Treyarch's original Spider-Man game lacked something. It was solidly made, and enjoyable enough to play, but failed to replicate the visceral thrill of hurtling through New York as a web-slinging superhero. It didn't capture the freedom, speed and fluidity of movement that makes Spider-Man so compelling.

Jamie Fristrom, one of Treyarch's first employees and a key member of the development team, had been away on his honeymoon when work started on Spider-Man, which was based around the first instalment of the Sam Raimi trilogy. Fristrom returned to the office to find that his colleagues had embarked down a different path to the one he envisaged.

Webs were essentially cosmetic and players could swing continuously from one to another, regardless of whether they attached to anything or not. They didn't respond to your momentum either, carrying you along at the same steady pace regardless of circumstance.

Fristrom felt that the web-swinging experience wasn't anywhere near dynamic or immersive enough. It also made Spider-Man too easy, depriving the game of the necessary speed and peril. "I was pretty disappointed by that, but I also knew that doing something more 'realistic', with physics and grappling hooks, where you actually attach to stuff, was probably not going to fly," he says. "But, during the development of that game, I did work late to cobble together my own ideas. About six months into production, I'd got something that I liked and I showed it around the team. They thought it was interesting and had potential."

That initial discussion with team members gave Fristrom the confidence to push his idea further. "I talked to the owners of Treyarch – my college buddies – and said, 'Here, look what I did.' They were like, 'Come on, Jamie, be reasonable. You can't change the core game mechanic halfway through!' It also wasn't quite there yet. You'd swing and you'd stick to a wall automatically, because Spider-Man was pretty sticky back then. That wasn't fun."

Treyarch decided to continue with the initial plan and put Fristrom's ideas to one side, at least temporarily. After the game was released in 2002, the development team went to watch Spider-Man in the cinema for the first time, an experience which changed everything. Spellbound by the film's sheer dynamism, they recognised that a more ambitious approach would be needed to ensure the sequel lived up to heightened expectations.

"Maybe we still didn't know what to do next, but we knew exactly where we were heading. Now we could do iteration after iteration. If you feel it strongly enough, getting there is just a matter of work. And we were excited enough that we didn't care how much work it would take," says Tomo Moriwaki, the game's creative director.

Soon after Spider-Man shipped, the next game was underway. Treyarch had two years to deliver Spider-Man 2 and spent the first six months of that in preproduction, refining Fristrom's prototype. "We had this period where we had one team working on gameplay and controls and character and how the camera would work, and then another team working on the tech," he explains.

"In today's world, with the kind of budgets that would be in place for a game like that now, it's unreasonable. Our bosses would have stopped us," says Moriwaki. "But, at the time, there was more distance between publisher and developer, and even the leaders of the development company. We were given a wider berth."

There was no guarantee that all this experimentation would deliver the results they wanted, causing a lot of anxiety. "There were several months of us telling our bosses, like, 'Don't look at it yet! Don't look at it yet!' That moment came where we couldn't hold them off anymore," recalls Fristrom. "That was a great day for us because they were all very impressed. They ran it all the way up the chain to the chief operating officer of Activision to show everybody what we'd done."

The new fluid style of web-swinging, in which Spider-Man would latch onto a building, lamppost, tree or other structure and pivot like a pendulum, was given resounding approval. The more attachment points that were added, the smoother the experience became. You could suddenly cover large distances much more quickly than before, in a way that felt liberating and much truer to the film. "Spider-Man becomes more like a ball that just moves through space and is influenced by the choices we make with the controller," says Moriwaki. "That shifted our thinking towards uninterrupted movement. We were on the hunt for animation transitions that took account of player velocity. If you were swinging at like 70 miles an hour, if you let go, you'd fly at that speed before starting to slow down."

This one fundamental change served as the catalyst for so many others that came together to make Spider-Man 2 far more engaging and memorable than its predecessor. Building a large open-world environment – a faithful recreation of Spider-Man's version of Manhattan that players could freely explore outside of missions – was one of the most significant, drawing inevitable comparisons with Grand Theft Auto.

Programmer Greg Taylor led the city's construction, which was a huge task. "It took longer than we expected. Greg definitely did get pretty stressed out," says Fristrom. "One of the things we had that GTA 3 didn't have was the verticality. On GTA, you're usually down on the road so you can't see that far. If you haven't loaded in distant neighbourhoods because you don't have the memory, or whatever, then it didn't matter that much.

"With Spider-Man, you could go up to the top of the Empire State Building and look around so we needed something. You couldn't just have a fog plane, like so many games did back then. Somebody came up with the idea of loading in these low-detail neighbourhoods that were basically just boxes. Always having those things in memory was pretty key, and then just having the nearby stuff loaded in high detail."

Eric Pavone and other designers populated Manhattan with activity to keep players occupied between missions. You can make deliveries for the pizzeria and take photographs for the Daily Bugle. There are various races to complete, hidden tokens to collect and crimes to stop, each earning you Hero Points that are used to buy upgrades like new attack moves or increased swing speed.

The most common type of challenges in Spider-Man 2, where you have to stop a crime or help a member of the public, were referred to as 'shenanigans' by the Treyarch team. Some had to be initiated by players, while others occurred at random, leaving you to choose whether or not to intervene. Time limits occasionally applied, like when a ship was sinking or a construction worker was about to fall from a ledge.

The lack of variety in shenanigan scenarios is one of the game's biggest drawbacks, forcing players to stop an armed carjacking, rescue a kid's lost balloon or retrieve a stolen purse from a mugger many times over. This was a by-product of the approach the team had taken and the scale of what they were trying to achieve. "Part of the problem is that, in hindsight, we were a prototype game long enough that we had to use whatever the results were," says Moriwaki. "We were just diligently going on, building all kinds of complex infrastructure for a system that we didn't know would work. Because of the way we were doing it, it had to work.

"Some of that stuff, like the armoured car robbery, was really complicated. It was already a huge logical difference to the way we scripted gameplay. It meant we were going to have to be responsible for itemising what we pulled into the scene, and also when we dumped it out. That required a difficult and complex memory management and streaming logic model."

Screen to controller

Matthew B Rhoades adapted the Spider-Man 2 screenplay to create the story. It covers the main plotline, the rise of Doctor Octopus and his fusion experiment that threatens to destroy New York, but other Marvel villains like Rhino, Mysterio and Shocker are drafted in to extend the gameplay. A highly sexualised Black Cat competes with Mary Jane Watson for Spider-Man's attentions as he struggles to reconcile his superhero responsibilities with his normal life as Peter Parker.

"We had to get approval and that wasn't automatic for us. We did a first round of just asking for a lot of different characters and a bunch of them came back 'no'. All the stuff that they said 'yes' to, we basically came up with a rationale for it," says Moriwaki. "We broke up the overall story into half a dozen pieces and then plopped the movie script's key points across that timeframe. We just found a place for it to fit in."

There was lots of extra content that the team wanted to include. Too much, as it turned out. "We were definitely behind schedule near the end. If the movie had come out when they originally said it was going to, I don't know what we would have done," says Jamie. "We got a three-month reprieve. That gave us time to bring more polish. Even with that, we had plans to do this whole sewer system with the Lizard boss, which ended up making it into the third game eventually."

Looking back, Moriwaki believes that the team were simply too close to the project, and too passionate about it, to recognise that their bold plans were getting out of hand. Eventually, Activision had to intervene, requesting that Treyarch narrow the scope of the game considerably to ensure that everything could be finished in time. Some painful sacrifices had to be made. "Spider-Man 2 must have more cut content than any game that had come out until that point," says Moriwaki. "The amount that was cut is staggering. There were some people on the project who had almost their entire work removed from the shipped game and that's terrible."

The control system used in Spider-Man was completely overhauled to make the sequel's gameplay as fluid and fast-paced as Treyarch wanted it to be. Amid all the excitement about what they'd created, there was an underlying concern that players might find the new controls too complex, potentially alienating a significant chunk of their audience.

Feedback from playtests was inconclusive. The team estimated that 10% of players might struggle but worried that the true figure could end up being even higher. "It's probably one of the most difficult core game mechanics that you can dump in somebody's lap and say, 'Here, learn this!'" says Jamie. "I was nervous as we were shipping the final thing. It was like, 'Will people just buy this and not be willing to figure out how to play it?' Most games with 3D swinging do fail, but I have a theory that the lure of Spider-Man means people are willing to get over that learning curve."

The new control system was much less intuitive than the previous one, but with the time and space to practise, which the open-world setting offered in abundance, its intricacies would gradually become second nature to most players, making Spider-Man 2 a far more rewarding experience. Treyarch's leap of faith paid off spectacularly. With the success of the film, which was the third-highest grossing of 2004, Spider-Man 2 was always destined to sell in huge numbers. Perhaps more significant was the overwhelmingly positive reception from players and critics, who praised the game for its vast scale, daring style and sheer fun factor. Sprinting, swinging, climbing and leaping around Manhattan was an absolute joy.

The developers reflect fondly on the process that led them there too. "I had an extremely good time and a ton of those people are still basically like family to me," says Tomo. "What we were able to discover, and accomplish, together was super-satisfying. It was a lot of work and, I think in hindsight, it was maybe at a somewhat unreasonable pace, but even that over-commitment just felt like mad science and experimentation.

"We developed a control scheme and a locomotion experience that could sustain an almost unlimited amount of exploration. We had no precedent for what we did and the way we did it gives me this clear example of why we take chances."

"In a lot of ways, I still feel like it was the peak of my career. Even over 20 years later, that's the coolest thing I've ever done, other than having kids!" laughs Jamie. "There's just something about Spider-Man 2 that's special and enduring.

"The fact that Spider-Man games keep coming out, and they keep paying homage to that swinging mechanic we developed, really makes me happy and proud still to this day. We changed gaming history in our own tiny way, right?"

Take a look at the best Spider-Man games for more web-head adventures!

It's that time of year, as publicity starts ramping up for the next Call of Duty game. The next installment is Modern Warfare 4, from Infinity Ward, and on the heels of the first demonstration of the FPS as well as the initial bout of open beta testing, the studio teased some incoming changes.

