29K Players Online—How The Witcher 3 Reclaimed Its Fame

Brian Holinka has joined Riot's unannounced MMO project as chief game designer, the studio confirmed this week. He's the third former World of Warcraft core veteran to sign on in under five months, and the hires signal the project is targeting something ambitious rather than just filling seats.

Holinka spent more than a decade at Blizzard—nearly five years as WoW's chief combat designer—before leaving in 2023 to join Fantastic Pixel Castle, a studio founded by ex-Blizzard executive Ghostcrab. That MMO initiative collapsed after NetEase withdrew its investment in 2025, pushing Holinka to seek a new home.

Meanwhile, The Witcher 3 hit 29,166 concurrent Steam players on May 29—the highest count since February 2022. No sale was driving the spike. The surge came from CD Projekt Red's 10-year anniversary tweet for Blood and Wine, which called the DLC "one of our most memorable projects," and the announcement of a new expansion called Old Melodies. Set for 2027, it's positioned as a prequel bridging the gap before Witcher 4, which puts Ciri front and center in a new trilogy CDPR aims to complete within six years.

For anyone who's been putting off Geralt's story, this is a good window. The base game sits at a modest price, and the 2027 DLC release gives you plenty of time to finish the main campaign before tackling new content. Old habits die hard in this industry—and apparently, so do classic RPGs.