I always took Sirrian’s idea of a 3rd map as an idea pitch and less of something that was concrete and immediate.
If anything, I hate to be accusatory, but you were the only person I’ve seen that has stated the 3rd map was a surefire thing and somewhat immediate.
@Kafka confirmed earlier that Gems of War will be part of the Smart Delivery program on the Xbox Series X. Where does that go??
The joke is, Gems of War is already free. 
Still it would be funny if the devs came out and said Gems of War will be part of the Smart Delivery system.
Nothing’s a sure thing until it goes live.
That said, I did a whole lot of digging and found the very first mention of 5.0, by the devs, all the way back in August 2019.
Watch Developer Q & A (All Things 4.5, Deeds & Challenges) from infinityplustwo on www.twitch.tv(Link goes to the appropriate question; takes ~30-45 seconds to be answered)
It’s brought up during a question about banner mana combinations. At that point in time, Nimhain and Sirran don’t explictly state “third map”, but Sirrian super-heavily implies one when they say “a place alongside the Underworld” and “5.0” in the same sentence.
I’m reasonably sure that this was clarified a bit on a later stream somewhere (may not necessarily have been a Dev Q&A stream) to be a third map, of an unknown location (I remember some comment about the map change button being modified to select which map to go to when it does eventually occur). But, that clip took me over an hour (almost 2) to find and I’m calling it quits on this here.
To be 100% fair though, I did technically analyze this in the stream notes and decided in the moment that this was sufficient of a tease to be called a “third map”.
And apparently, through all of this digging, that I took up the mantle of writing stream notes from the previous person all the way back at 3.5, in mid-2018. I’ve been doing this for almost two years now. Gaard, I’m virtually old… or partially insane, or probably a bit of both. 
Am I the only one who cannot open “Source” link?
Basically, I think he’s left a few placeholders, i.e.
[Source]() → Source
as opposed to
[Source](https://community.gemsofwar.com/t/promises-a-well-sourced-future-update-megathread/61686/24) → Source
where the round brackets actually contain a link.
I think it would be helpful if some of these instead said “Needs Sauce” or were added to a similarly-titled category to help anyone who might know provide links.
There’s never enough sauce.
Thank you for all the Stream Summaries you do. As someone who is unable to watch them live, and to lazy to watch them after, your summaries are perfect to me. Please continue. 
Thanks for the feedback everyone!
The OP got a big update thanks to everyone’s help.
Among other things, several points got added (thanks to @awryan, @Mithran!), a couple old/irrelevant points got removed, and all the broken links got removed (look for [Source Needed] in the post and help out, please!)
Tonight, I’ll be watching the stream and making highlights, and adding points to this post once I’m done. Definitely doesn’t substitute @Lyrian’s amazing work (which was part of the inspiration for this post) though!
Some other comments:
Does this mean we won’t be seeing any systems to utilize extra copies of troops? I did a bunch of grinding to avoid using Disenchant, partly because I anticipated the system would someday change.
I read the Pet Gnomes response and interpreted it as “Maybe, maybe not, we’ll see.” And they saw, and chose not. I’m really frustrated with their change of stance on Explore XP though, that point about
Odd. I gathered this point in part from a direct quote to that end that I still need to find, and in part from the accumulation of other quotes (“we’d be seeing a new source of banners” was stated in a pretty certain way), including the statement that 5.0 was essentially the endpoint in a long series of updates meant to build towards it.
That and partly the mere expectation that a milestone update like this one should have a major change like 4.0 did with the Underworld.
Sometime soon I will look into trying to create a full transcription of the streams, emphasizing the Q&A streams. Google’s cloud transcription service is hard to get functioning since I have to write my own computer program to interface with it, but it’s free (it’s like less than a dollar and I get $300 in free credits to start) and the streams have the added benefit of minimal background noise and high-quality microphones. This should aid significantly in the process of finding relevant quotes.
This is great @EliteMasterEric, thank you so much.
I never noticed that the streams don’t have live closed captions. Are they able to enable them for Twitch to make transcribing easier?
To be fair, if Sirrian commented in August last year about 5.0, things could have changed. We do have our schedule generally mapped out for a loooong time in advance but details are often changed due to various reasons which is why we don’t make solid announcements too early in development.
@Lyrian even I use your summaries so thank you 
I HAVEN’T CONFIRMED ANYTHING ABOUT NEXT GEN CONSOLES CALM DOWN AW also bear in mind that I have a full time job worrying about the here and now and the immediate future (ie. 4.8) I don’t have time to worry about next gen so I’m not a reliable source of info about that until the hour is upon us xD
Both systems will be backwards compatible with current gem. So whether you’re allowed to confirm or not. Gems of War will be available on next gen.
