Diablo Immortal has now entered Open Beta, though sadly it's a bit of a mess
- By Ash
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A fair bit of time has gone by since its disastrous first showing, but Blizzard's free-to-play "MMO-ARPG" Diablo Immortal has now finally landed into Open Beta for both PC and mobile platforms. While the gameplay is pretty much the same between the two versions, the PC one sports a revamped UI, chat functionality, as well as controller support.
What it looks like in action, as well as how the whole thing differs from Diablo 3 itself, that you can get a bit of an idea of through the freshly posted gameplay trailer. Have a gander:
The excellent Wolfenstein: The New Order is free to grab for one week
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[Update]: The ridiculously over-the-top shark RPG Maneater is free to grab until June 16th.
If you're looking for something to distract you from the scorching heat, at least for a little while, you'll be happy to hear that Wolfenstein: The New Order is currently free to grab. Simply head on over to the Epic Games Store, snatch yourself a copy, and you'll be good to go after a bit of a download.
The one catch, as always, is that the whole giveaway will only last a single week. As such, make sure to add a copy to your account before June 9th, after which you'll be able to play it whenever you want.
MTG Arena's June update has added 30 new cards and some long-awaited quality-of-life tweaks
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[Update]: MTG Arena has banned the surprisingly effective Expressive Iteration card from the Explorer format.
In order to help everyone pass the time until the Baldur's Gate set arrives on July 7th, MTG Arena has now unleashed a sizable new update. It brings with it 30 digital-only cards as a part of the Alchemy: New Capenna set, as well as a couple of long-awaited quality-of-life tweaks and improvements.
Unlike the previous sets, Alchemy: New Capenna has a slightly better distribution of card rarities (10 Uncommons, 15 Rares, 5 Mythics) which should make it a little bit easier to collect. And just to make things even more straightforward, Wizards of the Coast has also launched a week-long Alchemy Premier Draft event where one common card in each pack is replaced by a random Streets of New Capenna Alchemy card. In my experience it's not even close to being a balanced format, but it's still a nice little distraction from the usual onslaught of blue-white-green decks in the standard draft mode.
World of Warcraft has added cross-faction grouping and Dark Ranger themed character customization
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[Update #2]: World of Warcraft's hopefully down-to-earth Dragonflight expansion will be launching in 2022.
[Update]: Dragonflight's newest preview shows of the freshly improved and greatly expanded Druid & Death Knight talent trees.
It took many, many years for us to get here, but the day has finally come! As a part of Update 8.2.5, World of Warcraft has now added cross-faction grouping for most forms of instanced content: dungeons, raids, rated arenas and battlegrounds, as well as Torghast.
When in a party with a member from the opposing faction you will remain unfriendly to them out in the world, but as soon as you join an instance together you will be able to do everything from sharing loot to earning achievements together. In order to make the grouping process as simple as possible, Blizzard has made it so you can either invite players from the opposing faction via their BattleTag or cross-faction WoW Community, or simply through the use of the Group Finder. Nice and convenient!
Dota 2's "larger than normal" Patch 7.31d will be launching on June 8th, 2022
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[Update]: Patch 7.31d has now arrived, and while it's not exactly massive, there's still a lot of interesting stuff on offer.
After a few rounds of teasers, Valve has now finally decided to spill the beans on the next big The International tournament. Long story short, the whole thing will be hosted in Singapore and will consists of three events: the Last Chance Qualifiers from October 8-12, the Group Stage from October 15-18, and the Grand Finals from October 29-30. So if you're a fan of high-level Dota 2, you might want to make some room in your schedule!
However, you won't have to wait all that long for something new and interesting to happen as Valve has also taken this opportunity to tease the next big gameplay update. As such, you can expect Patch 7.31d to arrive this June 8th alongside a much-needed Dota Plus update and a seasonal refresh.
Here are the five most exciting announcements from the Warhammer Skulls 2022 festival
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Warhammer Skulls is an annual event that's here to celebrate everything related to Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 video games. Needless to say, this includes things like reveals of brand new games, major updates for existing ones, as well as a whole assortment of sales to give you an excuse to dive into the universe.
Rather than cover every single small and mostly cosmetic update, allow me to instead share with you the five most exciting announcements from Warhammer Skulls 2022. Without further ado, here's the brief list:
Vermintide 2's June 14th update will add Be'lakor's presence to the rogue-like Chaos Wastes
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[Update]: The Be'lakor update has now arrived, and while a bit buggy, it's still a fair bit of fun.
The Chaos Wastes are Vermintide 2's rogue-like game mode where you and your buddies get to explore an assortment of increasingly more difficult and randomized maps. Along the way you'll have to contend with both positive and negative modifiers, collect a whole bunch of powerful upgrades, and naturally, tear through more ratmen and Chaos worshipers than you could even attempt to count.
It's a really fun game mode, and one that's only going to get better in the near future as Fatshark has used the currently ongoing Warhammer Skulls festival as an opportunity to announce a brand new patch for the Chaos Wastes! Once it arrives this June 14th, the Be’lakor update will bring the dark prince's influence to the Chaos Wastes, and with it a whole host of new modifiers and challenges to overcome.