Today is a special day. PristonTale EU is officially 8 years old!

It's been an incredible eight years, and we're proud to say more than 100,000 characters joined the world of Priston in that time!

Where it started

PristonTale EU began as a project to fill a gap. The options back then were unmoderated servers, projects with inactive development, or servers customised so heavily they barely resembled the game we remembered. We set out to build something different: a place you could hop onto and immediately be hit with nostalgia, with the benefit of active, ongoing improvements to the game.

Throughout those eight years, one thing we've heard again and again is simply: *this is so nostalgic.* That never stops warming our hearts.

Thank you

A lot of people have shaped PristonTale EU into what it is today. Team members past and present have volunteered enormous amounts of their time creating art and 3D models, spending weeks on balancing, building tools, running countless tests, designing interfaces, testing beta versions, handling player support, and so much more. We want to take a moment to thank everyone who has worked with us and for us. Without these people, PristonTale EU wouldn't exist.

And we want to thank you: for playing, for building community tools and websites, for writing class guides, for helping new players find their footing. In the end, it's all for you: a Priston world we all remember and love.

Where we've fallen short

Eight years is also long enough to have made mistakes, and we've made our share. To anyone who has felt mistreated, unheard, or wrongly judged by our team: we're sorry. Building a community this size, with players from across the globe and very different expectations, cultures and backgrounds, has been a first for us too. What we can promise is that our intentions have always been for PristonTale EU as a whole, even in moments where it may not have looked that way.

What started as a hobby project has since grown into something we can sustain properly, which lets us keep the servers running, support active, and development moving year after year.

What we delivered this year

This year we set out a public roadmap, intending to hit everything on it within our estimated timelines. Looking back at the boxes we've ticked:

• The new map and items, Whispering Vale, in December 2025
• Addressing the clan issues at the start of 2026
• The new Aging transfer
• The launch of Season 12
• A brand new website
• The Cabinet
• A wide range of unplanned fixes and updates that we managed to fit in along the way
• Continued work on our backend code, which remains one of the biggest brakes on how fast we can build

What's next

Realistically, the rest of this year is about PVP delay and overall combat smoothness, alongside more PVP-exclusive content. We intend for that work to go hand in hand with Season 13.

We've also shared an early preview of Dungeons with some of our content creators. The 3D work is coming along, but the entire coding journey is still ahead of us, so a realistic expectation is that Dungeons will arrive in early 2027 rather than this year. We'd rather tell you that now than quietly miss a date.

The Marketplace

The new website already gives you a full database of monsters, items, and boss timers. Next we're building on that foundation with a complete marketplace, tracking prices, recent sales, and active listings, so you can finally see what's on the market without clicking through every shop in town. 

A better start for new players

One addition that never made the road map: a complete overhaul of new player guidance, plus the option to use WASD movement.

Right now we lose roughly 80% of new players before they reach level 2. That's a striking number, and it tells us the problem isn't the game people fall in love with; it's the first fifteen minutes before they get there. Better guidance and modern controls should give far more newcomers the chance to reach the Priston we all know. This one is deep into testing and will be released fairly soon.

One more thing: the world of Priston, refreshed

For our 8th anniversary, and with more than 25 years of PristonTale behind us, we decided it was time to give the world itself some attention.

PristonTale EU is overhauling the entire game world design. Not changing it into something you won't recognise, but polishing it into the world you remember playing for the first time. Every field, every town, exactly where it should be, just looking the way your memory insists it already looked. While it's not finished, we're soon ready to release the polished versions of Ricarten Town, Garden of Freedom, Bamboo Forest, Acacia Forest, Phillai Town, Road to the Wind, Valley of Tranquility, Land of Dusk, and Forest of Spirits.

Below is a before-and-after video so you can see what we're working on! Keep in mind these are a work in progress. The final versions can differ from the video.

The reasoning is the same as with WASD and the new player guidance. Too many people try PristonTale and leave before it clicks, and we think Priston deserves better than being stuck in 2003.

And the interface, too

The world isn't the only thing getting attention. We've been preparing a complete overhaul of every interface in the game.

If you've played for a while, you'll have noticed that PristonTale EU currently runs on a patchwork of styles: legacy interfaces from the original game, older ones we built years ago, and newer screens in a more modern style. It works, but it doesn't feel like one game.

We're fixing that. Every system is being modernised and brought into a single, consistent art style, the same one guiding the world refresh. Our goal is to have every interface in the game refreshed by the end of 2027.

There's more planned for 2027, but we can't share it all just yet. We've got 2026 to finish!

We're excited for what's ahead, and we hope you'll be there for it all.

Here's to year nine.