- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: World of Warcraft: Classic will be launching Hardcore/Permadeath realms on August 24th.
[Update]: World of Warcraft's Update 10.1.5 has arrived with a new mega-dungeon, Evoker Augmentation specialization and a lot more.
After spending a fair bit of time in testing, World of Warcraft: Dragonflight's Update 10.1 has now finally been unleashed. It brings with it a cavernous new zone to explore filled with surprisingly adorable mole-people, support for cross-faction guilds, a new Dragonriding mount, a brand new raid, as well as a whole bunch of balance changes and quality of life improvements.
Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible raid won't be opening its doors until next week, however, so feel free to take it easy and simply enjoy the new zone before things start getting hectic again. As for the various Raid Finder wings, those will be unlocked according to the following schedule:
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: MTG Arena's Aftermath expansion has now launched ahead of schedule due to some server issues.
[Update]: Magic: The Gathering is extending its Standard rotation from two to three years in order to help the floundering format on tabletop.
Seemingly inspired by the supplemental Alchemy card drops that follow most Standard sets, Wizards of the Coast will soon be releasing the March of the Machine: The Aftermath mini-expansion. Once it arrives this May 11th, Aftermath will bring with it 50 new cards to play around with (15 uncommons, 25 rares and 10 mythics) - all of which will be legal in Standard.
Unsurprisingly given the name, the various Aftermath cards will offer us little hints about what exactly happened to the various planes after Phyrexia was defeated, as well as what some of the fan-favorite characters are currently doing. The highlights include numerous Planeswalkers losing their spark, a certain character seemingly ascending to godhood, and the barriers between the worlds weakening and thus enabling even ordinary people to visit other planes.
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: Darktide's Update 1.1.10 is aiming to add Cross-play and an elite-focused modifier for missions.
[Update]: Darktide's Rejects Unite patch has now arrived, and unfortunately it has done so alongside some serious technical issues.
In order to help tide us over until the seemingly massive update lands at some point later this month, the Darktide team has now released Patch #9. The highlights include a new batch of free cosmetics, a rebalance of enemy spawns in Heresy and Damnation difficulties, tweaks for the Plague Ogryn and Beast of Nurgle bosses, as well as a bunch of quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes.
First and foremost, in order to unlock the new cosmetics you'll need to complete a brand new set of Penances (achievements). These are thankfully much easier to unlock than the previous batch and can be earned by simply playing the game in a team-orientated fashion. Best of all, if you don't really care about all of this cosmetic nonsense, you can also remove your shirt and go into battle with only faith as your armor!
[Update]: Whelp! It looks like the bare-chested look was a bug, and one that the newest hotfix has unfortunately rectified.
- By Ash
- in News
[Update]: Cities: Skylines 2 will be launching on October 24th alongside a bunch of technological improvements, new features and quality-of-life updates.
After a seemingly endless tide of expansions and accompanying free updates, it looks like the Cities: Skylines team is finally getting ready to move onto something new. They won't be going all that far, however, as their next game will be a bigger, bolder and more technologically advanced Cities: Skylines sequel!
According to the brief announcement, Cities: Skylines 2 will come with fully realized transport and economy systems, a wide variety of construction and customization options to mess around with, as well as a focus on creating an open-ended sandbox for players to build whatever city they want in. Most importantly of all, Cities: Skylines 2 will be following in its predecessor's footsteps and bringing in a suite of modding tools for players to add all-important things like Thomas the Tank Engine!
- By Ash
- in News
[Update]: Thanks to a couple of updates, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is now looking a whole lot better! More problems still remain, however, so you might want to give Respawn another week or so before finally diving in.
If you loved 2019's Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and were looking forward to its ambitious new sequel, I'm afraid I have some good and bad news to deliver. The good news is that not only has Star Wars Jedi: Survivor just been unleashed onto PC and consoles, but it's also a notable improvement over the original!
Unfortunately, the bad news is really bad because the PC version is currently suffering from a wide array of performance problems. These range from constant stuttering to endless loading screens and even hard crashes, so it's mostly stuff that's going to be hard to turn a blind eye to even if you're excited to dive in.
