It is time again.  Here we sit at the start of a new year and I am once again going to don the mantle of an oracle… false oracle to be sure, but let me do my cosplay… and foretell the doom of this next spin around the sun.

And after 2025, I am in a foul mood.  It is easy to be that guy who sees only the bad outcomes.  As the quote goes:

Always predict the worst and you’ll be hailed as a prophet.

-Tom Lehrer, quoting a friend

So you’ll have to pardon me if my 2026 predictions… and we’re back to predictions after 2025 failed to deliver on wishes in dramatic style… if they are not rife with sunshine and lollipops.

That said I once again want to remind people that predictions are not wishes.  These are not things I want to come to pass.  They are things I think are likely to come to pass given past behavior and the state of the industry and the economy overall.  If I am bleak, it is merely because I have been conditioned by the world to have that point of view.

For those wanting a past accounting… well, who am I to tell you what to do with your free time.  But there is a history here.

Now I am back around for another turn.  So let’s get on with it.  What will 2026 bring?

1. Bloodbath at Redwood Shores

EA will be… well, I am not sure what it will be at the end of 2026.  But I am pretty sure the Saudis will be getting out the bone saws once more and what was once EA will end up with more pieces cut off than Jamal Khashoggi corpse in the embassy in Istanbul. 

This seems like a gimme frankly.

2. More Microsoft Mayhem

Phil Spencer has but two choices to keep his obscene annual bonus going.  He either has to improve sales or he has to cut expenses.  Given where the industry has been headed, and the unfavorable reaction to the price increase for the XBox Game Pass, I am going to bet on cost cutting.

And what is the biggest expense?  Employees.  If they don’t cut at least another 1,000 staff from the XBox division I will be amazed.  My final score on this one will be the percentage actually cut relative to 1,000.  So nobody gets laid off, zero points.  But if Phil axes 2,000 people, I am claiming 20 points.  So basically, 0.01 points per person laid off.  Sorry to value people at such a low rate, but at least I am not throwing them out in the street personally.

3. WoW Midnight Modest Launch

We already have a date.  I started sketching this post back in October and had a placeholder for the launch date, picking April 20th.  But now we know it will be here on March 2, 2026, much earlier than I expected.

So prediction alteration time!  I am going to predict that there will be no follow up press release about how WoW Midnight was a huge success with cherry picked metrics to prove it was the best ever… WoW expansion with housing, for example, because I think Warlords of Draenor will probably still be ahead of it, and Tom Chilton telling us all that garrisons were housing counts in my book.  I will allow no ret-con of that.

4. The Big Chill for WoW Classic

My gut and intuition says that the J. Allen Brack “you think you do, but you don’t” faction gained ascendancy at Blizz when WoW Classic didn’t turn into a low-effort eternal cash machine.  Between them dropping WoW Midnight on top of the WoW Anniversary Classic launch of The Burning Crusade and the retail team just straight up taking the nostalgia card for itself in the form of the remix seasons to fill out the fact that they cannot, after more than 20 years, make an expansion with two years of content (or make expansions faster FFS), WoW Classic seems on the outs.

So my prediction is no new servers, no speeding up the languishing expansions, and absolutely no movement on anything that might feel even a bit like Classic Plus.   WoW Classic Warlords of Draenor will land in the back third of the year and that will be it.  I am going to claim five bonus points if Blizz puts out a roadmap and doesn’t bother to include and WoW Classic plans.

5. Nothing Else New in Irvine

For all the resources they have and the mighty reputation they have earned for quality and polish and stealing ideas and reinventing them better, Blizzard will bring nothing new to the table in 2026.  No announcements, no surprises, no additions to their lineup.  They will be milking their current titles until the last layoff.  See, doing something new is much higher risk than living on past glory.

6 . Lawsuit Wins for Against Pirate Servers

Both Blizzard and Daybreak will win their cases against Turtle WoW and The Heroes Journey respectively.  I think that is pretty much a gimme here.  The case law is clear and none of the arguments offered justify taking another companies IP and assets to start their own business.  Fan arguments in support of either made up requirements or different layers of “but I want it.”

Now, will the win help the companies or actually shut down similar operations?  Not a prediction that is part of the scoring, but I will say “no” on both counts.