On Twitter, the official Infinity Ward account took a second to address that most omnipresent of Call of Duty subjects: leveling up. "We see the conversation around weapon progression," the post reads. "We’ve got more to share on leveling and the grind soon. We got you on this."

No other details are given, but this is a discussion that comes up every Call of Duty installment, and it's a tricky subject for studios. Players want to feel rewarded and enjoy gradually unlocking their skins and such, but they don't want it to be too easy or too much of a slog.

Finding that balance is a constant back-and-forth for the devs. What kind of rewards do you make available? What should the criteria be for each prize? How high should the leveling go? Black Ops 7 goes up to level 100, which seems like overkill, but then 30 or 40 is probably too low, even to start.

The Modern Warfare reboot in 2019 serves as a worthwhile benchmark for the series, at least going by community sentiment.

"[Modern Warfare 2019] progression was good imo. Not too easy, not too hard, balanced," says a commenter on Reddit. "Please no more armory unlocks. just do the same thing you did with [Modern Warfare 2019]," adds another.

Broadly speaking, the 2019 Modern Warfare offered straightforward progression for your standard guns, though there were issues in other areas. Specific challenges for camo, for instance, required you to jump through a lot of hoops in terms of kills. It was imperfect, but the foundation was there.

We'll have to wait and see what Infinity Ward has to say here for what Modern Warfare 4 will offer. People got their first chance to check it out at Fanatics Fest, with a demo of new mode Kill Block.

The open Modern Warfare 4 beta, then, arrives on August 21 for those who pre-order. If you'd like to get in on that, you'd best put your money down soon, otherwise you'll be waiting until October.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 DMZ devs have been "paying attention" to other extraction shooters like Arc Raiders, but think they've got them beat on "weapon feel"

The Iconic Mythics saga in Diablo 4 just won't end, and as Blizzard continues to step on rakes to the wide ridicule of the game's most hardcore fans, the devs have announced that they're looking into how to escape the rake field they now seem to permanently reside in. In less hyperbolic terms – yes, they know Iconic Mythics aren't dropping, and yes, they're trying to figure out a solution.

A recent update was meant to actually get Iconic Mythics dropping again, as the patch notes promised that Blizzard had "increased the chance of naturally dropped Mythics being an Iconic Mythic." By all accounts, however, they're still effectively impossible to farm.

"Clearly the patch failed," as one irate post on the official message board put it. "Iconic mythics were supposed to start dropping. Now the community has collectively wasted millions of lair keys for no chance at iconic mythics still. Remove the crafted tag from AT LEAST the iconic mythics at blacksmith. They got nerfed with patch anyway. I just wasted 70 Lair keys on Grigoire for ZERO mythics of ANY kind."

In response to that message, a Blizzard community manager promises that "this is being looked into, as well as other issues surrounding mythics." The CM has, in fact, repeated that sentiment several times in response to other, similar messages over the past few days. But if you're looking for concrete details about what's changing and when, the devs have not provided them just yet.

Outrage over the state of mythic items across the game has been ongoing since before Season 14 hit the PTR at the start of June, and while Blizzard has offered various olive branches to the community and implemented changes to the system, it seems that there's still work to be done.

Diablo 4 streamer spends "20 hours non-stop" farming bosses for the ARPG's rarest items, doesn't get a single one: "Don't try this at home."

Blizzard has announced that it's ending support for Overwatch's MOBA-inspired Stadium mode due to low player numbers.

In a new blog post, game director Aaron Keller breaks down the different Overwatch modes by the amount of players they're attracting, and well, it's easy to see why Blizzard has decided not to bother making new content for Stadium.

The main unranked 5v5 queue is unsurprisingly the most popular and accounts for 54% of daily players, while 34% of players up the stakes for ranked 5v5 queue. From there, 19% and 8% log in for unranked and ranked open queue 6v6, respectively, and just 4% are playing unranked mystery heroes 6v6. All the way at the bottom is poor old Stadium mode, whose ranked and unranked queues are seeing just 3% of the player base tune in.

Keller notes that there's overlap in the data accounting for players who play different modes in the same session, which is why the percentages don't add up to a perfect 100%, but the numbers don't lie: Stadium just isn't very popular.

"With this in mind, while we'll continue supporting Stadium with seasonal balance updates, rank resets, and rewards," says Keller. "We're not planning on expanding Stadium with new Heroes or maps. Instead, we're taking what lessons we've gleaned from building it and applying those lessons (and those talented devs) to our future plans."

In the same blog, Keller also announced two new experimental 6v6 modes that'll be tested in the back half of season 3. The new modes are aimed at finding "ways of making matches more dynamic in Role Queue, improving the tank experience, and removing some of the volatility of team fights while also removing some of the pain points that players have with our current formats.

The first test runs this week from July 16 through July 19 and turns Quick Play into a "Flex Queue" where each team will always have at least one tank, three flex damage dealers, and two supports. The rub is that, at any point in the match, one of the team's damage dealers will have the option to swap into the tank role with a different hero, which Keller hopes will reduce queue times, make for a "slightly more dynamic experience" than the regular 2-2-2 team makeup, and provide a "more consistent" experience than open queue.

"There are a few downsides to this format and the biggest is the potential social pressure for Damage dealers to play Tank," says Keller. "But if the burden is shared among 3 people with more freedom to play different Heroes, will it feel acceptable? We're hoping to find out!"

Another test will run from July 28 to August 3 and is being called "Dynamic Queue," featuring a "blend" of Flex Queue and Role Queue elements. This time around, whether team composition is decided by the Flex Queue rules depends on how many people queue up for Tank, which is Blizzard's "current bottleneck."

"Think of the shift into Flex Queue format as a 'release valve' for the 2-2-2 queue," Keller explains, adding that the upside here is that it'll often result in "what we anticipate will be the most preferred format, 2-2-2." The downside is that the loss of consistency could make matches feel less competitive, which is something Blizzard will be keeping tabs on.

As if eulogizing Stadium, Keller encourages players to engage in these more experimental modes. "Give them a chance and go into those queues with an open mind. The pace of fights and general vibe of these matches may seem very different. Spend time getting used to how they feel and see if your initial reactions change over the mode's duration," he says.

Overwatch escapes "Mostly Negative" Steam reviews 3 years after becoming the worst-rated game on Valve's store: "In 2026, we finally got back to just Overwatch"

World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 players can finally earn some cash by playing their beloved respective MMOs and put it towards a real-life degree – but it's not as easy as it may sound.

The University of Silicon Valley in California has quite an offer on the table for a few very lucky select students (10-15 annually, apparently) – the Max Achievement Scholarship, as the educational institution outlines on its official website.

If you've not heard of it before, it gives folks a chance to score up to $15,000 in scholarship money… but it's far simpler said than actually done. It isn't only a matter of playing games, you see.

As the university explains, "The Max Achievement Scholarship recognizes students who have demonstrated extraordinary mastery, persistence, and systems thinking through the completion of rare and demanding achievements in digital gaming environments."

Yes, that means that aspiring players need to get to grindin' in their game of choice. We're talking "ultra-rare accomplishments" for the "Legendary Tier" of awards.

Many of these, as the University of Silicon Valley describes, require "500+ hours of sustained mastery across complex systems (typically <1% global completion rate)." For example, World of Warcraft players need to have Loremaster unlocked, all 13 professions maxed, and 25+ Exalted reputations, plus the Keystone Master achievement.

As for Final Fantasy 14 players, the requirements are higher than the in-game requirements to become a Mentor.

I know, I know, those aren't exactly ridiculously high themselves – but the university's are. Players need all 20 combat jobs and eight crafter/gatherer jobs at level 100 (the game's max level), plus all role quests and "all 12 extreme trials cleared," although it's not specified which ones.

I'm assuming Dawntrail's trials… and then some? The bottom line is that this scholarship money isn't easily obtainable, regardless.

MMOs aren't the only games up for the cash, either – heck, there's everything from Minecraft to Dark Souls (good luck with that one). You can even apply as a general PC, PlayStation 5, or Xbox Series X|S gamer, but you'll need platinums and perfect games galore.

Put simply, there's no quick way to have a go at the Max Achievement Scholarship money. If you think you might qualify, though, the university is accepting submissions now.

Multiple achievements may be submitted, too – but "achievements earned via modded, private, or emulated servers are not eligible." So, if you're a World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy 14 (or insert another game name here) stan, shoot your shot.

Blizzard knows World of Warcraft's removal of raid add-ons is "controversial," but the MMO's lead says its new UI "has been successful so far"

The first all-new Spyro game in 18 years, Spyro: A Realm Beyond, is finally set to launch early next year, but the devs at Toys for Bob have had to be careful not to get too carried away with their "cool ideas" that would see the platformer run out of budget and time.

Associate creative director Louis "Lou" Studdert and studio head Paul Yan recently appeared on an episode of the Kinda Funny Gamescast, where they were asked if there were any moments during development when they realised they were going too far.

The answer is yes, though Studdert explains that "every game is like that" since there's so much "eyeballing" and "napkin math" involved as the team works out what elements might need cutting back, and what they might want more of.

"There are areas where you tighten the belt, and there's areas where you expand," he continues. "Just part of the game development process."

Yan adds to this, noting that "scope creep is a real thing." There's a simple reason for this: "Every time you're in a conversation with creative folks, it's always like, 'Wouldn't it be cool if this happened?'"

And yes, Yan says, "they absolutely are cool ideas, but if you commit to every single one of those, you know, without some discipline, then your game blows out of budget and blows out of time."

Thankfully, this isn't Toys for Bob's first rodeo. The studio has "high tenure folks who have worked together and can complete each other's sentences," and are also so "highly senior" that they know the drill when it comes to shipping games and understanding "'what is the scope within our team,'" Yan says.

In summary, he concludes, "We know ourselves, and we know when things are a little bit beyond our reach, or too much, and then we'll pull it back down to be what's appropriate for us developing it and also for the experience."

One thing the devs haven't held back on, however, is A Realm Beyond's flight system. In the same podcast, the devs explain that they wanted flying to be a very "active" thing, and crucially, not like a "flight simulator" where you can leave Spyro on "autopilot." So, expect you can find plenty of "decision-making" there.

