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The official artwork for Hearthstone's Yogg-Saron

The end of days has come! The Hearthstone developers have not only broken their solemn vow of never, ever balancing their own game, but they have also done so in what I can only describe as a perfectly reasonable and balanced manner! I am expecting the gates of hell to open any day now as the world has quite clearly gone mad!

While my cataclysmic predictions might be a slight exaggeration, the rest of it is completely true. Blizzard has finally decided to actively balance Hearthstone in order to provide a more fun and competitive environment for all, and if this upcoming patch is any judge they are definitely moving in the right direction. If you don't believe me, have a look at all of the changes yourself:

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Battlerite review and critique of the early access version

Back in the ancient times of 2011 my main multiplayer obsession was Bloodline Champions, a game so well designed I felt I could never truly master it. All of the characters were almost perfectly balanced aganist each other, pretty much every team composition worked as long as you played with its strengths in mind, and to top it all off, not a single element of gameplay was in the hands of random chance! Alas, due to publisher greed and a couple of misguided patches Bloodline Champions abruptly transformed into something... different. Something I and many others simply couldn't enjoy any longer, and so with a great deal of sorrow I ended up leaving a game I spent a good hundred hours with.

While Bloodline Champions still remains a mere shadow of its former self, I am glad to say that there is hope on the horizon as Battlerite is about as close as you can get to the original Bloodline Champions without wearing its skin as some sort of freaky mask. It features the same cast of diverse characters, the same intricate balance, the same frantic combat, and most importantly, a pretty damn good matchmaking system that actually managed to consistently pair me with equally skilled players.

Battlerite is currently in Early Access, however, so while all of the gameplay mechanics are present and accounted for there are still some missing features and a definite lack of polish. With that in mind, allow me to show you what exactly Battlerite does right, and what still needs to be improved.

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Hotline Miami artwork showcasing various characters

For those of you that might not know, GOG Connect is a service that allows you to link together your GOG and Steam accounts, essentially giving you DRM-free copies for your Steam games. Naturally, this only works for a select few games, but it does appear that the list is going to continue expanding given that GOG recently added 17 more games to the service.

If you're interested in learning more about GOG Connect I would recommend you head towards the official FAQ, it should cover pretty much any question you have. On the other hand, if you're just looking to find out which games have been added, here's the full list:

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Modern Doom's screenshot from the deathmatch mode

Due to a strange turn of events the modern Doom ended up launching without any sort of a deathmatch mode. Thankfully, Bethesda has seen the error of their ways and have now included the classic free-for-all deathmatch mode as a part of the recent "Free Update 3".

As an added bonus, they have also added the ability to host Private Matches. When setting up your matches you will be able to determine the modes you'll play, the maps you'll play them on, the duration of the match, and other such settings you're probably well aware of. And finally, here are all of the bug fixes, as well as the changes to the SnapMap editor:

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Overwatch's Hanzo with his mighty bow

While I consider Overwatch to be one of the finest games I've ever played, it is not without its issues. The most annoying of these is the magically disappearing reconnect button, something that might sound hilarious right now, but is anything but when you're desperately trying to rejoin a game after the server kicked you out due to the yet another DDOS attack. There are very few things that sent me on a tilt, but the feeling of completely screwing over my entire team is certainly one of them - especially when the whole thing is outside of my control!

If you share a similar story, and I can almost guarantee you do because I've never seen the reconnect button actually working, you'll be glad to hear that the Overwatch team is currently hard at work on fixing just this issue. Best of all, they're also looking into increasing the buffer time so those that disconnect actually have a chance to come back and help their team secure victory. Here's the full message from Overwatch's Game Director Jeff Kaplan:

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World of Warcraft: Legion's first patch

If you haven't been paying attention to World of Warcraft news the past few days you may have missed all of the balance changes set to arrive with the next server reset. While there are certainly some great changes to be found amidst the patch notes, there are also some... questionable nerfs that if implemented could easily end up spelling doom and gloom for a couple of specializations.

Thankfully, after a few of days of non-stop yelling and some great arguments from the side of the community, Blizzard has finally decided to revoke the majority of the more egregious nerfs in favor of subtler changes. You can read the updated patch notes by heading over to the Blizzard forums, but for now here are the most important corrections:

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Symmetra screenshot from Overwatch

While most of the heroes in Overwatch are fairly well balanced, there are a few outliers that just can't seem to find a consistent place on any team. Chief among them is Symmetra, a support hero that entirely relies on her team dying one by one in order to provide any utility, and even then her impact is a lot lower than her competition's.

In short, Symmetra has problems, and a lot of them! Thankfully, it does appear that Blizzard is well aware of this as they have just recently announced their plans to rework Symmetra at some point in November. This information comes from a brief interview Jeff Kaplan did with Business Insider, so if you're interested in his perspective on Symmetra and her troubles I'd recommend you give it a read. If you're just looking for the short version, here's what Kaplan had to say about the upcoming changes:

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