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After spending a fair bit of time on the test servers, Overwatch's newest Escort map Havana has now finally made its way to the live servers. Much like the previous few maps and heroes, Havana will be locked away from Competitive Play for two weeks in order to give players enough time to adjust to its presence.
Speaking of which, you can get a pretty good idea of what Havana looks like, as well as where most of the fights will take place in, through the recently posted trailer down below. Have a peek, it really is a lovely map:
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While there are plenty of games that use the Battle Pass system, there are very few that have managed to make them quite as impressive as Dota 2's The International Battle Pass. As such, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to hear that the latest Battle Pass has once again managed to cram in even more content than the previous ones, to the point that simply scrolling down the website is an endurance challenge.
There is now a party finder option and the ability to avoid certain players, a chance to coach lower-skilled players in return for in-game rewards, the ability to vote for the match MVP, as well as a chance to showcase your achievements before each match. While it's currently unavailable, there will also be a special event centered around awakening gigantic bosses to crush your enemies, all in an effort to gain those precious compendium points.
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[Update]: After many, many delays, Bloodlines 2 will be re-revealed in September 2023, though you can now refund your pre-order if you wish
While certainly a cult classic these days, the original Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines stood absolutely no chance on release. Not only did it launch the say day as the much-anticipated Half-Life 2, but it did so with a plethora of bugs and game-breaking issues, some of which were only fixed when the community patches started appearing. A real shame since Bloodlines had plenty of great ideas, which if fully polished could've made it one of the best RPGs out there.
With that in mind, I am delighted to say that the series will finally be getting its second chance next year. The exact release date hasn't been announced just yet, but Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 will be coming to PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 at some point in March of 2020.
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The open-world survival game Conan Exiles is currently celebrating its one year anniversary. In order to get everyone in on the fun, the developers have now issued a massive update, as well as made Conan Exiles entirely free to try out for the next three days. All you really need to do is head on over to Steam, download Conan Exiles, and you'll be exploring the wilderness in no time.
In terms of content, the anniversary update has brought with it a brand new dungeon set deep beneath the waves, as well as a complete revamp of Sepermeru, New Asgarth, Summoning Place and Volcano regions. There's also a bunch of new pets to unlock, quality-of-life tweaks, and naturally balance changes. You can find more details, as well as the full patch notes, over at the official website.
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If you've been playing Overwatch for the past few weeks, then you may have noticed that Numbani was completely missing from both Quick Play and Competitive Play modes. You could still mess around with it in the Arcade or as a part of the Overwatch Workshop on the PTR, but for whatever reason it would simply not appear in any of the matchmaking modes.
While it took the community a rather long time to discover there's even a problem, mostly because Overwatch's map choices are entirely random, I am happy to say that things went a lot quicker on Blizzard's end. In fact, according to the latest developer update, the issue has already been fixed!
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[Update]: The NSO faction has now received a bunch of new content: a new weapon, vehicle and MAX variant!
After spending a remarkably long time on the test servers, Planetside 2's Nanite System Operatives (player-controlled robot mercenaries) have now finally arrived. Their purpose will be to help balance out the factions by providing additional firepower wherever it is needed the most, thus fixing one of Planetside 2's biggest problems - the purely numerical faction imbalance.
However, while the Nanite System Operatives are a brilliant idea and something I fully support, there is unfortunately one catch - they are only available to players with a paid membership. Why exactly is such an important feature locked away from the average player, I have no idea, but thankfully there appear to be enough of them milling around that faction imbalance shouldn't be a concern for the foreseeable future.
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The Elder Scrolls Online MMORPG will be heading over to Elsweyr this June 4th, with an early access period starting on May 20th. Besides giving players a chance to explore the Khajiit homeland, the Elsweyr expansion will also bring in a storyline filled with dragons, new dungeons and world bosses to conquer, as well as a brand new class to play around with - the Necromancer.
If you're wondering what exactly the forbidden arts have to offer, as well as how the Necromancer differs from all of the other spellcasters, allow me to share with you the recently posted and rather in-depth developer preview. Have a gander:
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If you ever wanted to give Black Ops 4 a try, and you don't particularly care about the co-op focused zombie mode, you might be interested to hear that the "Battle Edition" is currently $12 as a part of the latest Humble Monthly. There will also be a couple of mystery games coming in next month, so if you're even remotely interested, I'd say it's a pretty good deal.
The only thing you really need to watch out for is that the Humble Monthly is a subscription service. In other words, unless you're interested in getting a brand new bundle next month, make sure to unsubscribe as soon as possible. You'll still get Black Ops 4 and the bonus games next month, so there's really no downside to doing it before you potentially forget.
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[Update]: According to new rumors, Blizzard is currently working on Diablo 4 and a story-focused Overwatch game!
Even though the Overwatch team was expanded with new writers and developers, the pace and quantity of updates hasn't really increased when compared to the previous two years. As you might imagine, this quickly led to rumors that Blizzard is working on some sort of massive Overwatch project behind the scenes, perhaps even the much-requested and story-focused expansion.
While none of this has been officially confirmed or even commented on, things have definitely become more interesting after the recent Activision Blizzard earnings call. According to Blizzard's J. Allen Back, the team has some rather massive plans for Overwatch's future, plans that seem to expand beyond the current game itself.
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[Update #2]: Rocket League is going free-to-play, while the Steam version will become unavailable to newcomers
[Update]: Rocket League has now announced that they will be ending support for macOS and Linux platforms.
Ever since the Epic Games Store launched a little while ago, Epic has been spending more and more money in order to carve themselves a piece of the PC gaming market. They've bought exclusivity rights to a whole bunch of games, both indie and AAA, offered a generally interesting game for free every two weeks, and now even acquired the Rocket League studio Psyonix.
"In the short term, nothing will change at all," reads the official announcement from Psyonix. "We’re still committed to providing Rocket League with frequent updates that have new features, new content, and new ways to play the game for as long as you’ll have us."