Spyro: A Realm Beyond dev says the "loud and consistent" fans who bought 11 million copies of the Reignited trilogy helped manifest the series' first new game in years.

Blizzard made waves in the World of Warcraft community after deciding to remove combat mods alongside the release of new expansion Midnight, but director Ion Hazzikostas remains certain that it was the right decision.

Speaking in a new interview with PCGamesN, Hazzikostas first reiterates that raid mechanics were never developed "with the intent that add-ons would be used to solve them." It's an issue that Final Fantasy 14 players will understand well, too – although Blizzard only recently took action against combat plug-ins.

Players were meant to overcome World of Warcraft's greater challenges more organically, hence the removal of such add-ons.

Even though fans themselves have offered a bit of a mixed bag of reactions to the entire debacle, Hazzikostas believes the UI changes accompanying the add-ons' departure have largely been a good thing.

"I know this may be a controversial statement, but I will say that, overall, [the new UI] has been successful so far," he says. "It's not done, it's not perfect; there's more work to go, and we are continuing to undertake that work."

But, Hazzikostas assures us, "By and large, the vast majority of people are completing the same level of content that they were before, and far more are doing it without feeling like they need to seek out external tools."

Blizzard isn't done yet – the devs are "continuing to improve our base interface" while also making things a bit easier for add-on authors. It's about striking a middle ground, not just scrapping everything players used to know.

And, as Blizzard has said time and time again, "All of this has been in service of a more approachable experience and a more level playing field."

Reactions didn't make that easy, as the whole "killing add-ons" rhetoric "led to a very understandable, very negative reaction around that idea because add-ons have been a part of WoW for 20 years." But, they still are – just not in the same way they used to be.

It's nothing like Square Enix's third-party tool policy that those of us invested in Eorzea know very well – and it's evolving.

"While it's certainly been a transition with its challenges, we're excited to have this new baseline and foundation, and things will only continue to get better from here, both as we continue to add functionality to the base UI, and we continue to empower addon authors to add customization options," as Hazzikostas states.

Ultimately, Blizzard wants "to open up new doors and possibilities for players in raids, dungeons, delves, and everything in between" – and that's what Midnight's changes (and future tweaks, too) aim to do.

Blizzard continues taking action against World of Warcraft private servers as it pushes on with a lawsuit citing "large-scale, egregious, and ongoing infringement" of its MMO

In the midst of a total upheaval at Xbox, Blizzard is handing over publishing duties for Overwatch in Korea to live-service juggernaut Nexon.

In a joint press release, Blizzard and Nexon announced a new Overwatch service for PC players in Korea, with registration and account linking available now ahead of the official August 12 migration, lining up with the start of Overwatch season 4.

"Registration is now open and excitement is growing for the August 12 start of Nexon's service of Overwatch on PC in Korea," says Nexon president and CEO Junghun Lee, in a press release. "The Nexon team has been working closely with Blizzard to provide a service that enhances the Overwatch experience through Nexon's best-in-class live operations and hyperlocalization."

While the events aren't explicitly linked, the timing of an Xbox-owned franchise shifting hands even regionally is peculiar in the wake of Microsoft's historic downsizing of its gaming division, which saw 1,600 jobs cut immediately and will ultimately result in 3,200 redundancies by the end of fiscal year 2027.

The restructuring also splits off at least four studios from the XGS umbrella, with Compulsion Games and Double Fine going independent and Ninja Theory and Undead Labs entering "terms to join new ownership." Xbox CEO Asha Sharma says the company is reviewing "potential strategic options" for Dishonored and Deathloop studio Arkane.

"Opening registration is an exciting step forward as we approach the August launch of Nexon's service for Overwatch on PC in Korea," says Blizzard's head of development on live games, Walter Kong. "Together with Nexon, we are proud of the high-quality, tailored experience we are building for players in Korea, and we are excited to usher in this new chapter for the Korean Overwatch community."

Over on the official sign-up page for Nexon's new Overwatch service, the publisher encourages players to complete their account linking early and "receive special rewards, including 20 Mythic Prisms, a new Legendary skin, and Loot Boxes."

It's unclear if this will effectively region-lock Overwatch players in Korea, but the mention of hyperlocalized content and the mandatory Nexon account-linking seems to suggest that's the case. I've reached out to Blizzard and Nexon for comment and will update this article if I hear back.

Bethesda union blasts Microsoft as Xbox layoffs hit the Fallout and Elder Scrolls studio, too: "When will this cycle of cuts in pursuit of ever-greater profits end?"

It's been nearly seven years now since Activision and Toys for Bob released Spyro: Reignited Trilogy – and there's a reason the well-received three-in-one remake feels so faithful to its old counterparts from the late 90s and early 2000s.

In case you've never played the remade trilogy, it's pretty solid – in fact, it plays exactly as I remember the original few games playing, striking the perfect balance between nostalgia and quality of life (I'm looking at you, OG PlayStation controls).

Toys for Bob studio head Paul Yan explains how and why the developers pulled this off in a new discussion with Kinda Funny on YouTube – and insightful is an understatement here.

According to the lead, the team first tried to find source code in-house so it could "reconstruct it" for the Reignited Trilogy.

So, instead, "one of our engineers took an open- source emulator and then modified that so that we looked at the original game and actually peered into its data, extracted a lot of the models… We extracted the levels. We measured all the metrics. We found the exact placement for every gem."

That's not all, though. "We measured the timing, the speed, and the paths of certain enemies." In other words, they delved deep into the modified emulator. "It gave us a lot of metrics that gave us the authenticity on that side of it," as Yan says.

Obviously, they did change some things so that Spyro: Reignited Trilogy wouldn't feel too "old," so to speak – the controls, as I joked earlier, are one of the bigger things.

And, honestly, I'm grateful that they did. As associate creative director Lou Studdert chimes in, after all, players tend to have "rose-tinted glasses" on when approaching retro games like Spyro.

You imagine them looking and playing a whole lot differently than they actually did – but the devs took that into account with Spyro: Reignited Trilogy, and it's better for it. I do wonder, though… how will Spyro: A Realm Beyond feel, in contrast?

We have some very exciting features – like free flight and such – to look forward to, but also the same colorful visuals that made the original games so comforting. Personally, I can't wait to give it a go… a new entry has been a long time coming.

"Going independent meant taking a massive, massive risk": How Toys for Bob split off from Activision and Xbox to help guide Spyro to A Realm Beyond

Overwatch has had a turbulent history on Steam, launching as the storefront's lowest-rated game in 2023 and only rising out of the "Overwhelmingly Negative" depths a couple of times – but now, things might just be turning around for Blizzard's hero shooter.

It's no secret that Overwatch hasn't performed well review-wise over on Valve's platform. Heck, even game director Aaron Keller himself has commented on the negative reception, stating earlier this year that he's "not sure what it would take for us to move up to a positive score at this point" – but, what do you know, Overwatch no longer has a negative rating attached to it on Steam at all. Now, it's actually "Mixed."

This applies to both its recent and overall reviews, as a new influx of more positive feedback has seen the previously "Mostly Negative" rating rise.

Sure, there are still plenty of comments on the game being disappointing. One amusing review (with 1,467 hours in-game, mind you) describes its writer's time in Overwatch as a "toxic relationship that needs to end." Others criticize performance, gameplay, and, yes, microtransactions.

Folks bring up microtransactions and in-game purchases quite a few times, unsurprisingly – I mean, we are talking about that game that recently charged nearly $100 for a cosmetic bundle that introduced a new skin rarity, after all.

As for the more positive reception the game has received recently, reviews range from amusing ("hot girls," y'all… hot girls) to informative, with some players feeling that Overwatch has made a comeback this year.

"In 2026, we finally got back to just Overwatch," reads one such review. "The new characters are fun with interesting kits, the battle pass is good value, there's a lot of chances to get loot boxes, which means free cosmetics, the paid cosmetics have been really good, and overall the game has a lot to offer everyone."

Another adds, "I never thought I'd be writing a positive Overwatch review again, but here we are. Character development, apparently."

Character development, indeed. This does beg the question, could Overwatch rise up even more on the Steam ladder and perhaps see some variation of a positive review rating? I'm not keeping my fingers crossed for "Overwhelmingly Positive" or anything, but I do wonder…

Uncharted 3 co-director and The Dragon Prince co-creator joins the Overwatch team, once again reigniting hopes for an animated show.

Blizzard is pursuing legal action against private World of Warcraft server Project Ascension – a server that isn't the first to face a lawsuit from the company.

In case you missed the news earlier this year, Blizzard cracked down on private server Turtle WoW with a cease-and-desist order – only to then do the same to Stormforge, another server run by the MMO's players. There was no clear connection at the time, but Blizzard didn't stop with just the two. Most recently, it's gone on to target Project Ascension, a separate private server, with a lengthy lawsuit (thanks, Wowhead).

Project Ascension boasts a classless, free-to-play take on the usual World of Warcraft formula, with various game modes, custom raiding, and much more. It's been around for a good few years, undeniably catching the eye of Blizzard.

The company hadn't taken action against the private server for using its intellectual property until now, dubbing it an "egregious" violation on June 12.

"The defendants … have built an entire business on large-scale, egregious, and ongoing infringement of Blizzard's intellectual property," its initial complaint from earlier this month reads, outlining how Project Ascension stands "among the largest private WoW servers available today" with its million or so players.

A few days ago, Blizzard followed up on this with a summons request – and now, the clock is ticking.

As per the new request, the creators behind Project Ascension have three weeks to respond. "A lawsuit has been filed against you. Within 21 days after service of this summons on you (not counting the day you received it)… you must serve on the plaintiff an answer to the attached complaint or a motion…"

It concludes, "If you fail to respond, judgment by default will be entered against you for the relief demanded in the complaint."

That's not a lot of time, considering the private server's years of service – and, uh, also the fact that its developers are still adding to their project. Heck, 20 hours ago, the official YouTube channel announced a whopping 21 new classes.

All of this begs the question: What's next for Project Ascension, really? Will it face the same fate as Turtle WoW and Stormforge… or somehow dodge it?

