Look, let's be honest, the inaugural regular season of Game of Thrones: Kingsroad has finally drawn its epic curtain. Throughout this season, players who have fiercely competed by stacking up scores via exclusive content, seasonal dungeons, and a colourful variety of field play have finally received their final report cards today. Let us check out through the compiled tables and text what kind of results this rank struggle has churned out.

The criteria for the head ranking tier are largely similar

To cut right to the chase, the cutlines for the top-tier 'head' rank were pretty much on par across all three houses. The highest house cutline sat at 112,015 points, while the lowest clocked in at 105,856 points, leaving a gap of a mere roughly 6,000 points. Despite the variance in the player counts choosing each house, what really set this competition ablaze was, naturally, the loot. While the costume rewards were certainly charming, it was the legendary-tier title boosting critical strike chance that truly added fuel to the competitive fire.

Step down one tier to the 'greatsword' rank, and you will find that the cutlines scaled neatly with the population and score standards of each house. Only the Hornwood House, which swallowed up a staggering 51% of the entire player base, hit 70,925 points, whereas the baseline for the other two houses languished below 50,000 points. Aside from the costumes, the reward gap from the lower tiers wasn't all that massive, and unlike the head tier, the title's actual usefulness was a bit questionable. Thanks to this, mid-to-low tier players could easily secure the greatsword rank with just a tiny bit of effort.

Meanwhile, if we peer into the score metrics of the overall number one ranker for this season, the weight carried by 'mark returns' was utterly overwhelming. Out of a total score of 115,694 points, a whopping 48,155 points came straight from mark returns. Just a quick heads-up, though: starting from the upcoming season 2, things are changing so that mark returns will no longer impact seasonal rankings.

A fresh wind blows with growth expansion and balance tweaks

Following last week, there have been practically no earth-shattering shifts in class preferences and the momentum category. In fact, the growth rate of the number one momentum ranker over the past week recorded a flat zero. This is simply because top-tier players have already maxed out their collection elements and finished gearing up, leaving them with zero room to push their specs any further.

However, starting with the update dropping today, we are expecting a massive tectonic shift. First off, the character level cap is expanding to level 55, and world difficulty is also getting an expansion up to tier 7. Toss in the introduction of brand-new tier 5 equipment, and the ceiling for spec upgrades has been blown wide open.

On top of that, class balance tweaks are poised to stir up a refreshing breeze. Aside from the 'knight' class which has been dominating the scene, the skills and core mechanics of the somewhat sluggish 'mercenary' and 'assassin' have been buffed up. We are seriously excited to see how the ultra-top-rankers, now unshackled from their growth chains, and these buffed-up classes will shake up next week's ranking meta.