FFXIV Cosmic Exploration: A Fishing Hyperrod Delayed

The title of the post might be a little misleading when looked at a certain way. I felt like I really started flying through the grind of leveling each of my cosmic tools once I received the 150% progress bonus for having upgraded 5 tools. Going into last night I definitely felt I could complete upgrading my last two tools, the Cross-pein Hyperhammer for blacksmiths and the Fishing Hyperrod. Of course something had to come up to delay those plans. That's right, server maintenance. 

The maintenance began at 9pm Pacific/midnight Eastern time. That's right, right in the middle of prime time for those who live west of the Mississippi (and some of use who live east of the river as well). But unlike the 5-10 minutes of downtime the poor EVE players in Australia have to put up with, these updates usually take hours. While annoying, an EVE-style shortage today gives me time to go downstairs and fill up my drinks. With Final Fantasy XIV updates I just go to bed (or log into EVE).

I really can't complain too much because a couple of issues with Cosmic Explorations were fixed. The first one is an annoyance and hasn't affected me let on Oizys: the screen would fail to fade out during the cutscene after completing Cosmic Exploration Projects. I haven't been online to see that bug in patch 7.4.1 but I have another 13 opportunities to do so.

The second bug is a lot more serious, I think. Cosmic Exploration Projects and Red Alerts would occur simultaneously. Yikes! Failing to finish off the exploration project would delay progress for the whole server. I'm not sure for how long, but usually its harder to get everyone back together for a second try, especially for the smaller population worlds. At least, that's what I've heard.

As for my progress last night? I finished off upgrading the blacksmith cosmic tool. As for the Fishing Hyperrod? I'm two Class A fishing missions away from completing the set of Hypertools. I should have that completed tonight. Then on to grinding for the mechanical spider.

Flying Solo In EVE: The 2026 Roadmap

I always start these posts with a look at the weekly average number of concurrent users based on the data from Chribba's EVE-Offline.net. 

The average concurrent user count for the week ending 1 Feb 2026

The average line dropped by 1000 users last week. Yes, some technical difficulties resulted in service interruptions on both Thursday and Saturday but I don't think by enough to drop the number by itself. 

The PLEX market thru 2 February 2026

The price of PLEX remained steady lastweek, only dropping 1% in price during the week. The sales in the cash shop concentrated on mastery packs and remastered value packs. One interesting detail to observe in the near future is whether the first week of the month results in higher PLEX sales.

The reason for wanting to highlight the above information is the leadership of EVE's development seem pretty pleased with themselves with the state of the game.  I'll drop the video into the post below.

The video is part of the introduction of the roadmap for EVE Online for 2026. 

The roadmap is pretty basic and gives a 30,000 foot view (10,000 meters?) of what players can expect over the next 11 months. First, we get two expansions in the now familiar second and fourth quarters of the year. The word is the expansions will concentrate on factional warfare, meaning the Q1 entry for the Gallente election will probably impact at least the summer expansion.

In addition to the two expansions, expect four other major content drops in 2026. The first two will appear in the next few weeks. The EVE Evolved initiative is usually used to update the code base and functions of this game that will celebrate its 23rd year of operating in May. The last EVE Evolved in August of last year concentrated on updating the ESI as well as Upscaling & Ray-traced Shadows as well as an initiative from the art team titled Smoke, Fire & Smart Lights.

In addition to one in March will be another set of updated planned in the third quarter ahead of the winter expansion. The developers are only planning one major mid-expansion patch, this one for the Catalyst expansion, coming up in the next few weeks.

In addition to EVE Online, 2026 is the year EVE Vanguard enters Alpha. The roadmap shows a major event occurring in Q3 while Steam lists the same time period as the release of CCP's new first-person-shooter on the platform. The roadmap lists Vanguard as beginning a playtest on Steam in the final three months of the year.

Finally players will see the usual events such as Capsuleer Day celebrating the anniversary of the launch of the game, the Crimson Harvest and the Winter Nexus.

