw. It comes with the base pack, and Blizzard's own line says players will need to purchase the riding skill in-game to access and use the mount. So it is a mount you paid real money for, with a second purchase inside the game between you and riding it. A small thing, and the kind of small thing that reads badly on launch day.

And the question none of the posts we read answers. Blizzard lists Skyborne access as a pack benefit, and the beta includes the Skyborne and Zephras Isle. None of the Blizzard posts we read, the latest from 24 September, says whether they can be reached after launch without buying a pack. That is the question we would put to Blizzard.

What comes after launch

New raids arrive on 9 December. Past that Blizzard lists more raids and dungeons, player versus player updates, more world content, more quests through the 1 to 60 journey, and a revamped iconic raid (Blizzard does not say which). None of those has a date.

It also lists Hardcore. Forever moves away from picking a realm: each character picks a ruleset instead, which is the kind of world it lives in, and Hardcore is the one where death carries lasting consequences. Blizzard's ruleset post says Hardcore arrives sometime after launch, and that a Hardcore character who dies can move to another ruleset, player versus player included. Our rulesets piece covers all four rulesets.

The beta, the invite codes, the launch and the December raids are on our calendar, and the launch is on our release tracker too. For the beta itself, see our talent calculator, hunter pet reference and patch notes.

RuneFest 2026 is at the Birmingham NEC on 3 and 4 October, and the Chicago show is a different event

2026-09-13T00:00:00Z

RuneFest 2026 runs on 3 and 4 October at the Birmingham NEC, and Jagex named that venue on 15 January 2026 in the release that opened its 25th-year plans. RuneFest is Jagex's own fan event for RuneScape, a long-running fantasy world people play online together. If you came looking for a Chicago show, that is a different event.

Where is RuneFest 2026?

The Birmingham NEC. Jagex's release of 15 January 2026 puts RuneFest 2026 "at the Birmingham NEC", gives the dates as October 3 and 4, and says the event doubles in size from RuneFest 2025 to hold 6,000 fans.

If you have seen Birmingham mentioned, that is the right city. Our reading is that the venue is easy to miss because RuneScape's own news post about the event, dated 17 April 2026, never names a place at all. It gives the dates, the tickets and the plans, and leaves the venue out. The venue was already three months old by then, and it sits in a Jagex press release rather than in that game news post.

The NEC is not new ground for the event either. When Jagex moved RuneFest 2025, its post of 3 July 2024 said it would host "RuneFest at the NEC in Birmingham, UK on March 1st-2nd, 2025". Same site, the next RuneFest along.

When is RuneFest 2026?

3 and 4 October, which is a Saturday and a Sunday. Both pages agree: Jagex's January release gives October 3 and 4, and RuneScape's post of 17 April says "This October 3rd & 4th". Neither one gives a start time for either day.

What is the Chicago event, then?

There is a real Jagex event in Chicago this year, and it is not this one. The same January release announced Deadman All-Stars Live at the Rosemont Theatre on 20 June. Deadman is a competitive version of Old School RuneScape, and the release calls this an elite Deadman Mode competition. It says top content creators and competitors will battle it out, with the creator Solomission.

The release says that would happen in front of a theatre audience and a livestream. Two events, two countries, two different months. If you searched for the Chicago one and landed on October dates, that is why.

How much are RuneFest 2026 tickets?

Standard tickets are GBP 210 and Gold Tier tickets are GBP 375, in both cases plus what Jagex calls a platform booking fee. The 17 April post says tickets were due to go live on Thursday 30 April at 16:00 BST, and Jagex's January release said they would be sold through RuneFest.com. We have not found a publisher page saying whether any are left, so we are not going to guess.

A standard ticket covers both days and comes with a goodie bag. Gold Tier adds an upgraded bag with a figurine, early access to the merch store, 15% off merch at the event, reserved seating at the front of the main stage, and priority booking for LAN sessions and meet and greets.

This site is hard on paid power, so it is worth being as plain when something looks like the opposite: nothing Jagex lists for Gold Tier is game power. Every one of the five perks above is a real-world thing. The April post says the standard bag is packed with exclusive gifts "including some 25th anniversary surprises", and never says what those are. So we cannot tell you either bag holds nothing for Gielinor, the world RuneScape is set in, only that nothing Jagex names is. That is the version of a premium tier we have no argument with. Jagex also writes in the April post: "We do not make our events or set ticket prices for profit in any way." That is its claim rather than ours, and it is a claim worth holding it to.

What is actually happening at the event?

Jagex's January release describes two permanent stages of reveals and developer sessions, plus meet and greets with staff and creators. RuneScape's April post fills that in: a second stage running all weekend for developer panels and question sessions, and the return of the props from last year, including the Lumby gates, the Grand Exchange and the Varrock fountain. Those are places in the game, rebuilt in the real world.

Two things there are worth calling out. The Skill Chips come back in new versions, 8 brand new challenges built on the game's skills, plus a final reward chip for finishing all eight. And the event is running quests, which the post says it has never done at RuneFest before, with quest points and a hiscore table for them, the same way the game tracks its own story missions.

Our take: two Jagex events, months apart, and why the search is a mess

	RuneFest 2026	Deadman All-Stars Live
Dates	3-4 October 2026	20 June 2026, already past
Place	Birmingham NEC, UK	Rosemont Theatre, Chicago, US
What it is	Jagex's fan event, two stages of reveals and developer sessions	The release calls it an elite Deadman Mode competition, and says it will see top content creators and competitors battle it out, with Solomission
Announced	Jagex release, 15 January 2026	The same release

Both were announced in one press release in January, and after that they went their separate ways. RuneFest got its own game news post in April with the tickets and the plans in it, and that post never says where the event is. Deadman All-Stars Live has no equivalent post on the first page of RuneScape's events news list, which is as far as we looked.

Jagex gives RuneFest 6,000 fans, and gives no capacity at all for the Chicago show in anything we read. RuneFest's venue sits on a corporate site three months upstream of the April post, and the other event's only home in what we read is that same release. That events list also carries a 25 Years of RuneScape entry dated 15 January 2026 that we did not open, so we cannot tell you whether the venue turns up in game news somewhere we did not look. Our reading is that the April post leaving the venue out is enough on its own to mix the two cities up, and that nobody is being misled: a publisher can fix this by repeating itself once, in the post a player actually reads.

Havenhythe Part II comes out 28 September, and RuneScape's own preview gives no launch time

2026-09-06T00:00:00Z

Havenhythe Part II arrives on 28 September 2026, and that is the only date RuneScape's own September preview of 3 September puts on it. The post gives no launch time. Havenhythe is an island in RuneScape, which is a long-running fantasy world people play online together, and the game added it back in March.

When does Havenhythe Part II come out?

28 September, and that is the one date the post gives it. The post writes "September 28" and no year; 2026 is ours, off its own dateline of 3 September 2026. The post's own framing is that September is "predominantly about" seeing out the remaining weeks of Leagues II: EQUILIBRIUM, which is a temporary game mode with its own fresh characters and rules, "before transitioning into Havenhythe Part II, which launches on September 28".

Our reading is that this makes Havenhythe Part II the month's headline, because the post lists two further updates as "two other dedicated updates" and puts this one ahead of them.

What is Havenhythe?

An island, and the game's own announcement when it arrived is much more forthcoming than the September preview is. The post of 23 March 2026 calls Havenhythe "a brand new landmass" and places it east of Morytania, which is one of the regions of the game's map. It describes the island as "a quiet and mysterious place with a long history behind it".

That first release is the part with the detail in it. It opened with an introductory quest, which is one of the game's story missions, called Visions of Havenhythe, free to play and with no requirements. It stretched Hunter, one of the game's skills, up to level 110 for paying members. It added fish farming for members, between Fishing levels 45 and 84, and a couple of new boss fights the post aims at early to mid levels.

Your first stop is Wendlewick, described there as "a small village that sits along the island's shoreline". The story starts with a vision and works toward what that post calls "a growing threat known as The Sanguine".

Worth saying plainly, because the September preview does not: that March post said the island was built to keep growing, with "more stories, activities and discoveries" added across the year. Our reading is that Part II is the next of those. Neither post says what is in it.

What time does Havenhythe Part II release?

The post does not say. It names the day and no hour, and no time zone either. We are not going to guess one. If a publisher page puts a time on it, it will appear on our cross-game calendar with the source beside it.

Does Leagues II end when Havenhythe Part II starts?

The post gives no end date for Leagues II. What it says is that September is about seeing out its "remaining weeks" before the move into Havenhythe Part II on the 28th. Our reading is that the two sit close together in the month. The post never says they land on the same day, and neither do we.

What else is coming to RuneScape in September 2026?

Two more updates, one separate game's full release, and a fan event just after the month ends. In date order, as far as the post dates them at all.

An Engine Update is "coming next week", which from a post dated 3 September is the week of 7 September, and that is our maths rather than the post's. An engine update changes the software underneath the game rather than the content in it. The post says this one carries "a beta for Vulkan", a different way for a game to draw itself, which we wrote about separately, plus "a few other in-game changes that were not previously possible". It does not say what those changes are.

RuneScape: Dragonwilds 1.0 launches on 15 September. That is a separate game carrying the RuneScape name, and 1.0 is the label for a finished release. We have covered that one too.

The Deep Clean update lands in "week four of September", which is as close to a date as the post gets. It is a tidy-up. The post lists trimmed login messages, the removal of "a lot of" what it calls "egregious info box popups that get in the way of gameplay", and icons unified so interfaces match. It also refreshes the look of level 99 skillcapes, which are the capes a player gets for taking a skill to 99, and the health bars on "all core bosses", which is the post's phrase for the game's main boss fights. And it brings bank PIN entry by keyboard, for anyone using a Jagex account. A bank PIN is the code that guards a player's stored items.

RuneFest follows on 3 and 4 October. The post calls it "the biggest in-person RuneScape event of the year". It names no venue and says nothing about tickets.

One human note from the same post: there is no video version of the Month Ahead today. The post puts that down to "a variety of factors", one of them that "Jagex is moving offices and our studio has been packed up". The team says the video format is coming back.

Who is 28 September actually for?

The post is written for people already playing. Here is the same information sorted by where a reader is standing, which is the view it does not offer.

Where you are	What the post gives you	What it does not
Never played	A date, 28 September, and the sense that the month builds toward it. The March post fills in what the island is.	Anything at all about what is in Part II, or whether a new player can start there.
Played years ago, thinking of coming back	The Deep Clean, in week four: fewer login messages, fewer popups in the way of play, matching icons, refreshed level 99 skillcapes and boss health bars, and a bank PIN you can type, on a Jagex account. Our reading is that these are the changes a returning player notices first.	A day for the Deep Clean. "Week four of September" is the whole of it.
Playing Leagues II right now	The order of events. Leagues II is seen out, then Havenhythe Part II on the 28th.	The Leagues end date, which is the number you actually need.

Our take

This is a preview doing the honest version of its job. It dates its headline update 25 days ahead, which is our maths off the post's own date, and where it cannot give a day it says so in plain words: "next week", "week four of September". That is better than a fake precision, and it is worth saying so, because the opposite is common.

The gap is the one a current player feels. The post dates the thing that starts and never dates the thing that ends, and if you are partway through Leagues II with rewards still to earn, the Leagues end date is the number you came for. It is not in this post.

The Deep Clean is the part we would cheer for. Trimmed login messages, popups removed, and a bank PIN you can type are not content, and none of it will make a trailer. They are the small daily frictions of an old game, and clearing them out is a studio treating a player's evening as worth something. The post gives the keyboard PIN an exclamation mark. Our reading is that it earned one.

The September and October dates above, 15 September, 28 September and 3 and 4 October, are on our cross-game calendar, with the source on each row.

RuneScape Vulkan beta opens 7 September on Windows: how to switch it on, and what it should fix

2026-09-13T00:00:00Z

RuneScape, which is a long-running fantasy world people play online together, is changing how it draws itself. The game's news post of 4 September 2026 says a voluntary open beta of its Vulkan renderer starts on Windows on Monday 7 September, and you switch it on yourself from the Graphics Mode setting.

The post is signed by the RuneTek team, which is the name it gives the group that builds the game's engine. It never says how long the beta runs.

When does the RuneScape Vulkan beta start?

Monday 7 September, on Windows, and taking part is your choice. The post describes this as the first step of what it calls a staggered rollout, chosen because shipping a new rendering backend is high risk. A rendering backend is the part of a game that turns the world into the picture on your screen.

The beta is there to collect data. The post says it will give the team a lot of information about remaining crash, visual and performance issues, and that only once the team is happy those are resolved will it start offering the Vulkan version as the default through the launcher.

How do I switch RuneScape to Vulkan?

The post's own instructions, and it says to do this once the beta launches. We have split them into four steps:

At startup, open the options menu. Click the options button in the bottom left corner, or use the RuneScape then Options shortcut on the menu bar at the login screen.
Find the Graphics Mode setting.
Switch it to "Vulkan".
Restart the client, so the launcher can download the new program file.

Our guess is that the last step is the one people will miss. The post says you have to restart the client after making the change so that the launcher can download the new executable, which is the program file it runs.

What is Vulkan, and what does it replace?

The game currently uses OpenGL, which is the older way it can talk to your graphics chip. Vulkan is a newer one, built by the Khronos Group, and the post says it works across platforms rather than being tied to one.

The post's own comparison is a car. OpenGL is the automatic and Vulkan is the manual: both get you there, but the manual gives more control over gear changes and fuel economy. In practice that means the engineers get to decide more of what the graphics chip does, and have to be more precise about it.

Vulkan arrived around 2016. OpenGL's last major update was version 4.6 in 2017, and the post says it has, in its words, essentially been "put out to pasture".

What will I actually notice?

Less than the headline suggests, at first, and the post says so itself. For launch it says the goal is for Vulkan to be at least as good as, or better than, OpenGL on stability and raw performance. Parity is the floor it sets.

The most immediate change the post says you may notice is streaming performance, and it means the technical kind rather than the Twitch kind. Streaming here is the game loading the world in and out around you as you move. Better streaming means faster loading and less stuttering when you run across the map.

The post ties that to threads. Multi-threading is a computer spreading work across several parts of its processor at once instead of queueing it all through one. It says the cause is OpenGL's threading model "not being up to snuff", and that for the most part this is behind certain stuttering issues that have, in its words, "somewhat plagued" the game over the years. Vulkan, it says, is built for multi-threading from the ground up.

Why now?

Because the old road is closing. The post says OpenGL is no longer actively developed and is essentially deprecated, that many platforms are stuck on older versions of it, and that Apple and other platforms have warned developers they may remove OpenGL support altogether in future operating system versions. It says vendors such as Nvidia and AMD are already winding support down in various ways.

There is a second reason, and it is about the team's own resources. The post says waiting this long let the OpenGL work mature to the point where very little engineering time goes into it, and that this is what lets it support two renderers in the live game at once without a significant hit to those resources.

Timeline: one real date, and four promises with none

This is the part worth keeping. The post narrates a full rollout in prose, but it commits to exactly one day. Everything else is an order of events with no calendar attached to it. Our reading is that this is the honest way to write it, and also the reason not to plan around any row below the first one.

Step	Platform	What the post dates
Voluntary open beta	Windows	Monday 7 September
Vulkan becomes the default renderer	Through the launcher; that sentence names no platform	No date. Conditional on the team being happy that crash, visual and performance issues are resolved
Rollout reaches mobile	Android first	No date. Stated as after desktop
Rollout reaches Apple devices	OSX and iOS	No date. Stated as after Android
OpenGL becomes the fallback	Any device without Vulkan	No date. Stated as happening once Vulkan is the default

Four of the five rows are sequenced against each other and pinned to nothing. That is not a complaint. Our reading is that this is what a staggered rollout looks like when a team will not promise a date it might miss, and we would rather have this than four dates that slip.

What happens to OpenGL, and to Mac and phones?

OpenGL does not disappear immediately. The post says that once Vulkan becomes the default renderer, OpenGL mode becomes the compatibility mode, or the fallback for a device that cannot run Vulkan. On minimum specification devices it hedges: it says those should theoretically guarantee Vulkan 1.1 support, and we are keeping the hedge because the post did.

Apple is the awkward one. The post says Apple does not officially support Vulkan and uses its own low-level graphics interface called Metal instead. The bridge is an open source translation layer, which is a piece of software that converts one set of graphics instructions into another, called Molten in the post's own spelling. It says Molten maps the Vulkan code into Metal code on the fly with little extra overhead, and that the Khronos Group maintains it, so future support is probably guaranteed.

Elsewhere, the post lists three places where Vulkan is already the preferred interface: SteamOS hardware, Android and Linux. It also says DX12 is Windows only, and that this game needs an interface that runs on more than one platform.

Our take

The sentence worth reading in this post is the one about stuttering. It says long time players will probably know those stuttering issues, it says the cause is for the most part OpenGL's threading model, and it says this should no longer be the case with Vulkan.

A beta whose stated floor is to match what you already have is a strange thing to advertise, and it is also the right thing to build. Our reading of the lighting talk further down the post is that it is intent rather than commitment, and it carries no date anywhere in it. The thing we would watch is the second row of that table. A default switch with no date is where a beta either lands or quietly stops being mentioned. Our reading is that it is the row the rest hangs off. The post ties the fallback to it by name, and leaves mobile tied to the desktop release instead, so the mobile half of that is ours rather than the post's. When a date shows up, it goes on our cross-game calendar, beside the other RuneScape dates we track, each row carrying the source we took it from.

