RuneFest 2026 drew some 6,000 visitors to Birmingham for the game's 25th year.
Month of October 2026
October was a month when two studios changed their minds in public, one within a fortnight of announcing the plan. Jagex used RuneFest to reveal a fourth RuneScape MMO and then, eleven days later, withdrew the most contentious reveal. Elsewhere, Square Enix set a date for Final Fantasy XIV's next expansion, Blizzard shipped a mid-season patch for Midnight while its Classic-flavoured Forever closed its beta, and Black Desert finally put a ceiling on its levels.
RuneScape
A Fourth RuneScape, and a Reversal
RuneFest 2026 took place at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham on 3 and 4 October, and Jagex's announcement put the visitor count at more than 6,000. The headline reveal was a fourth RuneScape MMO, currently known only by the working title RS4, built in Unreal Engine and still early in development, with a teaser trailer but no release date or window. Jagex also confirmed an animated adaptation, made with the YouTuber Charlie White, better known as MoistCr1TiKaL, and the production company Lyrical Media, again without a date. Both are the sort of announcement that takes years to become playable, and for now they are a statement of intent rather than a schedule.
The announcement that mattered more in the short term was RuneScape Reignited, planned as a permanent new character type for 2 December, with its own economy, hiscores and worlds, aimed at new and returning players. It did not survive contact with the community.
Veteran players worried about a split player base and a second Grand Exchange, and on 15 October, creative director Ryan Philpott, known to players as Mod Ryan, wrote that "it is clear that we missed the mark on this, and so we are not moving forward with it." He said the last time Jagex didn't listen to player feedback, combat changed forever, and it has taken over a decade to recover.
What remains is the part of December that was always going to be less controversial. On 2 December, the Adventure Guide and the first part of a remastered early game journey are still due, along with a ten-day free-access period running to 12 December for new characters and for those not in membership since 2 June. Old School's members' worlds are not included.
The 2027 roadmap, which Jagex calls its largest, is unchanged: three story arcs beginning with Hoard of Dragons, a sequel to Dragon Slayer, in January, then the City of Gnomes, then Secrets of Karamja with a new raid, plus an Agility rework. Plugins, which let third-party developers extend the client with Lua code, went live on 19 October. As reversals go, it was quick. Reactions, as GamesRadar put it, were mixed: relief from many veterans, and disappointment from those who had been looking forward to a fresh start.
The Fractured Archive, Old School RuneScape's fourth raid
The Fractured Archive
In Old School RuneScape, the Fractured Archive opened on 20 October at 11:00 UTC. It is the game's fourth raid, arriving four years after the Tombs of Amascut, and Jagex billed it as the toughest yet: seven bosses followed by a final encounter, mostly combat with few puzzles, playable solo or in small teams. The rewards, all of which were polled in advance, include the Ascension crossbows, Zorya's Tome, the Rondache and the Obligator, a crush megarare.
The first fortnight on the wiki reads like the early life of any difficult raid. Jagex dropped a planned system of forgiving deaths, similar to the one in Tombs of Amascut, in favour of traditional wipe rules; practice mode wasn't ready at launch, and the wiki's first-week tally put the cost of death reclaims at about 329 billion coins.
Bork and the Smorks, a boss name that does not suggest severity, accounted for the most deaths of any encounter, at some 955,000, and Ocellus and the Archive Guardian were not far behind. Tweaks arrived on 3 November, with more balancing promised for the 9th. On 4 November, Hardcore Worlds, announced at the RuneFest summit as a permanent one-life mode with its own economy and no experience boosts, were due to open.
Evercold takes the Warrior of Light to the Fourth, a world facing an advancing ice age.
Final Fantasy XIV
The Fan Festival in Tokyo on 31 October and 1 November produced the date everyone had been waiting for, though it was slightly later than expected. Square Enix said that Evercold, the sixth expansion, will release on Tuesday 23 February 2027, with early access for pre-orders tentatively starting on 19 February. Earlier timing had pointed to January.
Producer Naoki Yoshida attributed the move to the time needed to bring the expansion's new systems up to standard, and it is hard to object to a studio taking a few extra weeks over systems it has promised. Pre-orders opened on 4 November.
The second new job, Zephyr, is a physical ranged DPS that fights with a crossbow and an avian familiar called Nephele, joining Bastion, the tank revealed in Berlin in July. Both start at level 90 and can be played only in Evolved Mode, the new combat option, and the main story lets players tackle its three major areas in any order. Evercold will also be the first expansion to launch on Nintendo Switch 2.