The post and video had more information but I just wanted to provide a quick road map. We'll probably see more details as time goes on.

Ashes Of Creations And Intrepid Studios Shuts Down Today

 Over the weekend stories were published about the shut down of the crowdfunded MMORPG Ashes of Creations that launched as an Early Access game on Steam on 11 December 2025. 

As seen on Steam on 2 February 2026

The accusations are flying around that the game is a scam. Perhaps the game started off as an honest project. Honestly I haven't enough research into the history of the game to make that kind of determination. I do know that the Warn Act is a federal law that requires employers give 60 days written notice before closing a single site workplace with over 100 employees. 

To meet the requirements of the Warn Act, Intrepid Studios would have had to issued the written layoff notices by 3 December 2025, a full week before the game launched on Steam as an early access title. 

Part of the story doesn't sound right. According to PCGamesN Intrepid Studios founder Steven Sharif made a post on Discord that didn't exactly clear up matters in my mind.

Not long after this, Sharif shared a short post to the game's Discord, seemingly confirming the reported layoffs. "I can make a limited statement in my personal capacity and not on behalf of the company, regarding the situation." He claims that "Control of the company shifted away from me, and the Board began directing actions that I could not ethically agree with or carry out.

"As a result, I chose to resign in protest rather than lend my name or authority to decisions I could not ethically support," Sharif claims. "Following my resignation, much of the senior leadership team resigned. Following those departures, the Board made the decision to issue WARN Act notices and proceed with a mass layoff.

When did the leadership resignations occur? Just from the sound of the statement I would guess before the game launched on Steam. And with this limited knowledge I would not blame anyone for believing the Steam launch indeed was a last gasp for one last money grap before Ashes of Creation jointed the rest of the games that never reached a commercial release.

Cloud Imperium January 2026 Sales Revenue Up 8.1% Year-Over-Year

Year 2 of the new leadership team's reign over Cloud Imperium Games began on a solid note, recording an 8.1% year-over-year increase in cash shop sales. Last month set another record for January with $8.4 million in sales according to the CCU Game Dashboard. While not explosive growth like January 2025's 44.2% YoY growth in cash shop revenue, the growth is in-line with my expectations of a 10% growth in sales in 2026 if sales of Squadron 42 are not included in the cash shop total.

As a note for 2026 I will continue the practice of adding the previous year and the 3-year average in the monthly sales chart. I like the three year average because I feel it gives a longer-term historical perspective. I have the feeling the metric will make CIG's marketing department look good in 2026. For January, sales were 20.6% over average sales in January for 2023-2025.

The $937.6 million displayed on the Roberts Space Industries funding page at the end of January was not a comprehensive accounting for all of CIG's revenue since the project's Kickstarter in October 2012. Overall, the company has recorded $1,061.9 million ($1.06 billion) in confirmed revenue (the funding page & the 2023 financial report).

• Sales/Pledges: $937.5 million (through 31 January 2026)
• Other cash shop revenue: $2.3 million (through 31 December 2023)
• Subscriptions: $39.5 million (through 31 December 2023)
• All other sources: $82.6 million (through 31 December 2023)

In addition, the company has received a total of $68.25 million in outside investment. According to the 2023 financial report, $4.8 million of the amount was returned to investors in 2020 and another $1.9 million in 2023. Including the outside investment money, the total amount raised by CIG to create Squadron 42 and Star Citizen is $1.130.1 million ($1.13 billion), or $1.123.4 million ($1.12 billion) when excluding the returned funds. An additional $12.6 million in loans issued in March 2025 and due for repayment on 31 December 2027 are not included in the total.

I realize that including data from 2023 in an article covering the first month of 2026 isn't great, but Cloud Imperium has a history of not providing financial data in a timely manner, even to governments. For example, CIG has failed to submit its financial accounts to UK Companies House by the 30 September deadline in 5 of the last 6 years. Stale data is just a fact of life when observing CIG.

