No Man’s Sky – The Swarm

I was a bit dubious of this two month long expedition as it intended to require players to work together in “huge battles” as the motherships of the Hive of Glass will be vigorously defended by fleets of the small, agile swarmers that will make “short work of unprepared pilots.”

We must work together

My concern was based on the fact that gamers in general tend to be very poor at cooperating unless cooperation is enforced by rules and that No Man’s Sky itself is not very good at pretending to be an MMORPG, which it is not.  Performance degrades noticeably when you get a bunch of players in the same vicinity and some the mechanics of the game, like base claims, can become pretty annoying.  Trying to find a spot to drop your reprocessor when every square meter of the terrain near an objective is somebody else’s space can be quite annoying.

Still, I was game to see how it was going, so I logged in, headed to the anomaly, and checked in with the expedition which had been up and running on PC since it went live. (It was delayed on consoles and, last I checked, Switch 2 players still do not have access.)

Starting off with The Swarm

The whole thing starts off with a quiz which assigns you to one of the three factions.  I ended up as Sage.

Sage is green because what else would it be?

Green is the theme for Sage, as blue and red are for the other two.  Once you have been filtered by the sorting quiz you are dropped on a planet… and you are the color of your faction.

It isn’t easy being green… or is it?

From there things start off down the familiar pattern of expeditions, with you being sent to find your ship.  After all, what is a traveller without a spaceship?  Naught but a ground pounder who won’t get very far at all.

And, as in past expeditions, I ended up at the ship support group/drum circle where I had to pick mine out of the crowd.

Ships waiting for their owners to claim them

As usual, your ship is in a state of disrepair and to fix it you need to craft a special item.  Over on Reddit I have seen some angst about this step, mostly because people get fixated on getting their ship running immediately.

However, unlike a lot of tasks from past expeditions, which you could do out of order, the first two phases of The Swarm look like they have to be done as laid out with no skipping ahead.

The echoes of the three fragments

Here is where I ran into an early arriver issue.  There were so many people running around looking for the few key items that there were none to be found within easy walking distance.  And, as noted, you cannot use your ship yet because you won’t get the part you need until you craft these items.

Meanwhile, somebody kept pulling groups of swarmers towards the ship campsite, which along with all the players running around the area, made things lag out enough that I gave up.

So I went away for a week or so, hoping to come back and continue when things had calmed down.  In the mean time somebody put up the usual guide to the expedition, which is linked at the end of the post.

In reading the guide one of the first steps it suggests is turning off multiplayer because otherwise all the other players will absolutely rat fuck you out of all the nearby resources you need, which was exactly what happened.  Also, the whole “bases everywhere” thing.

Unfortunately, once you start on a world turning off multiplayer does not restore it to a pristine state.  Your local save remembers.

However, that guide reminded me that you can start a new character/save for just an expedition.  All the expedition rewards are available on all saves.

Game mode selection, with expedition in the lower right

The downside is that any goodies you pick up outside of the rewards… credits, nanites, gear including your ship… can only be sent back to or copied to that save.  That is why I tend to use my main save for expeditions.  But I figured I could do without that for now… although then one of the phase rewards was 10,000 nanites, so do I go back and do it on my main save?

I have time to think about that because the event runs for two months.  I suspect I won’t miss it from my main save.  If nothing else, you can turn off how much a lot of things costs in your settings.

Anyway, the fresh save starts you out with the same quiz.  I don’t know if I answered in the same way, but I ended up as Sage again.  Green team all the way I guess.

The Green Team is go!

Starting off without multiplayer was a help.  I arrived at my ship, parked all by itself.

Lots of free parking there now!

It was not perfect.  My save still seemed to know about all the bases scattered about and who discovered what… probably from my original venture.  But when it came to going out and collecting stuff I was able to find all that I needed on the visor.  There was the usual amount of walking that needed to be done, but at least I had destinations I could mark.

