Thoughts and Concerns About the 1.0 Delay and the New Roadmap

Wicked Feedback
1

Hello everyone, and hello to the Moon Studios team,

I just heard about the delay of the final 1.0 release. I can’t say I’m surprised by the announcement. Having followed the game’s development closely from a distance for quite some time, I know that development schedules are rarely set in stone. I don’t mean this as criticism.

That being said, I am still disappointed that we won’t be getting a No Rest for the Wicked update in October. I was hoping for an update, not necessarily the final release. I was already expecting a delay, but not one affecting such a large amount of content.

Issues raised by this delay

The progression reset

Many of us are already unhappy about the planned reset when 1.0 launches. Some players are reluctant to invest more time into the game because they are afraid of losing everything and having to start over again.

Personally, I’ve already gone through several forms of resets. Early in development, there was already a reset. Then, with the arrival of the new regions, we essentially ended up with two different versions of No Rest for the Wicked, which once again felt like another kind of reset.

At this point, that’s starting to be a lot of fresh starts for players.

Feedback regarding the delay itself

Some players have said that they could lose confidence in the project if another delay happens.

From my point of view, there is also an issue with communication. For example, why show a working iPad version on social media at this stage? What exactly is the studio’s priority right now? Is it making No Rest for the Wicked cross-platform, or should the priority be focusing entirely on finishing the 1.0 version before working on cross-platform support?

Many players have also been wondering how the class system is going to work and wanted an opportunity to test it before 1.0.

Personally, I was already wondering why such an important system was being reworked so close to the planned release. It doesn’t make much sense to significantly change gameplay systems when the deadline is already so close.

Communication around these decisions needs to be handled carefully.

The new roadmap

I am very pessimistic about this new schedule.

To me, it suggests two things: the class system isn’t finished, and it isn’t even close to being ready for beta testing.

The studio is giving itself until December to lock down the system. December and January would then become the main feedback and testing period. February would become the rush to fix everything, followed by a March release.

At that point, I honestly think it would be better to aim for June 2027 instead.

Having three additional months for testing, polishing, and fixing issues would be far healthier than trying to force everything into a March release. Otherwise, February is likely to become an extremely difficult month for the team, and I can already imagine an announcement around that time saying something like:

“We have decided to move the release to August 2027.”

The pressure created by such a tight schedule, combined with the need to work quickly, could end up creating even more problems.

A possible alternative: chapter-based releases

One solution worth considering would be releasing the game in chapters.

Moving from one chapter to another could work somewhat like a new season, introducing new features and systems, new areas, and new story content.

This could help solve several problems. Instead of having to deliver every system from A to Z at once, along with a huge map that may not have been tested enough, animations that still have issues, and many other elements that need polishing, development could be divided into clearer and more manageable milestones.

The promise behind each chapter would essentially become:

“We achieved the goals we set for this chapter. We’ll see you in the next one, where you’ll discover what we have planned next for the game.”

I think this approach could make expectations clearer for players while also giving the development team more room to properly test, polish, and improve each part of No Rest for the Wicked.

2

Hi there Nerisson!

Thank you for being open with us here. Straight off the bat, let me just say that we are all disappointed that we have missed the October window. We truly thought we could make it but we identified that it would have come at a great cost to what Wicked will and should offer.

As you may know, we’ve done heart surgery on Wicked. Attribute System was outdated, causing huge friction and stiff. We knew the Class System would be a lot of work and take a lot of time coupled with expanding Isola Sacra and the story we want to tell. But we can only account for so much until we get it into our hands and really feel how our Class System plays out, one iteration at a time.

The radio silence on our part is (no pun intended) heard and honestly, I didn’t like it either. We won’t have a silence like that going forward. Just know that all 90 of us were heads down, 24/7. Now I’ll be head down, making sure you are all heard and kept informed. :slight_smile:

In respect to your points:

The 1.0 Wipe
We’ve communicated a lot about this as far back as March 2025 to prepare everyone that has stayed with us thus far.

1.0 is us leaving Early Access, it is our official launch to the public. We want everyone on the same level playing field, taking in the new journey of their character progression. We’re also making significant technical changes, revamping items, systems, etc.

The Class System is a huge overhaul beyond just numbers. It could cause significant challenges to addressing bugs if we have 50% of our players with pre 1.0 data and the other 50% with 1.0 launch data.

The New Roadmap
We’ve done a lot of internal playtesting (all of us!) and this should remedy concerns around rushes on our side. I highly recommend tuning in to the next Wicked Inside where we can lay this out a lot more clearly and quell everyone’s worries.

Chapter Based Releases

Whilst this is a nice idea, the expectations are incredibly high on the community side as well as the dev side. The Breach left a scar, quite rightly and we have learned from it. We will not half-bake anything nor sacrifice on our quality goal. In the past, we have released WIP footage, dev logs and such. We will look into providing these smaller tease/snippets again!

1.0 really is the last gargantuan hurdle and will arguably streamline a far more steady flow of future content (expansions).