… But again… It was just a joke. Because Gems of War (and all other free games) can easily market themselves as being part of Smart Delivery system.
Therefore, the only sources of information on 5.0.0 that we have are things that the devs have said in their Q&As. How do you know the devs plans have changed?
I asked Nimhain and Sirrian
One thing to keep in mind is I think it’s fair to say some ideas “expire”. There’s a sliding scale though.
Like, one time Sirrian expressed strongly he hates stamina systems, and that he’d never do that in Gems of War. It’s possible that if we confronted him directly about that he’d argue that what’s in GoW meets some subjective criteria that keeps the promise, but I think most players would agree sigils are the GoW stamina system and the promise is empty.
I will say firmly devs shouldn’t say “never” unless they mean it. There are a lot of dirty words we know aren’t true in software dev, and “never” is one of them. It’s better to say, “I don’t like stamina systems, but I have to keep the lights on at the end of the day. The best way you can prevent them is spend money on things that aren’t stamina.” It’s weasely, but it’s true.
Compare that to a statement like, “We’re thinking about a way to make poison do more damage.” As a player, you should NOT see that as a commitment. It means the devs are interested in that design space, but they aren’t really sure how it works. They aren’t making a strong commitment, so it’s not “a lie” if it never materializes. (In this case, I think the idea morphed into Bleed.)
I’ve been listening to a game developer podcast lately, and what strikes me is how the coolest indie games of the past few years all seem to have been developed very slowly out of small prototypes. The most successful people seem to pick one really cool idea, then try to figure out how to make a game out of it. They make a prototype and show it to friends. If the friends don’t like it, they brutally destroy it and start over. This process iterates over years until we get something like VVVVVV or Into the Breach that makes us think they just had this idea spring from their forehead. It doesn’t. It’s long, hard, insightful work.
Art’s like that. When you don’t know what you’re making, but you want to make it good, it’s not good to have a deadline. You just try what your muse tells you, and most of the time it’s garbage. But put a lot of garbage together and you start to get a feel for what might work.
“Live content” games as the devs have described GoW don’t get that luxury. They promise to release “something” every quarter, and various market pressures hold them to it. The idea that sounded cool in November might not have yielded fruit at the end of March, but By The Market they WILL release it. That means sometimes we’re going to get features that suck, and the devs know they suck, but again due to Various Market Forces they absolutely MUST release an update.
I hate it for them, but I also wish they’d have the power to resist Various Market Forces. If, say, Sirrian won a multi-tens-of-millions lottery, I’m sure he’d be happy to give his taskmasters the finger and produce sequels to Puzzle Quest that released when he felt like they were DONE, vs. on a schedule. Or he might buy the rights to GoW and release updates “when he feels he has a good idea” instead of "every quarter.
But we’re stuck with the realities of The Market. I hope the devs respond to this by using “never” or “we’ll do this” when it’s something they plan to stick, and using more weasel words like “we’re thinking about…” when it’s the kind of thing that isn’t a firm commitment.
Off topic but I have a side note - the problem is that at the time Sirrian absolutely meant what he said. Also if he decided to follow the rule of never saying never and said what you’d suggested - this would have been read as “GEMS OF WAR IS GOING TO INTRODUCE AN ENERGY SYSTEM AHHH!” even though that’s not what he would have been saying at all… it would be pandamonium, we’d cop abuse for a feature that wasn’t even in our brains let alone on a project plan and people would rage quit the game over something that wasn’t happening.
^ This can be applied to a lot of things. I try to say things “not at this time, but never say never” but I have to admit I do that more for things people WANT than things they DON’T want… because saying something no one wants then saying “never say never” will cause panic for no reason if something isn’t on the drawing board. Whereas when I say it to something someone wants, what I’m trying to say is, we have no plans or intention to do that thing at this time but we’re not saying NO. You know?
I guess the overall disclaimer is that things can change, don’t hold it against us in the long term D:
Cant find all these Informations here, shouldnt they?
I’m working to update this thread to include the information from the 4.9 Preview Stream.
Just as a quick note, the next update has been confirmed to be 5.0.0. There is no expectation that there will need to be a 4.9.5 for a 4.10.0.
Additionally, due to missing graphics, the 4.9 update must release before May 11th. We may see it as early as next week, or as late as May 5th or 6th.
Hey everyone,
The 4.9.0 and 5.0.0 sections have been revamped, the former including information from the 4.9.0 preview stream and the latter including what little we know about 5.0.0.
Additionally, points have been added to various sections, which I will copy here so you don’t have to search for them:
Great job @EliteMasterEric!
Soon™ as of 25/JUN/2020