0hp: News

ESO's September shop runs four crate lines at once, and up to 20 crates can be earned

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

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".

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 won't date its Warden class rework, and Templar has jumped ahead of Sorcerer

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

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 has a running order, and WoW gets ten sessions across two days

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

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. The gap the first announcement left, whether any of it would be broadcast, is closed.

Three of the slots below are esports finals, which are competitive tournament matches. The MDI, which stands for Mythic Dungeon Invitational, is the studio's dungeon speedrun competition. The AWC 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 slots and the two esports finals, taken from Blizzard's own longer list. All times Pacific, and all marked subject to change.

Day	Time	Segment
Sat 12 Sep	10:30 a.m.	Opening Ceremony
Sat 12 Sep	12:00 p.m.	World of Warcraft: What's Next
Sat 12 Sep	12:45 p.m.	MDI Grand Finals, first match
Sat 12 Sep	2:00 p.m.	Building Cutscenes in World of Warcraft
Sat 12 Sep	2:45 p.m.	World of Warcraft: What's Next II
Sat 12 Sep	3:30 p.m.	Developers x Creators Showcase
Sat 12 Sep	5:30 p.m.	MDI Grand Finals, championship match
Sun 13 Sep	10:00 a.m.	World of Warcraft: Deep Dive
Sun 13 Sep	10:45 a.m.	Crafting Coziness and Creative Freedom
Sun 13 Sep	11:45 a.m.	World Building in World of Warcraft
Sun 13 Sep	1:15 p.m.	World of Warcraft: Art Design
Sun 13 Sep	2:45 p.m.	World of Warcraft: Design Deep Dive
Sun 13 Sep	4:15 p.m.	World of Warcraft Hardcore: What's Next
Sun 13 Sep	5:00 p.m.	AWC Grand Finals, championship match
Sun 13 Sep	5:20 p.m.	Closing Remarks

Our take: what it means for players

Two "What's Next" panels on the same afternoon is the shape worth reading. A single roadmap panel is a year plan. Two back to back, with a cutscene panel wedged between them, reads as a roadmap split across a reveal and its detail. That is how a convention paces an announcement it wants to land twice.

The second signal is Hardcore getting its own forward-looking panel on day two, at 4:15 p.m., rather than a mention inside a broader session. A named "What's Next" slot is the smallest possible commitment a schedule can make to a mode, and it is still a commitment. 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. The band Le Sserafim plays at 6:00 p.m. on day two and the trophy ceremony follows at 6:30. 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 that will cost somebody something. A linking window that closes five days after the show, published inside a rewards section rather than on the ticket, quietly separates people from something they already paid for. Put it on the ticket.

What's next

Blizzard says the schedule updates after the opening ceremony, so the day two list is the one most likely to move. 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's Moogle Treasure Trove returns on 9 September with a two-part hunt

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

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 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.

FFXIV lists nine nights when the servers might go down, from 31 August

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

Square Enix has published the overnight windows when Final Fantasy XIV may go down through the first half of September, in a notice aimed at players booking a wedding. There are nine of them, they cluster in threes, and every one runs from 9:00 p.m. Pacific to 4:00 a.m. the following morning.

Yes, a wedding. The Ceremony of Eternal Bonding is the game's in-game wedding, booked in advance for a fixed slot, which is why downtime is a scheduling problem rather than an inconvenience.

The nine windows

Nights	Window, Pacific
31 Aug into 1 Sep	9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.
1 into 2 Sep	9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.
2 into 3 Sep	9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.
7 into 8 Sep	9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.
8 into 9 Sep	9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.
9 into 10 Sep	9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.
14 into 15 Sep	9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.
15 into 16 Sep	9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.
16 into 17 Sep	9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.

Square Enix marks all nine as subject to change, and says emergency maintenance can still happen outside them. The confirmed list, at the time of the notice, was empty.

Our take: what it means for players

Credit where it is due, because this is a publisher doing something most do not.

The value of this list is not the wedding advice. It is that the three clusters line up with the week of Patch 7.56 and the weeks either side of it. That turns a scheduling note into the clearest public statement of when the servers are expected to be touched.