So I built all the cores, got the reward that enabled me to repair my ship, got the ship to recognize me, listened to a garbled transmission with some clues… all the usual stuff.

Then it was time to go check out that thing that had been hanging ominously in the sky all this time.  It no doubt meant trouble.

That thing? Yeah, it just showed up the other day.

You fly out, you fight the swarms it spawns, get the update, go to the anomaly, speak to Polo, and you’re done with phase one.

Phase one complete

From there you have to travel some to investigate a crashed swarmer, which you do with your gravity gun… erm, gravitino coil… that was a task reward.

So, just pick this thing apart then?

That gets you attack by some swarmer sentinel drones, and fighting sentinels is one of my least favorite things to do.  It often ends badly for me.

Ah yes, I succumbed… but I wasn’t playing hardcore, so I got back up again

You then collect some samples, go find an Atlas station, hand over the samples, engage in a futile fight to defend the station, fail, end up on a planet, do… something, I just walked a bit and suddenly it was cut scene time again… and you end up on another planet with your ship and phase two complete.

Phase two complete

That gets you to the third and final phase… this isn’t a five phase expedition… where you actually have to go fight stuff.

Go do a purge mission already!

I went and did that… and then next two, all of which were pretty easily done solo.  And then I arrived at the Countermeasures milestone.

My phase three progress

At that point I was as far as I could go.  The Countermeasures milestone is a community event where everybody has to do more missions.

But I have made it to the third phase.  Now to figure out how much or how little I need to do to get to the end.

Related:

• Hello Games – The Swarm: Introducing Update 6.4
• Hello Games – The Swarm 6.41 patch
• Hello Games – The Swarm 6.42 patch
• Hello Games – The Swarm 6.43 patch
• Hello Games – The Swarm 6.44 patch
• Hello Games – The Galactic Atlas
• Reddit – NMS Swarm Expedition 22 In 2 HOURS – (Almost) Full Guide

I covered this with my usual dive into “Hey, everything costs more how can we expect prices to stay the same?” routine that gets no traction whatsoever.  This goes well beyond MMORPGs and there is even a new Matt Ball State of Video Gaming presentation for 2026 I can point you at if you want to wade into what has been going on.

Just the way things are.

But this made me think about how MMORPG subscription pricing looks here in 2026.  Back in 1999 and through until maybe 2009, being able to stand up a viable, mildly popular MMORPG with a subscription was viewed as having created a cash cow.

EverQuest set that early business model pattern; charge for the game, charge for expansions, require a subscription, and profit!

After a while though there were so many such titles vying for attention with a mandatory subscription being a barrier to entry that free to play took over as a requirement and the cash shop became king.

Anyway, here we are in 2026 and I cannot come up with a major MMORPG that doesn’t have some sort of free option.  Even World of Warcraft, which arguably is a mandatory subscription title, let’s you get to level 20 without a subscription.  These days, when you pretty much start at level 10, doesn’t seem like much… but it is still something.

So I dug through a few titles both to see where things stand these days and just how off base… if at all… the LOTRO price increase was.  So we’ll start there.

The long term subscription options are still discounted compared to the single month plan.

You no longer have to buy the game, but expansions are still for sale and the game is heavily oriented towards its cash shop for revenue.

For the first comparison I went to Daybreak All Access, which is the subscription plan that gets you EverQuest, EverQuest II, DC Universe Online, and PlanetSide 2.

Daybreak subscriber prices

Kind of a deal, one subscription for four titles… but I imagine most people play just one, or at least one at a time.  Also, the price hasn’t changed in years.  That image is from 2021.  But I’ll put in a nice chart all the same.

LOTRO is now a bit more than the Daybreak All Access pass, but it was previously cheaper, being $9.99 a month for 3 and 6 month plan and $8.99 a month for a 12 month plan.  So it feels like they could have just aligned themselves with this… but chose instead to charge more.  I don’t know.