7. A Rain of Tears in Norrath

Ongoing poor performance by the aging stable of Daybreak titles is going to mean layoffs.  Again, predictions are not wishes, but we’ve seen how this has gone in the past… and all the more so with Eros Capital Partners AB now heading the board following their demand for more cash payments straight to their pockets.

This will be why, the explanation for my prediction below about an EQII special rules server for 2026.

8. H1Z1 is Still Dead

Like the bit about Generalissimo Francisco Franco back in the early SNL days, H1Z1 is not coming back from the dead no matter how many times Ji Ham says to investors that it is an extremely important IP in the Daybreak portfolio.  The promise of a new version of the game with a 2026 release will be revealed a fiction… or, more likely, not revealed at all as the Ji Ham is likely to pull a John Riccitiello SWTOR move and drop all mention and claim it isn’t what investors are interested in if pressed at the earnings call.

9. EverQuest 3

Same as H1Z1.  It’s dead Jim… or Firiona… or whoever.  Daybreak will only buy new titles, like Palia, but won’t make anything outside of their current MMO lines.  We probably won’t KNOW it is dead, but it will be the old school Daybreak treatment of never mentioning it again… certainly not in 2026.

10. EverQuest Special Rules Server for 2026

The EQ team is under some pressure.  Numbers are down and The Heroes Journey was alleged to have been pulling in something around $100K a month for a dumbed down, multi-box, speed leveling version of the game. (Yes, there was more to it, but I swear that is all most people gushing about it seemed to mention.)  That has to have made some impression on the team.  Enough to get through their “Hardcore Heritage Forever” mindset?  One hopes.

What they should do is work on a “Tour de Norrath” special server.  Bonus xp, mob health all dropped to make most things soloable at level, even by a warrior who can only shield bash and kick with their auto attack, with expansions being dropped at a dizzying rate; something like 8 weeks for vanilla and then 4-6 weeks for every expansion thereafter.  Raids will be sized so that a group of three can do them, save for the Sleeper, who will require a full group.

What they will do is turn the dials they already have… xp rate, unlock rate, starting expansion… and pretend they have done something new and innovative.  It will not thrill.

[I wrote this before we got the news about what Daybreak was planning, but now we know that. so how it plays out will be the biggest part of any scoring.]

11. EverQuest II Special Rules Server for 2026?  Nope!

We’re not going to get one for 2026.  Reasons noted above, but also their popularity has not been established the way the EQ versions have.

12. Norrath Expansions

All the same, both EQ and EQII will announce Q4 expansions that will riff off of some location we have visited already.  That seems like a safe bet even with the last part.  Not a 100% gimme this time.

13. LOTRO Difficult Issue Avoidance

SSG has made it clear that they are going nowhere near the scourging of the Shire until they have milked the rest of the appendices of the series completely dry of content and they have trivialized the breadth of Middle-earth with murder for hire and FedEx quests.  They’re like the Borg of Middle-earth, and all must be assimilated.  But I think they have gone far enough south into Harad.  They will need to go in another direction.

So, my prediction in three parts; there will be an expansion (2 points), it will ship in December (2 points), and it will be set in the east, somewhere along the shores of the Sea of Rhun (6 points).  Fight me!

14. New Eden: Two Expansion, Two Events, One Fanfest

EVE Online will follow the now well set pattern of days, with a spring and fall (or summer and winter to use their terms, but May and November aren’t summer or winter where I live) expansion and the Crimson Harvest and Winter Nexus events… and Fanfest.  And that will be the roadmap for 2026.  Anything else will just be some login rewards, Twitch drops, and a cash shop sale.

15. New Eden to Remain Just EVE Online

Neither EVE Vanguard nor EVE Frontier will progress to the point of even an early access launch.  The former will remain the wet dream of a few key individuals at the company who still want to will this into being after 15 years of failure.  It isn’t going to happen.

The latter… well, CCP simply won’t be able to solve the economic contradictions of blockchain, which tries to pretend that supply and demand isn’t a thing.  But they cannot drop it due to Marc Andreeson’s money paying the bills, but doing what Andreeson wants will drive any actual gamers away, leaving just the speculator class looking for another get rich quick scheme.  If they ship, they die, so they will continue to pretend to be trying to solve the problem while cashing Andreeson’s checks.

