World of Warcraft Classic artwork of Deathwing

If you're a fan of World of Warcraft, whether this be the newest Dragonflight expansion or the various Classic versions, you'll be pleased to hear that the future looks bright! According to the freshly released Roadmap, both versions of the game will be getting a plethora of major updates throughout 2024!

The highlights for the 'Retail' side include things like world-wide dragonriding and a new assortment of quests in Winter, as well as remastered Dragonflight raids and a seemingly improved Timewalking option for the Pandaria expansion in Spring. All of this will eventually lead into The War Within expansion that will launch in late Summer and bring with it the usual array of new content like new zones, dungeons and raids, Earthern allied race, and the list goes on for a while.

The Outer Worlds official artwork and logo

If you're looking for a game to cuddle up with during the cold (or surprisingly warm) winter months, you'll be happy to hear that Obsidian's The Outer Worlds and all of its DLC are currently up for grabs. All you have to do is head on over to the Epic Games Store, snag yourself a copy, and you'll be set to make a complete mess out of outer space.

The small catch, as always, is that there is a fairly tight time limit. The giveaway will end at 4pm GMT on December 26th, so do make sure to add The Outer Worlds to your account before it goes back to its regular price. Once you've done that you'll be able to play it whenever you want and for however long you want.

Fallout 3 Power Armor in a ruined city screenshot

[Update]: More good news! Obsidian's The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition is free to grab until December 26th.

If you're a fan of RPGs and you've somehow managed to avoid giving Fallout 3 a try all these years, consider this your lucky day. As a part of the Epic Games Store's Christmas giveaway, Fallout 3 and all of its DLCs are currently free to grab!

Naturally, there is a small catch, and that is the limited time window in which you have to snag yourself a copy. In this case the giveaway will run out at 4pm GMT on December 24th, so do make sure to claim your copy before the giveaway goes away. And then, once you've added it to your account you'll be able to play it whenever you want and for however long you want.

Dota 2 artwork showing off the Bloodstone item

[Update #2]: Dota 2's Patch 7.35d has reworked hero bans and brought in yet more balance changes.

[Update]: Dota 2's Patch 7.35c has arrived with much-needed nerfs to overplayed heroes and items.

With the recent Patch 7.35 Dota 2 has rebalanced a good chunk of its items and heroes, as well as added a variety of new items and neutral items for everyone to mess around with. Unsurprisingly, given the sheer scale of the changes, Patch 7.35 has also brought with it a whole host of balance problems! 

So in order to smash some of these outliers back into place, Valve has now unleashed Patch 7.35b with another sizable batch of changes. The biggest one, and perhaps the most confusing, is the crippling nerf to Bloodstone - "Bloodpact no longer restores mana". Since only a couple of heroes ever bought Bloodstone, and since they did so mostly for the massive amounts of mana regeneration, I'm guessing the item is likely going to remain unused until it gets reworked yet again.

The Witcher 3 official screenshot showing off Ciri

In an announcement that came seemingly out of nowhere, CDPR has now revealed that they are working on a mod editor for The Witcher 3! The editor will be a reworked version of the REDengine 3 editor that was used to create the actual game, so skilled modders will be able to modify all of the existing content to their heart's content, as well as create entirely new quests and storylines!

While no exact release date has been announced just yet, The Witcher 3 editor will be heading over to PC at some point in 2024. And naturally, it'll be entirely free for everyone to mess around with!

Dota 2 screenshot of Meepo being smacked by Dawnbreaker

[Update #2]: Patch 7.35c has now launched with some much-needed nerfs to overplayed heroes and items.

[Update]: Dota 2's Patch 7.35b has arrived to fix some of the freshly introduced mistakes.

In an effort to prevent the meta from getting too entrenched, the Dota 2 team has now unleashed Patch 7.35. As you might expect, the update brings with it an absurd amount of balance changes to both items and heroes, a plethora of quality of life improvements, numerous new items and neutral items to toy around with, and since this is the holiday season we're talking about, some festive new cosmetics as well!

First and foremost, jungle creeps now offer less money, thus incentivizing a more active playstyle among core roles. Keeping with the theme, super creeps and mega creeps are now a fair bit stronger as well, so destroying an enemy team's base should be more than a simple inconvenience. And in order to give the dominant team a better chance to push, Roshan can now also drop a banner that greatly amplifies one lane's worth of creeps for 300 seconds.

Darktide artwork for the Traitor's Curse update

[Update]: Darktide devs are aiming to rework the Crafting and Achievement systems, as well as add new Content throughout 2024.

It took a full year for us to get here, but it looks like Fatshark has finally settled into a good rhythm with Darktide. And so, only a short while after Patch #15 arrived, The Traitor Curse - Part 2 update has now been unleashed with a variety of new content to mess around with!

There's a brand new map set in the Carnival zone, a time-limited event that will see your team randomly ambushed by one of the Karnak Twins, consumables stims that function similarly to Vermintide 2's potions, a new batch of weapon variations that includes a revolver with a fan-the-hammer mode, and as is tradition, yet another rework of the Veteran's skill tree. Best of all? It's all good stuff!

MTG Arena artwork for the powerful Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer card

[Update]: Khans of Tarkir and the Timeless format have now arrived, though not without some server trouble!

In an announcement that shouldn't come as too much of a surprise given the recent experimentation with Historic 'no bans' events, Wizards of the Coast has now unveiled a brand new format for MTG Arena - Timeless. As the name might suggest, Timeless will be a 60-card, ridiculously high powered format encompassing every single card ever released onto Arena, and no bans whatsoever!

That said, the last part is only technically correct. While no card has been banned, three of them have been restricted, which means you can only run one copy of them in your deck (sideboard included). The deadly trio is Channel, Demonic Tutor and Tibalt's Trickery, with the latter being restricted purely to prevent stupid non-games where the victor is decided based on a dice roll on turn 2.

Grand Theft Auto VI official artwork and logo

If you were excitedly waiting for the Grand Theft Auto VI trailer to finally drop, I bring some good and bad news. The good news is that, spurred on by the recent leaks, Rockstar Games have now released the very first trailer a day ahead of schedule!

Without spoiling any of the surprises, allow me to share with you the first look at GTA VI. Needless to say, it's quite an exciting one! Have a gander:

MTG Arena Lost Caverns of Ixalan dinosaur artwork

[Update# 2]: MTG Arena has re-released Khans of Tarkir and launched Timeless - a new high-powered format.

[Update]: The Alchemy mini-expansion has now arrived, and I have to say, the cards below ended up being even more fun than I expected!

Despite the entirety of Khans of Tarkir coming this December 12th for Historic and Explorer players, the MTG Arena team has somehow managed to find the time to create another in a long line of expansions for the Alchemy format. As such, the titular Alchemy: Ixalan mini expansion will be launching on December 5th with 30 new cards to toy around with.

Much like before, a good chunk of the cards have been designed to beef up the various archetypes and mechanics found in the main set. Or in other words, you can expect to see support for things like dinosaurs, pirates, merfolk and artifacts, as well as a couple of individually spicy cards that are bound to make a splash even in older formats like Historic Brawl.