RuneScape Dragonwilds 1.0 price: £24.99 / $29.99, unchanged when early access ends 15 September

2026-09-10T00:00:00Z

RuneScape: Dragonwilds, which is a survival game set in the RuneScape world, keeps its price when it leaves early access, the paid unfinished release players can buy into before launch. A post on the game's own Steam news channel, dated 3 September, says the game is "staying the same price once 1.0 releases", at £24.99, or $29.99. It also promises monthly updates after that, and a free winter update it calls Luminance.

1.0 is the finished version that ends early access. A separate announcement from Jagex, the studio behind RuneScape and Dragonwilds, dates it to 15 September 2026, on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.

One note on who is speaking, because the post itself does not say. It is written in the first person, as "we", and it names no author and no studio. It sits on the game's own Steam news channel, and our reading is that it is Jagex's own post. Every "the post says" below means that document, not a person we can name.

Does the price go up at 1.0?

No. The post says the game is "staying the same price once 1.0 releases", and its own headline says the price is the thing that is not leaving. Two currencies are given and no others: £24.99, or $29.99.

The post frames this as thanks, and it thanks two groups rather than one: the players who bought in during early access and took part, and the people who waited for the story to be finished before buying. It says it hopes "this small gesture" shows its "endless appreciation", and our reading is that the gesture it means is the price hold.

We have not found a source saying what studios usually do with the price at 1.0, so we are not going to tell you. What we can say is that the post exists, twelve days before the release, and our reading is that answering the price question early is worth more to a buyer than answering it well later.

What is actually in the box

	What the 3 September post says
Price at 1.0	£24.99, or $29.99, unchanged
What the game contains	"the entirety of Kuldra's Saga and the Free Updates around it"
After 1.0	Monthly updates, "as the game grows"
An update it names	Luminance, in the coming Winter, free
Next word on 2027	After 1.0 ships, and at a Summit at Runefest (which is Jagex's own convention for its games) on 3 October

Kuldra, in that table, is a figure in the game's story and the name of its story arc. The post capitalises "Free Updates" as though it names something, and never says what. The post writes "our Summit at RuneFest on October 3rd", and our reading is that the day belongs to the Summit rather than to Runefest as a whole, which is how we have it on our calendar. The post does not spell that distinction out.

What comes after launch

The post names four things that happen after 1.0, and only two of them carry a name.

The unnamed pair is how often updates arrive, and the story. It says it will "continue to deliver monthly updates" as the game grows, with no day, no size and no content on any of them; and it points at "the next Saga in Ashenfall's story" without saying what that is. Ashenfall is a region of the game's map.

The named pair is Luminance, arriving in the coming Winter and free "much like the minor updates", and the Summit on 3 October, where the post says its 2027 plans will be discussed. Luminance gets no day, no feature list and no region. Anything more specific than that is somebody else's guess, not this post's word.

What we could not confirm

The post is short, and it leaves four ordinary questions open.

It says nothing about paid extra content after 1.0. Not that there will be some, not that there will not be. What it does say is that Luminance is free, that the minor updates are free, and that the game already contains what it calls its "Free Updates".

It gives no price in any currency other than pounds and dollars, and it does not say which dollar. A reader in Canada cannot tell from this post what they will be charged.

It also never mentions the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions that Jagex's June announcement said would launch alongside the PC one. The only platform it names anywhere is Steam, and that is where it is published.

And "the coming Winter" is a season, not a date. We have not put Luminance on our release tracker as a dated row, because there is no date to put.

Our take: a price hold is a promise you can check

Our reading is that this is the cheapest kind of goodwill a studio can buy, and it still counts.

Our reading is that a studio does not announce a price hold in advance unless it has decided not to revisit it. The post names no other price, and no price it might have charged instead, so there is no gap for us to put a figure on and we are not going to invent one.

The part we will be checking is the word "monthly". A price that does not move is verifiable on the day it does not move. "Monthly" is a promise that comes due again every month, and our reading is that it is the claim in this post most likely to quietly stop being true. We track Dragonwilds' dates on our release tracker and our calendar, and Luminance goes on one of them the moment it gets a day.

OSRS Menu Entry Swapper on mobile: how to use MES 2.0 and set your left-click

2026-09-23T00:00:00Z

Old School RuneScape has a Menu Entry Swapper, the game's tool for reordering or hiding the options in its right-click menu. The game's news post of 3 September 2026 says MES 2.0, a ground-up rewrite, is live on mobile and in the game's own client from client version 240.6. The top entry is what a tap or left-click does.

MES is the short name for it, and the post uses both. The post says the feature was added a couple of years ago to give players more control: setting the order options appear in, hiding options, and generally letting people tune the menu to suit them.

One thing worth saying early. This piece is Old School RuneScape only. The post it is built on is Old School RuneScape's own, so nothing here is a claim about RuneScape, the version that kept moving forward when this one was preserved separately. That game has its own page.

Our reading is that the last line is the one worth holding on to, and that it is not new: the post describes selecting the top entry as how the game picks what a left-click does, and puts no version on that. Everything below is about moving the entry you want into that top slot, and getting the ones you keep misclicking out of the way.

The post's own instructions, in its order, and then the controls.

Long-press, or right-click, to open the menu.
If you play with a keyboard, do not hold shift, unless you want to edit the secondary set of swaps. There are two layers of customisation now, standard and secondary, and the secondary one needs a keyboard and opens with shift.
Press the 'edit' button in the top-right corner of the menu. That collapses the menu per object, so you can edit each one on its own.
Go to the menu you want to reorder.
Use the controls below.

Control	What it does, in the post's words
Up arrow	Bring entry to top of menu
Down arrow	Shift entry down by one space
Eye	Hide/show entry
Star	Promote sub-entry to top-level menu
Reset	Move all the entries under this object back to default

The post flags one line under that list as important: the top entry in the menu becomes the primary entry used when you tap or left-click.

How do I change what left-click does?

Bring the option you want to the top of that object's menu with the up arrow. That is the whole thing.

There is a second setting worth knowing about, and the post spells out why. By default the menu opens with its very top edge under your pointer. A setting called 'Minimenu start position' changes that so one of the entries sits under your pointer instead. The post says this works well alongside reordering, because it lets you set both a left-click option and an easy right-click option.

Two more settings are named. You can change how long a long press has to be before touch input opens the menu, and the post notes that shorter times let you act faster but need more precision. You can also change the spacing of the menu entries, which the post suggests if you find the menu too small.

How do I hide an option I keep clicking by accident?

Same edit mode, different button. Open the menu, press 'edit', go to the object you want, then press the eye on the entry. The post lists that control as hide/show entry, so it turns the entry off and can turn it back on.

The post says hiding options was one of the reasons the feature was added a couple of years ago, alongside setting the order entries appear in and letting people tune the menu to suit them. Our reading is that this is the control to reach for when you never want to see an option again, rather than pushing it down the list with the down arrow.

What about walk-here?

Walk-here, which is the menu option that just moves your character to the spot you clicked, comes up in four places in the post.

Three of those four are here; the fourth is in the technical section further down.

Entries can now be re-ordered around walk-here more reliably. The post lists that as one of the rewrite's improvements. Some customisations involving walk-here will not carry over from the old system, so those are ones you set up again. And walk-here turns up in the known issues: on priority swapping the post names walk-here being prioritised over Attack in player versus player, meaning the parts of the game where players fight each other rather than the game.

Does it work on mobile?

Yes. The post says MES 2.0 is available on mobile and in the game's own client from version 240.6 and up. Some of this is mobile-specific, and the last line applies everywhere:

Tall menus scroll with a swipe now, rather than making you grab the scroll bar.
Mouse behaviour on mobile should be slightly more consistent with desktop behaviour.
The secondary layer of swaps needs a keyboard, which the post says includes mobile players who run a keyboard setup.
Your entry swap settings are saved per device, so they will not carry over between devices.

Our reading is that this is the one that will catch people out. Set your phone up the way you like it and your computer is still on its own settings.

Five things the post says, before you go looking for a bug.

If tapping used to give you the wrong thing, that was the bug. The post's change log says it fixed a bug in the menu entry swapper that made 'Examine' and other unexpected entries happen on tap or left-click. Examine is the menu option that just tells you what something is. Our reading is that if this was your problem, the fix is the update itself.
You may not have it yet. MES 2.0 comes as part of client version 240.6. If your app has not updated itself, the post says you may need to update it by hand through the app store, and that the roll-out takes a little time across all devices.
Third-party clients are not part of this. The post says the changes will not affect third-party clients, which are separate programs made by other people that also run the game. It says they are unaffected, and our reading is that this is not the same as saying the feature is unavailable in them.
Some of your old setup may need redoing. The post says most previous menu customisations will carry over, and that some customisations involving walk-here, which is the menu option that just moves your character to the spot you clicked, will not. Those you set up again.
Drag-and-drop is gone on purpose. Entries are no longer dragged; the arrow controls replace them. The post calls that a decision to simplify the system so the team could focus on making it do more and work more reliably.

The post also carries a Known Issues box, which it says is a new format it is trialling. Six issues are listed, each with a status word and a date. Our reading is that three of them are about the swapper itself:

Issue, as the post names it	Status	Dated
Cannot Open The Swapper	Issue Raised	3 September
PoH Fairy Ring Issues	Issue Raised	3 September
Priority Swapping	Issue Raised	3 September

On the swapper failing to appear, the post says some players have raised that in certain instances the swapper options fail to appear. On player-owned houses, which are buildings each player customises and fills with useful rooms, it says some players have raised that their fairy ring, which is one of the game's teleport networks, either cannot rearrange options or activates the wrong option. On priority swapping it says some players have raised that setting certain priority options are making other options a priority in different interfaces. It names one case: walk-here being prioritised over Attack in player versus player, where players fight each other rather than the game.

The other three issues in the box sit on the same page, and our reading is that the post does not connect them to MES 2.0. They are the chatbox, the Total Level text appearing in the top-left of the screen rather than over the appropriate skill, and a tablet issue where the Special Attack button needs a long press. Total level is the game's running total of all your skill levels. The Special Attack button is the on-screen button that switches on the special attack of the weapon you are holding. The chatbox entry is three separate reports in one. The post says some players cannot scroll it with a finger. It says it has also seen reports of the channel buttons not responding when pressed, and that others have reported not being able to click through the chatbox's transparent version. We are naming them because they are on the same page as the ones above, not because the post says the rewrite caused them.

How do I reset it?

Two ways, and they do different amounts.

The big one is a "Reset minimenu ordering" button in the settings. The post says that is the one to use if you want to reset your existing customisations and start from scratch. The minimenu is the game's own name for the little list of options a right-click opens.

The small one is the Reset control inside edit mode, on the row of controls in the table above. That moves all the entries under one object back to default. Our reading is that the rest of your setup is left alone.

Our reading is that this is the part of the post most people will scroll past, and the most interesting thing in it.

The post says that in the 2007 code, its name for the game's original code, the order was fairly simple to achieve: things went into the menu already in the right order by default, apart from a few that were shifted to the bottom. It says that order was tightly coupled to the 3D renderer. The renderer drew every object to the screen back to front and recorded everything under the mouse as it went, which the post says incidentally leaves a list of what was under your pointer in reverse order. Flip it, and you have the order the menu should be in.

Then two things happened, both in the post. The game's own client kept adding to what the menu could do: some entries had to move to the top, some had to move around walk-here, some had to appear only while shift was held, and full reordering arrived. And the game switched to Z-buffered rendering, a way of drawing a 3D scene that works out what sits in front point by point instead of painting whole objects back to front, so the renderer stopped drawing things in that neat order. Our reading is that this is why the menu resisted patching for so long. Its order was a side effect of how the scene was drawn, so changing one meant reaching into the other.

Our reading is that the post is candid about what the rewrite cost, and that this is worth crediting. Drag-and-drop is gone. Some walk-here setups will not carry over. Settings live on one device and stay there. The post says the rewrite "will attempt to migrate" existing customisations and that most will carry over. Our reading is that this is the good kind of trade: the price is written in the same post as the prize.

Our reading is that the game took the harder repair here rather than the quicker one. We read one of the Summer Sweep Up batch's fixes the same way, in our own coverage of it.

What's next, and none of it is dated

Nothing here joins our calendar, because the post puts no date on any of what comes next.

Six issues are listed with the status words "Investigating" and "Issue Raised" as of 3 September. The post says feedback will be closely monitored and asks for thoughts and bug reports in the #mobile-bugs channel on the game's Discord server. It calls the Known Issues box a format it is trialling, without saying whether it stays. And it says the new foundations let the team add support for different styles, larger fonts and better internal debug features, none of which is dated either.

So the honest summary of what comes next is: six known issues with no fix dates, a feedback channel, and a list of things the rewrite makes possible. We will move a date onto the calendar when the post's own follow-ups give us one.

Albion Online's referral pays nothing in September until your friend buys Premium

2026-09-04T00:00:00Z

Albion Online's September referral pays you nothing until the friend you invited buys at least 30 days of Premium, which is the game's paid membership. The announcement puts that third in its three steps, and excludes Premium bought with the in-game currencies Gold and Silver. One referral unlocks the Steelplate Cougar mount skin.

Albion Online, if you have not played it, is an open-ended fantasy world you play online with other people, and a Season is one of the named stretches of play it runs, each with its own bundles and rewards. Two other September offers lean on Premium as well. The Season 34 bundles are listed at $69.95 and $119.95, with 90 days of it inside both. And the Adventurer's Challenge, the game's own rolling reward event, hands its Weekly and Monthly tiers to people who have it.

What is actually in the Season 34 bundles?

Four things each, and only one of them is cosmetic. Everything quoted in this section comes from the Season 34 bundles announcement, which is a different post from the referral one above.

	Season Bundle	Conqueror's Bundle
Price	$69.95	$119.95
Premium	90 days	90 days
Gold (one of the game's two in-game currencies)	2,000	9,000
Learning Points (an item the game hands out for progress)	1,000	3,500
Vanity	Dragon Hunter Vanity Bundle	Dragon Hunter Vanity Bundle

Vanity, on that last row, is the game's word for appearance items.

The announcement closes its price list with "Prices may vary by platform and region", so both figures are list prices rather than what a given store charges.

It is direct about why 90 days is 90 days: that covers "the full season and both surrounding off-seasons", meaning the gaps either side of a season. It is equally direct about where Premium stops being optional. Premium "is required to take part in the Conqueror's Challenge", which is the season's own run of tasks. A player doing it earns avatar sets, unlocks legacy avatars, which the page describes as avatars from previous seasons, and claims reward chests and what the page calls "valuable Fame buffs". Fame is the game's word for experience points.

There is also an upgrade path. Start on the Season Bundle, move to the Conqueror's Bundle any time before the offer ends, pay the difference.

What does the September referral actually require?

Your friend has to spend money, and the announcement puts that third.

The Steelplate Cougar is a mount skin unlocked by one referral, and the ladder climbs from there. Three friends for a T7 Pile of Tomes worth 100,000 Fame, where T7 and T8 are the game's labels for how good an item is. Five friends for a T8 Pile worth 200,000 Fame. The announcement also lists a T8 Pile worth 200,000 Fame as a bonus for your first-ever referral, and 500 Gold for each friend referred. The referral announcement lists three steps. Step one is sharing the link. Step two is the friend signing up. Step three is the one that decides whether any of it happens: the friend "purchases at least 30 days of Premium status".

Then comes the condition, in the same breath: "Note that this does not apply to Premium purchased with ingame currencies (Gold and Silver)". Silver is the game's other in-game currency.

Where does Premium sit in the Adventurer's Challenge?

Above the daily rewards and below nothing else.

September's Challenge is the Heretic Challenge, and its announcement sets the split out plainly.

Only Premium players unlock the Monthly Rewards: the Heretic Challenge Avatar Ring, and the Heretic Combat Mule. The ring is an avatar border, which is decoration around a player's picture; the page says it unlocks permanently for one character or can be traded to the game's Vanity Merchant. The mule is a mount, and it fires a cannon shot which knocks back and slows targets, with the page warning about its "massive recoil". Only Premium players unlock the Weekly Rewards, which are the Heretic Challenge Chests, meaning reward containers. Anyone can claim the Daily Rewards, which the page says include 10 Learning Points and a Tier 4 Tome of Insight, where Tier 4 is a rung on the game's quality scale.

Then the part that deserves credit. Players without Premium "also make progress on all reward tracks". A player who unlocks Premium later is told their earned rewards will be waiting.

The three offers side by side

The publisher posted these as three separate announcements over two days. Here they are in one place.

Offer	Window given	What it costs	What Premium unlocks in it
Season 34 bundles	to 21 September, 10:00 UTC	$69.95 or $119.95	the Conqueror's Challenge, avatar sets, reward chests, "valuable Fame buffs"
Steelplate Cougar referral	September; no closing day given	a friend's "at least 30 days" of Premium	the whole ladder: the skin, three Tome piles, 500 Gold per friend
Heretic Challenge	September; described as monthly, no closing day given	not stated; points come from open-world activities	Monthly Rewards (Avatar Ring, mount) and Weekly Rewards (Challenge Chests)

Our take

Our reading is that these three announcements are one offer wearing three hats, and the hat is Premium. A bundle that includes it. A referral that requires somebody else to buy it. A monthly event that hands its Monthly and Weekly tiers only to people who have it.