Feel free to reach out further to me if you need more clarity! Thanks again for sticking with us through our EA. It means the world to all of us at Moon. <3

edit: smol typos

3

I don’t mind the moved release window. Make it june 2027 if needed. I’ll be there.

What I would like more of however is some more communication from the team, and surely this is something Laura can help with (congrats on the new position btw!).

We had WICKEDLY WICKETTY GOOD art drops 4 months ago, the founders info 2 months ago, and the delay recently. I am not satiated and I hunger for more.

20 years ago, when a new MMORPG was about the be released, I remember going every day to the publisher website to check if they added more information about the available classes.

FEEEEEEED ME

4

YOU SHALL BE FED

Sit tight and thank you very much!

I’m on it, boss! :love_you_gesture:

5

Continuing the discussion from Thoughts and Concerns About the 1.0 Delay and the New Roadmap:

I’m sorry my friend but it doesn’t look like you’re following the game closely. . . Bringing up the Wipe issue again adds nothing to the conversation, if people don’t want to play because of the wipe, that’s not the real issue, what matters is that new players feel motivated to buy the game and that both they and existing Wicked owners play at launch. Whether someone buys and plays now or waits for the full release doesn’t matter as much as generating sales so Moon can cover its expenses. The wipe isn’t the problem, let’s get back to the Breach discussion, the game has changed, Breach was essentially Wicked 2,and version 1.0 will be Wicked 3, would you really stay stuck on version 2 if version 3 is better in every way? I didn’t know a single person who kept playing the “Legacy” version after Breach came out.

Regarding the Class System in May 2025 Thomas presented the initial scope for this new system, it vastly improves the game’s depth and solves the current version’s issues regarding attribute locking and stat reallocation. You might be right about the delay in getting it off the drawing board and into practical testing, I think Thomas underestimated the workload involved in such a major change, however come December we can revisit this topic to see if the work justified the delay (I am convinced it was the right decision).

As for Thomas’s posts on X and the parallel work he shares on social media do you realize he’s the CEO ? His role is decision-making, while the rest of the team handles their specific tasks, Thomas is prototyping his ideas and expanding the horizons for Moon and Wicked, he created a game solo to generate more revenue for the studio and is analyzing whether Wicked would make a good mobile port, which would mean more revenue for the studio and more ways for players to experience this masterpiece. In short, if anyone is working to make Wicked a success it’s Thomas (though of course the rest of the team deserves credit too).

Regarding your suggestion about releasing the game in chapters, Moon is already operating that way, we went from the initial version to Breach and now the launch will mark the completion of the first chapter (which is what I’m most excited to see). Down the line, there will be further installments and more content, and once again, we’ll have to wait and see what Moon has prepared to determine whether the delay was justified.

I was frustrated by the delay but I understand the reasoning and actually feel relieved now, I have more time to hit my 1k hour goal in the game (currently at 820 hours) and play other things but going from an October release to March and saying you’re worried that’s not enough time ??? I think March is a very safe deadline; Moon has all that time to clean things up and polish the game plus two full months (Jan and Feb) to work exclusively on class balancing.

I was really worried about the Together PTR often it was unplayable due to disconnects, crashes and server freezes but less than a month later the official Together update launched and the game was nearly perfect, I didn’t see any of the PTR issues in the final release. I think Moon deserves our trust but we won’t know for sure until we can actually get our hands on it.

I apologize if I sounded rude but nothing in your post makes sense to me.

6

Thanks for your reply, Laura. I really appreciate you taking the time to address each of these points, and some of the context you provided definitely helps clarify things from your side.

I’ve shared this message with part of the community.

I’d also like to clarify, for anyone reading this, that these comments are a compilation of the reactions that came up following the announcement that the 1.0 release would be delayed.

I’ve slightly reworded some of them to make them more constructive while preserving the original meaning:

  • “Oh no, I don’t think I can wait that long. This is really going to affect me.”

  • “I don’t really want to invest more time into a game knowing that everything will be wiped when 1.0 releases.”

  • “If they [the studio’s developers] delay it again, I don’t think I’ll be able to trust them anymore.”

  • “A delay is understandable. But I do think there’s an issue with how they communicated it. They seemed very confident about the release. There was talk about things like the macOS port, which is more of a side project—even though I’m personally in favor of it—and then, at the last minute, we get a six-month delay. Six months is a significant amount of time. It makes you wonder whether there’s a major issue internally. At the very least, it suggests they may not have had a clear enough picture of where development actually stood.”

  • “Are we going to get updates in the meantime, or are we staying on the current version until March?”

  • “Much love to the devs. You can tell Thomas is struggling while making the announcement. This is a tough blow for them too. Development delays are never fun, and as frustrating as it may be for us, it’s probably even harder for them. We’ll get a better game in the end.”

  • “Guys, this isn’t bad news! Look at it this way: it means they’re taking the time to make 1.0 as polished as possible.”

None of the messages above are mine. They come from discussions within the No Rest for the Wicked fan community. I also made sure to include some of the supportive and encouraging reactions, so this reflects both sides of the community response.