World of Warcraft: Dragonflight developer preview shows off the greatly improved new talent trees
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: It looks like the rumors were true - World of Warcraft: Dragonflight will be launching on November 28th, 2022!
[Update]: The hopefully down-to-earth Dragonflight expansion will be launching in 2022.
After fumbling around with the very concept of an afterlife, World of Warcraft will be taking things in a more grounded and familiar direction with the next expansion Dragonflight. You can expect to see a brand new draconic class/race combination, the Dracthyr Evoker, a new generation of flying mounts inspired by Guild Wars 2, improved professions, a customizable UI, as well as the long-awaited return to proper talent trees!
That said, the new talent tree system will work a little bit differently than before. For starters, there will be two distinct trees to explore: the class tree that offers general abilities and utility spells, and the specialization tree which lets you finely tune your playstyle. At level 70 you will have 31 class points and 30 specialization points to play around with, so in theory there should be a much larger diversity of builds than ever before.
Vampire Survivors June update has added a new stage, three characters and a couple of items
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update]: Vampire Survivors' "The Posh One" update has added a wacky new weapon and improved the Hurry mode!
After the remarkably bizarre Update 0.6.66, Vampire Survivors' newest Update 0.7.2 has now brought us back to a mostly normal state of affairs. There's now a brand new level to explore by the name of Cappella Magna, three new characters to acquire (two of which are secret), as well as a variety of new items and Arcanas to help spice things up.
First things first, if you're curious what some of these new additions look like in action, allow me to share with you the freshly posted teaser trailer. Have a gander, it's just as weird as the rest of them:
MTG Arena has banned the surprisingly effective Expressive Iteration card from the Explorer format
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: MTG Arena's October 13th update will ban The Meathook Massacre from the Standard format.
[Update]: After years of dominance, MTG Arena is nerfing two of the best decks in the Historic format.
As a part of the May update, MTG Arena banned Tibalt's Trickery and Winota, Joiner of Forces from the Pioneer-like Explorer format in order to ensure the metagame doesn't become too skewed towards combo decks. While the bans certainly did help in that regard, they also indirectly caused another problem - the rise of powerful Blue/Red/X decks.
So in ongoing effort to get the formats as stable and balanced as possible, Wizards of the Coast has now also banned Expressive Iteration from both Pioneer and Explorer. While bans don't usually target simple card advantage spells, Expressive Iteration has proven itself to be a remarkably powerful card across a variety of eternal formats, so it makes a lot of sense to get rid of it if the goal is to weaken Izzet (Blue & Red) style decks.
Dota 2's Patch 7.31d has brought in many small but potentially significant changes
- By Ash
- in News
[Update]: Dota 2's hotly anticipated Patch 7.32 has now arrived with a brand new lane creep and tons of changes!
After being briefly teased last week, Dota 2's Patch 7.31d has now finally been unleashed. It brings with it a whole bunch of small gameplay tweaks that could amount to something potentially significant, a brand new analysis tool for the paid Dota Plus feature, as well as a massive improvement to the fashion meta-game.
Thanks to Patch 7.31d you can now use Immortal item spell effects regardless of which item your hero is actually wearing! What this means is that you can mix and match effects and items to create a variety of unique looks for your hero, which while completely irrelevant for the gameplay itself, is a neat little addition and one that will be a lot of fun to explore.
Spark the Electric Jester 3 is an impressive-looking Sonic Adventure inspired action-platformer
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update]: Spark the Electric Jester 3 has now made its way onto Steam alongside a mostly positive reception.
If you've found yourself disappointed with the recently unveiled Sonic Frontiers gameplay, you might want to give the upcoming Spark the Electric Jester 3 a look. To put it quite simply, it's a fast paced action-platformer heavily inspired by some of the more popular 3D Sonic games like Sonic Adventure. Expect to see plenty of rails hoisted over gigantic drops, levels that reward you for going through them as quickly as possible, a variety of shiny gems to collect, and as is tradition, a fair few loop-de-loops to help spice everything up!
Since words alone tend to fare pretty poorly at describing these types of platformers, allow me to instead share with you the recently posted trailer for the Pacific Abyss level. Have a gander, it's a rather solid one:
Diablo Immortal has now entered Open Beta, though sadly it's a bit of a mess
- By Ash
- in News
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
- By Ash
- in News
[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.