Nothing here is hidden. Every price, condition and reward above is printed on the publisher's own pages in plain English, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. The plain-words explanations are ours: what Gold, Silver, Fame, Vanity, Learning Points, an avatar border and the T tiers are, what a Season and its off-seasons are, and what kind of game this is. So is the subtraction below.

What we would push back on is the referral condition. A referral programme is a friendship being asked to do sales work, and this one only pays out when the friend buys Premium outside the game's own currencies. Gold and Silver are excluded by name. Our reading is that this is a choice about who the programme is for, and our view is that a note tacked onto the end of the steps is the wrong place to qualify the step the whole ladder hangs on.

The Adventurer's Challenge is the one we would defend. The Premium gate on the mount and the ring is the least interesting thing on that page. The line worth noticing is the other one: players without Premium make progress on all reward tracks, and the announcement promises the earned rewards will be waiting for them. Banking somebody's progress while they are not paying is a decision in the player's favour, and it is one sentence long.

We will leave the bundles to your own sums, with one observation ours does support. Both tiers carry the same 90 days of Premium and the same Dragon Hunter Vanity Bundle. So every one of the $50 between them buys Gold and Learning Points and nothing else. Our maths, not the publisher's: the announcement prints the two prices and never subtracts them. What that extra Gold and those extra Learning Points are WORTH to a player, the announcement does not say, and we are not going to fill that in for it.

What's next

The bundles close on 21 September at 10:00 UTC, the only closing time any of the three announcements gives. The challenge is described as monthly and running all month long, with no day named, and the referral says only that it is September's. That 21 September close is now a row on our calendar beside the other September dates we track, each row linked to the publisher's own page.

ArenaNet says Guild Wars 2 gets nearly a full year of improvements after Visions of Eternity

2026-09-13T00:00:00Z

Guild Wars 2, which is ArenaNet's long-running fantasy world, wraps up its Visions of Eternity expansion, meaning a large paid addition of land and story, in September. The studio says it then spends nearly a year on the game itself. In a post published on 6 June 2026, ArenaNet said it will spend "nearly a full year going back through each era of Guild Wars 2, making meaningful improvements to the player experience".

That starts with the first Hall of Monuments update, "coming later this year". The Hall of Monuments, which is a place inside Guild Wars 2 that players can visit, goes first. Guild Wars Reforged, which is a third ArenaNet game alongside Guild Wars 2 and the announced Guild Wars 3, is mentioned further down. The post naming September is dated 6 June 2026, so our reading is September 2026.

The post went up one day after ArenaNet announced Guild Wars 3. Our reading is that it is the half of that week most useful to anyone already playing.

Updated 13 September 2026. ArenaNet has since named the day. Its post of 8 September 2026 says Code of Creation, the final chapter of Visions of Eternity, "drops September 15". The section below is our reading of the two June posts, which gave the month and no day. Its wording is unchanged apart from its heading, which now says when it was true.

What ArenaNet committed to, and what it had not dated in June

The post gives one month and no day for any of that work. On 3 September 2026 we read the front page of ArenaNet's news index and its events page. The newest article listed was dated 25 August 2026, and the events page carried no Visions of Eternity entry. Nothing we read on either named a day for the finale.

That is our own check on one day, not a claim about every page ArenaNet has ever posted.

The commitment	What ArenaNet has actually said, across its 5 and 6 June 2026 posts
Visions of Eternity wraps up	"in September", the month, with no day published
What comes next	"improving the foundations of Guild Wars 2"
How long	"nearly a full year"
The scope	"going back through each era of Guild Wars 2"
The first piece	The first Hall of Monuments update, "coming later this year"
Where players send requests	"the new feedback forum", for players to "share your ideas on what you’d like us to address"
Guild Wars 2's status (5 June)	"we’re not done making Guild Wars 2"
Guild Wars Reforged's status (5 June)	Also not done; three games "actively developing" at once
Guild Wars 3 beta (5 June)	"a chance to join" it, "in the fall of 2027"

Not one row carries a day. Three carry a period: September, "later this year", "the fall of 2027". One carries a duration, "nearly a full year". The remaining five carry no time at all. That is worth saying plainly rather than filing under detail. Our reading is that nearly a year of improvements with one named milestone is a direction rather than a plan, and no player can put any of it in a calendar yet.

Where this sits against the sequel

ArenaNet announced Guild Wars 3 on 5 June 2026, calling it its first brand-new game announcement in almost two decades. It is set in Orr, which is a region players already know from the current game, and ArenaNet promises you will explore it as you never have before. It runs on PC and PlayStation 5, and its combat is built to work with a controller or with a mouse and keyboard.

You join the Vaelwardens, described as a guild sworn to protect the land, the people living beyond the walls of Orr's towns and cities, and the nature spirits who call Orr home.

Our reading is that ArenaNet gave the sequel its own day on purpose. The announcement post promises detail on Guild Wars 2 "tomorrow", and adds: "Today, we’re celebrating the first brand-new game announcement for ArenaNet in almost two decades, and that deserves its moment in the spotlight." The answer for existing players arrived the following day, from the Guild Wars 2 game director in a studio update video, alongside the studio head and the Guild Wars Reforged game director.

Our take: the unglamorous year is the good news

Nearly a year of going back through each era of a game people are still playing is the least announceable work a studio can do, and close to the most valuable. None of it ships as a trailer. Nobody puts a repaired old zone, meaning one area of the game's map, on a shopping list.

Our reading is that this is the shape of work a studio does when it wants an old world to still be worth living in after the sequel arrives. ArenaNet marked Guild Wars 2's fourteenth anniversary on 25 August 2026, so there is a great deal of era to go back through.

Our reservation is the calendar, and it is smaller than it was. The finale has a day now, 15 September 2026, named on 8 September. Nearly a year of work still has one named milestone. A beta, meaning a public test before release, that is a chance rather than a place in a queue, and our maths puts the fall of 2027 about a year past the finale. The finale is a date now. The other two are still kinds of "later". Our reading is that ArenaNet has told players what it intends and almost nothing about when. Still better than a roadmap that quietly slips. Still not something you can schedule your play around.

We said we would move our cross-game calendar row the day ArenaNet named one. We did not manage the day. ArenaNet named it on 8 September 2026 and we moved the row on 13 September, when our fortnightly re-read of every source behind that calendar reached it, so for five days the row showed an estimate and the answer was published. It now reads 15 September, announced.

ESO Crown Store September 2026: four crate lines, and up to 20 free crates

2026-10-02T00:00:00Z

The Elder Scrolls Online's September 2026 Crown Store showcase, which is the monthly list of what its real-money shop will sell, went up on 28 August. It names four Crown Crate lines, meaning four separate ranges of paid boxes whose contents are random. Our maths on their windows puts all four on sale together between 10 and 17 September.

One more bit of vocabulary and you have the lot. Golden Pursuits, the campaign handing out the free crates, is a rotating list of in-game tasks that pay shop rewards. Its Straight to the Crate run goes until 17 September and, in the showcase's own words, "allows you to earn up to 20 free crates".

Looking for October? The October showcase is out, and our October piece reads it the same way.

The four crate lines

Crate line	Window
Diamond Anniversary	20 August to 17 September
Scalecaller	27 August to 17 September
Wraithtide	3 September to 17 September
Xanmeer	10 September to 24 September

Our maths on those windows puts all four on sale at the same time between 10 and 17 September. The page itself does not point the overlap out.

What is new, and what is coming back

The showcase's highlights section leads with these dated items. The Reveries Formal Wear costume is new, 8 to 21 September. Keshu the Black Fin arrives from Gideon as a new houseguest, 10 to 24 September. A houseguest is a character who lives in your player house.

The Fair Winds home returns 17 September to 14 October, which the page ties to the High Seas of Tamriel event arriving 30 September (Tamriel is the continent the whole series is set on). And for followers of the Mad God there is the new Sheogorad Chateau house, stocked from the Sheograth Shenanigans furnishing pack, both 30 September to 15 October.

Beneath the highlights the page carries a full week-by-week schedule. Thirty-six of its entries are marked as carrying an ESO Plus discount, ESO Plus being the game's paid monthly membership. One item, the Amaranthine Pocket Watcher (28 September to 12 October), is listed as "available in the Crown Store for Gems and Seals".

The nine items the page tells you to go and earn

Nine entries in the schedule carry a note saying where the in-game version comes from: six arms packs and three crafting motifs. A motif is a pattern book that unlocks a style of gear.

The routes are not all the same, and that is worth saying, because the pattern is easy to over-read. Four of the arms packs name a dungeon boss for the matching mask page. The Slimecraw pack points at Alene Pellingare in Veteran Wayrest Sewers I. The Scourge Harvester pack points at Alene and Varaine Pellingare in Veteran Wayrest Sewers II. The Lord Warden pack points at Lord Warden Dusk in Imperial City Prison, and the Shadowrend pack at High Kinlord Rilis in Veteran Banished Cells I.

For each of those four, the shoulder page has two routes. Buy it for 50 undaunted keys, from Maj al-Ragath in most cases and from Pledge Master Urgarlag Chief-bane for the Lord Warden set. Or take a chance from that same vendor's mystery coffer for one key.

The other two arms packs point somewhere else entirely. The Oaken Order armor pages have "a small chance to drop from Glorious Pan-Tamriel Reward Boxes and Pan-Tamriel Reward Boxes". The Eltheric Revenant pages have a small chance to drop from "certain Dremora Plunder Skulls introduced in the 2025 run of the Witches Festival Event". The page adds, for the Oaken Order, the Eltheric Revenant and the Glass motif alike, that the event they come from is not live during this period.

Two of the three motifs follow the dungeon-boss pattern. Fang Lair chapters have a chance to drop from Thurvokun in Fang Lair, and Waking Flame chapters from Baron Zaudrus in The Cauldron. The page notes in both cases that the chance is higher on veteran difficulty and hard mode. The third goes elsewhere: Glass chapters turn up in Anniversary Jubilee Gift Boxes, with the complete book sold by Rolis Hlaalu for 180 Writ Vouchers.

Four of the notes go further and name an achievement that improves the odds. Among them are "Down the Gutter" for the Slimecraw set and "Pellingare Ghoul Slayer" for the Scourge Harvester one.

Our take

Four crate lines are open at once this month. Our maths on the windows puts all four on sale together between 10 and 17 September. Our reading of the sequencing is that it is deliberate. The windows are staggered rather than aligned, so from 20 August to 24 September there is never a day on this schedule with no crate line open.

That is the mechanic doing what the mechanic is for. Saying so plainly describes it rather than accusing anybody.

The free crates are the part we would look at hardest. Up to 20 crates earned before 17 September is a generous-sounding ceiling, and the campaign ends on the same day three of the four crate lines close. Our reading is that handing a player crates from a line about to shut is a funnel rather than a gift. Say what you like about the design, though. The ceiling and the deadline are both stated plainly in the publisher's own announcement rather than left to be worked out.

The genuinely good thing here is the farming notes. A shop page that stops mid-list to tell you which dungeon boss drops the mask you are about to buy is a shop page arguing against itself, nine times, in writing. That is the earn-it-instead line a shop page has no commercial reason to print, and here it is in the publisher's own copy. Nine notes across a schedule this long is not most of them. We would rather it were. The habit is still the right one and it deserves the name.

The highlights the page chose to lead with are a costume, a houseguest, two houses and a furnishing pack. Decoration, in a word. What the crates actually contain, this page does not say, and we are not going to guess. Their contents are the thing a reader would most want listed, and this showcase does not list them.

What's next

The showcase says Update 51, which belongs to the game's current named run of months, and the High Seas of Tamriel event finish off the month. The crate windows run into October. Our calendar carries ESO's dated autumn with the publisher's own notice against each entry.

ESO Warden rework release date: there isn't one yet, and Templar now jumps ahead of Sorcerer

2026-09-10T00:00:00Z

The Warden rework in The Elder Scrolls Online still has no release date. In a letter published on 1 September 2026, the game's development team wrote that it is "not ready to share a release date today". The same letter changes the running order: Templar now comes before Sorcerer. All three are playable classes, and each is being rebuilt in turn.

Some plain words first, because the letter uses none of them. The Elder Scrolls Online, or ESO, is a fantasy game shared with a great many other people. You pick a class, which is the kit of skills your character fights with. ZeniMax Online Studios (ZOS), the team that makes it, is rebuilding those classes one at a time. The Warden is the one in the workshop now.

What the letter actually commits to

Question	What the letter says
Warden release date	None given: "we're not ready to share a release date today"
Is it still happening	Yes: "development is continuing, the vision remains intact, and we're committed to bringing this refresh to you when it's ready."
Why the timeline moved	The feedback loop adds time, plus "the July restructuring at ZOS"
Does the plan still stand	Yes, per the letter: the studio letter from game director Nick Giacomini "still reflects our current roadmap"
Running order	Templar moved ahead of Sorcerer
Updates already shared	The letter says "including" the Dragonknight (another of the playable classes) and Werewolf, a transformation skill line a character carries alongside their class

The team lists three problems it says it is fixing. The Warden "currently lacks a unified visual identity and theme". Its skill lines are "role-centralized, reducing their effectiveness when attempting to utilize their entire kit", which in plain words means each line is built for one job and the whole kit does not work together. And Wardens "lack a unique mechanic to their kit that all roles can engage with".

What stays is listed too: nature magic, animals, ice-themed abilities, and a clear identity as protector of the natural world. What goes is the Morrowind of it. Morrowind (an old chapter of the game, set in a region of the same name) is what the Warden shipped alongside, and the class was themed to match. The letter says the rework is "pivoting away from the Morrowind-specific visual theming to better represent the natural world across all regions in Tamriel", the continent the whole series is set on. It credits community feedback for that call.

The team is also looking at tying the class to the four seasons, spring through winter. The idea is to bind its themes into one whole rather than leave them as separate bits.

The four abilities shown

The letter carries what it calls "very early work-in-progress examples". This is the part with something to look at rather than something to promise.

Scorch keeps what it does now, with updated visuals the letter says are not strictly focused on Morrowind.
Lotus Flower gets an ice version. Petals match each of the seasons and the various morphs, which is the game's word for the variants an ability can be upgraded into. The video shown is the winter one.
Spriggan is new. It answers what the letter calls a community request for more creatures in the kit, and it briefly calls a Spriggan, a tree spirit, to your side.
Betty Netch works much the same and loses the beam. Instead of a big floating creature tethered above your shoulder, a much smaller one loops around you.

Our take

The honest thing in this letter is the absence, and our reading is that a studio with a date would have given one. "We're not ready to share a release date today" is more use to a player deciding what to level than a quarter that quietly slips twice. The four videos do the work the date cannot. Here is the thing, it is real, we cannot say when.

The queue change is the part worth flagging, because it costs somebody something. The old roadmap, in the letter's words, "laid out that the Sorcerer refresh would follow the Warden class". Templar now goes first. The letter says so plainly and says it "may disappoint some of you", which is more candour than a silent reshuffle. It is still a cost. Sorcerer has moved from next in line to behind Templar, in a queue whose front position has no date at all. Getting classes out "as quickly and effectively as we're able to" is a fair goal. From a Sorcerer player's chair, it is also indistinguishable from waiting longer.

There is one date in reach, and it is not in this letter. The letter says a recent studio letter from Nick Giacomini still reflects the roadmap, without dating it. Our reading is that this is the game director's letter of 30 July. That letter says of the class and combat refresh: "we are targeting 2027 for the next refresh." It also says the team is "discussing some interim options for the classes still awaiting their full refresh". So 2027 is still the working target, by our reading, because the September letter neither repeats it nor revises it. It is not a date the studio gave again this week.

The other thing we take from this letter is that ESO is still paying for July. "The July restructuring at ZOS" is named as a cause here. The earlier game director's letter moved Update 51 to 28 September and pushed both Update 52 and the Crimson Veldt trial into 2027. A trial is this game's word for a raid, which is a dungeon built for a large group. That letter wrote of "organizational changes and departures of teammates" without dating them. Our reading is that these are the same events, and that they are one of the two causes named for a class rework nobody can date. Two letters, one root. That is not a criticism of the letter, which does the right thing by saying so out loud. It is a reason to read the next roadmap with July in mind.

One note in the game's favour. The letter is explicit that combat work has not stopped while the rework runs, and points at the ability changes made during the Update 51 public test server, a copy of the game where changes are tried before release. The failure mode here is a class rework that swallows every balance decision while it runs. The letter addresses that head on rather than leaving it to be asked.

What's next

Nothing the letter promises carries a date, which is the point. It promises more detail on the exact fixes as development continues. The dated ESO events are elsewhere: Update 51 on 28 September, and the rest of the game's autumn on our calendar, each with the publisher's own notice against it.