As with LOTRO, all of these titles no longer charge for the game, EQ and EQII charge for expansions, and all have cash shops to drive revenue.

From there I went to World of Warcraft, the arguable standard bearer for subscription MMORPGS.  It sets boundaries that other titles often feel compelled to remain within.

That looks a lot like the LOTRO pricing, so perhaps SSG was looking at that when planning their own price increase.  They align with WoW on most entries, but are actually a buck a month cheaper at the 12 month mark.

Incidentally, Blizz flags the 12 month option as “Best Value” despite being the same price per month as the 6 month option.  Both the 6 and 12 month options get you special goodies like mounts and pets, with the 12 month getting more… so if you value that sort of thing, they may be correct.

Blizzard relies less on cash shop revenue than LOTRO, though still has quite an array of cosmetics and pets and mounts and services you can buy.  And then there is the trading post and trading tokens.  Still, WoW feels less infested by its cash transactions that LOTRO, which feels like it has a mithril coin option in every damn dialog.

Having kind of set a baseline there, I decided to go straight for the outlier, the other title on this list that has raised prices, EVE Online.  As with everything about EVE Online, its subscription plan is complicated.

At one point CCP/Ffaris normalized their pricing to round numbers.  No more of this very America “and ninety-nine cents” tacked on to the end of everything.  They also appear to have killed off the two month subscription that they introduced with the price increase back in 2022.  I put it in there just for reference because they were trying to use it to soften the blow of the price hike.

Also, what do you mean they aren’t called “Ffaris?”  Isn’t that what they’re newly issued logo says?

Ffaris Creations Logo

I don’t know what that little orange diamond is, but it sure looks like it starts with two Fs… but I digress.

So CCP of old raised the bar for subscriptions, a move that very few have opted follow.

And even CCP had to mitigate that price move as they depend very much on people having multiple accounts.  So those last two rows, the ones with “alt” in them, those are special prices you can get on your additional accounts so long as you have linked all your accounts together with the same email address.

Discount Pricing for Alts

You have to go to the web store and the “Special Offers” section to take advantage of these prices, but they are there if you know where to find them.

And speaking of “Special Offers,” EVE Online is the only subscription oriented title I can think of that regularly has discounts on their subscriptions.  For yesterday’s Cradle of War expansion they are knocking 25% off of the subscription price.

Sales ends June 19, 2026

Leaving aside the occasional lifetime subscription thing, does anybody else have sales on their subscriptions regularly?  I mean, SOE used to back in the day, but they were so bad at it you could get the monthly price down to $1.25… so they decided to stop that.

And CCP/F are throwing in PLEX, the in-game cash shop currency, which brings up another factor I am not even going to try to account for, which is titles that give you cash shop currency as part of your subscription.  Daybreak gives you their DBC, WoW gives you something for the trading post, LOTRO gives you 500 of their things.

Also, it feels very New Eden that the cheapest price requires a two year commitment.  This is a game that will eat your life if you let it.

So CCP felt the need to jack up the subscription price… and going from $15 to $20 earns that turn of phrase I think… despite also relying heavily on their cash shop and people buying PLEX.  But they no longer charge for the game itself and expansions are free, so if you factor in not buying an annual or bi-annual expansion, the subscription might be justifiable… though lets not get into expansion content comparisons.  That would be a whole post on its own.

As I said, EVE Online is always complicated title to deal with.

But once I got started on this I was on a roll and had to keep going.  So it is time for Final Fantasy XIV.

I have never played FFXIV, having been thwarted on two attempts, so have no insight into what the limited basic subscription gets you, but it is cheaper than the full version.  The game does charge for expansions and I assume has a cosmetic cash shop… Final Fantasy is all about outrageous dress up scenarios, right?  I mean, that is what it looks like from the outside.

Anyway, it is here to fill out my need to have more examples.

After that I had to start thinking about titles, because most everything else is pretty heavily biased towards free to play with a cash shop.  I have played Elder Scrolls Online a bit and didn’t feel like I needed a subscription.  But there are subscription options!