- By Ash
- in News
In an effort to expand the League of Legends universe, as well as to branch into other genres, Riot Games opened up their own publishing platform back in 2019 - Riot Forge. So far this has resulted in a fast-paced rhythm runner, a turn-based RPG, and thanks to the freshly released The Mageseeker, a hack & slash RPG as well.
Set within the kingdom of Demacia, The Mageseeker will task you with the very simple job of organizing a full-blown rebellion against the tyrannical Mageseekers and those that serve them. In order to do so you'll need to recruit various mages from across the land, build up your base and unlock a variety of new abilities, and since this is a hack & slash we're talking about, beat up a whole bunch of enemies through stylish combos, including characters from League of Legends itself.
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: World of Warcraft's Update 10.1.5 has arrived with a new mega-dungeon, Evoker Augmentation specialization and a lot more.
[Update]: Patch 10.1 - Embers of Neltharion has now been unleashed, and I'm happy to say that it's looking quite good so far!
After a couple of months dedicated to getting everyone's characters to max level and up to speed in terms of gear, the time has finally come for a brand new content update. Once it arrives this May 2nd, Update 10.1 - Embers of Neltharion will bring with it Zaralek Caverns as a hefty new zone to explore, a new chapter of the story campaign that will have us square off against one of the freshly freed Incarnates, cross-faction guilds, and naturally, a new raid by the name of Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible to plunder for sweet, sweet loot!
Much like before, Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible won't be opening its doors on the very same day the patch arrives, but rather a week later so everyone has a chance to explore the new zone at their own pace. Here's what the full schedule's going to look like:
- By Ash
- in News
If you're a fan of giant mechs and Souls inspired combat, you'll be happy to hear that FromSoftware will be combining the two with the upcoming Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon. In other words, you'll be able to pilot your mech in full 3D and engage in fast-paced battles against an assortment of massive enemies, upgrade and customize your mech with all sorts of fancy weapons and armor pieces, and as is tradition, get humbled time and time again by the tricky bosses before finally getting 'gud' and giving them a taste of their own medicine.
The good news doesn't end there, however, as FromSoftware has just announced that we won't have to wait all that long in order to get our hands on Armored Core VI. In fact, it's only a couple of months away as it'll be making its way onto PC and consoles this August 25th, 2023!
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: Overwatch 2's Season 5 is nerfing snipers, buffing Lifeweaver and bringing back soft crowd control.
[Update]: I'm afraid I have some bad news. Overwatch 2 will be drastically downscaling the scope and amount of its long-awaited PvE missions.
Instead of going with a fairly generic support hero concept that's all about spamming healing, Blizzard decided to do something a bit more interesting with the recently released Lifeweaver. With him they opted to focus on utility over raw power, with the end result being a hero that's capable of manipulating the position of both allies and enemies, thus changing the course of the battle with the flick of a wrist.
Unfortunately, while the concept may be incredibly cool, the actual implementation left a lot to be desired. I say this because Lifeweaver not only released in a remarkably underpowered state, but his default keybinds were also really messy which just made him awkward to play. Luckily, most of this is now a thing of the past!
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: Blizzard games are coming to Steam, starting with Overwatch 2 on August 10th.
[Update]: Plot twist! EU regulators have now approved the acquisition, which might just give Microsoft an upper hand in the upcoming legal scuffle.
In an announcement that I must admit comes as quite a surprise, the United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority has just announced that they are blocking Microsoft’s planned purchase of Activision Blizzard. This was done due to concerns over Microsoft becoming too dominant over the cloud gaming market as it already supposedly accounts for an estimated 60-70% of the global cloud gaming services.
"The UK cloud gaming market is growing fast. Monthly active users in the UK more than tripled from the start of 2021 to the end of 2022," reads the official explanation. "Microsoft has a strong position in cloud gaming services and the evidence available to the CMA showed that Microsoft would find it commercially beneficial to make Activision’s games exclusive to its own cloud gaming service."