New user accounts - For those interested in the number of new accounts created, January was the 8th month in a row the number of new accounts rose year-over-year. The streak began one month before the implementation of the new referral system in July 2025. 

In January new user account creation increased by 71.8%, to 58,423, compared to January 2025's 34,005 accounts. The major change in the monthly charts in 2026 is the removal of an attempt to project the number of accounts created in a month. Between the effectiveness of the new referral system and the expected release of Squadron 42 sometime in 2026 I couldn't come up with a way to model the result.

What to look for - I see three things observers should be on the lookout for that might affect the numbers.

1. Fallout from the shutdown of Ashes of Creation. Tomorrow Intrepid Studios shuts down operations, thereby killing the game, such as it was. Will any of the fallout from AoC's collapse splash onto Cloud Imperium Games and Star Citizen? Theoretically no, but if Squadron 42 does not launch this year, expect the cries of "Scam Citizen" to echo even louder than in the past.

2. Publication of 2024's financial report. Cloud Imperium is in a bit of a Catch-22 situation. Don't release the report in February and get accused of hiding bad news. Not a good look following the collapse of Intrepid Studios. But due to Cloud Imperium's practice of greatly delaying financial news, a release now would probably be bad as the company is expected to have lost millions of dollars in 2024.

3. The new patch release cycle. The constant release of new content last year helped retain interest and increased spending to new heights. Will the new bi-monthly (every other month) release schedule slow down interest? I believe February is the first month without a scheduled patch release in quite awhile. Will  year-over-year revenue decrease?

FFXIV's Cosmic Exploration: First Three Days On Oizys

Three days ago Square Enix released patch 7.41 for Final Fantasy XIV. I finally got the chance to play on the new planet in cosmic exploration, Oizys. In addition to new levels for our cosmic tools a new system using drones to find artifacts on the planet was introduced. And of course a bunch of new mounts and minions was added to the zone.

After leveling one tool

For this patch the tools can only be increased three times, from iLevel 750 to iLevel 765. Because I spent time collecting class points I already had enough research to get the first level of tool. I spent a few minutes upgrading the 11 crafting and gathering tools. I then started leveling the botanist tool. An added bonus is that I already had enough Cosmic Botanist V points for the second tool, making the upgrade go that much faster. To my surprise I had the Hyperhatchet in my hands when I logged off on Wednesday night.

My first hyper tool

I like the looks of the tool with the decoration resembling the floating rocks located on Oizys. The purple color on the head of the tool I think is a nice touch.

The drone found an artifact

The new system involves buying drone modules. Crafters and gatherers now gain drone bits by successfully completing Type A and higher cosmic missions at gold level. Once a player has a drone module, the drone is used to find one of three grades of artifacts: gold, silver, and bronze. I've used 14 drones so far. Below is what I've received after turning in the artifacts.

Gold ancient records

Ufiti Horn - 2

Silver ancient records

Private Moai

Wind up Dullahan

Bronze ancient records

Adventure Basket

Coblyn Larva

Gigantpole

Wind-up Aldgoat

Wind-up Qiqirn

Pastoral Dot Parasol

Craftsman's Cunning XI

Gatherer's Guile XII - 2

I have a limited sample size but I think gold artifacts provide mounts, silver artifacts provide the higher level minions, and bronze artifacts provide lower value minions and other items.

The Volatile Gravity Vacuum Suit

While I already had a Ufiti, I have acquired two new mounts so far. The first, Rapid-fab Vacuum Suit, cost 20,000 cosmocredits. The other, Volatile Gravity Vacuum Suit, I managed to win playing Cosmic Fortune. Patch 7.41 introduced three other new mounts:

Alert Red Warp Loader - a red version of the yellow mount acquired on Phaenna, the mount costs 20,000 cosmocredits.