Those fit in the zone.  I am not sure what you get for the subscription, mostly because I didn’t care enough to read the text there on the page.  I am sure you get something.  And the pricing fits into the zone bounded by WoW.

Then I checked on RuneScape and Old School RuneScape, which have a subscription plan, and a simple one at that.

This is more like renting an apartment, you can go month to month or sign a 12 month lease.  Still, if you are committed and feel you need the subscription, the year play is a decent discount.

I dug around a bit more and found that Star Wars: The Old Republic still has a subscription since going free to play.  That was the move for a lot of titles, including LOTRO.

They still depend heavily on their cash shop and would very much like you to go buy some cartel coins.  They also have a confusing array of packs that include subscriptions and mounts and other things.  But subscriptions are clearly still in play there.

Finally, in digging about for a last example I went to check out Rift, now in the cold clutch of Gamigo, the assisted living destination for MMORPGs.  Once you get checked in there is no going back home.

In an attempt to survive after burning their user base by completely changing up design philosophies with their first expansion, free to play was introduced.  But, as with other titles, the subscription option still survives.

Rift Subscription Options

Again, I will put that in a nice chart… assuming you find these charts nice.

There it is, even in the old MMOs home, the $15 a month subscription baseline.

Through all of that the minimum price per month is the Daybreak All Access 12 month plan, which runs $9.99 a month, while the highest price per month is the base EVE Online subscription with will set you back $20.

Also, I will point out that I used the LOTRO terminology for subscription terms, which they call out as months.  However, most titles make it clear a month is a 30 day increment or do not use the term “month” at all.

So what did I miss in all of this?  What other title should I have included?  Are there any MMORPG subscriptions that break this model without simply being full on cash shop titles?

Cradle of War – Turn the Tide

The name of the expansion gives you CCP’s plan,  They want to create a direct path to guide new players from character creation directly into low sec PvP and the war between the NPC empires, faction warfare, that acts as the framework of CCP’s low sec vision.

EVE Online has analogs to most of the standard MMORPG mechanics; if null sec is massive battles, empire building, and castle sieges, wormhole space is sandbox co-op survival, incursions mimic raiding, high sec is carebear quests, and low sec is open world PvP zones, then faction warfare is something like realm vs realm, where you fight for one of the NPC empires in a never ending struggle over a discreet set of constellations in low sec space.

What I don’t know about faction warfare could fill a whole EVE University Wiki entry.  I am mostly familiar with the aspects people complain about on Reddit (which CCP has slowly addressed over the years) and that one time that Goons manipulated the whole thing to get huge loyalty point payouts.  Not a deep cut for a feature that has been around since 2008.

Anyway, there is a one-two punch in Cradle of War as the company attempts to achieve its dream of making everybody like PvP.  But I’ll go down the list of the major features.

Exordium – Perfectly Safe New Eden

The first item on the list is Exordium, the new starter region of 53 systems where players will be perfectly safe from PvP.

CCP map of Exordium

And that might even be true, depending on how you define PvP.  The company appears to have plugged the holes that were letting a few PvP kills slip through.

May 20th seems to be the last such kill

The rules for the region are:

• Safety settings are permanently locked to green.
• War Declarations and Factional Warfare combat are disabled.
• Duels cannot be initiated.
• Killrights cannot be activated.
• Characters with combat flags such as suspect, criminal, and limited engagements cannot jump into Exordium or undock within the region until their timer expires.
• Players cannot freely attack other capsuleers.
• Upwell Structures cannot be deployed.
• Deployables and anchored containers cannot be placed.

In order to keep the region from becoming an ISK printing machine, immune to the environment that rules the rest of New Eden, what you can do within Exordium will also be limited.