Honestly, I can't see the server dodging Blizzard's legal wrath here, no matter how I spin it in my head – but I suppose only time will truly tell.

World of Warcraft Camelot discovery gives the MMO's community its most compelling evidence yet that Blizzard might actually turn a myth into a long-hoped-for reality.

After dropping a massive surprise StarCraft 2 update late last month, Blizzard is back with a public test release of a patch that remedies some of fans' balance requests – but sadly, it does not address one glaring issue many folks have had since late May.

In case you missed the news when it happened, StarCraft 2 did indeed receive an update last month that practically changed the 2010 real-time strategy gem from the ground up.

Blizzard described it as primarily focusing on "extending the early and mid-game experience, allowing players to remain competitive on one to three bases for longer periods," with the most notable tweak being a reduction in starting workers from 12 to eight.

Now, Blizzard has another patch up its sleeve – one that it says comes with "adjustments based on your feedback." As per the developer's official post on the new changes, there are some balance changes affecting spawn rates, mineral costs, speeds, and more, with a couple of bug fixes and quality-of-life tweaks, too.

The StarCraft 2 studio hasn't, however, gone back on its change to the starting worker number… even though fans want it to.

PTR notes update from r/starcraft

Over on Reddit, the community is sharing its thoughts on 5.0.16 – the new public test release update – and, of course, the topic of the starting worker number is everywhere.

The top reply states that Blizzard is "moving in the right direction," but that's "excluding [the] worker start number." Another response adds, "Literally nobody wants eight starting workers." It certainly seems to be the case, judging by fans' reaction to the patch.

As one person writes, "They really seem to be fixed on the eight-worker change. Such an awful change. This is the kind of change that will eliminate a good chunk of the current player base."

That might sound a bit dramatic, but to be fair, people are upset about it. It does add a bit more stress to the whole "strategy" aspect of StarCraft 2, emphasizing a slower start and preventing early economic spikes… but that doesn't mean fans are happy with it.

Here's hoping Blizzard hears everyone out in its next patch. It feels like it's taken a bit of a swing here and missed with the whole starting worker thing after the strategy game's huge May update – but it does show devs are listening… even if only a bit.

World of Warcraft Camelot discovery gives the MMO's community its most compelling evidence yet that Blizzard might actually turn a myth into a long-hoped-for reality

The future of Compulsion Games, Double Fine, and Ninja Theory are unclear. There are reports this week that Xbox is in discussion to shutter all three legendary studios, and rumors that the teams responsible for South of Midnight, Psychonauts, and Hellblade could buy back their independence. At a time where both first-party creative houses – PlayStation Studios and Xbox Game Studios – have shown little hesitation in closing development houses, the idea that these three could walk away seems unlikely. And while no two situations are alike, it isn't unheard of. Just look at Toys for Bob.

"Toys for Bob was acquired by Activision in 2005, and for many years we enjoyed a long and successful partnership," says studio head Paul Yan, who took on the role following the departure of founders Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford in 2020. It wasn't long before Yan was steering Toys for Bob through one of the most challenging periods in its 30 year history. "Covid hit, and the world turned upside down. There were many changes that happened as a result. One was a corporate mandate [at Activision] to support the large blockbuster IPs – Modern Warfare, Warzone, and Overwatch 2, to name just a few."

Before the studio was drawn into the Call of Duty ecosystem, it was doing industry-leading work – breathing new life into the mascots that fuelled the imaginations of an entire generation of millennials. It spearheaded the burgeoning Toys-to-Life genre with the Skylanders series, "an original IP inspired by Spyro" before being given the opportunity to go a step further.

As Yan explains: "We spent time meticulously handcrafting the first three classic Spyro games for the Reignited Trilogy, and we really got an understanding of the character during this period. And then we moved on to Crash Bandicoot, breathing new life into that series with a sequel, as well as an experimental multiplayer spin-off with Crash Team Rumble." It's a period of prolific creativity, where Toys for Bob was able to leverage its growing confidence and expertise into long-overdue platformers.

And then the world changed. "We learned a lot after we shifted into a support structure to assist other teams with various initiatives, games, feature-sets, and updates. We spread into a lot of territories that we weren't familiar with, or at least hadn't spent a lot of time with. We're very proud of the work that we did there, and of all of the collaboration. But if we're being honest with ourselves, we knew that we were just straying too far from the games that we're passionate about – that we're known for. So at that time, in the back of our mind, we knew we wanted to get back to them somehow."

Soon, Activision began to change too. In 2022, as Toys for Bob was supporting Infinity Ward to get Modern Warfare 2 out the door, Xbox announced its intention to acquire Activision Blizzard King for $68.7 billion. Former Xbox CEO Phil Spencer went on record to say that he was interested in Toys for Bob dusting off older Activision IP, but nothing changed. As the deal closed in 2023, Toys for Bob were locked into supporting development of Overwatch 2 and Modern Warfare 3. Then the Xbox layoffs hit. One of the Toys for Bob studios was shuttered. A month later, it was all change again – the studio secured its freedom.

"In 2023, Microsoft was in the process of acquiring Activision. This was a long, drawn out process which gave us a lot of time to soul search – to ask ourselves, well, how can we get back to the games we're passionate about making? So we got in front of leadership at both the Activision and Xbox level," says Yan. "We proposed a really bold plan. We asked that Toys for Bob would buy back its independence – taking creative, financial and organization control – to spin-off into a separate company. One where we could get back to the games we were known for, and preserve the tight-knit team and the long tenure that we had built up over the years."

There was a major caveat in the proposal. Toys for Bob needed the security of knowing that it would immediately receive funding for a project. So if Toys for Bob was going to spread its wings, it was going to do it with Spyro: the character that had first freed it from the trap of making Disney licensing games with Activision back in the early 00s.

"The other half of the proposal was that the first game we would develop out of the game would be a new title for Xbox, and that it would be based on a concept that we had been stewing on ever since 2018," says Yan. "We learned a lot about Spyro in this time, and we had ideas on where the series could go and how we could evolve the character. So fast forward a bit, and leadership was very supportive of the move and of the game pitch. And for the last two years we've been quietly working on exactly that title: Spyro: A Realm Beyond."

Built in Unreal Engine 5, in development for PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch 2, and Xbox Series X, A Realm Beyond is in many ways a continuation of the iconic Insomniac era of games – with Toys for Bob leveraging everything it learned through remaking that trilogy and then pushing on beyond it. Given how eager Toys for Bob was to regain its independence, I was curious as to why the studio would draw such a hard line in the sand – that it would get what it wanted, only so long as Xbox funded the group as a third-party entity.

Granted anonymity to speak candidly about the situation, multiple staffers at Toys for Bob have told me that it would have been 'near suicidal' to reenter the market without a project in active development, and that the arrangement works for everybody involved: the studio regains control of its future and a degree of security; Xbox gets to revive a legacy IP the community is desperate to see return with little risk; and that this could all ultimately lead to a fruitful partnership between the two in the future.

When I spoke with Xbox's executive vice president and chief content officer last week, Matt Booty didn't wholly shut down the question of whether third-party studios could be entrusted to revive other IP that the publisher has in the vault in the future: "I think the answer is there are options to do all kinds of things, and we're certainly looking at those all the time."

I did ask Toys for Bob associate creative director Lou Studdert why the studio went all-in on Spyro, rather than, say, Banjo-Kazooie, and he was clear about the studio's priorities. "Spyro has a deep place in the studio's heart. Having worked through Skylands and the Reignited trilogy, we've always admired that small but mighty underdog story of the character taking on these overwhelming odds – we see ourselves in that a little bit. And, honestly, it was also a no-brainer."

Yan adds: "Going independent meant taking a massive, massive risk. It's taking a bet on ourselves, but we had confidence in making that move [...] Reignited sold over 11 million copies, so there's an audience that showed up for the series."

As my time with Toys for Bob drew to a close, I asked Yan whether there was ever a world where the studio would have pursued independence without the Spyro sequel in place. "The proposal that we had was complex, and that was part of the equation from the beginning. That in order for us to pursue this, we would go independent. Is there a possibility that could have happened in some other alternate timeline?"

"I can't speak to that, but I can say that those two things together are exactly what we proposed," he says. "That Toys for Bob would spin off and have control over the types of games we wanted to focus on, and that Spyro would be number one."

Spyro: A Realm Beyond is set to release in 2027, although it doesn't have a confirmed release date. Toys for Bob may be developing the title as an upcoming Xbox Series X game, but it's also set to launch for PC, PS5, and Nintendo Switch 2.

Modern Warfare 4 is the Call of Duty I have been waiting all generation to play. It's a slickly produced first-person shooter that truly feels as if it is pushing at the boundaries of what this series can achieve when it's firing on all cylinders.

Activision has finally allowed its vast network of video game studios (who keep the gears of this annualized machine turning) to cease support for the PS4 and Xbox One, and the results are astonishing. There's a fluidity to the movement systems; weight to the weapon handling; a density of detail to the visual and auditory design that's apparent from the first kill to the last. You love to see it.

Jack O'Hara, the co-studio head of Infinity Ward and game director of Modern Warfare 4, believes the decision to leave last-gen systems behind has had a transformative effect on ideation and execution. "The processing power of the PS4 was great in its time, but it was starting to get in the way when it came to certain innovations. Support was making the development of new features harder, because you have to account for the differences between platforms."

"Console generations have been living for longer and longer, so we got better and better at optimization, but it does reach a point where you might be optimizing more than you're making something new. So, once you reach that threshold, you have to make the call," O'Hara adds. It's an exceptionally reasonable argument that has led to compelling results.

I'm told that Infinity Ward has engineered a lot of technology to deliver better balanced firefights. "Every shot should tell the truth" is a phrase I have heard more than once. Basically, there's a stronger alignment between bullet trajectory, weapon motion, and operator stance. Target visibility has been refined as IW introduces solutions to longstanding issues with bloom and depth of field. Weapons now make micro-adjustments as you push into tight spaces and begin to peek corners. It's wonderfully immersive, and feels utterly fantastic.