BlizzCon 2026 UK time: 18:30 BST Saturday, 18:00 Sunday, and both championship finals after midnight

2026-09-10T00:00:00Z

BlizzCon 2026, which is Blizzard's own convention for its games, now has a running order. The studio published the schedule, stream plan and rewards detail on 1 September, eleven days out from the show on 12 and 13 September at the Anaheim Convention Center. It says which parts are streamed for everyone at home, and it prints every start time twice, once in Pacific and once in UK time.

Three rows below are esports matches, and they come from two tournaments. The MDI, which stands for Mythic Dungeon Invitational, is the studio's dungeon competition. The AWC, the Arena World Championship, is its arena tournament. One panel on day two is about Hardcore, a mode where a character who dies is gone for good.

The World of Warcraft slots, both days

The Warcraft panels and three of the esports matches, taken from Blizzard's own longer list. Blizzard prints both clocks itself, so the UK column below is Blizzard's own, not a conversion of ours. BST is British Summer Time, the UK's summer clock. Every time is marked subject to change.

Four of these land after midnight in the UK. The UK is eight hours ahead of California, so a slot from about 4 p.m. Pacific onwards has already tipped into the next UK day. The dates in this table are ours too. Blizzard writes "day one" and "day two" and says the show runs on 12 and 13 September. Which day is which, and what weekday each one falls on, are our own reading of a calendar.

Day	Pacific	UK (BST)	Segment
Sat 12 Sep	10:30 a.m.	18:30	Opening Ceremony
Sat 12 Sep	12:00 p.m.	20:00	World of Warcraft: What's Next
Sat 12 Sep	12:45 p.m.	20:45	MDI Grand Finals: Dignitas vs Big Lucky
Sat 12 Sep	2:00 p.m.	22:00	Building Cutscenes in World of Warcraft
Sat 12 Sep	2:45 p.m.	22:45	World of Warcraft: What's Next II
Sat 12 Sep	3:30 p.m.	23:30	Developers x Creators Showcase
Sat 12 Sep	5:30 p.m.	01:30 Sun 13th	MDI Grand Finals, championship match
Sun 13 Sep	10:00 a.m.	18:00	World of Warcraft: Deep Dive
Sun 13 Sep	10:45 a.m.	18:45	Crafting Coziness and Creative Freedom
Sun 13 Sep	11:45 a.m.	19:45	World Building in World of Warcraft
Sun 13 Sep	1:15 p.m.	21:15	World of Warcraft: Art Design
Sun 13 Sep	2:45 p.m.	22:45	World of Warcraft: Design Deep Dive
Sun 13 Sep	4:15 p.m.	00:15 Mon 14th	World of Warcraft Hardcore: What's Next
Sun 13 Sep	5:00 p.m.	01:00 Mon 14th	AWC Grand Finals, championship match
Sun 13 Sep	5:20 p.m.	01:20 Mon 14th	Closing Remarks

Our take: what it means for players

Two "What's Next" panels on the same afternoon is the shape worth reading. Our reading, and Blizzard has said none of this: one of those panels on its own is usually a year plan. Two back to back, with a cutscene panel wedged between them, looks like a roadmap split across a reveal and its detail. That is how we would pace an announcement we wanted to land twice.

The second signal is Hardcore getting its own forward-looking panel on day two, at 4:15 p.m. Pacific, rather than a mention inside a broader session. Our reading: a named "What's Next" slot is about the smallest promise a schedule can make to a mode, and it is still a promise. We will take it. A mode where death is permanent, given a stage of its own, is the genre remembering what it is good at.

The fine print is where our complaint sits, and Blizzard states it plainly. The streams cover the opening ceremony, major panels and esports competitions. The musical performances are not part of that, and neither are what Blizzard calls some other elements. Le Sserafim plays at 6:00 p.m. Pacific on day two and the trophy ceremony follows at 6:30 p.m. Pacific. Anyone attending in person has until 18 September to link a BlizzCon Pass, which is the in-person ticket, to a Battle.net account and still claim the rewards.

That deadline is the bit we think will cost somebody something. It is five days after the show closes, and Blizzard publishes it down inside a rewards section rather than up at the top. Our view: a paying attendee should not have to find a deadline in the small print to keep what they already bought. Say it louder, and say it early.

What's next

Blizzard says to check back after the opening ceremony for the fully updated schedule. Our expectation is that day two moves more than day one, because it has longer to move in. Both days, the two esports finals and the reward-linking deadline are on the calendar with the day we last checked each against Blizzard's page.

FFXIV Moogle Treasure Trove 2026: the First Hunt for Astronomy, from 9 September

2026-09-10T00:00:00Z

The Moogle Treasure Trove returns on Wednesday 9 September 2026 as the First Hunt for Astronomy, by Square Enix's own announcement. The Trove, which is a recurring event that pays a temporary currency for replaying old content, is billed this time as a special edition marking the upcoming release of Evercold. It runs across two installments rather than one, and the headline reward is an uolon horn.

What is different about this one

	First Hunt	Second Hunt
Starts	9 September 2026	"a later date", no day given
Currency for exchange	different tomestones from the other hunt's, per the announcement	different again
Item lineup	its own	a different one
The uolon horn	yes	yes, by Square Enix's own note
Extra requirement	minimog and ultimog challenges award the item the horn needs	not stated

A tomestone, in case that table is the first you have met one, is a token the game pays you for finishing content, which you spend at a vendor. The announcement calls this event's ones irregular tomestones of astronomy I, and says the two hunts need different tomestones from each other.

Square Enix calls this run "a special edition" and says it takes place across two installments, which is the announcement's own way of marking it as not the usual shape.

Our take: what it means for players

The two-installment shape changes how much of this is urgent, and the answer is less than it looks.

Square Enix states plainly that the uolon horn is available in the Second Hunt too, so the reward is not on a clock that ends with part one. What does not carry is everything else. The announcement says the tomestones required for exchange differ between the installments, and that the item lineups differ too. Our reading is that anything banked in part one buys from part one's list and nothing else. Treat each half as its own shop with its own currency.

The two footnotes are where the earning goes wrong. Running content with an adventurer squadron, or through Duty Support, which is the system that fills a party with computer-controlled allies, awards no irregular tomestones of astronomy at all. That removes the most convenient way to farm old content alone. An unrestricted party has to have Level Sync switched on to receive them, and Level Sync is the rule that drops a strong character down to a lower area's power. Unrestricted parties are exactly how a high-level group blitzes low-level content, so the fastest method is also the one most likely to award nothing.

That exclusion is the one thing here we would argue with. Duty Support is the tool Square Enix built so a player without a regular group could still see old content. Switching it off for the event that rewards old content is a quiet tax on the people with the least flexible schedules. The event is otherwise the good kind: a currency earned by playing, spent from a fixed list, with nothing for sale.

The framing is worth a line of its own. Square Enix pegs this Trove to the release of Evercold rather than to a content lull. Our reading is that this is a catch-up window aimed at people levelling a job, meaning a character class, before the expansion. That is a different audience from the pre-patch drought a Trove usually fills.

What's next

Patch 7.56 arrives the day before, on 8 September, and Square Enix's own notice says it closes PvP Series 11 with it, PvP being short for player versus player.

A PvP Series is a numbered season of that side of the game's reward track. The Trove start date and the patch both sit on the calendar with the day we last checked them. Evercold is on the release tracker with no date at all, because Square Enix has not given one.

FFXIV maintenance schedule, September and October 2026: nine possible nights to 8 October, checked 25 September

2026-09-25T00:00:00Z

Square Enix keeps a list of the nights Final Fantasy XIV might go down, and it keeps changing it. Read again on 25 September, the notice carries nine possible windows and nothing confirmed. Six new nights run to 8 October, and the next one is the night of 28 September.

Yes, the list lives on a wedding page. The Ceremony of Eternal Bonding is the game's in-game wedding, booked in advance, and Square Enix says maintenance may cause a reserved one to be cancelled. That is why this notice exists at all.

Every night we have seen the notice list, and what it said each time

We have now read this page four times. The columns are those four readings. Every window marked possible runs from 9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. the next morning, Pacific time, which the notice writes as PDT.

Night, Pacific	2 Sep	7 Sep	10 Sep	25 Sep
31 Aug into 1 Sep	Possible	Gone	Gone	Gone
1 into 2 Sep	Possible	Gone	Gone	Gone
2 into 3 Sep	Possible	Gone	Gone	Gone
7 into 8 Sep	Possible	Confirmed, 11:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m.	Gone	Gone
8 into 9 Sep	Possible	Possible	Gone	Gone
9 into 10 Sep	Possible	Possible	Possible	Gone
14 into 15 Sep	Possible	Possible	Possible	Gone
15 into 16 Sep	Possible	Possible	Possible	Gone
16 into 17 Sep	Possible	Possible	Possible	Gone
21 into 22 Sep	Not listed	Not listed	Possible	Possible
22 into 23 Sep	Not listed	Not listed	Possible	Possible
23 into 24 Sep	Not listed	Not listed	Possible	Possible
28 into 29 Sep	Not listed	Not listed	Not listed	Possible
29 into 30 Sep	Not listed	Not listed	Not listed	Possible
30 Sep into 1 Oct	Not listed	Not listed	Not listed	Possible
5 into 6 Oct	Not listed	Not listed	Not listed	Possible
6 into 7 Oct	Not listed	Not listed	Not listed	Possible
7 into 8 Oct	Not listed	Not listed	Not listed	Possible

Square Enix marks the possible ones as subject to change, and says emergency maintenance can still happen outside them. The confirmed list currently reads "None".

The three nights from 21 September are still on the list, though all three have passed. So by our count six of the nine possible nights are still ahead, and the next one is the night of 28 September. The notice lists nothing for the three nights before it.

Our take: the list is a live document, and that is the story

Credit where it is due, because this is a publisher telling players something ahead of time rather than after the fact.

The useful thing here is not the wedding advice. It is what four readings of the same page show. On 2 September the notice listed nine nights and confirmed none of them. When we read it again on 7 September, three had dropped off, one had hardened into a confirmed four-hour window, and the rest were untouched. By 10 September that confirmed entry had been cleared away, and three new nights had appeared at the end. By 25 September four more nights had gone, and six new ones had appeared, reaching into October.

So this is not a schedule published once and left. It is a page Square Enix edits. Our reading is that it is worth checking again rather than trusting a copy of it, including a copy of it on a site like ours, which is why this table has four columns instead of one.

The uncomfortable half of that is what it means for anyone planning around it. A list that gained three nights at one reading and six at the next is a list you cannot plan a month against. Our view is that publishing it anyway still beats the alternative, which is a player finding out the servers are down by trying to log in.

The one rule worth carrying away sits at the bottom of the notice and dates to 2018. A ceremony booked to start after maintenance or an outage ends stays valid and needs no rescheduling. Square Enix says to reschedule a reservation that overlaps confirmed maintenance, and confirmed is a stricter word than possible. Read that as a floor rather than a ceiling: the same page says maintenance may cancel a reservation, and that emergency maintenance can happen outside every window the notice lists.

The two scheduled windows we have seen

When we read the page on 7 September it had something concrete on it. The confirmed section named 11:00 p.m. on 7 September to 3:00 a.m. on 8 September, Pacific time, and an all-Worlds maintenance notice gave the same hours. All Worlds means every server, rather than a few. By 10 September the confirmed section was back to "None".

The night of 16 September was one of the possible nights, and it did get a maintenance notice. An all-Worlds emergency maintenance notice scheduled the game offline from 11:00 p.m. on 16 September to 3:00 a.m. on 17 September, Pacific time, to add hotfixes for Patch 7.56, and said the finish time could change. A hotfix is a small repair shipped between the game's numbered updates. We did not read the wedding notice that week, so we cannot say whether it ever showed that night as confirmed.

Note that the edges did not match, either time. Both windows were scheduled for 11:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m., narrower than the 9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. bracket the possible nights use. Neither notice we hold says when the work actually finished. Two nights is not a rule. Our reading is that it is still worth remembering if a future night hardens the same way.

What's next

As of 25 September, by our count six possible nights remain, the last of them ending at 4:00 a.m. on 8 October, and none is confirmed. We will read the page again rather than assume this table still holds. Every date we track for this game sits on the calendar with the day we last checked it against the Lodestone, which is the game's own news site.

FFXIV on Switch 2 starts charging on 8 September, and the account link is permanent

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

The free subscription period on the Nintendo Switch 2 version of Final Fantasy XIV ends at 11:59 p.m. on Monday 7 September 2026 in each region. Square Enix's own notice explains what happens next in more detail than the date suggests. Billing on this platform does not work like the others.

A subscription, for anyone new to the game, is the recurring fee you pay to keep playing. And FFXIV is simply the usual short name for Final Fantasy XIV, which is why the coins below are called FFXIV Coins.

The rules that are specific to Switch 2

	How it works
Subscription scope	Separate from every other platform, even for an existing subscriber
Discount	Half price with an active subscription elsewhere, but not while a 30-day free play period is running there
Payment method	the subscription itself, FFXIV Coins from the Nintendo eShop only
Payment registration opens	8 September, 3:00 a.m. Pacific
Renewal	Automatic while the coin balance covers it, halted when it does not
Account link	Made on first launch, and cannot be undone or transferred
Nintendo Switch Online	Not required to play; members get one extra free teleport destination

Our take: what it means for players

Two of those lines cost money or characters if they are read late, and neither is the headline date.

Start with the one we think is indefensible. A subscription is rent on a world, and this is the same world, the same character and the same server. Charging a second time because the player picked up a different box is a platform tax wearing a product's clothes. The half-price discount is a discount off a fee that should not exist, and it comes with a condition on top.

The condition is the part that will catch people. On Switch 2, registering a Starter or Complete Edition, which are the two retail bundles, gets you a 30-day free play window opening on 8 September. While a free play period is active on another platform, the half-price Switch 2 subscription is not available. Square Enix adds that the discount does apply if remaining game time is still on the other platform when the charge lands. So the order of operations decides the price.

The account link is the other one, and it is the only genuinely irreversible step here. On first launch the Switch 2 user profile binds to a Square Enix account permanently. An existing player must pick their existing service account at the licence prompt. Choosing to create a new service account instead means, in Square Enix's words, that you will be unable to play as your existing character. The registered region has to match as well: an Americas account needs a Nintendo account registered in the United States, Canada or another applicable region.

One smaller trap is worth knowing before anyone blames the game. Hotbars, HUD layouts (the HUD being the bars and buttons drawn over the game screen) and macros are stored on the device rather than the account, and Square Enix says they are not synced automatically. So a character logged in on Switch 2 arrives with whatever that console holds, until the settings are uploaded from the other platform through the server backup feature and downloaded again here.

What's next

Patch 7.56 lands on 8 September and, by the same notice, is scheduled to resolve the launcher bug that currently stops it opening the coin purchase screen in the eShop. Until it does, coins are bought through the console home menu. Both dates are on the calendar with the day we last checked them.

OSRS water sapphire and elemental jewels: where they drop and what they make

2026-09-10T00:00:00Z

Jagex, which is the studio behind Old School RuneScape, shipped the rest of its Summer Sweep Up on 2 September 2026. Everything landed except the pet updates, which its own note says are planned for release within the next two weeks. The changelog is mostly small mercies: stackable Unsireds, a lectern that remembers what you were making, inventory locking in the Seed Vault, and four amulets for spellcasters plus a fifth that combines them.

A little of the game's own vocabulary before the numbers. An Unsired is a drop from the Abyssal Sire, one of the game's bosses, traded in for a reward. The Seed Vault is the storage room for farming seeds. Runecraft is the skill that makes magic runes. GP means gold pieces, the currency. A raid is a dungeon built for a group. And Permanent Deadman Mode, which the changelog names as such, is a high-risk mode where dying costs a great deal.

The numbers worth writing down

Change	Detail
Necklace of Fangs	+12 Ranged Accuracy, +1 Ranged Strength, 1 in 128 from Turoths; also drops from Spiked Turoths, at a rate Jagex does not give
Elemental jewels	1 in 64 each: air from Killerwatts, water from Sea Snake Hatchlings, earth from Molanisks, fire from Infernal Mages
Elemental amulets	+10 Magic Accuracy, +2 max hit, Runecraft 18 to 21 by element
Elemental amulet, combined	The four elemental amulets plus 500 runes of each element, Runecraft 30; +10 Magic Accuracy and +2 max hit on all elemental spells
Shark lures	1 lure, 50% chance of 5 ticks becoming 4; 3 lures, always 4; 5 lures, always 4 with a 50% chance of 3
Fishing Sacks	500 Molch pearls reclaimable per extra sack, from Alry the Angler
Permanent Deadman risk floors	at least 100,000 GP in alch value to attack other players, at least 500,000 near the chest; raid entry needs at least 1,000,000 AND no Deadman protection remaining

Alch value, in that last row, is what an item is worth when magically turned into coins.

Our take: what it means for players

The Unsired fix is the model here, and it is worth explaining, because it shows the right way to solve this kind of problem.

Unsireds could not stack because each one, in Jagex's words, had to retain separate information about its potential reward. Jagex moved the roll to the Font of Consumption instead. Our reading is that this is the harder of the two available fixes and the better one. It makes every Unsired the same item, rather than bolting on a storage exception that would have left the oddity in place. A design fix rather than a convenience feature, and it costs the player nothing.