• Mission ISK rewards, LP rewards, and NPC bounties reduced by 20%.
• Additional 5% market fees added to non-instant orders.
• Industry installation fees increased by 5% for manufacturing , material efficiency research, time efficiency research and invention.
• Ores found within Exordium are of a new “Grade 0” type with lower mineral yield than their standard variants.
• Exploration sites within Exordium contain distinct loot tables with lower value loot and items optimized for new players.
• Homefront Operations within Exordium have reduced difficulty, as well as reduced rewards.

There will be level 1 and 2 agents and a what sounds like a new set of career agents within the region to get new players up to speed.  And then, once they will point you at shipcasters that will send you right to the edge of low sec space so you can jump right into faction warfare.

• State Rookie Shipcaster:
  • Tatrys to Onnamon
• Federation Rookie Shipcaster:
  • Mondaekus to Intaki
• Republic Rookie Shipcaster:
  • Dettisolin to Amo
• Imperial Rookie Shipcaster:
  • Ichorah to Mehatoor

There are also new gates from Exordium, one in each of the new empire areas, which will also take you straight to a system adjacent to low sec.

• Kassigainen <-> Pakhshi
• Kemerk <-> Bania
• Rayeret <-> Jakri
• Mehatoor <-> Akes

So that is the plan, to change the new player experience so you go from a safe region of space straight to PvP.  I am sure that will totally work as planned and that the current player base won’t exploit the safety aspect at all!

As part of this CCP has even included a FAQ in the expansion launch announcement:

• Can I skip Starter Space?
  • After 9 June all new players begin in Starter Space, but you can easily leave Starter Space via:
    • Stargate in Manifest to Yulai in high security space (highsec).
    • Empire shipcasters to that empire’s war headquarters in highsec. Note these can only be used once.
• How can I get into Starter Space?
  • If you started playing before 9 June but want to enter Starter Space to hone your skills, you can go to Yulai and use the stargate to warp to Manifest.
• Will I get ganked?
  • No, PvP is not allowed, and safety is locked to green. Plus characters with active combat flags (suspect, criminal) cannot enter until their timer clears.
• Can I lose my ship?
  • Not via PvP, but it is technically possible to lose ships in PvE. However, the content and missions in Starter Space are tailored to new players and thus it is less likely.
• What can I do here?
  • All content is tailored to new players. There is a variety of activities available, including combat, hacking, and mining sites, low-level missions, and Homefront Operations.
  • To get to know the four main factions, you can visit their embassy systems and stations, do missions, and play through the Visions of Greatness Epic Arc.
  • You can also trade with other players on the market in the AIR Laboratories Trade Center in Manifest.
  • Furthermore, you can also take on Freelance Jobs for player corporations to earn ISK and possibly find a corporation that is right for you.
• When can I leave?
  • Whenever you feel ready. After completing your initial onboarding, you can use a one-time shipcaster to jump directly into your chosen empire’s highsec space.
• How will I meet others?
  • All new players begin in one region, you can find other players in local chat.

Meeting others through local chat… well, I have seen a lot of local chat over the years so my view on that might be skewed.  But that is the plan!

There are actually multiple FAQ lists and I am not going to quote them all, but there was a question about Exordium that comes up later on.

• Why would I ever want to leave?
  • Because everything worth earning is outside. In Starter Space, the rewards are lower, there are extra taxes, market fees, and industry costs, plus the ore is lower yield. This is a training ground focused on learning.

I think the company underestimates the aversion to PvP felt by so many.  Anyway, welcome to Exordium!  Have a nice stay, however long you choose to make it.

Faction Warfare Military Campaigns

Here is the core of the expansion, the description of which I am just going to quote:

Military Campaigns are a new type of time-limited content where capsuleers can come to the assistance of each of the four empires as they pursue their goals which will have a lasting impact on New Eden.

I had to chuckle at the idea of “lasting impact.”  Faction warfare is arena combat eternally constrained within a fixed set of parameters.  Nothing lasts for very long.

