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During the initial burst of announcements Blizzard revealed a brand new Hybrid Overwatch map - Blizzard World. While I still consider it to be a bit too self-referential for my tastes, I am very glad to say that it will be accompanied by some downright amazing cosmetics inspired by Blizzard's various games. In fact, the cosmetics are so good I am starting to think that Blizzard designed the entire Blizzard World map just so they could find some sort of excuse to fit them in!
You can look forward to things like Nova Widowmaker, Magni Torbjorn, Butcher Roadhog, Barbarian Zarya, and the list goes on for a while. The video quality isn't the greatest since it was ripped straight from the Blizzcon stream, but you can get a good look at new skins right below. Have a gander:
Overwatch's next map "Blizzard World" will be a theme park featuring all of the major Blizzard games
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Out of all the announcements that came with this year's Blizzcon, the upcoming "Blizzard World" Overwatch map might just be the strangest one. Instead of having something that even loosely fits the Overwatch world, the new map is essentially a theme park celebrating Blizzard's various games. While I'm not exactly a fan of this sort of silliness and self-referential humor, I am very glad to say that Blizzard World will be a Hybrid map (like Hollywood, King's Row, etc.)!
If you're interested in seeing what Blizzard World might look like in-game, you'll find what you're looking for in the recently posted teaser trailer down below. Its not very long, but it goes over pretty much all of the important areas. Have a look:
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While I definitely enjoyed the Mei animated short, it really didn't grow on me as much as the Bastion, Hanzo/Genji, or even Soldier 76 ones did. I took me a little while to realize why, and the answer I came up with is a complete lack of character development or insight. It featured Mei overcoming ridiculous odds and personal tragedies, but none of that seemed to phase her in any way. She was and still is the exact same Mei, despite the fact that literally everyone she knows is now long dead and gone, which is fairly boring as far as character development is concerned.
As such, I am very glad to say that the most recent "Honor and Glory" short not only gives us a good insight into Reihnardt as a character, but it also shows him grow and change as a person. Its all a little bit cheesy, as you would expect from any Blizzard short, but there is some real heart to it. But enough babble from me, have a look, its well worth a watch:
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Blizzcon 2017 has now arrived, bringing with it an absolute ton of new announcements. The most exciting of these new reveals, at least for Overwatch players, should be the imminent arrival of a brand new hero - a Talon affiliated support by the name of Moira.
Her biotic abilities allow her to drain life from her enemies in order to heal herself and her teammates, conjure orbs that deal area-of-effect damage or healing, and most annoyingly for everyone else, an option to teleport around on a relatively low cooldown (6 seconds). Fans of 'classic' Overwatch memes will also be happy to hear that her ultimate gives her a long-ranged beam, and yes, you can indeed use it to 'snipe' people. Here's what all of it looks like in-game:
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"You think you do, but you don't" was the answer World of Warcraft players got when they asked for vanilla WoW servers last year. The codebase was simply too obscure and difficult to unravel, the original team that worked on it had moved on a long time ago, and overall the whole project was far more costly than it could ever hope to recoup. Outside of tiny little rumors here and there, these statement appeared to be the end of all classic WoW discussion - a definitive no from Blizzard themselves.
And now, out of absolutely nowhere, Blizzard has come out to announce that they are working on official World of Warcraft: Classic servers! You'll find the brief announcement video right below, and while it doesn't show any actual gameplay it will still give you one hell of a nostalgia blast! Have a look:
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The Overwatch World Cup is set to begin later today, bringing with it a variety of improvements for spectators, viewers, and players alike. The tournament will showcase the newly added tactical camera, an over-the-shoulder view for insanely fast heroes like Genji and Tracer, unique team uniforms and ability colors, and the list goes on for a while.
So if you're interested in seeing what exactly Blizzard is doing to push Overwatch esports, or if you're just wondering what all of the new skins and abilities will look like, you'll find what you seek in the most recent behind-the-scenes video. Have a look, its quite interesting:
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After only being revealed two days ago, Dota 2's Dueling Fates update has now made its way to the live servers. It brings with it two brand new heroes to play around with, a ridiculous amount of balance changes spread across all aspects of the game, a couple of new items as well as the removal of Poor Man's Shield and Iron Talon, numerous hero reworks, mechanics changes, and the list goes on for quite a while.
There are far, far too many changes to cover in brief, so if you're interested in all of the details you'll find the full patch notes and overview at the official website. Just make sure you brew yourself a coffee before you head in as you're going to be stuck there for a rather long time. And no, that's not an exaggeration. It'll most likely take you over 30 minutes to go through all of the changes - there's just that many of them!
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Call of Duty: WW2 is set to arrive this November 3rd for PC and consoles, a mere two days from the time of writing. So if you're interested in seeing what sort of maps you'll be able to play around with, you might be glad to hear that the developers have now released a preview for a reworked version of Carentan, one of the most popular battlegrounds from Call of Duty 1 and 2.
There is unfortunately very little actual gameplay footage, at least not any that hasn't been heavily edited, but it should still give you a good idea of how the team has redesigned this iconic map. But enough blabber from me, have a look:
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After collecting well over 900 player-created designs, Guild Wars 2 developers have now narrowed down the 2017 Design-a-Weapon Contest to a mere 20 entries. You can head on over here to vote for your favorite concept, the three most popular of which will be making it in-game as fully fledged weapons!
Each person can only vote once and pick exactly one weapon, so think carefully before you press that submit button. Speaking of which, the poll will end on November 10th at 9am PDT, after which the developers will start working on bringing the most popular weapons to life... well, virtual life anyway. This is going to be a lengthy process, however, so be prepared to wait for a couple of months before they actually make it in-game.
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The Humble Monthly Bundle is a $12 subscription service that instantly gives you access to one game (or in this case three), and then a whole bunch more when the next month rolls over. Last time around the featured game was just Rise of the Tomb Raider, while this time you have a combination of Quake Champions, The Elder Scrolls: Legends, and The Elder Scrolls Online.
Besides the game itself, Quake Champions also comes with 50 Shards, 100 Platinum, 2000 favor, as well as the Ranger and BJ champions. The Elder Scrolls Online brings with it an extra 750 Crowns, as well as 15 free days of the ESO Plus subscription. The last and slightly less impressive The Elder Scrolls: Legends bonus pack offers 2 Skyrim Card Packs, 1 Event Ticket, 100 Gold, and 100 Soul Gems. To be perfectly honest I have absolutely no idea how valuable any of these special currencies really are, but that does seem to be a lot of stuff for $12, so if you're interested in any of these games I'd say its well worth springing for.