16. Drone Regions Consolidation

One of the big changes in New Eden this year was the evacuation of the Drone Regions of null sec and the subsequent land rush by smaller groups to grab territory there.  There were about 20 groups on the map at one point.  That has already slimmed down to 14.  By the time we get around to scoring this I am going to say there will be just three groups, either alliances or recognized coalitions of alliances, in the Drones.

17. NetEase to Buy CCP from Pearl Abyss

We got hints that CCP was being shopped around in 2025 and, frankly, there are few suitors that make as much sense as NetEase.  They already run the EVE Online server in China as well as EVE Echoes.  Why not buy the whole thing?  They don’t have to close the deal in 2026, they just have to announce it.  I mean, the gaming press acts like any such announcement means the deal is complete anyway, so why fight it?

The only alternatives are Tencent buying them or Crimson Desert being a smash hit.  I’ll give myself a couple points for either of those options just because I mentioned them.  But it has to be NetEase for the full 10 points.

18. The Crimson Desert Blahs

Years in the making… and promising… we have a ship date for Crimson Desert at last.  March 19th.  And, frankly, they had better make that date.

What then?  Will this be the massive hit with rave reviews that restores the fortunes of Pearl Abyss and allow them to hold onto CCP while getting out from under their bad investments.  I don’t think so.  But how to quantify that for a prediction?  Well, thanks to Fantasy Critic League, I now pay attention to review scores.  So I will go with that.

Crimson Desert is going to land with an Metacritic review score of 80, which is the honorable mention, fine work but not outstanding bracket a lot of game land in.  So a score of 80 gets my a full 10 points, but I will tick off 2 points for each point its score goes above or below 80.  That will be the partial credit metric.

19. The Perilous voyage of a Ship of Heroes

I mean, they shipped their game.  They got the business model completely wrong and now it peaks at 10 concurrent players on a good weekend.  That is completely unsustainable.  There will be no subscription requirement by the end of the year.  That simply has to go.  Big titles cannot sustain that, these guys certainly won’t make it work.  That means it will go “buy to play,” will institute a free to play mode, or will simply shut down.  But the subscription idea will die in 2026.

20. Camelot Undone

I see three paths forward for this incredibly late bloomer of a title.  We’re already a dozen years past the promised ship date… still two years shy of the Duke Nukem Forever slip, but nothing to be proud of either… and the madness of Mark Jacobs is going to have to find an endgame somewhere.  So my prediction, like Gaul, is divided into three possibilities.

• Ship in 2026, flop, and fail

Given the complete lack of success of their other title, Final Bland: Ragnarok, which is now dead and gone, why would we believe Camelot Unchained is going to do any better.

• Don’t ship in 2026 and fold up shop, closing the company down

At some point investors are going to stop writing checks.  The industry remains in a down cycle, investors are already skittish, further funding will look like throwing good money after bad.

• Go with the full Andreesen Horowitz backed blockchain revision of the game

My special favorite because “Angry Marc” Andreeson, a man so lacking in self reflection that he has become the Pillsbury Doughboy parody of Sand Hill Road venture capitalist, has no interest in video games except to the extent that they further his desire to make even more unearned wealth by implementing a tax on the internet through blockchain.

I am going to give myself 10 points if one of these comes to pass… but if Mark Jacobs manages to pull of a second I am going to grant myself a bonus five points, with a full 10 point bonus if he manages the hat trick.

[This was the first prediction I wrote back in October, and I was in a bad mood.  But it is so complicated, I am going to leave it as is in tribute to past me.]

21. Palworld Injunction

Nintendo has been pissed about Palworld for quite a while now and has gone so far as to get patents approved that seem aimed and going after any title that emulates the whole “throw an object to catch a pet” idea that they see as the heart of its Pokemon titles.

This year we’re going to get a resolution… and Nintendo is going to lose, having pushed too far while ignoring prior art.

22. No Man’s Sky 10th Anniversary

We’ll get a bit update for the game’s tenth birthday.  That goes without saying.  And it will be a lot of cool stuff.  But it won’t hit like Voyagers did with the introduction of corvettes.  Peak concurrent users on Steam will be my measure for this.  I am going to take stand at the 50K line and my score will go down 2 points for every 10K above that the game goes.  This is one where I want to be wrong, but I have to look at history.