There are also a series of changes to faction warfare overall, including putting an emphasis on having sites reward items you need to loot rather than you just having to be present due to a lot of complaints about “seagulling” where pilots just warp into a site and idle while you do the work, collecting the same reward as you.  Now the seagulls will have to zip in and steal the loot, which I am sure is exactly what will happen.  I have played enough New Eden events to know that is how this will work out.

Achievements Again

The company is going to take what I would count as their third run at achievements.  I consider the whole “mastery” thing to be a proto-achievement system, which is at least still in game.  I don’t even remember when that was introduced at this point, but it has always been semi-helpful at best.

Then there was the activity tracker, introduced with Onslaught back in 2018 and killed off due to neglect in 2024.

So now we’re getting a new version.  Which is fine.  Achievements do not bother me.

What will bother me is that they will only track from today forward, which for a game that just passed its 23rd birthday is kind of bullshit.

These achievements will include rewards the way the AIR Career Program does and will also award titles that I am sure will all be normal and not abused ever.

Navy Issue Destroyers

We got a sneak peek at these during the Warpath even for Capsuleer Day XXIII.  I have a blueprint copy for each one.  They are, for the sake of completeness:

• Algos Navy Issue
• Corax Navy Issue
• Dragoon Navy issue
• Talwar Fleet Issue

I am sure they will be fine and settle in the way new ship classes always do, with one obvious winner, two fine choices, and one that nobody will fly.  Then CCP will do a balance pass and the roles will change but the distribution will remain the same.

Command Carriers

CCP continues to try and make carriers great again… and they have made some progress on that front.  For combat operations you’d still rather fly a super carrier, but carriers can now haul a bunch more ships and conduit jump subcaps.

But now we will have Tech II carrier upgrades of the carriers we have had forever at this point.  They are:

• Amarr – Salvation
• Caldari – Simurgh
• Gallente – Gaia
• Minmatar – Ymir

Their roles is really that of a utility command burst ship, so we’ll be unlikely to see fleets of these, but it feels like there might be a few scattered in any capital fleet as opposed to the usual subcap command ships.  We’ll see.

Balance Pass

A bunch of subcaps, drones, modules, and other things got buffs or nerfs.  The expansion notes have the details.

I will just call out that mining anomalies in wormhole space now all have grade IV rocks.  People mine in wormhole space?  I guess so.

Login Rewards and Twitch Drops

There cannot be an expansion or event without some login rewards, and the company has set up 15 days of rewards that ends with a big 250K SP reward for Omega accounts and 100K for Alpha accounts.

Expansion Login Rewards

In addition there are also Twitch drops because the company is always keen to support streamers.

Free Omega Time

Meanwhile, in the in-game New Eden store you will find some special items.

At the top of the NES

It is Tuesday, so if you have an Omega account you get your free 15K of skill points.

But there is also a free gift of 25 PLEX and a special offer that will get you seven days of Omega time for… 25 PLEX.  That is a one time purchase and, while you can take the PLEX and go, 25 PLEX for seven days of Omega time is a pretty good, if short, deal.  And if you are patient you might time the redemption so you can get that final day of SP… though I am not sure how long the 7 days of Omega will remain.

And, of course, there are other sales going on, including Omega time in the in-game store and the web store, depending on whether you would rather spend PLEX or real world money.

So off we go.

Related:

• CCP/F – The Cradle of War Expansion is Here
• CCP/F – Cradle of War: Expansion Notes
• CCP/F – Patch Notes (fixes only)
• CCP/F – Cradle of War Expansion Launches 9 June
• CCP/F – Cradle of War In Focus
• EVE Uni Wiki – Cradle of War login rewards
• Massively OP – EVE Online’s Cradle of War expansion kicks off
• TNG – Exordium, The New Starter Region

Valheim 1.0 – Deep North

The announcement out this past weekend in the rash of updates that were part of the PC Gaming Show, so it was possible to miss it in the mix of news.

