Where Winds Meet is opening the Imperial Palace on May 28, giving Everstone Studio's free-to-play wuxia RPG its second major expansion and a new court-focused space built around intrigue, daily duties, campaigns and large-scale boss fights.
The new gameplay trailer, published by PlayStation, arrives one week before Version 1.7 goes live. It gives the update a clearer shape than a normal live-service content beat: this is not just another activity board or reward reset, but a new royal court setting for a game already sold on scale, wandering and martial-arts fantasy.
Everstone Studio announced that Imperial Palace launches on May 28 UTC. The same announcement describes the Kaifeng Imperial Palace as a space spanning more than one million square meters, with more than 3,000 NPCs spread through the Front Court, Inner Quarters and Central Bureaus.
That scale matters for Where Winds Meet because the game is at its best when its open world feels like more than scenery between fights. The Imperial Palace pushes the fantasy inward, away from broad countryside adventure and toward a controlled political space where players enter under the cover of an investigation and become tied to the Office of Martial and Virtue, an elite intelligence agency within the court.
Everstone is also using the palace to add stranger, more social texture. The announcement names cricket fighting, seasonal ice frolicking, exploration systems, the Imperial Prison, royal meals, hidden martial arts masters and even the possibility of sitting on the Dragon Throne. Some of that sounds playful, but it fits the wider pitch of Where Winds Meet: a wuxia RPG where the world is supposed to support jobs, factions, reputations and odd detours alongside swordplay.
The combat side is not being left to the atmosphere. Sealed Treasury arrives with the expansion on May 28, sending players into a guarded royal vault after an anonymous letter. Confinement Tower follows later in June inside the palace's underground prison. Everstone also says two new world bosses, Gilded Lament and Cat Emperor, will appear within the palace grounds.
Two multiplayer campaigns will unlock after the update as well. One centers on Everdeer, described as a mythical beast with unpredictable attack patterns, while the other is a moonlit battle against Moongazing focused on speed and strategy. For a live game with solo, co-op and larger multiplayer ambitions, that gives Imperial Palace a wider audience than players who only want the new map.
The official May 22 patch notes add one practical detail for active players: pre-download for Version 1.7, The Imperial Palace, is available now. The patch also adds a Cross-Server Matchmaking toggle for Arena mode and includes several fixes, but the palace pre-load is the headline item before launch week.
Where Winds Meet is available as a free-to-play game across PS5, PC and mobile. The Steam page lists cross-play and cross-progression across PS5, PC and mobile, with monetization described as cosmetic rather than pay-to-win. PlayStation's own listing says the PS5 version supports DualSense features and is PS5 Pro Enhanced.
The expansion also appeared in this week's game trailers roundup, but the new gameplay trailer and confirmed May 28 date make the next step clearer. Imperial Palace is the next major test of whether Where Winds Meet can keep its huge wuxia world feeling specific, not just large, as it moves from launch spectacle into long-term updates.