The same instinct runs through the rest. A lectern that remembers your last tablet. Ghommal's Lucky Penny working when consumed rather than worn. Inventory locks in the Seed Vault. Abyssal Lanterns storable in Magic Wardrobes, which the changelog credits to popular request. None of that is content. Most of it is friction with no benefit to anyone, and removing friction is the cheapest respect a studio can pay to the people playing.

Deadman is the one that will start an argument, and we think Jagex has it right. You now need at least 100,000 GP in alch value to attack another player, and at least 500,000 near the chest. Entering a raid area needs at least a million risked and no protection left. A player who risks nothing can no longer farm players who risk everything. A permanent mode where players fight each other works best when the attacker has skin in the game.

The one blemish is a promise rather than a change. The pet updates would let pets follow you into content like the Gauntlet, Fossil Island's underwater area and various minigames, and respawn with you on death. They did not make this batch, and Jagex says only that they are planned for release in the next two weeks.

What's next

Jagex plans the pet changes for the next two weeks, and lists the Phosani's Nightmare pillar health bars for a coldfix next week. Phosani's Nightmare is a solo version of one of the game's hardest boss fights. Nothing new joins the calendar from this batch.

That coldfix note sits oddly, and our reading is that it is worth flagging. A line further down the same page says the totems and pillars at Phosani's Nightmare were not showing their health accurately and have been fixed, while the Known Issues box still lists the problem as outstanding. Jagex never says the two are the same bug.

The page does carry two dated events: LANscape on 5 September, which is the studio's own in-person day where creators play together, and Dragonwilds 1.0 on 15 September. Both are already on the calendar from their own announcements.

WoW hotfixes, 1 September 2026: thirteen specs buffed, and boss health cut in Raid Finder

2026-09-10T00:00:00Z

Blizzard's fix pass dated 1 September 2026 points in two directions at once. Thirteen character specialisations went up in World of Warcraft, while several healing and defensive numbers came down where players fight each other. Ten of the thirteen took a damage increase, two took healing and one took survivability. It all sits on Blizzard's running hotfix page, which is edited in place as fixes land rather than reposted each time.

Three words to carry through the rest of this. A hotfix is a small change applied to the live game without taking it down. A spec, short for specialisation, is the role and playstyle a character picks inside their class. A raid is a dungeon built for a large group.

The numbers, against monsters

Spec	Change
Frost Death Knight	Howling Blast and Obliterate +15%, Frost Strike +20%, melee +10%
Protection Paladin	Blaze of Glory +150%, Consecration +30%, Divine Guidance +30%
Feral Druid	all ability damage +5%, auto-attacks +10%, Ferocious Bite +10%
Beast Mastery and Survival Hunter	+7% each, Survival only +3% against other players
Frost Mage	+6%
Fire Mage	+3%
Restoration Druid	healing +4%
Vengeance Demon Hunter	Demonic Wards 15% (was 12%), Fel Devastation healing +25%
Mistweaver Monk	healing +5%, tier 4-piece proc chance 25% (was 20%)
Havoc, Balance, Windwalker	+4% each, against monsters only

A tier set, which is a matched set of gear whose pieces give a bonus when worn together, is what the Mistweaver "four-piece" row is about: wearing four of them.

Five of those rows carry a developer note explaining the intent, and the notes are more specific than the numbers. Frost Death Knight is aimed at single target and two-target cleave. Vengeance is called out as still short defensively. Feral is called short in raids. Mistweaver is said to want more healing and more value from its four-piece. Protection Paladin is behind other tanks in dungeons.

Our take: what it means for players

This is a difficulty correction aimed at the bottom of the ladder rather than the top, and that is the right end to aim at.

The Venomous Abyss, which is the raid at the centre of the current season, has four difficulty settings. Raid Finder, the automatic queue that puts strangers into an easier version, sits at the bottom. Then Normal, then Heroic, then Mythic at the top. Every Venomous Abyss change on 1 September touching Raid Finder, or a smaller Normal or Heroic group, makes the fight easier. Inside that raid, Mythic is the only setting that gets stricter anywhere, on the Twin Fangs, though two abilities on the Coiled Altar, one of its boss fights, were cut there as well.

Nek'zali the Soulcoiler lost 15 percent of its health in Raid Finder, the Entombed Sentinels the same, and Vexhul and Ithraz 20 percent. On Mythic, Eternal Venom now takes ten applications to kill instead of fewer, and Ravenous Feast hits at least four people.

Read that split as a statement about whose evening matters. Midnight Season 2 is the game's current run of months, and Blizzard's own schedule for it puts wing 3 of that raid in the week of 1 September, so it opened the same week these numbers came down. A group walking in that night met a trimmed version rather than the one that had been standing. Nobody had to buy anything to get that. The fight moved. A player with a couple of evenings a week getting a fix in a hotfix, for free, is how this is supposed to work. Worth saying out loud in a genre where the same problem is often solved by selling somebody a shortcut.

The pass for fights between players runs both ways, and the healing cuts are unusually blunt about why. Healers keep topping people up too fast. So the Gladiator's Distinction set bonus now grants 5 percent primary stat for healing specialisations instead of 10, Restoration Druid's Swiftmend heals 20 percent less, and Mage barriers absorb a quarter less. Those are pace changes aimed at shortening matches rather than at any one class, and the studio saying so in the notes beats leaving people to guess from the numbers.

Where we would push: a fix pass this large arrives as edits to one running page, dated by day rather than laid out change by change with a build behind each one. Six weeks from now, working out which version your Tuesday night sat on means reading the whole page again.

Credit where it is due: Wowhead is where the community keeps a running record of these hotfixes.

What's next

The Venomous Abyss finishes opening with Raid Finder wing 4 in the week of 8 September, the last scheduled unlock of Midnight Season 2. That date, and BlizzCon, which is Blizzard's own convention and which we wrote up in our piece on its running order, are both on the calendar with the day we last checked them.

Albion's Dragonfire update puts a 20-player dungeon above the clouds, safe from raiders

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

Albion Online's Dragonfire update went live on 31 August 2026, and Sandbox Interactive's own launch post leads with a 20-player dungeon where nobody can attack you, and calls it the greatest challenge against the game itself that Albion has seen yet. The route to it runs through the Ancient Lands, which is a new region of floating islands where rival groups very much can.

That contrast is the whole story, so here is the vocabulary. Albion Online is a fantasy world where items are made by players, and where in much of the map other players are allowed to attack you. PvE, short for player versus environment, means fighting the game's own monsters. PvP, short for player versus player, means fighting each other.

The structure of the new content

Layer	Party size	Contested?
Ancient Lands portals	Solo up to 20, matched with similar sizes	Yes, deeper routes carry a higher chance of rivals
Leygates, opened with Keystones	As above	Yes, and rewards rise with depth
Dragon Sanctuary, entered with a Spirit Waystone	20	No, no other players can attack you
Dragon attacks, Royal Continent (the safer inner region)	Open, with little warning	Whoever is nearby
Dragon attacks, Outlands (the lawless outer region)	Open, announced in advance	Yes, rivals can contest the fight and its rewards

The Royal Continent is the game's inner region and the Outlands its outer one, where players hold territory themselves.

Rewards run from Dragon Scales, which craft into the Dragonslayer armour set, up to a Fire Drake Egg from Azaryon that can be raised at home into a Firewing Drake.

Our take: what it means for players

The two-tier design is the smart part, and it is a genuine answer to an old argument.

Albion's identity is that everything worth having is contestable, which is also why a lot of players never see its best content. Dragonfire keeps the contest where the value accrues, in the Ancient Lands and on the routes deeper in, and then puts what the studio calls its most demanding fight against the game itself behind a door other players cannot open. You still have to survive a contested region to get the Spirit Waystone. What you do not have to do is lose a two-hour run to an ambush on the last boss. That is a world with rules rather than a lobby with a queue, and it is the right instinct.

The Outlands dragon attacks are the same idea from the other side. Announcing them in advance so guilds can assemble, and letting rivals show up for exactly that reason, turns a world boss into a scheduled territorial fight. Announced contested content beats surprise contested content, because both sides chose it.

Where we would sound a note of caution is the reward ladder. A Fire Drake Egg raised at home into a mount, exclusive cosmetics gated behind Draconic Insight, plus creator giveaways running six weeks. That is a lot of engagement machinery bolted to one update. Nothing in the launch post is sold for money, which is the thing that matters, and it is worth watching that it stays that way.

What's next

The launch gift in Albion's own shops runs to 7 September at 10:00 UTC, and doubled Twitch drops, which are rewards for watching a stream, run to 14 September at 09:30 UTC. Both dates are on the calendar with the day we last checked them.

FFXIV Patch 7.56 maintenance: 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. Pacific, and the season that closes with it

2026-09-10T00:00:00Z

Patch 7.56 for Final Fantasy XIV lands with overnight downtime. Square Enix's maintenance notice puts that at 11:00 p.m. on 7 September to 3:00 a.m. on 8 September, Pacific time, while its other notice on the season ending dates the same maintenance to Tuesday 8 September. Our reading is that these are one window written in two timezones.

That other notice says PvP Series 11 draws to a close with the beginning of that maintenance. PvP is short for player versus player, the part of the game where players fight each other, and a PvP Series is a numbered season of its reward track.

That is a useful reminder, because the deadline people actually miss is the season closing under the patch rather than the patch itself.

The downtime now has an hour on it

By its own all-Worlds notice, Square Enix takes the game down from 11:00 p.m. on 7 September to 3:00 a.m. on 8 September, Pacific time. Maintenance is the planned shutdown while a patch is installed, and the notice says the finish time may move.

Our reading: the patch day is still the eighth almost everywhere, but if you play on the US west coast, your evening of the seventh is the one that disappears.

Four smaller things go with it, and one of them is not obvious.

Data Center Travel stops 30 minutes early. That is the feature that lets you visit another group of servers, and it stays off until maintenance ends.
The same 30-minute head start applies to three Mog Station jobs: moving your character to another home server, renaming a character, and entering an item or gift code. Mog Station is the game's account and billing website.
The Companion app is unavailable too. That is the game's companion phone app, and Square Enix gives it a maintenance notice of its own.
Duty recorder data recorded before this maintenance can no longer be replayed after it. The duty recorder is the feature that saves a run so you can watch it back later.

That last one is the one to act on before the servers go down. The notice states the effect and gives no reason for it; our reading is that a patch changes the game underneath a recording. It is also the kind of thing a player only discovers by going to watch a fight they were proud of.

What changed

Several things move on the eighth, and not all of them are updates.

What	When	Detail
Patch 7.56 downtime	7 Sep 23:00 to 8 Sep 03:00 PDT	Brings beastmaster, a limited job (job is this game's word for a character class)
PvP Series 11 ends	Tue 8 Sep 2026, as the downtime starts; our reading puts that at 7 Sep 23:00 PDT	Series experience and level reset, rewards replaced
Series 11 rewards claimable until	end of Series 12	Trophy crystals carry over
Switch 2 free subscription period ends	Mon 7 Sep 2026, 23:59 local	30-day free play then starts 8 Sep
Moogle Treasure Trove, First Hunt for Astronomy	Wed 9 Sep 2026	Two installments, uolon horn reward

Beastmaster is the patch's headline, and it comes from a different notice. The Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XCIII digest was recorded at Fan Festival 2026 in Berlin, which is the game's own convention. Lead battle content designer Masaki Nakagawa walks through live gameplay of beastmaster there. Square Enix calls it the limited job introduced in Patch 7.56, a job being a character class and a limited one being a class that only works in certain content.

Before and after, for anyone on Switch 2

This is the quiet one, and it is a bill rather than a patch.

By its own notice on Switch 2 subscription fees, Square Enix ran a free subscription period on the Nintendo Switch 2 version, introduced to help ensure server stability. That period ends at 23:59 local time in each region on Monday 7 September, the same night the downtime begins. From Tuesday 8 September, the 30-day free play window that came with a Starter or Complete Edition registration begins. Those are the two bundles the game is sold in. A subscription, which is the recurring fee you pay to keep playing, is required once that window has elapsed.

The same notice carries the part that decides what you pay. A Switch 2 subscription is separate from every other platform's, even for an existing subscriber. It is half price with an active subscription elsewhere, and that discount does not apply while a 30-day free play period is running on the other platform.

So the practical order runs like this. The free period ends the night of the seventh. The 30-day clock starts on the eighth. Thirty days from there lands in early October, which is where our maths says the first real charge arrives for anyone who registers then and does not pay before it elapses. Square Enix gives the first two dates, not the third. The free trial is unaffected and stays free, which the notice says outright.

Our take: what it means for players

We are going to defend the model and then complain about the paperwork.

A flat monthly subscription is the fairest arrangement in this genre, and it is worth saying so while the industry drifts the other way. Everyone pays the same. Everyone gets the same game. Nobody's character is stronger because their card is. Square Enix charging for Final Fantasy XIV the way it always has, rather than opening a shop that sells the difference, is why a patch note like this reads as a schedule instead of a price list.

The paperwork is where we would push. There are three dates in this chain. The free period ends at 23:59 on the seventh. The 30-day clock starts the following day. Our maths puts the first real charge in early October. Only one of those three lands in most people's heads. Anyone who registered at launch on Switch 2 and has not paid yet will meet a charge they did not plan for, or find their subscription simply stops. Nobody is being tricked here. It is a sequence nobody wrote down for them, and a single line in the launcher would fix it.

The free trial is unaffected and stays free, which remains one of the more genuinely generous things any subscription game does.

What's next

The Moogle Treasure Trove opens the day after the patch, on Wednesday 9 September. The Trove is a recurring event that pays a temporary currency for playing old content, and this run is called the First Hunt for Astronomy.

By its own announcement, Square Enix calls it a special edition celebrating the upcoming release of Evercold, and it runs across two installments. The uolon horn needs an item awarded for minimog and ultimog challenges. The horn is available in the second hunt as well, so missing the first one is not fatal.

Beyond that, 7.56 is a closing patch rather than an opening one. The next thing on the horizon is Evercold itself, which Square Enix names only as an upcoming release. We carry it on the release tracker with no date at all, because it has not given one. Every date above is on the calendar.

WoW's Midnight Season 2 finishes unlocking on 8 September

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

World of Warcraft's Midnight Season 2, the game's current run of months, finishes unlocking in the week of 8 September 2026. That is when the fourth and last chunk of its big group dungeon opens to the automatic queue. Blizzard staged the season across five weekly steps rather than one day, in its own announcement.

The names, in plain words. The Venomous Abyss is this season's raid, which is a dungeon built for a large group and the hardest thing on the schedule. Raid Finder is the automatic queue that puts strangers into an easier version of it, released in chunks called wings. Above Raid Finder sit three harder settings: Normal, then Heroic, then Mythic at the top. The Great Vault is the weekly chest a character earns just by playing. Delves are short solo dungeons.

The unlock timeline

Week of	What opened
11 August	Altar of Fangs, Heroic and Mythic 0 dungeons, the new eight-dungeon rotation, Tidebound Grotto on World difficulty, Prey Normal and Hard, Nemesis delves at the first difficulty, arena training grounds
18 August	The Venomous Abyss on Normal, Heroic, Mythic and Raid Finder wing 1, Mythic+ Season 2, player-versus-player Season 2, bountiful delves and keys, Prey Nightmare mode, Great Vault season rewards
25 August	Raid Finder wing 2 and the raid's story mode
1 September	Raid Finder wing 3
8 September	Raid Finder wing 4

Mythic 0 is the detail people miss in that table. It ran on a weekly lockout in the first week and moved to a daily reset in the second, at the same 292 item level either way. Item level is the number that says how strong a piece of gear is.

Our take: what it means for players

A five-week ramp is a decision about who the season is for. Read it in order and it tells you who Blizzard expects to be where.

The first week is a gearing week with no raid in it at all. The second carries almost everything competitive at once: the timed dungeons, the fighting between players, the raid on Normal, Heroic, Mythic and the first Raid Finder wing, and the Great Vault, all turning on together. The three weeks after that add the raid's story mode and three more Raid Finder wings, and nothing else.

That last part is the interesting choice, and we think it is a good one. A schedule whose back half is built entirely around pacing the story for people who do not raid on a fixed night treats a casual evening as a legitimate way to play rather than a lesser one. The competitive players got everything in week two and are not waiting on anybody.

For a returning player the practical read is that arriving now costs almost nothing. Every source of gear except the last two Raid Finder wings has been open since the week of 18 August. The dungeon rotation is fixed for the season. The rating thresholds are published up front: 1500 for the title "the Venomous", 2000 for the mount Breath of Blight, 3000 for Breath of Ruin. Rating here is the score a character builds from timed dungeon runs. The top one percent and top 0.1 percent of players in your region settle at the season's end rather than on the way through. Thresholds published up front are the difference between a goal and a treadmill.

The raid's rewards are unusually generous for housing, and this detail is worth copying. Defeating Ula'tek drops the Venomous Abyss trophy decor for every raid member at 100 percent, on every difficulty. Heroic adds a second trophy and Mythic a third. A guaranteed drop rather than a chance is the right way round for a cosmetic. It pays the group that finished the raid, rather than the one lucky person in it.

Credit where it is due: Raider.IO is where a lot of groups will actually watch those rating thresholds move.