The middle cluster, 7 to 10 September, brackets the patch itself. Square Enix's own notice dates Patch 7.56 to the start of downtime on 8 September, and a separate announcement opens the Moogle Treasure Trove, a recurring event that pays a temporary currency for playing old content, on the ninth. The first cluster covers the run-up. The third covers the week after, which on our reading is where the small follow-up fixes land once a patch has met live servers. Nothing here promises downtime on any given night, and Square Enix says emergency maintenance can happen outside the list.

Publishing a maintenance window before it is confirmed costs a studio nothing but the risk of being held to it. Square Enix has done it here for an in-game wedding, which is exactly the kind of feature a schedule usually ignores. That is respect for a player's time, and it is the standard the rest of the industry should be measured against.

The one rule worth carrying away is the 2018 change buried at the bottom of the notice. A ceremony booked to start after maintenance or an outage ends stays valid and needs no rescheduling. Only a reservation that overlaps confirmed maintenance has to move, and confirmed is a stricter word than possible. With nothing confirmed, the honest reading is that all nine nights are a warning rather than a plan.

What's next

Patch 7.56 arrives with the downtime on 8 September, and by the notice linked above it closes PvP Series 11, which is the numbered season of the player-versus-player reward track. Every dated item here sits on the calendar with the day we last checked it against the Lodestone, which is the game's own news site.

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.

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.

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.

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

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

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	Starting early 2027
Time Amazon published it	Nearly two years	Nearly five years
Exact date given	No	No
Shutdown mentioned	No	No
Amazon's framing	Handing the game back to the developers	Handing the game back to the developers

Neither post gives 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.

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 post says anything about any of that. 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 would ask for is 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. Until one is published, everything downstream of it, including whether balances carry, is a question nobody can answer.

What's next

Both transfers sit on the sunset tracker as handovers rather than shutdowns, with the windows the publishers actually gave 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

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

New World: Aeternum, which is Amazon's colonial-era fantasy game set on a supernatural island, is switched off on 31 January 2027. And Amazon's own notice lays out the whole 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 with its own rewards. 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

Owners can still download and reinstall until the shutdown. Refunds for Marks of Fortune are not available, and Amazon points anyone who bought the game recently at the storefront they bought it from.

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 Amazon 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 six months before the end, so nobody spends 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 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. Amazon closed the shop in July, which proves it understands the problem exists, and then declined 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 Amazon handed Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark back to their studios, and it lands harder here. This game is being switched off on a named day. Those two are changing hands with no end date at all. Those are genuinely different outcomes, and it is worth keeping them apart.

What's next

Nothing else is dated. The shutdown sits on the sunset tracker with the day we last checked it against Amazon's own notice, alongside the two handovers we covered from Amazon's separate announcements.

Jagex says Dragonwilds 1.0 ends one story, not the game

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

RuneScape: Dragonwilds, which is Jagex's survival game set in the RuneScape world, leaves early access on 15 September 2026. Jagex has now said what happens after. A message from Mod Dutch frames that release as the end of the Dragon Queen's story rather than the end of the game, and promises a multi-year run of updates.

Some names, all of them the game's own. Early access is a paid unfinished release players buy into before launch. 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. 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, no dates
Next detail	Closer to launch, then Runefest in October 2026
Where it was said	The Runefest 2026 preview livestream, 1 hour 28 minutes in

Ashenfall, in that table, is the part of the world the game takes place in, and Mod Dutch says it stays hidden from the rest of Gielinor behind ancient magics.

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 Discord slowly notices. Jagex naming a multi-year plan in advance, and pointing at Runefest for the detail, removes the ambiguity that usually costs a game its population 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, which is the honest description of what has kept its RuneScape titles alive for twenty-five years. Applying it to a survival game is not obviously right. 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. The only checkable thing here is Runefest in October. We will hold it there.

What's next

1.0 arrives on 15 September, and Runefest follows in October 2026 with no day announced. The launch is on the calendar and on the release tracker, each with the day we last checked it against Jagex's own pages.