Patch 7.57 arrived on 13 October, and was a modest affair: same-region matchmaking for the Japanese data centres and a round of adjustments to the Beastmaster's Crucible of the Unbroken. A more unusual event followed a week later, when Square Enix suspended new logins on all worlds as part of its security response to a critical vulnerability in the PHP programming language. Logins resumed on 22 October once updated patch servers were released.
The Labyrinth of Kindo'jan, an Amani funeral complex, reopened beneath Zul'Aman.
World of Warcraft
The Promise of Tomorrow
Patch 12.1.5 went live on 13 October, with an eight-hour maintenance day for Midnight and an hour apiece for the Classic realms. Titled The Promise of Tomorrow, this medium patch concludes the Venomous Abyss story.
The story campaign ends with a single-boss raid, The Unbinding of Kith'ix, with Story Mode, Raid Finder, Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulties, plus a flexible Mythic group of 15 to 25 players. Kith'ix is an ancient C'Thraxxi general, and Lady Liadrin fights beside the raiders.
The more interesting additions are the smaller ones. The Labyrinth of Kindo'jan is the first of a new kind of content that Blizzard describes as a megadungeon version of Delves: a sealed Amani funeral complex that can be run in a single session or one wing at a time, with Valeera Sanguinar as a companion and Mythic-level gear at the end. Aqir Invasions are zone-wide public events in Eversong Woods and Zul'Aman that run for ten minutes each hour, with six scenario types and eight possible combat affixes, and Ascendant Venomstones add further upgrade levels for weapons, trinkets and necklaces.
The Legion and Battle for Azeroth reputations also become Warband-wide, a change that will remove a surprising amount of alt-based tedium. Blizzard Watch reported all servers back online after the long maintenance day, and class tuning followed on 27 October.
The Beta Closes
The World of Warcraft: Forever beta, which opened on 17 September, ended on 23 October, a little later than first planned. A stress test on regional hardware on 21 October was the last major event, followed by early name reservations from 27 October to 3 November for those who had bought one of the pre-launch packs.
The beta period saw nine new dungeons described across the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, an account-wide Legacy system with 65 challenges, and class changes for all nine classes. Forever then launched worldwide on 4 November at 3 pm Pacific, just outside the month covered here, and early reports on the first evening spoke of short queues and some teething problems with layering and faction creation. That is a subject for November's article.
A solo adventurer and companion approach a Skyrim hold, as in the new solo dungeons.
Elder Scrolls Online
Season Two, named Echoes of Skyrim, began on 21 October and runs to 27 January. The biggest change is structural: the Greymoor chapter's zone, story, and Antiquities system, along with the Kyne's Aegis trial and the Wolfhunter dungeons, were added to the base game, and Markarth is scheduled to follow on 9 November. A pair of solo dungeons, Moon Hunter Keep and March of Sacrifices, have been redesigned for one player and a companion, with optional Meted Misfortunes that can be stacked up to three at a time for Dauntless difficulty. The Tamriel Tome has a higher point rollover cap and wider challenges, and the season's reward tracks run in free and paid forms.
The season matters partly because it says something about the studio. ZeniMax Online lost a large number of staff in layoffs earlier this year and reshuffled its roadmap in response, and Season Two arrived on the date it was given on that roadmap. On 29 October the studio put Update 52 on the public test server, and the Season Two page already lists the January additions to follow, including a new PvP zone. The cadence is quieter and more deliberate than before, and so far it has kept to its dates.
Guild Wars 2
The big October change in Guild Wars 2 was commercial rather than narrative. On 13 October, ArenaNet announced that Living World Seasons are no longer sold individually. Season 2 is now free for anyone with a level 80 character, Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire come with Seasons 3 and 4, End of Dragons includes Season 5, The Icebrood Saga, and the Complete Collection now covers all six expansions.
Existing owners have any missing episodes unlocked automatically, and anyone who bought Living World content after 12 September was due a gem refund. The Starter Pack also gained a Salvage-o-Matic, five Teleport to Friend devices and two Black Lion Chest Keys. It tidies up a pricing structure that had grown awkward over fourteen years, and gives new players an easier answer to the question of what to buy.
The same update, the wiki confirms, added Legendary Mode to the Nexus of Eternity raid encounter, the final raid boss from Code of Creation, fulfilling the 13 October date announced the previous month.