Cosmic Armored Weapon - a mechanical spider mount used in mech ops missions. Acquired by turning in 60 Oizys Token Booklets.

Cosmic Countenance - A larger version of the Private Moai, the mount is acquired by turning in a Gold ancient records. Assuming the RNG gods cooperate.

So far I've managed to upgrade a tool once per night. Hopefully once I get my pickaxe upgraded the bonuses will help the grinding portion go faster as the research bonus increases from 50% to 100% with 2 tools upgraded to iLevel 765. But I still need to do all the little mini-games until I can buy or win all the items I want. I'll probably type a few more posts as I progress through the content. 

Flying Solo In EVE: Beware Of Ghost Sites

Yesterday I mentioned the three-year trend in EVE Online where the average number of concurrent users has increased by approximately 60%. That remarkable statistic is one of the reasons I start each of these posts with what Chribba's Eve-offline.net displays each week. 

The week of January 19-26, 2026

And sure enough, two months after the launch of the Catalyst expansion the ACU is running in a range of 25,500 - 26,500 accounts logged in at any one time according to the site. Next week Jester runs his graphs for the end of the month and I'm really interested to see the results for January.

The entire history of the Global PLEX Market

A factor that influences the number of players in the game is the price of PLEX. The normal price of one month of game time in the New Eden Store is 500 PLEX. That price declined by 100,000 ISK per PLEX last week, making the price of a month's gametime approximately 2.2-2.3 billion ISK. When the global PLEX market launched last July the price was over 3 billion ISK.

My topic today is a quick reminder about ghost sites. While Ray Parker Jr ain't afraid of no ghosts, I received a reminder of why I should be. I was probing down sites on my combat main, saw a data site, and warped in flying a Cheetah. I was in high sec and had nothing to worry about, right? I kind of ignored the warning about the site being a Lesser Angel Covert Research Facility. Usually Covert Research Facility throws up a big red flag, but I didn't have my probing window opened wide enough to see the full site name.

Now, I was still okay up until the time I got greedy. The first can I opened gave me two Ascendency blueprint copies. At that time I should have just scooped up the BPCs and warped off. Instead I tried to hack more cans. Sure enough, the site blew up on me. Not only did I lose my Cheetah but I lost one of the blueprints as well.

The worst part of the story is, I had a Stratios in a neighboring system set up to withstand the blast of an exploding ghost site. Oh well, every few years I have to relearn the lesson that everything potentially can kill me. But don't be like me. Fly safe everyone.

New World Gets A Sunset Date: January 31, 2027

I'm a little late to the party on this, or should I say wake? New World, a game with one of the worst launches in MMORPG history, now has an official sunset date: 31 January 2027. 

The disastrous launch was documented in a Josh Strife Hayes video published in December 2021.

Now, I know some publications as well as fans of the game will try to gaslight people into believing the game was finally fixed and on the upswing. But as the Steam charts show, even with the launch of a new expansion the average number of concurrent players was still below that of EVE Online's global server.

Steam chart for New World

And outside months with an expansion launch, the monthly ACU in EVE Online was 2-3 times greater than that in New World. I think if Tranquility ever showed activity that low that Pearl Abyss would wind up forcing CCP Games to shut down the servers.

For those who wish to know what an improved and recovering game looks like, below is Jester's ACU graph for the past 10 years.

Jester's 10-year ACU chart - Jan 2016 to Jan 2026

Unlike New World's Steamcharts, Jester's EVE Online ACU chart shows and approximately 60% growth in logged in accounts since CCP returned to the 2-expansion per year model at the end of 2022.

Perhaps if New World would have seen such a recovery a couple of years ago, not only would the game have been saved, but the studio as well. But given the history of failure, Amazon finally realized it was not good at video games, finally cut their losses and is shutting down the studio. I think Amazon will remain as a publisher, but for now AAA games are no longer part of the business plan.

Crimson Desert Has Gone Gold

Yesterday Pearl Abyss issued a press release announcing Crimson Desert has "gone gold".