What's next

After the week of 8 September the season has no further scheduled unlocks. The next dated Warcraft event is BlizzCon, which is Blizzard's own convention, on 12 and 13 September. Its published running order carries a "World of Warcraft: What's Next" session and a second one numbered II. Both sit on the calendar with the day we last checked them.

RuneScape starts enforcing a 300 furniture limit in player houses again

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

RuneScape's September Patch Week landed on 1 September 2026. Its longest section is housekeeping for Leagues, a temporary game mode with fresh characters and its own rules. The line most players will feel sits in the housing block of Jagex's own patch notes: the 300 furniture limit in a player house is being enforced again, with a warning on entry for anyone already over it.

A player-owned house, to be plain about it, is a building each player customises and fills with useful rooms. It is a long-running side system in this game, and most of what goes in it is there for the look of the thing.

What actually changed

Six names in the table need a line each.

They are all the game's own words. Dungeoneering is the skill built around descending a randomised dungeon. Prayer and Summoning are two more skills, one powering protective blessings and one calling creatures to fight beside you. A Godsword is a family of powerful two-handed weapons named for the game's gods. Miscellania is an island players manage for a steady supply of resources. Anachronia, in the hotfix row, is one of the game's islands. Anachronia, in the hotfix row, is one of the game's islands. Anachronia, in the hotfix row, is one of the game's islands.

Area	Change
Player houses	300 furniture cap enforced again with an entry warning, bigger limit promised, undated
Player houses	Miscellania table recipe from Royal Trouble, Ports table recipe in the Ports Reward Shop
Dungeoneering Remastered	Prayer and Summoning doors capped at 99, Follow the Leader completable after a party member leaves, bound blastboxes and surgeboxes no longer lost on floor completion
Leagues II Equilibrium	Eleven quests and area tasks auto-completed, five quests and six tasks, divine boons at half energy with the Divine Druid relic, poison-only kills now award experience and drops
Leagues, hotfixed	The Leagues rare drop boost now applies to Godsword shards in the God Wars Dungeon, Clue Connoisseur gives 3 charges per outfit piece, Anachronia's base camp tutorial auto-completes on region unlock
General	Soul altar no longer demands a pure essence in the inventory, items sold to Tom's Trove buyable back, chicks added to four farms

Our take: what it means for players

Take the good first, because there is a lot of it and it all points the same way.

Auto-completing a quest a Leagues player cannot reasonably do, rather than making them do it, is the correct call every time. Eleven auto-completes went in this week: five quests and six area tasks, plus one more in the hotfix block for Anachronia's base camp tutorial. Alongside those came a fix so enemies killed only with poison award experience and drops, and a Wiki button that now points at the Equilibrium page. That is a team watching a temporary game mode and clearing the potholes as players hit them, which is what a seasonal mode needs and rarely gets.

The housing cap is the other thing. Enforcing an existing 300 item limit again is not a nerf on paper. Our reading is that in practice it is one. The patch note adds a warning "on entry to any players above this", which is Jagex confirming those houses exist. A warning on entry, no way to raise the ceiling, and a bigger limit described only as coming soon, leaves those players holding a house the game now flags as a problem. Housing is exactly the kind of long-horizon, no-power, purely-for-love system that keeps people subscribed to old games. It deserves a date rather than a promise.

Credit where the source gives it. Jagex points at Mod Yuey streaming Dragon trophy tips on 3 September alongside Maikeru and RSWillmissit. Mod is the prefix a Jagex staff member's public name carries. The notes also highlight community work by Casillio, Artwle, Bucket Cultist, Wings of Absurdity, Lily and SaltyxRs. The Pink Skirts run their usual week of open events, including Vorago, one of the game's boss fights, on 6 September.

What's next

The Month Ahead for September was due mid-week, and the community API and plugin update from Mod Fable has moved to the week of the seventh. An API is the interface community tools use to work with the game. Neither is a dated commitment, so neither joins the calendar until Jagex gives a day.

WoW's Curse of Ula'tek adds an island, an eight-boss raid and a Discord link

2026-09-13T00:00:00Z

World of Warcraft's Curse of Ula'tek update went live on 11 August 2026. Blizzard's own summary leads with the Coiled Isle: a new outdoor area off the east coast of Zul'Aman, with an eight-boss raid, a three-boss dungeon and three new delves behind it. The raid arrived a week later.

Three words worth unpacking. A raid is a dungeon built for a large group, usually the hardest thing a game has. Delves are the small solo version. Zul'Aman is a region long-standing players already know, so the isle sits somewhere familiar.

What shipped, and when each piece opened

Piece	Detail	Live from
The Coiled Isle	Public events, Curse Surges, cursed fishing, an isle-only talent tree	11 August
Altar of Fangs	Three bosses, up to Mythic 0 (Mythic is the hardest difficulty setting)	11 August
Lairs	World bosses moved into private instanced fights; the notes describe scaling up to flexible Mythic with 15 to 25 players	11 August
Three delves	The Ring of Glory, Gnarldor Isle, and Venomfall Deeps as a Nemesis one	11 August
The Venomous Abyss	Eight bosses, Ula'tek last	18 August, with Season 2
Mythic+ rotation	Altar of Fangs joins seven others	18 August, with Season 2

Our take: what it means for players

Two changes in this update outlive the season around them, and neither of them is the raid.

The first is the Discord link. Discord is the chat app a great many guilds already run on the side. Connecting a Battle.net account to a Discord one and passing messages both ways closes a gap guilds have long papered over with a second app. It changes nothing about how the game plays and quite a lot about who reads guild chat, because the people who miss a raid signup are the ones not logged in. Unglamorous plumbing, and the best thing in the patch.

The second is housing blueprints, and this is the one we will actually praise. Exporting a whole house, an interior, an exterior or a single room and handing it to another player turns decorating from a private hobby into something shareable. The detail that makes it usable is the import screen: it lists what you are missing and still lets you import. A reset option puts everything back in storage, so experimenting costs nothing.

Note what is not there. Nothing in Blizzard's summary attaches a charge to any part of it. No shop entry, no bundle, no currency. In a genre where housing is very often the first thing put behind a shop, a sharing feature arriving with no price on it is worth saying out loud.

The area design earns a line too. Killing a rare tough monster at a Curse Surge unlocks cursed fishing in that spot, which chains a combat activity into a quiet one rather than running them in parallel. Those monsters rotate across five locations, so the isle rewards moving rather than camping. A world that pays you for walking around in it is a world rather than a menu.

Credit where it is due: Wowhead is where the community documents the blueprint format and the rare rotation.

What's next

The last dated step of this content cycle is the fourth Raid Finder wing, which is one chunk of the Venomous Abyss opened to the automatic queue that puts strangers into an easier version of it. Blizzard's own Midnight Season 2 schedule puts that wing in the week of 8 September.

The next Warcraft date on our calendar after that wing opens is BlizzCon, which is Blizzard's own convention, and we have its dates and its running order in our piece on the schedule. Both sit on the calendar with the day we last checked them.

ESO's combat team rewrote Update 51's balance pass after test-server feedback

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

The combat team behind The Elder Scrolls Online went back into Update 51 and rewrote its balance pass. Players had spent two weeks hammering the public test server, which is a copy of the game where changes are tried before release. The team says so plainly in its own post on 13 August: these adjustments answer that feedback, and were not originally planned.

That is a rare admission, and it is why this list is worth reading closely. A quick primer for anyone who has not played. You pick a class, which is the kit of skills your character fights with. ZeniMax is rebuilding those classes one at a time. Update 51 is the next free patch, and a balance pass is the round of number changes that decides which classes feel strong.

The numbers, by class

Class	Change
Dragonknight (a fire and earth themed class)	Core of Flame 12% missing resources (was 15%), Heart of Flame healing down 20%, Landslide builds faster and stacks to 12, Seething Fury halved in player-versus-player, Power Lash damage down
Templar (a light and healing themed class)	Balanced Warrior uncapped and now rewards slotting Templar skills, Judgment's Brand 1600 bonus damage (was 1400), Aetheric Lancer's area effect spawns on a stationary caster
Nightblade (a stealth themed class)	Strife grants 1% damage per 10% of current health while active; the cost increases stay under review
Necromancer (a class that raises the dead)	Nothing Wasted loses 2 stacks instead of 3 but decays every 12 seconds without generating a corpse (was 15), Pummeling Goliath's bash gains a 1-second cooldown and about 73% more damage, Frozen Colossus 12.5% more damage and costs 150 ultimate (down), both to be reverted in a future update
Warden (a nature and ice themed class)	Fetcher Infection 75% every other cast (was 60%), Arctic Blast about 20% more per tick
Sets and skills	Draugrkin's healing reduction halved in player-versus-player and its bonuses moved to weapon and spell damage, Ice Comet about 21% more damage over time and now snares on every hit

Two bits of vocabulary for that table. A stack is a counter a skill builds up as you use it. An ultimate is a powerful ability you charge up before you can cast it.

Our take: what it means for players

Credit first, because it belongs to the testers rather than the studio.

Nothing in that table exists without the people who spent two weeks on a test server writing up what was wrong. ZeniMax naming that feedback as the cause is the honest thing to do. A public test server is unpaid labour that makes a live patch better, and it deserves to be described that way.

The substance is a studio admitting that rebuilding classes one at a time was always going to break fights between players. Dragonknight and Werewolf got their refreshes before the others, and the post names their "prevalence and often dominance" in that space. Werewolf is a transformation skill line a character can carry alongside their class. The team says part of that is inevitable by nature of going first. It is. That is exactly the argument against shipping a rework class by class in a game where players fight each other. Everyone on a class that has not had its turn waits on a schedule they did not choose.

The Warden entry is the one that should worry people. A class the studio says is still mid-rework gets two number tweaks and a note saying they do not indicate where it will end up. The next stage of that rework has already moved to 2027. That is a long stretch of playing a class the developers agree is not finished, and no amount of Fetcher Infection damage closes the gap.

The Necromancer bash change is the quiet good one. The post says it is aimed at correcting the need to double bash weave, which is the fiddly habit of squeezing two bashes in between other abilities, and gives one harder hit instead. ZeniMax says plainly that this "will nerf some of the ceiling potential", and that it is fine with that based on the logs. Our view is that trading a little top-end power for a far less fiddly ability is the right way round.

What's next

Update 51 lands on 28 September 2026, a week later than first announced (the studio director's letter). The next stage of the class and combat rework is now targeted at 2027. Both sit on the calendar and the release tracker with the day we last checked each.

Bronzeman won a majority in Old School RuneScape and lost anyway

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

Old School RuneScape's Bronzeman vote got more yes votes than no votes and still failed. A change put to a vote in this game needs 70 percent to pass, which is a much higher bar than a simple majority. Jagex's own post-vote note, published 21 August 2026, confirms the majority and the shortfall.

Two things to know if you have never played. Jagex, which is the studio behind the game, puts big proposed changes to a public vote, and the cache for this one says the Bronzeman poll "fell short of the required 70% supermajority". Bronzeman is a self-imposed mode that blocks buying from other players.

What the studio said it did

	Detail
Result	Majority yes, below the 70% bar
Threshold	70%, described by Jagex as the required supermajority for this poll
Studio's advance knowledge	Jagex says it can see results before they are public, and prepared for this outcome
Immediate action	In-game survey, live from 11:15 UTC on 21 August
Proposed change	An optional question in future votes asking why a player voted as they did
Next step	An update once the studio is confident what, if anything, should happen

Our take: what it means for players

We are going to defend the threshold, and then criticise how it was used.

A 70 percent bar is the single most valuable thing this game has. It is why the world still feels like something its players own rather than a product shipped at them, and it is why a studio cannot quietly reshape it in a direction the community hates. A mode that more than half of voters wanted and fewer than seven in ten did is exactly the case the bar exists for. Jagex publishes no percentage, only "a majority" and the shortfall. The bar held. Good.

Where we would push back is the design of the vote rather than its outcome. Jagex said it saw the result coming and had prepared for it, and that it now wants to ask people why they voted. Asking why after the fact is a survey. Asking why on the ballot is data. The studio's own note says this information is "now much easier for us to process with the improved polling system we have", which raises the obvious question of why a proposal this contested went out without it. A failed vote costs the community the wait and costs the studio the work, and both are avoidable when the disagreement is legible in advance.

The tone deserves credit. Jagex asks everyone to focus on "where did we go wrong, and what needs to change in the future". That is the right target. Our reading is that the mode failed because the pitch did not answer the objections, and blaming voters would have been the easy move.

For anyone tracking the discussion, the studio points at the 2007Scape subreddit, the Steam forums and its Discord, and at the Old School RuneScape Wiki for the reference material.

What's next

Nothing is dated. The survey opened at 11:15 UTC on 21 August, with no close given. Jagex said it would return with an update once it knew what should happen, and as of writing it has not. So the calendar carries nothing for Bronzeman, and will not until there is a day to carry.

ESO Update 51 slips a week to 28 September, and two big features slide into 2027

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

Update 51 for The Elder Scrolls Online lands on 28 September 2026, a week later than ZeniMax first said. Three things have moved out of 2026 altogether. The change came on 30 July in a letter from game director Nick Giacomini, published alongside a round of studio changes.

If you have never played it: The Elder Scrolls Online is a fantasy game thousands of people share, and an update is a free patch that adds areas, systems and fixes for everyone. Season One is the game's name for this stretch of the year and the content grouped inside it.

What changed

The letter puts a principle before a date: quality experiences over calendar dates. Here is what that costs, in dates.

The letter gives one old date and one new one. Update 51 "will now launch one week later, on September 28". The 21 September in the first column below is that week subtracted, not a date ZeniMax restates.

Feature	Was	Now
Update 51	one week earlier, so 21 September 2026 by our subtraction	28 September 2026
Nowhere Vault	with Update 51	28 September 2026, with Update 51
Rumors system	with Update 51	28 September 2026, with Update 51
Player experience improvements	with Update 51	28 September 2026, with Update 51
Three-sided Battlegrounds (arenas where players fight each other)	no date stated	28 September 2026, permanently
Crimson Veldt trial (a trial is this game's word for a big-group raid dungeon)	no date stated	2027
Update 52	no date stated	January 2027
Class and combat refresh, next stage	no date stated	targeted at 2027

Everything else in Season One runs as planned. The letter adds a Golden Pursuit campaign, which is a rotating list of in-game tasks that pay shop rewards, called "Straight to the Crate", from 20 August to 17 September. It also dates a High Seas of Tamriel event from 30 September to 14 October. Tamriel is the continent the whole series is set on. Season Two is dated 21 October 2026.

Our take: what it means for players

A week is not much. The rest of the list is, and the letter is more honest than it had to be.

The Crimson Veldt is the biggest thing on the list. A trial is this game's word for a raid, which is a dungeon built for a large group and usually the hardest thing a game has. The letter says it is pushing boundaries with mounted combat. That is the sort of feature a raiding guild plans months around. Moving it into 2027 with no date attached leaves the Nowhere Vault as the hardest new thing Season One offers. The group that was waiting will now be waiting past the New Life Festival, which the letter itself puts inside Season Two. Our reading is that a feature this size sliding out of the season it was announced in costs a studio trust it cannot buy back.

The class and combat rework is the quieter loss. A class is the kit of skills your character fights with, and ZeniMax is rebuilding them one at a time. The letter says the studio is "targeting 2027 for the next refresh", and that it is discussing "some interim options for the classes still awaiting their full refresh".

A rework that runs one class at a time is a balance problem the whole time it runs, and that is our reading rather than the letter's. Stretch the window into 2027 and you stretch the problem with it. The people paying for that are everyone still waiting on a rework. We wrote up what the combat team itself said two weeks later in our piece on the Update 51 test-server changes.

The studio context is in the letter too, unprompted: organizational changes, departures, and a leadership arrangement in which Giacomini runs the studio alongside Josh Henderson. That is the reason given for the schedule. It is more useful to know than the schedule itself, because it is the thing that predicts the next one. Publishing it rather than letting a date slip quietly is the right call, and we would rather have this letter than a cheerful one.

Credit where it is due: the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages are where the community documents this game's class changes patch by patch.

What's next

28 September 2026. Update 51 and three-sided Battlegrounds.
30 September to 14 October 2026. High Seas of Tamriel.
12 October 2026. Moon Hunter Keep and March of Sacrifices become free for everyone in their group versions.
21 October 2026. Season Two, with those two dungeons in solo form.
9 November 2026. Greymoor and Markarth become free for all players.
January 2027. Update 52, expected to carry the Jerall Pass zone for fighting other players.
2027, undated. Crimson Veldt, and the next stage of the class rework.

Every one of those sits on the calendar with the day it was last checked. The two with no firm date are on the release tracker rather than written up as though they had one.

Old School RuneScape puts twelve creators in a room and lets chat sabotage them

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

Jagex, which is the studio behind Old School RuneScape, is running a live creator event in London on Saturday 5 September 2026, streamed from 14:00 to 19:30 UTC. Its own announcement is refreshingly clear that this aims at something more relaxed than a polished esports tournament. Twelve Old School RuneScape creators, four teams, in-game and real-world challenges, and viewers voting on how badly to sabotage them.

LANscape, which is what the studio calls the event, is its own in-person day where creators play in one room. The four teams are named after gods in the game's world: Saradomin, Zamorak, Bandos and Guthix.