Shadow of the Mad King, the annual Halloween festival, ran from 13 October to 3 November, with the Mad King's Labyrinth, the Clock Tower and the Ascent to Madness all returning, and Lion's Arch decorated again, as it is every year. The first beta of the new World vs World borderlands was announced for 10 November in September, and that date hasn't changed in anything I found.
Level 75: the new ceiling on Black Desert's long climb
Black Desert Online
The 8 October patch, 117 updates and about 891 MB on NA and EU, raised the maximum character level from 70 to 75 and rebuilt the Combat EXP system around it, as announced at the Heidel Ball in July. Experience stops accruing at 75, and from level 70, each level adds 3 Extra AP Against Monsters and 3 Monster Damage Reduction, reaching +18 of each at 75.
The bonuses also apply to tagged characters, which is a useful concession for players who keep a stable of alts. Combat EXP gained from a single monster kill is now capped by the character's level, and the My Information window and Monster Zone Info now show the experience details players previously had to work out from outside sources.
The same patch added a common skill for every class, Godslayer: Force Palm, adjusted Awakening Valkyrie and Succession Woosa, closed the Guild League regular season, and scattered eight types of Tachyon Traces across Inner Edania. The previous system had no fixed cap, but experience requirements climbed steeply at the top, as MMOs.com lays out clearly. Combat Secret Books, which give Combat EXP for chosen PvE and PvP activities, were scheduled for distribution after the 15 October maintenance.
EVE Online
Alliance Tournament XXII reached its finals on 31 October and 1 November, with sixteen teams from the original 58 playing double-elimination matches that became best-of-three once eight remained, and a best-of-five Grand Final. The finals moved from the Thunderdome test server back to Tranquillity.
Deteriorated, which fielded a Vindicator as its declared flagship and was described by one commentator as an underdog, is listed as the champion on the EVE University wiki. The finals straddle the end of the month, so the result is noted here for completeness. Fenris Creations, the studio formerly known as CCP Games, also ran its Crimson Harvest event through late October.
The more consequential date is 10 November, when the second Theatres of War expansion, Fractured Skies, is due. It brings four Military Campaigns for Factional Warfare, new navy attack battlecruisers, synchronizer rigs, a first phase of an updated HUD, and EVE Vanguard as a paid Alpha running around the clock, with a showdown between the four empires over Drifter technology planned for later in January. The expansion notes were published early, on 6 November.
Broader Genre News
Aion 2, Launched and Divisive
Aion 2's free-to-play launch on 5 October, following the Founder's Pack early access that began on 30 September, produced the month's largest Western debut. NC reported a peak of more than 400,000 concurrent players across Steam and its own PURPLE platform, and Steam alone recorded 397,905.
The reception has been more mixed than the numbers. According to MMODude, the $15 Special Quai Membership, which gates the player Market and personal trading, is bought per server rather than per account, and that was the main target of complaints, with Steam's rating falling to around 62 per cent positive by 9 October.
Inven reports roughly 59 per cent positive across 32,000 reviews and daily peaks still in the 320,000s ten days after launch. NC promised a first free server transfer, which began on 14 October, and made Founder's Pack outfits usable across servers. The game has large player numbers and a monetisation argument it has not yet won.
Smaller Notes
Netmarble's vampire-themed MMORPG Vampir opened in further global markets on 27 October on PC and mobile. Allods Online opened the Oasis of Yolicztl region in an update in mid-October, and Rift's 27 October patch added Battle Pass Season 6, due to start in the weeks that followed, along with new mounts. ArcheAge Chronicles, a separate and more action-oriented project from XLGAMES, opened in Steam Early Access on 3 November for $29.99, and that too belongs in next month's account.
Looking Ahead
November arrives with several dates already fixed. Elder Scrolls Online adds Markarth on the 9th, and on the 10th EVE's Fractured Skies and the first Guild Wars 2 borderlands beta are scheduled. Neverwinter's Module 34, Sleeping Gods Lie, is targeted for 17 November, with its Ascendant Mode pushed to 8 December after Cryptic decided it wanted more time. RuneScape's scaled-back December plan lands on the 2nd, and Evercold follows on 23 February.
Star Wars: The Old Republic's 8.0, Masters of the Force, had no release date in the Q3 letter, and I could not find one since, though the publicly stated target is the holidays. The test server is rolling out more content in stages, and the DirectX 12 client is still promised a technical test. Patience remains the sensible attitude towards SWTOR for now.