23. No Man’s Sky All About the Base

Meanwhile, my stab at what we will get in 2026 is bases.  The whole base building aspect of the game is a bit chaotic, tossed together, and feels like there is a lot of room to improve.  So Hello Games is going to go all in on making sure you can make the space home of your dreams, with a landing pad that will work for your damn corvette already.

24. No Fire to be Lit

Light No Fire will remain a ghost title for 2026.  No dates, no early access, no roadmap, just vague news and nothing for players at all.

25. Guild Wars: Reforged Content Pack

ArenaNet, caught by surprise by the success of Guild Wars: Reforged, will announce a content update for the game.  It won’t be a whole new campaign, or even something as big as Eye of the North, but the game has demonstrated that there is demand for it, so why not give the players what they want?

26. Guild Wars 2  Expansion as Usual

The pattern has been set, NCsoft expects the income, we’re just going to get another one.  Probably in August.  Seems about right.

27. No Official Announcement for Guild Wars 3

I mean, doesn’t ArenaNet have enough on its plate.  There might be a leak or some discussion of a possibility of such an eventuality… I mean, they have to let GW2 sit untouched for a decade or so in order to go back and farm that the way they did the original… but we’re not there yet for a commitment.

28. The End of the New World as We Know It

Amazon will announce the end date for New World.  It might not end in 2026, but the end times will be marked in the calendar. We know it is happening and we know that Amazon isn’t going to do something like Dual Universe and make the game playable after the servers close.  It will just be the end of days… so get started on that emulator now!

29. Squadron 42?  More Like Squadron 86!

Chris Roberts was absolutely positive that the long delayed Squadron 42 spin-off of the Star Citizen universe will ship in 2026.  He says it is done and fully playable.  There was even a special email update about it with “2026” in a huge size to emphasize the point.

At this point I simply don’t believe him.  No Squadron 42 launch… and I am going to give myself 9 point if we get some chickenshit “well, it is alpha now so you cannot criticize it” routine like we’ve had for Star Citizen for the last decade.  Cloud Imperium has yet to ship a game and I don’t see that trend changing in 2026.

30. Not Coming Back

Crowfall will remain dead.  Alganon too.  Seems like a gimme, but somebody out there believes these will return.

Bonus Picks!

Bonus picks are extra credit, wild ass guesses that don’t count against me if they fail to come to pass, but which get me some points if they somehow manifest into the real world.

Bonus Pick 1 – AI to the Death

Some studio… will it be you Krafton, or maybe this is a job for the petty and vindictive Tim Sweeney… will go all in on making a game with AI code, art assets, and audio.  And it will crash and burn, becoming a complete disaster.

This will need to be a big game.  If you point out somebody did a tic-tac-toe title with AI, that isn’t going to count.

This doesn’t mean somebody ruining their reputation by embracing AI publicly… again, Krafton, EA, and Tim Sweeney are already in that boat… but actually putting their money where there mouth is.  Likewise, public revulsion and refusal to buy the game is out of bounds, it actually has to get reviewed and be announced to suck.

The only reason this is a bonus pick is I am running a project that is using AI to code it and I have my doubts about the ability to produce anything complex.

Bonus Pick 2 – Sports Betting Comes to EA!

In looking at the Saudi purchase of EA, I am trying to figure out the upside financially.  I mean, sure, the EA Sports franchise can spin money, but not enough to make the deal a net win.

Meanwhile, sports betting apps are making so much money off of people that they are buying tons of ads during events to keep the gravy train running.

And the Saudis know this.  So I suspect that we’ll get some sort of announcement of an integration between EA Sports and gambling, likely first with the NFL, who will go along when the Saudis give them a cut.

Summing Up

So those are the predictions for 2026. That is 30 predictions to measure this year.  Unless otherwise stated, each are worth 10 points, with partial credit available.  I have a couple in there that could give me some extra credit, but we shall see if I get any of that.

There are also bonus picks.  I might add some more of those.  But no ret-conning.  I promise that.

As always, the deadline is December 15th for things to come to pass.  So if Amazon announces the end of New World on the 16th, I lose.  But if Squadron 42 somehow ships on or after December 16th, I win, full points.  That is a hard date.

Now we’re off into the new year to see what becomes of us.