The four teams, and what they face

Team	Creators
Saradomin	Purpp, Potatohime, Mr Mammal
Zamorak	SoloMission, Tastylife, Sardaco
Bandos	Skill Specs, Katerena, Sick Nerd
Guthix	B0aty, Megan, MMORPG (a creator's handle here, not the genre)

The in-game rounds run on a special event world, which is a separate copy of the game where Jagex can change rules it would never touch on the live one. There is a team tileman challenge scored on crossing as few tiles as possible. There is a boss relay of familiar bosses, one or two of which Jagex says may catch the teams off guard. There is a barrage race across Gielinor, the world the game is set in, with obstacles thrown in. There is hide and seek. And there is a final showdown where players fight each other, where Jagex says points earned earlier could help teams buy upgrades.

Away from the keyboard there are gnome gliders, giant Jenga, cup-stacking and carnival games. The announcement lists all of those as challenges Jagex is "looking at" rather than confirming. Soup and J1mmy host.

Our take: what it means for players

This is the right way to spend a Saturday on a game this old, and the reason is the part that sounds like a joke.

The event world is the news. Jagex is making rule changes it describes as deeply irresponsible anywhere near the main game, which is only possible because the studio is willing to build a throwaway ruleset for one afternoon. Most publishers would either run the event inside the live game with the handbrake on, or build a competitive format only the very best players recognise. A tileman race and a game of hide and seek make sense to anybody who has ever played this game, and that is exactly why they will draw an audience.

Giving the vote to Twitch chat is the other good decision. Handing viewers the power to split a teammate's mouse and keyboard, or take away somebody's F-keys at the worst possible second, makes the audience a participant rather than a metric. It also, quietly, makes the competition unfair on purpose, which removes any pressure to treat it as a ranking.

Credit is the whole point of the event, so we will pass it on. Purpp, Potatohime, Mr Mammal, SoloMission, Tastylife, Sardaco, Skill Specs, Katerena, Sick Nerd, B0aty, Megan and MMORPG are the twelve competing. Soup and J1mmy are hosting. Jagex thanks The Skulled for the announcement video. A game stays alive this long because those people keep showing up.

What's next

The stream runs 14:00 to 19:30 UTC on 5 September, on the Old School RuneScape Twitch channel. Jagex says some participating creators may also stream their own perspectives. The date is on the calendar with the day we last checked it against Jagex's page.

Throne and Liberty's 4.9.0 makes the Nix region easier almost everywhere

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

Throne and Liberty's update 4.9.0 followed roughly three hours of downtime, which the notes said would begin at 10:30 p.m. Pacific on 26 August 2026. The patch notes on Steam are dominated by a single theme. Most of what happens in Nix, which is the region of the map where the current content lives, now takes less time, fewer people, or both.

Throne and Liberty is a fantasy world made by NCSOFT, which is a Korean studio, and released in the West by Amazon Games, Amazon's own game division. The Tumgir Vault below is an instanced dungeon inside Nix, and a Skill Core is an equippable item that changes how one of your skills works.

The difficulty pass, in numbers

Where	Change
Tumgir Vault	Chest interaction time down 30%, Skill Core acquisition down 50%, elevator sequences down 40%
Tumgir Vault	Crowd control removed from named enemies on floors 2 and 4 and reduced on floor 3; the Frost effect removed on floor 1
Ritual of Frost	Frost Curses per magic circle down from 29 to 9
Frozen Moment	Three waves down to two, survival per wave up from 45 to 60 seconds
Tumgir Hollow	Water Energy requirement down from 15 to 10, geyser reactivation 60% faster
Scarlet Dream, Primal Trial, Hall of Repentance and others	Maximum participants cut from 6 to 3
Remnants of Nix	Masarax now spawns at a fixed location with a 30% chance at 15 minutes, more rewards, less difficulty

Crowd control, in that second row, is the family of effects that stun, freeze or otherwise stop you acting.

Our take: what it means for players

The cuts are the right call, and the reason for them is not flattering.

Instanced events that allowed up to six players now cap at three, and the interaction timers come down by 30 to 60 percent. The notes give the changes and no reason for them. Our reading is a studio concluding that content gated on assembling six people was gating on something its players could not supply. Better to fix it than leave it standing empty, and the fixes are real: faster chests, fewer curses, fewer waves, and Masarax now spawning in a fixed spot instead of a random one.

What we will not wave through is the note at the bottom about the Battle Pass, which is this game's seasonal reward track and has a paid tier. Alongside Battle Pass: Smoldering Vow, the update says that moving forward, Battle Pass event shops will contain a Premium section. It sells extra Trait Unlockstone Fragments, Trait Enchantment Stone Fragments and Heroic Trait Unlockstone Fragments to players who have bought the Premium Pass. A Trait is a small permanent bonus attached to a piece of gear, so those are character power materials rather than cosmetics. Putting more of them behind a purchase is the plainest form of paying for strength there is. A game that has just spent a patch making its content reachable should not spend the same patch making its progression purchasable.

The Snowsoul tier deserves a flag of its own, for a different reason. A new weapon rank above Ascended Archboss gear, crafted from the weapon you already own, resets the top of the ladder for everyone who finished the last one. An Archboss is the game's largest open-world boss, fought by many players at once. That is the treadmill working as designed, and it is at least earned through Ascended Deluzhnoa and Ascended Giant Cordy rather than sold.

What's next

By the same notes, Vegamor has moved to the end of September and the Primordial Wanderer milestone now ends 24 September 2026. Both dates are on the calendar with the day we last checked them. The handover of this game's Western publishing, which we covered from Amazon's own announcement, is on the sunset tracker.

Black Temple opens on WoW's Burning Crusade Classic servers, with a new arena season

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

Black Temple, which is a big-group dungeon from an old World of Warcraft expansion, opened on the Burning Crusade Classic Anniversary Edition servers on 27 August 2026. It arrived alongside the Battle for Mount Hyjal, the Netherwing daily quest hub and epic gems. Blizzard's own notice lists them together under what it calls your journey ahead, and puts Arena Season 3 five days later on 1 September.

The short version for anyone who has never played. Burning Crusade Classic, which is a re-release of the game's first expansion, runs on its own servers so people can play it as it was. Each of Black Temple and Mount Hyjal is a raid, which is the game's word for a dungeon built for a large group. The Caverns of Time, where the second one sits, is the in-game hub that leads to dungeons set in the game's own past. Netherwing is a faction you build standing with to earn a flying mount. And an arena season is a numbered stretch of ranked small-team fighting, with its own gear.

The two raids, side by side

	Black Temple	Battle for Mount Hyjal
Level	70	70
Location	Shadowmoon Valley, Outland	Caverns of Time, Tanaris
Bosses	9, ending on Illidan Stormrage	5, ending on Archimonde
Reputation	Ashtongue Deathsworn	Scale of the Sands
Gate	An attunement chain	The Vials of Eternity questline
Extra vendor	Okuno, inside the raid	Indormi, inside the raid

An attunement is a chain of quests you finish before the game lets you in at all. Indormi is the row to note for anyone not raiding: the jewelcrafting designs for the new epic gems sell from inside Mount Hyjal, and the gems themselves come from mining in that raid at 375 skill or as rare drops in Black Temple. Blizzard's notice also says a raid group is not required to enter Mount Hyjal.

Our take: what it means for players

The arena rollover is the part with a deadline on it, and it has already passed for anyone holding points. Season 2 closed the week of 16 August, at 10:00 pm local time the night before each region's reset. Unspent Arena Points, which is the currency earned in ranked small-team matches, turned into Honor Points at ten each. Honor is the older currency, earned from fighting other players out in the world.

That is a conversion rather than a refund, and we think it is the wrong way round. Points saved for a Season 3 purchase became honor, which buys a different and older set of gear. Anyone who did the disciplined thing and banked their points for the next tier was paid out in the currency for the last one. The people who spent theirs immediately lost nothing. A rollover that punishes patience is a small unfairness with a real cost, and it was avoidable.

The upside of the same rollover is genuinely good, and worth being loud about, because it is the opposite of how a lot of this genre now solves the same problem. Two tiers of player-versus-player gear dropped their gates at once. Season 2 gear now sells at a discount from Area 52 with no rating requirement, and Season 1 gear moved to the Honor vendors in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. For a player arriving late to this phase that is a cheap way back in, and it costs time rather than money. No boost, no bundle, no shop page. A vendor and an afternoon.

Netherwing is the long tail and it makes no apology for it. The standing comes from daily quests on Netherwing Ledge. That is a floating outpost in southeastern Shadowmoon Valley, which the notice says needs a flying mount to reach, or a willingness to take a very strategic fall. The six Netherwing Drake colours all need exalted standing, artisan riding, and the Blood Oath of the Netherwing step of the quest chain. Nothing about that chain is fast. That is the point of putting it in beside a raid tier. It is the sort of reward that still means something a year later, precisely because nobody can shortcut it.

Credit where it is due: Blizzard's own notice links a community guide for the Netherwing chain, and Wowhead is where a lot of players will check the steps.

What's next

The anniversary servers have no further dated phase in Blizzard's notice. The next Warcraft date on the record is BlizzCon, which is Blizzard's own convention, on 12 and 13 September. Its published running order carries three forward-looking Warcraft sessions, one of them for Hardcore, the mode where a character who dies is gone for good. Both days are on the calendar with the day we last checked them.

EVE Online is rebuilding the screen you fly by, and you can opt out for a long time

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

EVE Online, which is a long-running science-fiction game about spaceships, is taking apart the most established screen in it. And its second design blog is unusually explicit about the order. An opt-in phase, then a long opt-out phase, then a full switch only once adoption is high. A first version is aimed at the next expansion, with no date attached.

The screen in question is the HUD, which is the set of bars and buttons drawn over the game. At its centre is the medallion, a round dial carrying your ship's speed, its health, its heat, and its capacitor, which is the energy pool that powers guns, shields and engines. A module is a piece of equipment fitted to a ship and switched on and off in combat. To overload one is to run it past its safe limit for extra power and some damage. And the minimap is the small radar view showing what is near your ship.

The studio is Fenris Creations, which is the company behind the game. It took that name when it announced on 6 May 2026 that it was becoming independent again.

What changes, and in which release

Element	Change	Stage
Speed	Moves out of the medallion into its own controls	First
Health	Shield, armour and hull stay around the capacitor, with clearer proportions and possible ticks	First
Capacitor	Keeps its circle, gains a gauge showing how fast energy is gained or lost	First
Rack heat	Moves beside the medallion, pointing at the rack it belongs to	First
Overload (running a module past its safe limit)	Becomes its own interaction; Shift-click is preserved	First
Modules	Clearer active and inactive states, a moving cycle indicator, discoverable shortcuts	First
Minimap	On-grid, metro and system views	Second
Boosters	Dedicated consumable slots with shortcuts	Third
Customisation	HUD as movable components, hideable parts	Fourth

One row there needs a word: boosters, which are consumable drugs that raise a pilot's stats for a while.

Our take: what it means for players

The rollout plan is better than the redesign, and the redesign looks good.

An opt-in phase, then an opt-out phase the studio itself expects to run long, then a switch only once adoption is high. That is how you change an interface people have spent years learning without taking those reflexes away from them. Compare it with the industry norm of shipping a new screen on patch day and learning from the forums afterwards. Nobody's Friday night fleet gets ruined by a redesign they did not ask for, and the studio still gets its modernisation.

The research is credited where it belongs, and that should be noted. New players were brought in to be watched. Veterans were interviewed. There were sessions with the player-elected council the blog calls the CSM, plus a workshop and a booth at Fanfest, which is the game's own convention. The single most useful finding in the whole blog came from watching newcomers fail to realise the security status element was a button at all. A designer does not find that by thinking harder.

Our one reservation is sequencing. Customisation is the thing veterans have asked for longest, and it is the answer to the screen space a minimap and consumable slots will eat. It is explicitly last. Screen space is a real cost in a game played in several windows at once, and shipping the parts that take room before the parts that let you hide them is the wrong order for the people most likely to opt in early.

What's next

A third blog is promised, covering what comes after this work. The first round of HUD changes is targeted at the next expansion with no announced date, so nothing here joins the calendar yet.

Black Desert's Guild League season runs to 23 September

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

Black Desert opened three dated events at once on 27 August 2026, and the event post from Pearl Abyss, which is the studio behind the game, runs the longest of them out to November. The one with a competitive deadline is the Guild League, which is a scheduled competition where guilds fight each other. Its regular season closes on 23 September.

Black Desert, if you have not played it, is an action-combat fantasy world made by Pearl Abyss. Guilds are player-run clubs, and the Guild League is fought between them.

The three windows

Event	Runs	What it gives
Guild League regular season	27 Aug to 23 Sep 2026	Faster-paced format, rebuilt rules, rewards at 3, 6 and 12 total victories
Sailing and barter hot time	27 Aug to 10 Sep 2026	+100% sailing experience, +100% barter experience, double sailor experience from monsters on the Great Ocean
Olvia Academy combat boost (servers with boosted rewards for new and returning players)	27 Aug to 12 Nov 2026	Ordered quest chain giving cron meals, perfumes and selectable harmony draughts

A hot time is the game's word for a limited window with boosted rewards. The Olvia Academy is the game's programme for new and returning players, named after one of its starting towns.

Guild League's reward tiers are the Thankful Premium Outfit Box, 1,500 Cron Stones and an Ultimate Premium Enhancement Box, at three, six and twelve victories. Cron Stones are consumables that stop a piece of gear breaking when you try to upgrade it.

Our take: what it means for players

Three windows of three very different lengths is a scheduling choice, and it tells you what the studio wants you doing.

The hot time is two weeks and doubles a grind: sailing and barter experience, barter being the game's system of trading goods between islands, plus double sailor experience from monsters killed on the Great Ocean, which is its open sea. Short windows on multipliers are the least objectionable kind of event, because the reward is time saved on something you were going to do anyway rather than power you could not otherwise get. The Great Ocean is one of this game's genuinely world-shaped systems, and paying people to go out there is a reasonable use of a fortnight.

Guild League is the interesting one. Rewards tiered at three, six and twelve victories over four weeks mean the ceiling is reachable by a guild that turns up, rather than only by a guild that wins constantly. And 1,500 Cron Stones at the second tier is a serious amount of upgrade insurance handed to the middle of the ladder rather than the top. Rewarding participation over dominance is how a competitive mode keeps enough guilds in it to stay competitive.

The Olvia chain running eleven weeks is aimed squarely at people who are not here yet, and it is the longest of the three by a distance. Our reading of that gap is a game spending a lot of effort pulling newcomers and lapsed players in, and comparatively little on the players already climbing.

What's next

The sailing hot time closes on 10 September, Guild League on 23 September and the Olvia chain on 12 November. All three are on the calendar with the day we last checked them.

RuneScape: Dragonwilds leaves early access on 15 September

2026-09-14T00:00:00Z

RuneScape: Dragonwilds, which is Jagex's survival game set in the RuneScape world, leaves early access and launches in full on 15 September 2026. Jagex dated it on 5 June during the Summer Game Fest Live showcase, and that page still carried the date when we read it on 14 September. A second release, on 19 August, names four platforms for that day: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and Nintendo Switch 2.

Four things from that opening. Jagex, which is the studio behind RuneScape itself, makes it. Early access is a paid unfinished release players buy into before launch. A survival game is one about gathering, building and staying alive; this one has skills to level as well. And Summer Game Fest is an industry announcement event.

What changed

	Early access	1.0, from 15 September
Platforms	PC (Steam)	PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, Jagex Launcher), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, Nintendo Switch 2
Console release	none stated	simultaneous with PC; the 19 August release calls it the franchise's first game on a console
Covered by a subscription	neither release says	Xbox Game Pass from day one; PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium
Headline content	the road to the Dragon Queen; update 0.12.1 expanded the Agility skill on 29 July	the Scorned Wilderness update, plus all content from the Umbral Sands expansion
Sales, as stated	5 June: over one million sales during early access	19 August, same period: over one million players. Sales in one release, players in the other

The Dragon Queen, in that table, is the figure the current story builds towards. Jagex calls the Scorned Wilderness an update and Umbral Sands an expansion.

Three facts are worth carrying out of that table. The console launch happens at the same time as the PC one, which the 5 June release calls a first, and the 19 August one says this is the franchise's first game to reach a console at all. The second is that 1.0 is not a re-release of what early access already had. The 5 June release says it includes the brand-new Scorned Wilderness update, alongside all content from the Umbral Sands expansion. It dates that expansion only as "arriving later this Summer".

The third is the one that decides what you pay. Jagex's 19 August press release puts the game on Xbox Game Pass from day one, and Game Pass is Microsoft's paid games-subscription service; Jagex says holders play it for free. Of PlayStation it says something narrower, only that the PlayStation 5 release is on the Extra and Premium tiers of PlayStation Plus, Sony's own paid subscription service. Those two tiers are the only part of it the release names. Our reading is that this comes to the same thing for anyone already on one of those tiers, and Jagex does not say so. On editions, that release names a Digital Standard and a Digital Deluxe on PC, and a Digital Standard on Switch 2. Physical Standard and Deluxe editions reach PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X in Q4 2026, the last three months of the year. It names no digital edition for PlayStation 5 or Xbox, and neither release carries a price.