Amsterdam, The Netherlands — January 21, 2026 — Pearl Abyss announced today that its upcoming title Crimson Desert has officially gone gold, marking a major development milestone ahead of its global launch. 

In a message shared via the official Crimson Desert social media channels, Pearl Abyss thanked fans worldwide for their continued support. “We sincerely thank our fans around the world for being with us on this meaningful journey,” the developer said. “Thanks to your support, we have reached this important milestone. We look forward to welcoming you to the continent of Pywel on March 19”.

But what does "gone gold" mean? According to GameRant:

The term "gone gold" is shorthand for the gaming industry phrase "gold master". When a game enters this stage of development, it means that it has reached the point where it is finished and ready for release. Everything that the developers want to put into the game is in the most recent build. At this stage, the developers and publisher believe that the game is ready for the public. So when a game goes gold, this is good news for players that are looking forward to a particular release.

Crimson Desert is set to go on PlayStation 5 as well as Xbox Series X and S. Going gold also means that Sony and Microsoft have certified the game. Going back to the GameRant article:

In order for a game to go gold, it must also pass the certification process that companies like Microsoft and Sony set to ensure that anything released on their platforms is stable and won't have any major issues. This includes things like crashes that make the game completely unplayable or bugs that would result in a less-than-ideal experience for players. Once a game has gone through this whole process, it will be put onto physical discs (where applicable) and then shipped out to be sold at various retailers.

So, barring major production issues with printing the discs, next month's earnings call should be the last where analysts ask Pearl Abyss the years-long question, "Are we there yet?"

Flying Solo In EVE: Growing An Alt

I already had the last subject for this post planned before CCP's marketing department announced its apparently weekly sale. But before delving into the topic of alts let's go back and look at some weekly metrics.

Average concurrent users (ACU) from Jan 12-Jan 18

First, as expected, the average concurrent user count for the week on EVE-Offline.net dropped. I was hoping the drop would only go down to 27,000 but a two thousand account drop really was in line with history once the Winter Nexus ended. Still, the ACU numbers are running approximately 10% over the same time at the beginning of 2025.

The global PLEX market from conception to last Monday

The price of PLEX on the global PLEX market remained fairly stable last week, spiking with the news of a sale on multiple character training in the New Eden Store. But the effect on the market only lasted 24-36 hours before dropping with the introduction of a 20% off PLEX sale on Saturday down to an average of just above 4.5 million ISK.

Weekly stats for 2026

Despite the ACU dropping sales of PLEX increased by 16.1%, both in amount traded and ISK spent. Converting the number of PLEX to game time shows enough PLEX was traded to keep 16,961 people playing for another month. For the month to date players have exchanged 97.6 trillion ISK for 42,148 months of game time.

Speaking of multiple character training, I finally decided to use the 90 days of MCT I purchased during a sale several months back. I am upscaling a planetary industry alt to be a little more useful. By the end of March I hope to have the character able to fly mining barges, have near max scanning skills, and fly the Gallente assault frigates decently.

The track only requires 12 days to complete

I have found with a Pioneer I can finish level 2 mining missions fairly quickly. I also often doing three of the opportunities as a level 2 mining mission usually covers the requirement to advance in the track. Add in the always available jump through three gates opportunity and my alt makes 1.5 million ISK daily when not hauling PI products out of low sec.

The track only takes 12 days to complete, so if I really wanted to I could finish the track on all three characters on the account I'm using. Or I can just concentrate on the PI alt and pour in 525,000 skill points in addition to what I learn through MCT. But the benefit of advancing through the monthly track is receiving 15 PLEX. Add in the additional 8 million ISK for each character and that totals up to between 90-100 million ISK per month. And if two characters complete two opportunities each day the total ISK earned for the month increases to 150 million ISK. Not bad for just hanging around the edge of high security space.

