"Just started writing and didn't stop...."
Speculating about Valheim also has that effect on me :)
I think your thoughts about the sudden success is right. A mixed challenge in the short term and hopefully something wonderful in the long term. I do think its worth noting though that other indie studios have also been in this situation before and not all of them have exactly lived up to expectations. That sudden success, for Valheim thats 6 million copies sold in early access, seems to be a real test of a studios integrity.. I am very hopeful for them tho because i think their success prove they only really need to keep doing what they already are doing. The foundation is solid so to speak.
I really wish I had given the source for that roadmap image because it actually gives a bit more detail about the updates. I got it from the Fandom wikia
here which in turn leads to both this
pcgamer article and this
Steam community update. The Steam update seems to be the origin of the image which means its all the way back from the 2nd of February when early access was released. The pcgamer article has some very interesting details and is for sure worth a read. And for the most part they support your speculations. :)
Re "Hearth and Home": Henrik Törnqvist confirms in the article that new building pieces are coming and I absolutely love that. Considering how much have already been done with so relatively few pieces even just 3-4 more would open a new world of possibilities.
Re "Cult of the Wolf": It does sound dangerous! And with the devs not confirming much other then "Cult of the Wolf will be an update that focuses on exploration and combat with hopefully some some new fun and different encounters for the players" I can only join you in hoping it adds more lore and "life" to existing biomes so to speak. I don't know if CotW will go this far, but I hope that in time they will add more personality and behavior to the various enemies and wild life. Seeing trolls interact for example would be hilarious and would probably lead to some fun encounters.
Re "Ships and the Sea": Their intention seems to be to populate the Ocean biome more which I can only welcome. I absolutely agree that sailing is great and for me its particularly sailing down the small rivers that just feels awesome. As for more ships the point seems to be more customizing existing ships then adding new ones which imo is a good thing. There's a certain danger of just adding stuff because they can rather then because its needed. With the content available right now I feel I have the right amount of ships.
Re "Mistlands": You seem to be spot on. ""So it will be new enemies, new items, a new boss, new resources, everything, and that's what we have planned for this year."
I must admit that knowing the image is from February and reading especially the last line in the interview: "We're five people, by the way, so we have quite a lot to do. But yeah, as soon as we feel ready, we will begin working on the updates outlined in the roadmap" makes me think even more that they overestimated how fast they could get stuff done. Or was completely floored but suddenly having millions of bug testers. Or perhaps as you say the road map was meant more as motivation and goals then hard set deadlines. But that's not really a great practice though if that's the case. They make a clear distinction between stuff they intend to do and stuff they might do, so it seems fair to assume the stuff not in the "might do" category is coming. And since they provide the deadline themselves, also within that. I'm willing to cut them a lot of slack though and just cross my fingers and hope for the best. Their world is probably just about upside-down right about now :)