There's a control and a stability to the way that Modern Warfare 4 plays that simply wasn't present in Sledgehammer Games' disastrous Modern Warfare 3. Infinity Ward has effectively picked up from where it left off with MW2 in 2022. The recoil patterns and damage profiles are familiar, so too is the snappy TTK – though IW promises it's slightly less severe this time around.

"We are dialing in on the details to make that TTK feel consistent and strong," says Jacky Reynolds, multiplayer design lead. "One thing I'm really stoked about is that we made the TTK slightly longer at further ranges. If you played MW2, you probably felt yourself getting beamed across the map a lot. You'll feel that a lot less in Modern Warfare 4." Fighting at range requires more precision aiming than before, but Call of Duty is as lethal as it's always been once you're within sprinting distance of an enemy.

Consecutive Black Ops releases means Call of Duty has been saddled with hyper-mobility for two years. While I was certainly a fan of the omni-movement system within certain contexts, I was worried its introduction had defined a new direction for the wider franchise. IW has leveraged elements of this system to generate more fluid transitions around maps, and to give you new ways to change angles or adapt to pressure. So while you can't sprint, slide, or dive in any lateral direction like you could in BO7, you can now take advantage of backwards slides, mantle cancels, and faster climbing.

Combat Ready

I'm impressed with what Modern Warfare 4 is shooting for. I was able to play two multiplayer maps, and they are very in-keeping with the traditional Infinity Ward style – largely designed around three distinct lanes, promoting constant engagement and shifting momentums. There are some nice tweaks elsewhere too. The Riot Shield being reclassified as 'Equipment' and degrading through repeated use. There's now two Prestige paths, and IW is also very proud of a new Apex Attachment system – a set of unlocks that drastically transform a weapon's lethality and adaptability. Absurd incentives for weapon progression meet a more robust Gunsmith, enhanced customization, and a redesigned Create-a-Class system. There are more maps, modes, weapons, killstreaks, skins, and so it goes on and on.

All told, Modern Warfare 4 recalls memories of Call of Duty at its finest, albeit with a slick new-gen set of refinements, evolutions, and improvements. Beyond multiplayer, Infinity Ward has a lush campaign offering, following the exploits of Task Force 141 in the western hemisphere and a team of ordinary soldiers battling on the frontlines of a Korean war, and a returning DMZ mode that seems primed to take the fight right to Arc Raiders and Marathon. It's still early days, but I can't shake this feeling that Modern Warfare 4 couldn't have come at a better time for Call of Duty.

The series had clearly reached a breaking point. Back-to-back instalments of Black Ops and Modern Warfare titles created fatigue. Overbearing integration between mainline games and Warzone sowed frustration. There's a general sense that Sledgehammer and Treyarch (with three and two contributions this generation, respectively) haven't done enough to push the series forward – problematic as Arc Raiders, Battlefield 6, and a resurgent Overwatch offer competition elsewhere. But there's a quality to Modern Warfare 4 that is undeniable, and I'm desperate to play more.

Modern Warfare 4 is set to release on October 23 for PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch 2, and Xbox Series X. However, the new game for 2026 will no longer land day one on Xbox Game Pass.

During Summer Game Fest, the annual Xbox Games Showcase brought us some very cool reveals – including the long-awaited Spyro: A Realm Beyond.

The upcoming Spyro game from Activision and Toys for Bob is the first big mainline entry in nearly two decades, and it's just as brilliantly vibrant as its nostalgia-inducing predecessors. In the new trailer, we see everything from bright purples to glowing oranges, green grasses to blue skies – you name it. It feels like a childhood fever dream in the best way, and I have a feeling that the developers wanted it to. They certainly weren't shying away from colors, anyway.

In a new online post, the official Toys for Bob account puts it best: "The world needs more radically joyful, colorful games," asking fans if they agree. I absolutely would.

The devs' statement here lines up well with what they recently said in an interview posted on Xbox Wire, too, that A Realm Beyond is one of those much-needed games the world is calling for now, and that it'll be as whimsical as the old Spyro gems we know and love.

"We know first-hand that a big part of what makes a Spyro game really resonate is having a wide variety of colorful, whimsical spaces with activities, characters, and treasures that motivate you to explore every nook and cranny," studio head Paul Yan explained.

We do get a taste of these spaces in the trailer, and so far, and I'm personally impressed. It's like a modernized step back into the early 2000s, old PlayStation hues and all.

That's not to say that the new Spyro game won't be… well, new. Yan also admitted "the sense of discovery is absolutely core to this new adventure," which translates into some very exciting features – like free flight and such.

All in all, A Realm Beyond sounds like a blend of both familiar and fresh Spyro mechanics (and aesthetics, apparently). We'll get to witness it first-hand come its spring 2027 release date.

Fingers crossed that Spyro: A Realm Beyond delivers on all of its promising visuals, features, and more when it does finally launch. I'll be eagerly awaiting it, anyway.

Searching for something else to wishlist? Here are the best new games coming this year and beyond to look forward to.

Tonight's hotly anticipated Summer Game Fest event was the annual Xbox Games Showcase, and boy, did it bring us some cool reveals – including one of Spyro: A Realm Beyond, a title we've waited nearly two decades for.

The last proper Spyro entry landed a whopping 18 years ago with The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon, but Activision and Toys for Bob are finally back with a new entry in the beloved series... one that sounds like it's shaping up to be the biggest we've ever seen – free-flying and all.

Speaking in a new interview with Xbox itself, Toys for Bob studio head Paul Yan seems to tease as much, first admitting that A Realm Beyond is just what the nostalgia doctor ordered.

Admitting that it'll be just as colorful and whimsical as predecessors, he says, "In Spyro: A Realm Beyond, the sense of discovery is absolutely core to this new adventure."

This whole "sense of discovery" that the lead mentions here is made all the better by one stand-out fact: you can fly freely about the skies as Spyro in A Realm Beyond. Yes, freely... and that's a lot for both the developers and fans.

As Yan describes, "For now, I can tell you that our biggest ambition in Spyro: A Realm Beyond is to give the player the freedom and fantasy of dragon flight – to be able to take the skies at a moment's notice and make interesting and active decisions to flow through the spaces as you charge on the ground and now soar through the air."

In fact, "This is such a significant addition to the game" that "we've built a whole world around that promise." That's... exciting, to say the least. It almost feels like the jump that the Super Mario series saw in Odyssey – but Spyro. I am so here for that.

If you're looking forward to soaring the skies as everyone's favorite little purple dragon like I am, it'll be available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S – and, of course, Xbox Game Pass, too.

Searching for something else to wishlist? Here are the best new games coming this year and beyond to look forward to.

Nearly a year has passed since the last StarCraft 2 update dropped, and Blizzard is back now with another – and this one packs quite a punch.

In case you're out of the loop, StarCraft 2 just got a new patch – and it fundamentally changes the 2010 real-time strategy gem from the ground up. As per the official notes on Blizzard's website, the update primarily focuses on "extending the early and mid-game experience, allowing players to remain competitive on one to three bases for longer periods." And, oh boy, does it do just that… and more, too.

"We've introduced changes to make non-warped Gateway play a more viable path," Blizzard continues, "while also increasing overall strategic diversity across all three races." There are also, of course, plenty of quality-of-life improvements in place "to enhance the overall player experience."

So, what makes this StarCraft 2 update such a big deal? Well, most notably, it reduces the starting workers from twelve to eight.

StarCraft II 5.0.16 PTR Patch Notes from r/starcraft

This opens up the potential for new opening strategies, just as the old swap from six to 12 with Legacy of the Void did.

The Warpgate tweaks are wild as well, with research tech now in the Cybernetics Core rather than the Gateway. Warpgate Research now speeds up Gateway unit production time by 35%, though – at the cost of 50 Gas and Minerals. Thankfully, the Warp-in Time has also decreased to three seconds (from 3.6s and 11.4s).

Other adjustments include changes to default minerals, reduced supply from base buildings, and a plethora – I mean a LOT – of bug fixes.

Unsurprisingly, the community is losing it over patch 5.0.16, taking to forums like Reddit to discuss it. Many fans aren't even convinced it's real, it's that mind-boggling. "I thought it was April Fool's," as one person writes. Another jokes, "StarCraft 3."

My personal favorite sums the situation up nicely: "Wtf is happening?" Indeed, anon. Indeed.

Overall, I'd say most players are at least excited, with some describing the update as bringing "absolutely groundbreaking changes and amazing QoL." And, understandably, they're shocked.

As one fan puts it, "I started playing in 2020, I saw nothing even coming close to how wild these changes are." Blizzard has managed to blow all of our minds, eh?

Here's hoping that the new StarCraft update doesn't prove too chaotic a change, and fans adapt to what might just stand as the RTS game's most notable patch in a long time.

Diablo 4 Season 14 brings controversial Mythic Unique changes and heavy nerfs, but hey, at least Blizzard is finally introducing one long-requested mode.

The World of Warcraft community has always had Classic, a vanilla experience in which fans can enjoy the MMO as it was before all of its expansions, but what about Classic Plus?

If you've not heard of it yourself, World of Warcraft Classic Plus doesn't actually exist – yet, anyway – but has circulated the web for years now as players yearn for a cleaner, modern take on the base Classic release… a version with more modern updates and quality-of-life features, basically. Think Old School RuneScape and the like.

A quick search on Reddit alone shows all of the Classic Plus discussions that have unfolded over time. In other words, it's a very popular idea without any actual grounding in reality – until now, that is… or, well, we'd like to think, anyway.

As per Wowhead, Blizzard recently invited a bunch of WoW Classic content creators – like Xaryu, Esfand, Guzu, Savix, and sodapoppin – to a secret event. Unfortunately, they're all under an NDA, so we've got no idea what was actually happening over at the Blizzard campus in California, where they attended.

The fact that they're all specifically Classic streamers, however, has unsurprisingly left folks excited over a potential Plus release. Just have a peek at Xaryu's recent stream, in which he reveals he's visiting Blizzard's headquarters.

His chat goes wild with "Classic+ confirmed" messages and the like. And, amusingly, one person had to comment about a new mobile game. Here's hoping it's the former rather than the latter, though.