The game itself has been under development since 2017, when it was just a solo project, with Iron Gate studio being formed in 2019 to bring the game to bring the vision of the game to life.

Since then it has been updates, expanded, and ported over to the XBox consoles.  The game’s FAQ has a timeline for the development since early access began:

• February 2021 – April 2021: Bug fixing to ensure the game ran smoothly for our massive influx of new players.
• May 2021 – September 2021: Main development of Hearth & Home
• October 2021 – November 2021: Bug fixing for Hearth & Home, as well as developing the Abomination, and starting the development of the Frost Caves
• December 2021 – February 2022: Main development of the Frost Caves
• March 2022 – December 2022: Main development of the Mistlands
• January 2023 – August 2023: Hildir’s Request in development, parallel to Ashlands development
• January 2023 – May 2024: Ashlands in development, parallel to Hildir’s Request
• May 2024 – October 2024: Deep North in pre-production, parallel to Bog Witch development
• October 2024 – August 2025: Deep North in development, parallel to Call to Arms development
• August 2025 – present: Deep North in development

Now they finally have their end goal in sight.  When the Deep North update arrives in September you will finally be able to gain Odin’s favor by completing all of his requests on the world of Valheim, thus earning your way to Valhalla.

And what does the Deep North hold in store for us?  Well, there is a trailer.

That doesn’t tell us much.  It is mostly a review of where the game has been before and then an ominous tease of what the Deep North will hold for us.  Looks like we’re going to need a bigger boat.

In addition to finishing up the game’s content arc, the 1.0 launch will see it available on PlayStation 5 and the Switch 2, giving it broad console support.  And, in a bit of a surprise, they are promising full cross-play for all platforms.  We’ll have to see how that works out.

Now, the question is:  When should I get back to my current solo Valheim campaign so I can at least see the new biome?  I left off in the Mistlands, where the game difficulty starts ramping up thinking maybe that was enough for now.  But I might have to get back to it and finish the Mistlands and get at least a foothold in the Ashlands so I can be ready for the update.

I have been playing the game off and on since it launched.  I feel like I ought to finish it… which is a rare thing for me.

Messing around with boats back in 2021

September 9th is a ways away though.  I have some time.

Related:

• Iron Gate – Valheim Has A Release Date!
• Iron Gate – Valheim FAQ
• Massively OP – Valheim finally unveils a September 9 release date

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

And then I found out it was Summer Games Fest this past week as well, and with that came a bunch of launch dates.  So the end of the post will have a lot going on.  But we’ll start as usual with scores, beginning with the board as it stood last week.

Week 22 Scores

The week kicked off with a drop for one of the many Warhammer titles launching in 2026.

• Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus II
  • [Picked by Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 78.8 to 75

That drop alone was not enough to change the board, but there were further, smaller hits… too small for the bot to announce… that eventually pushed Archey down a rank.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)
    • Moved from 11th place to 10th place
  • Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)
    • Moved from 10th place to 11th place

Then it went down a bit more, just to make the point I guess.

• Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus II
  • [Picked by Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 74.2 to 72.1

That was the start of the week, but then things were pretty quiet for a while.

The bot did show up and tell us that nobody picked what is currently the top scoring title in the 2026 league.

• Schrödinger’s Call
  • [Unpublished]
  • Score has gone UP from 92.6 to 93.8

To be fair, that was a bit of a dark horse, picked in only 1.1% of the leagues this year.

Schrödinger’s Call

I am sure somebody felt pretty good about that pick, though with only 18 reviews it felt susceptible to the dreaded four out of five star review from THOSE sites.  You know the ones.  The ones that don’t give half stars.

Then on Thursday night we got the update that the one title for the week, the Gothic 1 Remake, had released.

Gothic Remake… there is no “1” in the actual title

Then we had to wait until the next day for enough reviews to land for it to get a score.  And that score… was a bit mid.

