The first playable phase of the Land Expansion from Splinterlands will finally be out next week, during the regular Tuesday maintenance window, we were announced by 
Screenshot from Land 1.5 on the Mavs test server
The team kept a reserve in case anything unpredictable happens that would postpone this launch again, but I believe they are fairly certain this time about the date.
For anyone not familiar, we are not talking about putting the game in a semi-public environment like the Mavericks QA server. It's been there and probably updated regularly for almost two months already! This will be the full public release on the main website!
It's been strange when I looked at my feed to see when I posted about Land 1.5 being on Mavs server for the first time. I didn't realize it has passed almost 2 months already.
Due to funding runway concerns, understandably, the presale for Rebellion took precedence and the next core set has probably been the main focus of the majority of the Splinterlands team.
I believe the timing was well chosen to launch Land 1.5. People who want to be fully immersed in both Land and in Rebellion have time to start up Land and put in the initial time, which won't be negligible at first, and then go into a routine with it. Afterwards, Rebellion will be launched and they will have time to focus on that. Before that, they may want to test Rebellion on the Mavs server.
Also, let's not forget that before Land 1.5 would be launched, the presale for Rebellion happened (and is still going on). One of the effects of that is that DEC price was pushed close to its shop value from much lower before that.
Screenshot from CMC
If everything goes the right way, we'll have a good round of excitement when Land 1.5 is launched. One or two weeks after that, the initial draft for Land 2.0 would be released, mentioned Matt in the town hall. That will give purpose to Land 1.5 gameplay - which otherwise might feel kind of boring after a while - and would fuel more excitement.
Couple that with the launch of Rebellion, which should happen not long after, that's another push to the momentum. If the crypto market also pushes in the right direction, I believe we are going to start to see serious excitement around the game, once again.
Will that rival what happened during the launch and airdrop of SPS? Most likely not. But could we have a surprise in the future (coupled with the right market sentiment), that could stir another explosion for Splinterlands? Maybe... Hints have been dropped, but about that in a future post.
P.S. Something else we found out from the town hall that is important for the good balancing of territories. It looks like land surfing (which has a low priority of being developed) will work including for non-claimed or not surveyed land, so non-land owners could work that land as well once land surfing is released.
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