I'd say it's not too far outside of the realm of possibility. Xaryu's little smile feels like a hint in itself when fans start spamming their theories about Classic Plus, along with the fact that players have wanted it to come to fruition for literal years now. Heck, there's even a community-led project to make it happen – so it's evidently on the wishlist of many a hopeful WoW enjoyer. It does all beg the question, when will the NDA lift?

I suppose only time will tell, but I'm sure we'll find out what Blizzard has up its sleeve for Classic players soon enough – fingers crossed it's sooner rather than later.

World of Warcraft "will continue to decline" unless the MMO gets a "reset," says former Blizzard boss.

Blizzard has announced the details of Diablo 4's new season, the Season of Reckoning, and it's a little light compared to previous seasons. Most notably, it won't feature its own seasonal questline, theme, or story like previous seasons, presumably to let the new Lord of Hatred expansion really breathe.

While you won't be able to hop over to the seasonal realm for a new "season-specific story, theme, or gameplay elements" this time around, Blizzard says in a new blog that the Season of Reckoning will introduce "major system upgrades such as sweeping Skill Tree updates and class changes, increased level cap, difficulty and progression updates, quality of life improvements and so much more," with the idea being "a seamless and epic experience between the Season of Reckoning and the Lord of Hatred expansion."

Season of Reckoning, which launches alongside Lord of Hatred on April 28, will also feature Diablo 4's biggest season rank journey, with "more goals and rewards" than ever before. There are nine ranks and 100 objectives to check off in total, with up to 12 skill points, 42 paragon points, 14 Resplendent Sparks, a new Loathroot pet, a Hateful Heraldry mount trophy, new emblems, new titles, crafting materials, gear and material caches, and more available to earn as part of your seasonal progression. That's not so bad considering Lord of Hatred seems like the size of a full game in itself.

Personally, I think this is a wise call. Diablo 4 is already competing for everyone's time in an increasingly competitive landscape, and with Lord of Hatred coming with two new classes, the new Skovos region to explore (and go fishing in), and a new questline wrapping up the Mephisto arc, I think a whole new seasonal deal on top of all that would be too much for most people to juggle. If I were Blizzard, I would also worry about a distinct seasonal theme and storyline being confused for the new expansion, which could draw people away from Lord of Hatred.

It's also worth noting that Blizzard has confirmed that "future seasons will return to our regular cadence and form," so this isn't a permanent change. It seems directly related to the launch of Lord of Hatred, whose impact on Diablo 4 as a whole, when combined with all of the new system tweaks, is really hard to overstate. Here's how to get started in Lord of Hatred in case it's been a while.

With Diablo 4's Lord of Hatred DLC, Blizzard "intentionally" added at least one "basically useless" item just for the new Horadric Cube

Diablo 4's second expansion, Lord of Hatred, is on the horizon, but not everything included will be immediately useful.

Aside from the new classes and questline, the Diablo 4 version of the Horadric Cube, first introduced in Diablo 2, is one of the big selling points of the Lord of Hatred DLC. If all goes well, it could shake up endgame itemization in a way that people have been asking for for years. For the uninitiated and in the simplest of terms (I go over it in more detail here), the Cube lets you use items you'd otherwise salvage to upgrade gear or create entirely new items, opening up an unprecedented level of gear customization and dramatically expanding the loot economy.

For the new issue of PC Gamer magazine, associate game director Zaven Haroutunian really hammered home how central the new Cube is to Lord of Hatred. The Diablo 4 iteration is such a big deal that Blizzard packed junk items into Lord of Hatred just to help players make better use of the Cube.

"I think players are going to shock us with what they’re going to do with it," Haroutunian said, adding that those pesky item drops clogging up your inventory, wasting your precious clicking strength, and waiting to be salvaged will soon have a "second life" thanks to the Horadric Cube. "I will say that with Lord of Hatred, there’s at least one item we’re intentionally putting in there that’s basically useless because we know it’s going to be a target for the cube," said Haroutunian.

The return of the Cube in Diablo 4 is accompanied by a separate and nearly as transformative loot change that'll bring low-level loot back to the endgame with one huge caveat: it'll drop with the chance to have a greater affix attached, yet another design tweak purposefully designed to feed into the Horadric Cube, as it means the chump change you pick up in dungeons will have the chance to become your new main weapon, chest piece, or shield. That should, in theory, make endgame runs a whole lot more interesting, which is presumably high up on Blizzard's priority list as a lack of depth is one of the main pain points for high-level players. We'll find out when Lord of Hatred launches on April 28.

Diablo 4 will get updates until the day it dies because players keep finding new problems "over the course of 10,000 hours," says Blizzard

Blizzard has been taking in Diablo 4 player feedback and using it to shape game updates since shortly after launch in May 2023, and the developer doesn't expect it'll ever stop.

In the latest issue of PC Gamer magazine, associate game director Zaven Haroutunian and game designer Aislyn Hall opened up about the challenges of keeping everyone happy in a game meant to be played over many years and hundreds of hours. It's the endgame, typically, that draws out the most fervent commenters, and Diablo 4's upcoming Lord of Hatred expansion is geared specifically for players who feel like they run out of stuff to do at the end of every season.

"I play a lot each season and the way I typically end a season is I find myself kind of in a rut where I'm just doing the same thing over and over," says Hall. "I think that pretty much all of these changes we're doing are trying to get you out of those ruts, make you think about the game differently for a longer period of time."

I've been playing Diablo 4 casually pretty consistently since it launched almost three years ago, and as someone who typically only has time for a couple of hours most nights, I've never been left wanting – but a lack of endgame challenge has been one of the most common pain points I've seen other players report from the beginning, and the issue has persisted through countless updates, many different seasons, and one big expansion, Vessel of Hatred, released in October 2024.

Haroutunian doesn't see that ever changing, because people play the game for so long that they start to change and want different things.

"The people who play an action RPG from the start change as they play that action RPG more and they start requiring different things," he says. "Friction points that we could never imagine – that players can never imagine – suddenly rear their head over the course of 10,000 hours."

Lord of Hatred is the follow up to Diablo 4's first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, and brings the three-year Mephisto narrative arc to a close. I've been having a great time with my Paladin build, which has been available for anyone with a Lord of Hatred pre-order for months now and will unlock for everyone else when the DLC launches, but I'm particularly excited to see the Diablo 4 iteration of the Warlock class, which hit Diablo 2 Resurrected in February.

Naturally, there will also be a new questline and some endgame shenanigans to, hopefully, give those ARPG diehards something more to chew on in the long-term.

Xbox wants Fable to have Diablo-level cutscenes as Matt Booty casually reveals Blizzard is helping out with the RPG reboot's cinematics

Now that Death Stranding 2 has been out on PlayStation 5 and PC for a while, plenty of folks have had the opportunity to experience the Hideo Kojima masterpiece – including Mike Ybarra, former Blizzard Entertainment lead and Xbox corporate vice president at Microsoft.

Ybarra reveals as much in a new online post, praising the game while sharing a screenshot of his Death Stranding 2 stats on Steam. It shows his hours spent in-game and achievements unlocked, which he has apparently 100% completed.

"91.8 hours, probably idle for 10-15 of those," writes the ex-Blizzard boss. "Hell of an experience, and beautiful graphics and sound throughout the entire game. Well done, Hideo Kojima and team."

It sounds like he thoroughly enjoyed it, which isn't all that surprising – after all, we're talking about the game that saw its PC port impressively surpass the Steam concurrent player peak of both versions of the original game combined in just 24 hours. Heck, it boasts thousands of reviews and an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating with a perfect 5/5 score on Steam, too.

What is a bit mind-boggling, however, is Ybarra's admission in his comments.

Upon a fan asking which story is better – that of Death Stranding 2 or its 2019 predecessor – Ybarra shockingly replies, "1." In other words, the Microsoft veteran believes the original game has a better plot… or, at least, that's what it sounds like.

I suppose I can understand and respect that it's a matter of perspective, but not everyone agrees. One response to Ybarra reads, "Don't think it's remotely fair to even say that. It's a true sequel. The story is coupled."

Everyone's got their own opinion, I guess – I'd argue that, while Death Stranding 2 presents its "story" more quickly and apparently, the first game definitely harbors a surreal allure I'm not sure the second nails as well. So, I see where Ybarra's coming from… but I also get the other side.

All in all, though, I'm more impressed by the achievement completion. That's a whole "lot of deliveries," as Ybarra himself admits in the thread.

We'll just have to wait and see if Death Stranding 3 – which Kojima said he's already written a concept for but wants someone else to make – outdoes the first two games, should it ever come to fruition. Here's hoping it does.

Hideo Kojima flexes on NASA, shows Death Stranding 2 players traveled further than the Artemis 2 mission in the same time span.

Last week, reports began to circulate that Blizzard had scored a legal victory against the popular World of Warcraft private server Turtle WoW, and the owners of the server have now confirmed that it will soon be shutting down. It seems Blizzard has been prolific with the cease and desist orders, too, as Stormforge is also scheduled to shut down next month.

"After almost 8 years online, Turtle WoW is heading towards shutdown," the devs say in their announcement. "The final day of operation will be May 14, 2026, and the servers will go offline at 12:00 AM on May 15th. Working on Turtle WoW has been the highlight of our lives. It has been an honor to build with you and for you. Whether you were exploring new stories, leveling, raiding, PvPing, roleplaying, or just enjoying a quiet moment in the world, seeing how much this game means to you has been our greatest privilege."

Stormforge's announcement is pretty similar in tone: "It is with a heavy heart we share the news of the project's shutdown. Following a Cease & Desist request and subsequent positive discussions with a legal entity representing Blizzard Entertainment, we have agreed to cease all operations, development and distribution of content related to World of Warcraft by May 14th, 2026. Our realms will remain online and fully accessible until that date, but it will no longer be possible to register a new account and no further content updates will be released. We will also shut down the Stormforge Discord server and website. We would like to thank Blizzard for being understanding in regards to our closure process and the transition period."

It's unclear whether the two server shutdowns are connected, but the timing can't be ignored. Blizzard sued the people behind Turtle WoW last year, and earlier this month court documents revealed that the two parties had reached a settlement. Clearly, the terms of that settlement have included Turtle WoW's shutdown, and Blizzard couldn't abide Stormforge's continued existence, either.

