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[Update]: The freshly added and rather overpowered corrupted gear is now getting rebalanced.
After spending a fair bit of time in beta, Battle for Azeroth's final content update, Patch 8.3 - Visions of N'Zoth, has now arrived in full. It brings with it a massive new raid to explore, a highly challenging Horrific Visions scenario that you can tackle solo or in a group, Vulpera and Mechagnomes as two new Allied Races, a new legendary cloak to slowly upgrade, and the list goes on for a while.
If you're looking for a bit more information, or if you're just curious about what all of this might look like in-game, allow me to share with you the recently posted Survival Guide. It's a bit lengthy, but it should clue you in on pretty much everything Patch 8.3 has to offer. Have a look:
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If you've somehow managed to miss all of the various sales during the recent holiday season, you now have a second chance to pick up some new games as the Steam Lunar New Year Sale is currently ongoing. The one catch is that the sale will only last until 10am PST on January 27th, so do make sure to check it out sooner rather than later.
As always, for those of you that have no idea what might be worth grabbing, I'll share a couple of my favorites that are currently on sale. Here they are, in no particular order:
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It seems that the popularity of the card game genre is waning, or perhaps it is the players that are slowly but surely congregating around a couple of big games like Hearthstone or MTG Arena. Whatever the case may be, things aren't exactly looking good for some of the smaller, niche card games out there.
Development on Bethesda's own The Elder Scrolls: Legends has been put on hold, while Duelyst is now being shut down entirely. According to the official announcement, the Duelyst servers will remain active until 3pm PST on February 27th, after which the game will become unplayable.
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[Update #2]: Parts of this PTR update have now already made their way to the live version of Overwatch. Unfortunately, 'thicc' McCree has not been one of them.
[Update]: Blizzard has now addressed the recent rumors about hero bans, as well as further explained their plans for Overwatch's future.
A little while ago Blizzard released an update that directly nerfed Hanzo, Mei, Baptiste and a couple of other problematic heroes. Usually this would be pretty much everything we'd hear from the Overwatch team for the foreseeable future, though this time around they have not only upped the amount of community interaction, but also released yet another major PTR balance update!
This one is mostly focused on reducing the power creep that appeared over the past few year as heroes were heavily buffed to combat the incredibly powerful GOATs composition (three tanks and three supports). As such, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to hear that Hanzo, Reaper and Orisa are among the nerfed heroes. Here's the full list of changes:
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[Update #2]: I have good news to deliver - The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is getting a big new sequel!
[Update]: Saints & Sinners' competition, The Walking Dead Onslaught, has now launched, though sadly alongside poor reviews.
As you might guess from the name alone, Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is a VR focused survival and exploration game. You'll need to roam across the zombie-infested streets in search of all-important supplies, help your fellow survivors or wage war against them for resources and shelter, and naturally, clear out hordes of zombies with both melee and ranged weapons.
You can get a pretty good idea of what all of this looks like in gameplay terms through the recently posted trailer. Have a gander, it's a short but informative one:
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[Update]: Patch 8.3 has now made its way to the live servers, and yes, it does appear it'll be the last major patch until Shadowlands!
Battle for Azeroth's Patch 8.3 (also known as Visions of N'Zoth) will be going live on January 14 or 15 depending on when your server maintenance happens. As you might expect from a major update, it'll bring with it an assortment of new content and storylines to explore, both solo and in a group.
There will be a brand new raid to rampage across, Vulpera and Mechagnomes as two new Allied Races, Horrific Visions as a challenging and highly replayable mini-dungeon that can be entered solo or in a party, a revamped auction house, a new legendary cloak to forge, and the list goes on for a while. Rather than continue to fill your head with a list of features, allow me to share with you the recently posted "survival guide" that briefly highlights each one and showcases just what the patch as a whole has to offer. Have a gander:
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[Update #2]: The King's Shilling update has now gone live, fixing these bugs, as well as many others.
[Update]: The latest beta update has now fixed this bug, as well as a variety of other major problems.
Total War: Warhammer 2's The Shadow and The Blade DLC has arrived a little while ago, bringing with it a good chunk of new content to play around with, as well as some long-awaited quality of life changes and improvements. Sadly, it also brought with it a couple of really annoying issues.
First and foremost, AI-controlled Vampire Counts, Vampire Coast and Lizardmen factions are completely unable to field more than one army. As such, the overall balance on the campaign map is currently extremely out of whack as minor factions are dominating large stretches of land, while the already powerful factions like the Dwarfs or Empire are nearly unstoppable as there is simply nobody to challenge them.
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[Update]: According to the newly revealed roadmap, the PC version of Monster Hunter: World - Iceborne will achieve parity with consoles in April, 2020!
Much like the original Monster Hunter: World, the PC version of the Iceborne expansion was delayed a couple of months in order to give the developers enough time to polish things up. However, now that Monster Hunter World - Iceborne has finally released onto PC, it would appear that it's also facing a similar set of problems as its predecessor.
Most notably, the performance is all over the place with certain PCs having nearly unplayable framerate drops and others having a completely smooth experience. Similarly, there are reports of the Iceborne expansion deleting save files or refusing to launch entirely, but once again it's not something that affects everyone in the same way. So much like the original Monster Hunter: World, it seems a couple of patches will be necessary before things really get on track.
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[Update #2]: Blizzard has now announced significantly faster balance changes and weekly hero bans in order to keep Overwatch fresh and interesting for years to come.
[Update]: In a rare departure from their usually slow balance cycle, Blizzard has now released another PTR update aimed at toning down the rampant power creep!
While Overwatch's switch to Role Queue with enforced 2/2/2 compositions was a great idea, it unfortunately brought with it quite a few balance problems. Blizzard tried to address this with the somewhat recent rebalance of shield health, but since that patch didn't target all of the problematic heroes, the resulting meta ended up being rather similar to the one before.
Thankfully, the newly released beta update is already looking like it will shake things up quite significantly! Baptiste and his immortality field are getting a much-deserved nerf, while the ever-present DPS heroes like Hanzo and Mei are being toned down so the rest of the cast has a chance to actually compete.
You can find the full list of changes over at the Overwatch website, but for now allow me to share with you the most interesting part - the hero balance changes:
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With Christmas behind us and most people still recovering from their food comas, it is the perfect time to snuggle up in a cozy blanket and play some video games with your loved ones. However, if your preferred method of spreading the holiday cheer is with copious amounts of explosives, you might be interested to hear that Blizzard has now continued their tradition of giving every Overwatch player five new cosmetic loot boxes to unwrap.
Claiming them is about as simple as it gets. Just log into Overwatch and they'll be automatically added to your account. You don't even need to open them right away as they will remain exactly where they are until you're ready, even once the Winter Wonderland event has faded away.