Viewing Final Fantasy XIV's Warrior Of Light As A Samurai Daishō

Final Fantasy XIV is a story-driven game in which the player is The Chosen One. But as I spent time in Dawntrail taking care of and leveling my retainers, companion chocobo, squadron members and Trust NPCs, I thought more of taking care of a household more than saving the world. Then the thought hit me, "Am I acting like a knight?" Knights weren't just solo armored fighters. They each had their own men-at-arms and followers on campaign to take care of the non-military parts of life. More importantly to the analogy, the knight was responsible for keeping them properly trained and equipped. Or, in the case of a video game, properly leveled.

But the analogy didn't quite fit. So I did what I hope is a natural progression. I looked at Japanese history. Reading a lot of internet drama over the past few years, I think a lot of people don't realize that Square Enix is a Japanese company and that the people writing the story are Japanese. I found the comparison I was looking for not in Europe's medieval period but in Chūsei (or feudal) Japan.¹

The title, or I should more accurately say rank, is samurai daishō.² No, not the set of matching long and short swords worn by samurai. During the Chūsei period a samurai daishō served as a commander ranked between the commander-in-chief and a commander of troops. Think of the Warrior of Light's position of authority between the rulers of the city-states (Kan‑E‑Senna, Merlwyb, Raubahn/Nanamo) and the Grand Companies. By the time A Realm Reborn ends the player reaches that position.

Another similarity is the tendency of the Warrior of Light to serve many masters. In history the samurai daishō tended to serve many masters as the European model of "one master per land" didn't strictly exist in Chūsei Japan. So that feeling players can get of feeling passed around from the Grand Companies to the city-states to the Alliance to Hydaelyn has a historical precedent. Which makes the title of "adventurer" rather apt.

I really went down the rabbit hole on background so let me head back to the surface by discussing gameplay elements. The Warrior of Light's authority comes from reputation, not bureaucracy. That little fact is hammered home by the final efforts made to send the Warrior of Light and the Scions to Ultima Thule at the end of Endwalker. But another comparison emerges -- the Warrior of Light's household.

Called samurai‑shū (侍衆), these were the elite retainers who accompanied a samurai on campaigns, handled specialized tasks, and acted as trusted companions. In FFXIV, the samurai‑shū aid the WoL in getting through the MSQ. Here's how the the Scions and retainers wound up mapping to a samurai‑shū:

Except for Tataru I've leveled all the characters and retainers to max level. The developers haven't thought about requiring the Scions' secretary/quartermaster to level.

When I began this bit of research I was searching for a historic/fantasy framework in which to put what turned out to be a rather large number of NPCs I'm responsible for in FFXIV. Not only is the player's character "The Chosen One" in word but the developers give the player all the trappings of that fame as well. Throw in a language barrier and I'm left hoping I got everything correct. Hopefully I'm close enough that I can use this framework to take a deeper dive into exactly what benefits and responsibilities the Warrior of Light carries in Final Fantasy XIV.

End notes

1. “Chūsei Japan” (中世日本) is the term used in Japanese historiography for the country’s medieval or “feudal” period, spanning roughly the late 11th to the late 16th century and encompassing the rise of the samurai, the establishment of warrior governments, and the era of clan warfare. A clear academic overview appears in James L. McClain’s course description, “Medieval Japan — Creative Energies in the ‘Dark Ages’,” Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies, https://www.kcjs.jp/pdf/courses02/28/medievaljapan.pdf. (kcjs.jp in Bing)

2. “Samurai daishō” (侍大将) was a mid‑ranking samurai commander, positioned below a daimyo and responsible for leading troops under higher generals. The Japanese Wiki Corpus notes that a samurai daishō “commands an army under [the] Dai Shogun” and held a rank between the commander‑in‑chief and infantry captains during the Sengoku period. For an accessible overview, see “Samurai Daisho,” Japanese Wiki Corpus, https://www.japanesewiki.com/title/Samurai%20daisho.html. (japanesewiki.com in Bing)