Anthem's 90-Day Post-Launch Roadmap Revealed

By Brandin Tyrrel

BioWare’s shared-world shooter Anthem is officially out for everyone today, and with it, BioWare has announced the events and changes you can expect over the next three months.

In a post on the BioWare blog, Chad Robertson, Head of Live Service on Anthem, shared his short-term vision for the game with a look at the first 90-day roadmap of what the live-service team has planned.

You can find a list of the activities below, broken out by the month they’ll be deployed. It’s important to note that none of these activities have concrete deployment dates, or weeks, assigned to them just yet, so we’ll have to keep an ear to the ground for when we can expect them to roll out during the calendar month.

Anthem – February 2019:

• New Freeplay Event: “Outlaw Outrage”
• New Freeplay Event: “There Be Giants”
• New Freeplay Event: Shaper Surge

Anthem Live Services – March 2019:

• New Cosmetics: “Elysian Stronghold Caches”
• Rewards: New Items
• New Missions: Legendary Missions – Phase 1
• New Freeplay Event: TBA (To Be Announced)
• Freeplay Event: “There Be Giants”
• Freeplay Event: “Outlaw Outrage”

Anthem Live Services – April 2019:

• Expanded Progression: Mastery System
• Rewards: New Items
• Multiple Freeplay Events: TBA
• Freeplay Event: Shaper Surge
• New Missions: Legendary Missions – Phase 2
• New Stronghold: “The Sunken”
• Social Play: Weekly Stronghold Challenge
• Social Play: Leaderboards
• Social Play: Guilds

Anthem Live Services – May 2019:

• Freeplay Events: TBA
• New Missions: TBA
• Rewards: New Items

While February is solely dedicated to the launch rollout, troubleshooting, patches, fixes, quality of life improvements, and a small stable of freeplay events, things really kick off in March.

Anthem in March will introduce new cosmetics, new Legendary missions, new item rewards, and one new freeplay event.

April is the big one for Anthem, where we’ll see an expansion to endgame progression with a “mastery system,” in addition to a new Stronghold eerily called “The Sunken.” Additionally, BioWare will target the touted social aspects of Anthem like Leaderboards (for Stronghold clearing time, etc.) alongside Guilds. Finally, we’ll see a Weekly Stronghold Challenge introduced that should add a new twist on the four Strongholds available (by then.)

Anthem’s May will deliver more freeplay events, missions, and reward items, none of which are outlined at this time.

“Anthem’s launch represents a commitment we’re making to you,” Robertson said in the post, “we’re just getting started. We have a growing list of improvements we’re evaluating for the future. You’ll start seeing the next of those this coming week.”

Our official IGN Anthem review found it to be just okay with the potential to be a good game, but all indications are there’s a lot of work to be done to reach that point.

Brandin Tyrrel is IGN’s Xbox Editor. You can find him on Unlocked, or chat over on Twitter at @BrandinTyrrel.