Dear Fawkes Community,
What an extraordinary year 2025 has been! As we reflect on the past twelve months, we see a journey defined by dedication, collaboration, and growth, both within our teams and alongside our passionate player communities.
Across every game we support, we faced complex challenges and delivered important advancements. Together, we pushed forward improvements that enhance gameplay, fix longstanding issues, and invest in the future of each title.
Below is a look at what we achieved in 2025 and a preview of what’s in store for 2026.
Shaiya – A Year of Deep Transformation
This year was a true rollercoaster for Shaiya, marked by both challenges and meaningful progress. We are currently in the middle of one of the most important technical transitions in the game’s history, a process that requires strong collaboration between the development team and the community.
Throughout the year, we maintained seasonal and special event content while also pushing forward with structural improvements and long-term fixes. In total, over 14 patches were applied.
Key Improvements Delivered
- Multiple skill balance adjustments, including improvements for Rangers and Assassins.
- Ongoing investigation into HP-over-time effects and the Toxin debuff, which can cause unintended instant deaths. A permanent fix is planned once the 64-bit client is finalized.
- Adjustments to item tradeability, allowing previously stuck items to be traded or stored in the warehouse.
- Introduction of new event maps, including limited PvP maps and Goddess-related areas.
- Continued fixes to inherited issues in quests, localization, and legacy content.
- Revitalization of Stable Erde, adding useful activities and incentives to bring life back to a fan-favorite map.
- Expansion of the raid system from 30 to 150 slots, including the addition of 5 sub-leader roles.
Major Technical Milestones
This year also marked the beginning of a critical modernization effort:
- Visual Studio 2008 → 2022
- C++8 → C++17
- 32-bit → 64-bit client and server
- Introduction of multi-threading support
- New caching system for faster loading, especially during large-scale PvP
- Separated networking layer to reduce lag, crashes, and data conflicts
- Opening of a Public Test Server (PTS), allowing players to actively participate in testing the new client
Goals for the Coming Year
- Finalize the new 64-bit client and technical upgrades
- Warehouse and inventory expansions
- Permanent fix for the Toxin debuff death bug
- Combat log improvements in chat
- Status page updates
- Extra potion slot
- Sub-leader functionality optimization
- In-game raid pings
- DEX formula fix
- Additional trade window item slots
- Debuff visibility via tabs
- Introduction of an in-game ranking system
Defiance – A Challenging and Rewarding Return
This year marked the return of Defiance after four years offline, a complex and demanding undertaking.
The initial stress tests far exceeded expectations, with a large number of returning players eager to revive the game. Following extensive stabilization work, the team focused on understanding, documenting, and restoring systems that had been left undocumented or dependent on missing external tools.
Community communication played a central role throughout the year, with near-daily interaction helping guide priorities and improvements.
What We Achieved
- Released all 5 DLCs for free to all players
- Integrated Easy Anti-Cheat to address exploits and cheating
- Identified that several event drops were handled by missing external tools, and began restoring them manually
- Successfully fixed event drops for:
- Hulker’s Hell
- New Frontier Harvest
- Solstice Strike
- Added Chip Pullers to non-event Arkfalls, increasing the value of regular gameplay and making previously paywalled items accessible through gameplay
- Fixed stability and issues causing the game to suffer from technical problems
- Maintained a consistent rotation of Py’Numbra items and cache box synergies
Goals for the Coming Year
- Continue documenting and understanding all core systems to enable further Quality of Life improvements
- Restore and expand additional event drop systems
- Investigate event structures to allow for new content creation in the future
- Continue addressing exploits (such as fire-rate issues) through design-driven solutions to ensure fair play
- Releasing the game in Steam, sharing the world of Defiance with more players
Desert Operations & Wargame 1942 – Stability, Strategy, and Growth
Throughout the year, Desert Operations and Wargame 1942 focused on reinforcing long-term progression, competitive balance, and overall performance.
Highlights of the Year
- Expanded research levels, offering deeper strategic progression paths
- HQ level extensions across all servers, supporting continued growth for veteran players
- Relaunch of Blitzkrieg fast rounds, bringing back the popular 30-day accelerated gameplay format
- Introduction of the Global Diamond Count, improving transparency and resource tracking across servers
- Backend performance and stability improvements, reducing delays and timeouts
- Launch of the new server Bastion, providing a fresh competitive environment
- Successful server merges, consolidating Chaos and Blood of Iron into the Evolution server to ensure the correct game balance and combat between players
Last Chaos – A Year of Stability and Renewal
2025 marked a breakthrough year for Last Chaos, with a strong focus on stability, technical improvements, and community-driven development.
Many long-standing issues were addressed throughout the year, resulting in significant improvements to overall server stability. One of the most important milestones was the successful transition to a 64-bit environment, laying a stronger technical foundation for the future.
Connectivity was also improved with the return of Horizon to North America, providing better connections and reduced latency for players in the region. In addition, Russian and Portuguese were introduced as new in-game languages, making the game more accessible to a broader audience.
Alongside these technical improvements, the team continued to deliver new and recurring events, limited-time costumes, and multiple quality-of-life updates, keeping the experience active and engaging.
Extensive planning has already been completed for the coming year, with a clear focus on a major upcoming content update that will define the next chapter of Last Chaos.
A Warm Thank You
To our incredible communities across all titles, thank you.
Your passion, ideas, and continual engagement are what fuel our progress. Every bug reported, every suggestion made, and every conversation had has helped shape the shared future of these games.
We’re excited for what 2026 will bring, and we’re honored to continue this journey together.
With warmest wishes,
The Fawkes Games Team ✨