There are numerous private, fan-run servers for World of Warcraft, each of them offering some particular advantage over Blizzard's official servers. Often, that advantage is simply "play for free," but there are benefits beyond pure piracy. Some servers offer all-new content, and players often appreciate the fact that there are usually fewer bots and gold sellers on these platforms.

But judging by the comments I've seen around the respective shutdowns of Turtle WoW and Stormforge, the fandom always figured their days were numbered because of their real-money cash shops. Maybe – maybe – Blizzard is willing to turn a blind eye to the private server devs who are doing it for the pure love of the game, but once you're trying to turn a profit? That's a lot more difficult for an MMO's legal team to ignore.

Blizzard famously took action in 2016 against a private server called Nostlarius, which offered an experience hearkening back to WoW as it originally released in 2004. A year later, Blizzard announced World of Warcraft Classic, which offered the same sort of experience on official servers. At a minimum, it seems Blizzard is at least willing to learn which features from private servers are most worth stealing back for official WoW.

World of Warcraft is still one of the best MMORPGs out there.

Diablo 4's upcoming Lord of Hatred expansion has been rated for Nintendo Switch by an Indonesian ratings board, hinting at a potential handheld port.

This is from the same Indonesia Game Rating System purportedly behind the recent 007: First Light and Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake leaks. However, in this case it's not so much a leak as publicly available information. You can see the rating for yourself right here, complete with a general description for Diablo 4 and 'Nintendo Switch' listed clearly as a platform alongside PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.

While this is far from official confirmation, Diablo and Nintendo have a long history. Diablo 3 was a massive hit on Nintendo Switch when that version released back in 2018, and Diablo 2 Resurrected, the beautiful HD remaster of the iconic 2000 ARPG, launched on Switch at the same time as every other platform in 2021. It would absolutely make sense for Diablo 4 to make a similar move, although I'd be somewhat surprised if it released on the original Switch and is more likely to be new-gen exclusive.

That said, it is curious that the IGRS only rates it for the original Nintendo Switch instead of Switch 2, as searching the body's official website yields results specific to each console and often lists the two consoles as separate entities.

Lord of Hatred is Diablo 4's second big expansion after 2024's excellent Vessel of Hatred (sensing a theme?). Releasing on April 28, Lord of Hatred will officially add the new Paladin class, although that's been available in the base game to anyone who pre-orders the expansion. A second new class, the Warlock, which surprise-dropped into Diablo 2 Resurrected back in February, will finally arrive in Diablo 4 with Lord of Hatred, alongside a new questline, endgame activities, and gameplay updates.

Diablo 4 game director admits it's "really hard for players to keep up" with the ever-changing ARPG, especially if you aren't "at the cutting edge of everything all the time"

An Overwatch map that was so divisive it had to be removed from the game's rotation entirely is coming back later today with Season 2: Summit, and Blizzard Entertainment is promising a rework that hopefully bumps it up from its position as one of the game's worst maps ever.

Two seasons and more than four months ago, Blizzard yanked Antarctic Peninsula out of the game's map rotation to rework the icy control stage that's only selling point was adorable penguins and fishing. At the time, a lead level designer explained that "player sentiment on this map hasn't always been very strong" and its temporary removal gives everyone a chance to "get excited for its return."

Saying that anyone's too excited for its comeback might be hyperbolic, but Blizzard's now detailed some of the map's fast-approaching improvements, and they sound like exactly what it needs. A new Overwatch blog post explains that the Antarctic Peninsula rework aims to "create cleaner engagements, smooth out team pushes, and make meaningful flank routes throughout the arctic tundra."

To that end, all three control points will be enjoying promising tweaks later today, including alternative routes that should enable more opportunities to flank enemies and a more "open" main choke on Research Station point, so pushing into an enemy team doesn't feel like squeezing through a Pringles tube. The Underground point will also have higher ceilings, which should help the newer aerial characters like Jetpack Cat and DPS Sierra.

Quick admission, I almost forgot that Antarctic Peninsula wasn't in rotation anymore, partly because map votes would barely ever swing in its favor anyway, and partly because, as much as I love those damn penguins, they're not enough to distract from how bland the map was otherwise.

At least the Overwatch devs are taking a hammer to stages that don't work rather than letting them stew in map purgatory forever, though.

As Overwatch Season 2 welcomes Sierra, Blizzard says "we're proud to continue expanding our hero roster and the communities around the globe we get to represent"

World of Warcraft is finally hosting its very own official Pride event this June as part of a big update to Midnight, and it's safe to say the community can't wait.

After all, The Running of the Trolls has been active (and a hit, if I do say so myself) over on North American server Feathermoon for some 12 years now, acting as a fan-led fundraising event for The Trevor Project – a very neat organization that advocates for and supports young LGBTQ+ folks all year round.

Now, for the first time ever, there'll be an official event for fans to participate in, too, as Blizzard has unveiled the Darkspear Dash. The Darkspear Dash will see players join "the Darkspear trolls as they celebrate individuality and identity," with run organizer Dravvie announcing the "microholiday" on Reddit.

"Just for background, Darkspear Dash Microholiday is based on the Running of the Troll, a yearly community event Warcraft Cares started in 2016 that is held every June to benefit the Trevor Project as the sibling event to the Gnome Run!" Dravvie writes.

Darkspear Dash - WoW's First Official Pride Event Coming in Patch 12.0.5 from r/wow

For anyone out of the loop, the referenced "Gnome Run" is The Great Gnomeregan Run – a similar yearly event that raises awareness for breast cancer.

Dravvie continues, explaining, "I can't comment on everything that's still in the development stage that's been datamined, but it's been a long process since I first talked with the dev team about two-ish years ago about possibly developing a Troll Run holiday." It's finally coming to fruition now.

They confirm that there'll be "lots of details for everyone once everything about the microholiday and its date is solidified and June creeps closer, as well as our yearly fundraiser and more" – so, keep an eye on their account.

Unsurprisingly, fans are thrilled, with one amusingly commenting, "Sounds gay, I'm in." Elsewhere, players of other MMOs like Final Fantasy 14 gather to question if their favorite games will "follow suit" in the future.

Here's hoping they do – I love a good Pride event, and not enough online games host official celebrations for the LGBTQ+ community, if you ask me. World of Warcraft, thankfully, is joining the list of those that do… with more to follow, fingers crossed.

World of Warcraft guild known for raid-busting exploits disqualified from new Midnight Mythic race by Blizzard after hitting 1 boss for 300 million damage: "Absolute gamers."

Every time a new World of Warcraft expansion rolls around, eagle-eyed players uncover bugs and exploits that help land them in first place in the never-ending race to tackle Mythic raids as quickly as possible – and Midnight certainly offers no exception.

The Dreamrift, a brand-new one-boss raid (yes, just the one – unheard of for those of us used to Final Fantasy 14 and its million boss phase mechanics) from the first season of Midnight, is up – and that means folks were racing to be a part of the world's first group to complete it.

Technically, that title went to a guild by the name of RAoV QA Strikes Back… although as PC Gamer writes, the team didn't get to keep its spot in the Hall of Fame for very long.

That's because, as per usual, RAoV QA Strikes Back secured its spot via exploits. You can watch them battle Chimaerus, the raid's boss, on YouTube, where you'll see them deliver almost 300 million points of damage to the formidable foe instantly.

This isn't the first time the guild has pulled such a feat off, however – it's a group that's well known for abusing (or using, as some might argue) bugs and the like to finish on top.

Congratulations RAoV QA Strikes Back on world FIRST Dreamrift! from r/wow

Even though Blizzard evidently doesn't approve of its methods, fans feel a bit differently about the guild and its shenanigans with raid exploits. A recent Reddit thread on its Dreamrift completion – and momentary stint on the Hall of Fame leaderboard – showcases as much.

As one person dubs the group's members, "Absolute gamers." Others argue that Blizzard should actually make a separate Hall of Fame for teams like RAoV QA Strikes Back.

"I wish Blizzard would make a hall of fame for the exploiters/bug abusers," one such fan says in their reply. "It's pretty cool that people discover something new like this every single season. It'll give them the credit they deserve and keep Blizzard's bug squashers humble at the same time, win/win."

I mean, I guess they're not wrong. Others just joke, "Seems Blizz wasn't as excited as we were here." No, I suppose it was most definitely not.

With all the excitement surrounding RAoV QA Strikes Back and its journey through The Dreamrift, I'd argue it could actually be fun to have a Hall of Fame for, erm, unofficial quality assurance testers (AKA fans who use exploits) – but I doubt it'd ever come to fruition.

World of Warcraft hit with FOMO complaints once again as Blizzard slams the doors shut on delve Hall of Fame after just 9 hours: "Huge day for the unemployed"

It seems like Diablo 4 morphs into a completely different game every year, with Blizzard consistently dropping updates containing foundational changes to its core systems. If you find it hard it keep up with everything happening, Blizzard hears you.

Right from launch in 2023, Blizzard has been tweaking Diablo 4 with big changes to everything from loot to combat to endgame and, most controversially, its approach to balance. The ARPG implemented sweeping balance updates in 2023, a huge "loot reborn" update in 2024, another big loot and combat overhaul in 2025, and coming up on the horizon, an endgame revamp that takes cues from Diablo 2.

Talking to PC Gamer, Diablo 4 game director Zaven Haroutunian chalks it all up to ARPG problems, saying it's "normal" for these kinds of games to go through "transitions."

"I call them transitions because the people who play an action RPG from the start, they change as they play that action RPG more and they start requiring different things," he says. "Friction points that we could never imagine—that players might never even imagine—suddenly rear their head over the course of 10,000 hours."

That definitely makes sense in a live-service game with so many interwoven systems, but the near-constant evolutions can be tricky to keep up with unless you're playing all the time.

"We know that it's also really hard for players to keep up with [Diablo 4], particularly those who aren't playing at the cutting edge of everything all the time," Haroutunian admits. It doesn't sound like that acknowledgment will have any bearing on how Blizzard approaches Diablo 4 updates, but it's validating to hear as someone whose job requires me to stay up-to-date on this dang game.