• Gothic 1 Remake
  • [Picked by Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais)]
  • Now has a score of 75

Mid or not, that was enough to stick it to Archey again this week, dropping him down to 12th place.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais)
    • Score has gone UP from 12.2 to 17.2
    • Moved from 12th place to 11th place
  • Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)
    • Moved from 11th place to 12th place

And then Gothic dropped again.

• Gothic 1 Remake
  • [Picked by Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 75.0 to 72

That change reversed the previous ranking change.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)
    • Moved from 12th place to 11th place
  • Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais)
    • Score has gone DOWN from 17.2 to 14.2
    • Moved from 11th place to 12th place

Things just don’t hold up the way you hope at times.  Even Schrödinger’s Call faced a dip on just two more reviews showing up.

• Schrödinger’s Call
  • [Unpublished]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 93.5 to 92

It is still the top title in the league, but the gap is now a bit slimmer.

All of which wrapped up the scoreboard changes, with the whole thing ending up like this.

Week 23 Scores

There was also a single bid this week.

• Bids in TAGN League
  • Unannounced Mainline 3D Mario Platformer
  • Won by TAGN HQ (Wilhelm) with a bid of $4

We’ll get to why I bid on that in a bit.

And then there were the updates.  Oh, so many updates.  I have put them in order of release date just to apply some sorting to them

• EA Sports College Football 27
  • [Picked by Neutical Publishing (Cyanbane)]
    • Release date changed from ‘July 2026’
    • to ‘Thursday, July 09, 2026’
• Denshattack!
  • [Picked by S Class Warfare Studios (p0tsh0t)]
    • Release date changed from ‘Wednesday, June 17, 2026’ to
    • ‘Wednesday, July 15, 2026’
• Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
    • Release date changed from ‘Thursday, July 02, 2026’
    • to ‘Thursday, July 23, 2026’
• Star Wars Zero Company
  • [Picked by Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)]
  • [Counter Picked by Neutical Publishing (Cyanbane)]
    • Release date changed from ‘2026’ to
    • ‘Thursday, August 27, 2026’.
• Control Resonant
  • [Picked by Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)]
    • Release date changed from ‘2026’
    • to ‘Thursday, September 24, 2026’
• Silent Hill: Townfall
  • [Picked by S Class Warfare Studios (p0tsh0t)]
    • Release date changed from ‘2026’
    • to ‘Thursday, September 24, 2026’
• Onimusha: Way of the Sword
  • [Picked by S Class Warfare Studios (p0tsh0t)]
    • Release date changed from ‘2026’
    • to ‘Friday, September 25, 2026’
• Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve
  • [Picked by Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)]
    • Release date changed from ‘2026’ to
    • ‘Friday, October 02, 2026’
• Phantom Blade Zero
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
    • Release date changed from ‘Wednesday, September 09, 2026’
    • to ‘Thursday, October 29, 2026’
• Grave Seasons
  • [Picked by Anthania Interactive (Ula)]
    • Release date changed from ‘Friday, August 14, 2026’
    • to ‘Fall 2026’
• Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis
  • [Picked by Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)]
    • Release date changed from ‘2026’
    • to ‘Friday, February 12, 2027’
    • Tags changed from Remake to Reimagining.

The rumor was that everybody wanted to either get in before Grand Theft Auto 6 sucked up all the oxygen in the room or delay until after it finally gave other titles room to grow.

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis fell into the latter category it seems, moving out to 2027 and so is a prime pick for next year, but only good for a drop in 2026. (Also, I committed a bunch of the change comments which were wondering what category the game was, choosing to show just the end result.)

Then there is Grave Seasons, which had a ship date… and now it does not.  I suspect that is not a good sign for a 2026 release.

Anyway, the next ten titles on the list for release are now as follows.

Coming Up for Week 24

Next week we have one title set to launch again.  But there is also a Nintendo Direct scheduled for Tuesday, so I expect we’ll have some more ship dates revealed… including maybe something for the that unannounced 3D Mario platformer slot I bid on.  And, if not… there is always time to drop!

Related:

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