Our take: what it means for players

Dragonwilds is not one of the big shared online worlds this site usually covers, and it is not pretending to be. It is an open-world survival and crafting game for one to four players together, set on Ashenfall, which Jagex calls a previously unexplored continent of Gielinor, which is the world the game is set in. This is the first standalone title in the RuneScape family.

That matters if you are reading this as a RuneScape player rather than a survival player. The family is being widened rather than deepened, and the thing shipping in September is a different genre wearing familiar art. Whether that is exciting or annoying depends entirely on which of those two things you turned up for, and we are not going to tell you which.

What we will say is that the shape of the release is the right one. A game leaves early access on a named date, at 1.0, for up to four players in a world you can walk around. The press release of 5 June names no season pass and no shop, nor does the one from 19 August. On one of the four platforms the game is free from day one to Xbox Game Pass holders, and on a second it sits in two PlayStation Plus tiers. In 2026 that is worth noticing rather than assuming.

The early access run earns attention. The 5 June release says the game passed one million sales during early access, which is a great many for a game still being finished. An executive producer quoted in the 5 June release says every update through early access was shaped by player feedback, which is a claim easy to make and hard to check. What is checkable from Jagex's own newsroom is the cadence beside it. Update 0.12.1, expanding the Agility skill, went out on 29 July. The Xbox Game Pass day-one announcement followed on 19 August. That is a team shipping in public in the weeks before a console launch.

A correction, and it is ours

Until 14 September this piece told you Jagex had not named Nintendo Switch 2, and to treat any Switch listing as unconfirmed. That was wrong. Jagex named it on 19 August, in the same press release the Game Pass line above comes from: the game arrives on Switch 2 as a Digital Standard edition on 15 September too.

We had that release's date sitting in our own paragraph about Jagex's shipping cadence, a few lines up, and still left the old sentence standing. It is corrected here and on the release tracker.

Our reading of how it happened, and it is ours rather than anything Jagex said: we checked the one announcement that dated the launch, wrote down what it did not say, and never asked whether a later announcement had said it. An absence is only ever true of the page you read, on the day you read it.

What's next

The Scorned Wilderness update arrives with 1.0 on 15 September, and the 5 June release says all content from Umbral Sands is in it. Neither release we read gives a day for Umbral Sands itself: the 5 June one says "later this Summer" and the 19 August one never mentions it.

So Umbral Sands is not on the calendar. The launch is, and the row carries the day we last checked it against the 19 August release.

EVE Online is moving 2.4 million lines of code off a version that died in 2020

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

EVE Online, which is the long-running space game Fenris Creations makes, is being moved off Python 2.7. That is sixteen years after it last changed language version, and six years after that version stopped being supported. The studio's own blog puts real numbers on the job, which is why it is worth reading rather than skipping as housekeeping.

Python is the programming language the game is largely written in: the blog counts 2.4 million lines of it. Version 2.7 reached the end of its life in 2020, so new tools are built for Python 3 instead.

A note on the studio's name, because it changed this year. Fenris Creations is the company behind the game. The blog credits it as one of the most significant contributors to Stackless Python, the version of the language EVE runs on. The name comes from its own announcement of 6 May 2026, which says the company behind EVE is once again becoming independent. We use the name the sources use.

The measured size of the problem

Measure	Number
Lines of Python in the codebase	about 2.4 million
Files scanned under both versions	about 20,000
Files that already worked under both	95.9% on the first scan
Lines using syntax Python 3 rejects	about 3,300
Old-style print statements	about 1,500
Long number literals such as 123L	about 800
Deprecated exception clauses	about 600
Uses of the ancient not-equal operator	50
Lines that work under both and behave differently	about 20,000

That last row is the whole project. The example given is division. In Python 2, one divided by two is zero. In Python 3 it is 0.5. When the numbers involved are damage, currency or coordinates, each of those lines needs a person to decide, not a tool.

Our take: what it means for players

Nothing, this year, and that is exactly why we are writing about it.

A twenty-three year old world running on a dead language version is a slow-motion risk to everybody who has a character in it. Every year on Python 2 is another year of libraries falling out of reach, and more of the toolchain maintained in-house instead of spent on the game. Doing the migration is unglamorous, expensive and invisible when it works, which is why studios put it off until something breaks. Starting before something breaks is the correct call and deserves saying out loud.

The measurement discipline is the part worth copying. Running every file under both versions to find out how far the codebase actually is, rather than estimating, turned an unbounded fear into a countable list: 3,300 lines to fix mechanically and 20,000 to read. A studio that publishes those numbers is a studio that can be held to them.

Credit belongs to the players here as well as the engineers. The first stage was tested in late July on Singularity, the game's public test server, by the players, whom this game calls capsuleers, who volunteered to play a version of the game whose whole ambition was to feel identical. The studio thanks them and says they are the ones helping it get there. That is unpaid work protecting everybody else's assets, and it is worth naming.

The honest caveat is that stage one was the easy part by the studio's own account, and no completion date is given for the rest.

What's next

More test rounds on Singularity, with no dates announced, and the agent mission backend being prepared alongside them. Nothing here is dated, so nothing joins the calendar until the studio names a day.

Amazon is handing two more of its online worlds back to the studios behind them

2026-10-09T00:00:00Z

Amazon Game Studios is handing two of the online worlds it published back to Korea. On 12 August 2026 it announced, in a post about Throne and Liberty, that day-to-day running of that game moves to two other companies from the last quarter of 2026. A near-identical post the same day sent Lost Ark back to Smilegate in early 2027.

Who is who, in a line. Throne and Liberty goes to FirstSpark Games, which is the studio that develops it, and to NCSOFT, its Korean owner. Lost Ark goes to Smilegate, the Korean studio behind that one. Amazon Game Studios published both in the West. And both are MMOs, which stands for massively multiplayer online games, the kind thousands of people share at once.

Two handovers, side by side

	Throne and Liberty	Lost Ark
Going to	FirstSpark Games and NCSOFT	Smilegate
Amazon's stated timing	Starting the last quarter of 2026 (the day came in a 9 October post)	Starting early 2027
Time Amazon published it	Nearly two years	Nearly five years
Exact date given	Yes, since 9 October: maintenance begins 10 November 2026	No
Shutdown mentioned	No	No
Amazon's framing	Handing the game back to the developers	Handing the game back to the developers

Neither August post gave a day, and both use the same phrase about returning the game to the people who made it. Worth noticing, given both went out the same day. For Throne and Liberty, Amazon named the day on 9 October: the service transition maintenance begins on 10 November 2026, and it will share the start time and length closer to then.

Our take: what it means for players

A handover is a different thing from a shutdown, and we want that stated before anything else. The two get conflated every time, and the conflation costs a game its population.

Both worlds keep running. What changes is who answers when something breaks, who funds the Western translation, and who decides the shop. Neither August post said anything about any of that. Amazon's 9 October post answers part of it. NC, the name it uses for the developer, which works through its FirstSpark Games studio, takes over customer support, and old support tickets don't transfer. In the shop, Celebration Packs, Character Boost and Lucent packs come off sale on 26 October until the transition is complete. Lucent and items you already own transfer with your account, and NC will say when the shop returns. Our expectation is that an operator with a direct line to the developers ships regional content faster, and that the shop is the thing to watch, because a new operator sets its own pricing and nobody has published theirs.

The uncomfortable read is what these two posts say together, and we will label it as ours rather than Amazon's. Amazon spent nearly five years on one of these games and nearly two on the other, and announced both exits on one day. Both posts give the same reason, and it is a generous one: handing the game back to the developers, so their passion for it can keep being realised. Our reading is that a reason this warm, arriving twice on one morning, is also a judgement about the business of running these games in the West. Players should weigh it that way rather than as a verdict on the worlds they play in.

Amazon's third online world is on a different footing again. New World is its colonial-era fantasy game, and we covered its dated shutdown from Amazon's own separate notice.

What we asked for here was a date. A quarter is not a date, and an account holder with a paid reward track or an unspent currency balance is entitled to know the day their relationship changes hands. Throne and Liberty players now know the day the handover begins, and Amazon's 9 October post says characters, items, currency and progress all transfer unless a player opts out before 30 October. When we last checked Lost Ark's tracker row, on 6 October, its players had only "early 2027", and until a day is published, everything downstream of it is a question nobody can answer.

What's next

Both transfers sit on the sunset tracker as handovers rather than shutdowns, with the dates or windows the publishers have actually given and the day we last checked each. New World's shutdown is on the same page, with the date Amazon gave in its own notice.

BlizzCon is back in Anaheim on 12 and 13 September

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

BlizzCon, which is Blizzard's own convention for its games, is back on Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 September 2026 at the Anaheim Convention Center, per Blizzard's own announcement. Two days, one venue, and a named list of what is on: opening ceremony, panels, the Darkmoon Faire, friendly competition and hands-on gameplay.

The Darkmoon Faire, for anyone who has not played, is a recurring in-game carnival in World of Warcraft, and Blizzard names it among the show's staples.

What the announcement actually commits to

There is a difference between a date and a schedule, and this is a date.

	In the announcement	Not in the announcement
Days	Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 September	any hour-by-hour timing
Venue	Anaheim Convention Center	hall or stage detail
Programme	opening ceremony, panels, Darkmoon Faire, competition, hands-on play	which tournaments, which finals
Tickets	sign up at BlizzCon.com for first notice	an on-sale date or a price
Broadcast	nothing	a stream plan, a paid at-home ticket, or Twitch reward drops

Blizzard says it aims to "meaningfully elevate this iconic celebration", which is the language of a company that knows the last few years have been uneven. The announcement dates the first BlizzCon to 2005.

Our take: what it means for players

A two-day, single-venue BlizzCon is the shape, and the shape is the news.

An opening ceremony still on the list means the ceremony carries whatever announcement weight the year has. That is worth planning around if you follow one of Blizzard's games: our reading is that the ceremony is where the year's dates arrive, and that everything after it is elaboration.

Now the part we were not gentle about, and the update it has since earned. Nothing in this announcement mentions a stream, a virtual ticket or drops. For most of the people reading it, who will watch from home rather than fly to Anaheim, that was the one fact they wanted. Blizzard said plans would be shared as they took shape, and it has since published them. We have the running order and the stream plan in full in our piece on the schedule. That is late for a question this basic, and it is answered.

The thing we like: a convention that comes back at all, in a hall, with a schedule, is a genre keeping a tradition that costs money and returns goodwill rather than revenue. Worth defending, even while we complain about the broadcast.

What's next

Tickets have no on-sale date in this announcement. Blizzard asks people to sign up at BlizzCon.com for first notice, and to follow it on social media. That is the whole of the call to action in it.

We carry the event on the calendar with both days and the day we last checked it against Blizzard's page. If a broadcast plan, a ticket date or a tournament schedule appears on a Blizzard page, that row moves and the date it moved sits on the row.

New World goes offline on 31 January 2027, and the shop closed first

2026-09-06T00:00:00Z

New World: Aeternum, which is an action role-playing world set on a single haunted island, is switched off on 31 January 2027. And the game's own shutdown notice lays out the wind-down rather than just the ending. The game was pulled from sale on 15 January 2026, and in-game purchases stopped on 20 July 2026. The last season stays running until the lights go out.

Aeternum is that island. Nighthaven, further down, is the game's most recent season, which is a named run of content. Marks of Fortune are the currency you buy with real money and spend in the game's shop.

The full timeline

Date	What happens
15 January 2026	Delisted, no longer available for purchase
20 July 2026	Marks of Fortune and all other in-game purchases stop
Through to the end	Nighthaven season extended, world bosses and bonus weeks continue
Through to the end	No new content, no further server merges, bugs and performance still watched
31 January 2027	Servers taken offline on all platforms, permanently

Can you get a refund for New World?

It depends what you bought, and the notice takes the two cases differently. Marks of Fortune: no. The notice says refunds are not available for Marks of Fortune purchases. The game itself, bought recently: ask the platform's customer support. The notice's answer there is to check with customer support for the platform where you purchased New World: Aeternum, rather than giving one of its own.

Owners who already bought it can download and install it again, and can keep playing until the servers go offline on 31 January 2027.

Our take: what it means for players

This is close to the best version of a bad announcement, and the one part we would argue with is the refund line.

Start with what this notice got right, because it is more than most. A year of notice. A shutdown date named in advance rather than trickled out. Purchases switched off more than six months before the end, by our maths, so players are not spending money on a world with weeks left. The final season extended rather than cut short, and world bosses and bonus weeks left running so the game still has a heartbeat while it winds down. Compare that with the shutdowns we have covered that give a month's notice and stop the events immediately.

Now the refund. Marks of Fortune are a purchased currency, and any balance a player is holding on 31 January 2027 buys nothing, ever. The shop closed in July, and our reading is that this shows the problem was understood; the same notice then declines to refund the balances that closure stranded. Currency sold for real money and extinguished by the seller's own decision should come back to the person who paid for it. That is the whole argument against premium currencies in one line. They convert money into something the publisher can end.

The wider point is one we made when Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark were handed back to their studios, and it lands harder here. This game is being switched off on a named day. Our reading of those two handovers, in that piece and off their own announcements, is that neither named an end date. Those are genuinely different outcomes, and it is worth keeping them apart.

What's next

The notice dates nothing else. The shutdown sits on the sunset tracker with the day we last checked it against that notice, alongside the two handovers we covered from their own separate announcements.

Jagex says Dragonwilds 1.0 ends one story, not the game

2026-09-13T00:00:00Z

RuneScape: Dragonwilds is a survival game, one about gathering, building and staying alive, from Jagex, the studio behind RuneScape. It leaves early access, a paid unfinished release players buy into before launch, on 15 September 2026. A message from Mod Dutch frames that as the end of the Dragon Queen Kuldra's story, not the game's, and promises a multi-year run of updates.

Some more names, all of them the game's own. 1.0 is the finished version that ends early access. Mod is the prefix a Jagex developer's public name carries. The Kuldra Saga is the current story arc, and the message calls its finish the Scorned Wilderness raid, meaning a fight built for an organised group. Gielinor is the wider RuneScape world. And Runefest, where the detail is due, is Jagex's own convention.

What was actually committed to

	Stated
What 1.0 concludes	The Kuldra Saga, with the Scorned Wilderness raid as its finish
What continues	Ashenfall, described as still hidden from the rest of Gielinor
Scope named	Skills, quests, regions, bosses, enemies, rewards
Timeframe	A multi-year journey, and the message puts no dates on the journey itself
Next detail	Closer to launch, then Runefest in October, no day given here
Where it was said	The Runefest 2026 preview livestream on Twitch, 1 hour 28 minutes in

Ashenfall, in that table, is the part of the world the game takes place in. Mod Dutch says it stays hidden and unknowable to the rest of Gielinor, and separately that it could be a new frontier of civilization but its ancient magics still block that.

Our take: what it means for players

Saying this out loud before launch is worth more than it looks, and it is also not a roadmap.

The genuine fear about a survival game leaving early access is that 1.0 is the exit rather than the milestone. The studio ships the ending, the reviews land, the team moves on, and the players work it out last. Our reading is that Jagex naming a multi-year plan in advance, and pointing at Runefest for the detail, removes an ambiguity that costs games players in the month after release. Whether it is true will be visible in the updates that do or do not arrive.

The framing deserves a second look too. Jagex describes its RuneScape titles as ongoing projects that are never done, and says that has been the way for twenty-five years of adventuring on Gielinor. Our reading is that applying it to a survival game is not obviously right: our view is that survival games live and die on a finished, coherent world rather than a content drip. This is a claim about intent, and intent is not content.

What we would want before calling it a commitment is a single date. Skills, quests, regions and bosses listed without one is the shape of an aspiration. When this piece was written, the nearest thing to one after launch day was Mod Dutch's "Runefest in October", a month with no day. Jagex has since dated its own Summit at Runefest, which is not the same thing, and the update below shows the difference.

What's next

1.0 arrives on 15 September, and Jagex's Summit at Runefest now has a day.

Updated 4 September 2026. When this piece was written, Mod Dutch had named October and no day. Jagex's 3 September post, written by Mod Doom rather than Mod Dutch, says players can tune into the studio's Summit, meaning its own plans talk, at Runefest on October 3rd, to hear more about 2027 and the next Saga in Ashenfall's story. A Saga is Jagex's word for one of the game's big story arcs.

Read that carefully, because our own first draft of this update got it wrong and our review caught it before the page changed. The post dates Jagex's Summit. It does not date Runefest. It says nothing about when the convention begins or how many days it runs, so neither of the two Jagex posts behind this piece says Runefest is on 3 October. Our calendar carries the Summit as its own row, beside a separate RuneFest row added later, once we held a Jagex page that dates the convention itself. Our RuneFest piece sets that out.

October 3rd is the only day that post gives. It adds four things this article did not cover at all, and not one of them is a date either. Its own headline is the price: Jagex says the game stays at £24.99, or $29.99, once 1.0 releases. It says it will keep delivering monthly updates after 1.0. It says its next update is called Luminance, is free, and comes in "the coming Winter". And it says it will share more about its 2027 plans once 1.0 has shipped. A price, a cadence, a season and a condition are not days, and we are not going to write them up as though they were. The Summit is now a row on the calendar rather than an estimate.

The launch is on the calendar and on the release tracker, each with the day we last checked it against Jagex's own pages.