"I said this before, I believe in it: If a part of the game isn't working, we have to give it some attention," Haroutunian says. "I don't think anyone's too thrilled about having an obsolete part of the game just sort of linger and not do its job and not contribute."

Ex-Diablo 2 lead character artist says "there's no way you could ever" give the iconic ARPG a new act: "Would it be in a location that Diablo 3 or Diablo 4 has already fleshed out?"

World of Warcraft is no stranger to fans' fear of missing out on timed or locked content, and the recent delve Hall of Fame achievement offers no exception – in fact, this might be one of the worst instances of FOMO that Blizzard's MMO community has experienced.

Less than a day after Season 1 launched, over 4,000 players tackled delve nemesis Nullaeus, prompting the closure of the Hall of Fame and its accompanying achievement in both the EU and North America.

Players from the former region, in fact, only had about nine hours to give it a go – which, you know, isn't exactly a realistic window for many of us, especially when those hours fall within those of the usual workday.

EU Delve Hall of Fame is full from r/wow

It's not going over well with fans, unsurprisingly, with a recent Reddit thread on the EU delve Hall of Fame showcasing as much. "Had school," reads one response. "Couldn't even log in. Should be a week for something like this."

Another adds, "So you have to take time off work or just not have a job to be able to get this one, nice." Plenty of folks echo this, with someone writing, "Bro, I didn't even get home from work…"

It's not the only post to highlight players' disappointment about having to miss out due to, you know, life.

A separate thread on the NA delve Hall of Fame highlights similar thoughts, with a reply reading, "There's going to be a lot of very disappointed people who wouldn't have even had the chance to pull it once before it filled if they worked today" – and, indeed, there are plenty. "Can confirm," as somebody responds.

Folks are taking to other social media with their complaints, too, with one post quipping, "Huge day for the unemployed." Another angry fan says, "The European Hall of Fame being filled before 2 pm, so no one employed could have gotten it, is funny as fuck LMAO please please please never do this again."

Well, they're certainly not alone in thinking that Blizzard should change its approach to such limited achievements in the future.

Others are taking the opportunity to compare the feeling of FOMO in MMOs like World of Warcraft to Final Fantasy 14.

"A couple of weeks ago, I said that one of the things I like about XIV was, outside of seasonal events, FOMO wasn't bad, and I appreciated it," one such player writes. "Because holy shit this sucks and I can't believe people defend it." That makes sense – and seasonal events are longer-term as well, which softens the blow a bit.

It's important to note that Blizzard actually changed how the delve Hall of Fame would work a couple of times. This is the first instance of special recognition for early delve nemesis kills, and initially, the cap was supposed to be 1,000 players.

The studio tweaked this, pushing it up to 10,000, before finally reducing it to 4,000 – which is evidently nowhere near enough, particularly when paired with the hours it's opened.

Here's hoping that Blizzard hears fans' feedback regarding the delve Hall of Fame and gives the wider community more of a chance next time, should there be one. It's not easy to balance such unique achievements, but I'd argue there are ways to make it more fair.

World of Warcraft update lifts flying restrictions on mounts in Midnight, even if Blizzard acknowledges "the ability to fly trivializes a challenge" for some

The long-awaited World of Warcraft expansion, Midnight, is finally here, and Blizzard's hard at work tidying up fans' experience with it via hotfixes and updates – including one that lifts the requirement to unlock Pathfinder for Steady Flight.

There were discussions surrounding the necessity to unlock Pathfinder for traditional flying in Midnight before the expansion even released – see Reddit for examples.

Folks were frustrated about the potential grind, with one fan dubbing the requirement "so fucking stupid," but the community hasn't exactly been able to agree on the matter… well, ever. There are arguments for mounted flight, of course, but also a movement against flying.

Yes, that's right – the "No Flying Movement" or "Ground Mount Movement," whatever you prefer to call it, has seen a rise in supporters as arguments that not enough players interact with the world meaningfully anymore and avoid all challenge via flight.

It's… a lot, but Blizzard is listening, and a new Midnight update proves as much. Now, Steady Flight in Midnight and The War Within zones are no longer unlocked via Pathfinder achievements.

While discussing why this requirement was in place at all, community manager Randy 'Kaivax' Jordan explains, "Questing through Azeroth has always had a… complicated relationship with flying. There are countless cases where the ability to fly trivializes a challenge or ruins the pacing of an experience."

He uses an example in which flightless players fight to reach their target, while those flying can avoid any difficulty altogether. "That said, players love their mounts, love being efficient, and love seeing the world from above, so flight has stuck around," admits Kaivax.

"Different expansions have handled rulesets differently, but we've generally sought compromise in the form of: your first time through the game, your flight capabilities are limited, and then after you've explored most of the world, your flight capability is less limited."

Seems fair enough, right? The old system of Skyriding vs. Steady Flight doesn't really work anymore, though. "The distinction between Skyriding and Steady Flight has diminished greatly so that it no longer really makes sense to distinguish between Skyriding and Steady Flight while leveling" – hence the hotfix.

As for what the future holds, Blizzard "will continue to look at how the ability to fly affects our play experiences."

Although the studio acknowledges recent arguments against flying and how Midnight "hits different" from the ground, the developers "don't have any plans to restrict flight access meaningfully in the future" – although they'll keep such feedback in mind.

Overall, fans seem impressed with the announcement so far, thankfully, and the direct replies showcase this. "Good change, reads one." Another simply declares this a "biiiiiig W."

Here's hoping some sort of balance is found between frequent flyers and ground truthers. I'd personally agree with comments pointing out that, as it stands, World of Warcraft is suited to both styles of exploration… It's up to the player to choose, which is fair enough.

World of Warcraft would've been a first-person MMO in the EverQuest-inspired world of Overwatch's Jeff Kaplan: "I argued a lot for that"

What was happening inside Blizzard when Marvel Rivals rolled up and snatched away a chunk of the Overwatch audience? Game director Aaron Keller fielded the question at a GDC panel attended by GamesRadar+, acknowledging that Marvel Rivals "definitely had an impact on us in a lot of different ways" and pondering how the player response could inform decisions on Overwatch.

"One of the biggest ones was seeing the amount of excitement that new players to Rivals had for this big drop of heroes," Keller says. "It got us talking. Hey, what if we could just drop 30 new heroes into Overwatch? What would player reaction to that be? Because it almost felt like the release of that game was something like that. So it actually kind of helped us clarify a bit the types of releases we wanted to make going forward.

"Maybe, from the way I'm answering the question, you can kind of see some of the strategy behind the Season 1 launch that we just did with the five new heroes," he adds.

Blizzard previously billed Overwatch Season 1, arguably one of the most confusing names in the history of live service games, as the "beginning of a comeback" for the once-unrivaled but long-struggling game. Keller also touches on this in his GDC talk, which was titled, "Lessons Learned In Running A Game The Hard Way: How Blizzard Revitalized Overwatch."

Keller proposes a correction to this title: "How Blizzard Is Revitalizing Overwatch." The transformation is very much ongoing, he says, and while less definitive, this title is still a lot better than "How Blizzard Tried To Revitalize Overwatch."

"I started this talk by saying that, in order to play a live game in the present, players need to have confidence in its future," Keller concludes. "And I think that players' newfound excitement for the future and what's coming is the true mark of confidence in the game and in the team. And I actually sleep better at night than I did three years ago, or even than I did three months ago."

The final slide of Keller's presentation, proudly putting Jetpack Cat front and center, reads: "When belief returns, a game doesn't just survive - it gets a second life."

Overwatch director celebrates no longer being "the lowest-rated game on Steam," but admits he's "not sure what it would take for us to move up to a positive score at this point."

The game formerly known as Overwatch 2 is riding a wave of positive buzz the likes of which we haven't really seen since the first time it was called simply "Overwatch." Exactly how far the good vibes extend remains to be seen, but game director Aaron Keller is pretty excited to no longer be the lowest-rated game on Steam.

In a Game Developers Conference panel attended by GamesRadar+, Keller explains that "running a live-service game is like being in a relationship." So the Overwatch team makes efforts to make players feel like they're part of the continued loop of the game's development.

"Once a player realizes that, then I think that they can have confidence in the future that the game is heading," Keller says. "We end each of our three weekly team check-ins with the phrase, 'let's make a great game.' This is also how I sign off on my director's takes. It's because we really do want the community to be a part of that process."

But as far as the game's ability to rebound from its dismal early response, Keller says that "there was really no silver bullet moment here. We can't point to one post or update and say, 'this fixed it.' But over time, we saw signals change - and engagement, and sentiment, and how players talked about the game. We saw comments like, 'They're listening to us,' or, 'The dev team really cares.'"

With that, he takes a moment to celebrate: "We're no longer the lowest-rated game on Steam!" The crowd of developers at the panel took a moment to offer some appreciative applause at that celebration. "I'm not sure what it would take for us to move up to a positive score at this point," Keller adds. "But we're only a few percentage points away from 'Mixed.'" At that, more applause. Listen, you've got to set realistic goals for yourself.

"I don't think we're really across the finish line here," Keller admits, noting in particular that the team "could be doing a lot more from a non-official perspective" rather than communicating mostly through official blog posts and videos. But even if there's more to be done, it's clear that Overwatch is in a much better position than it was a few years ago.

Overwatch Season 1 is the "beginning of a comeback," Blizzard says as the hero shooter claws back fans: "You dream of these type of things."

Diablo 4's endgame and loot system is about to look a lot more Diablo 2-like, with the upcoming Lord of Hatred expansion set to bring back low-level loot to higher levels with one massive change: those items will soon have the chance to drop with greater affixes, something currently only possible in legendary loot.

Currently, at some point toward Diablo 4's endgame, basic loot like common, magic, and rare items all but stop dropping to make way for higher level, more powerful gear, which is identified by its orange color as opposed to blue, white, and yellow-colored bad loot. Visually, that makes for a very uniform aesthetic when you're high-level dungeon mobbing, but come Lord of Hatred's launch on April 28, item drops will look a lot more like Diablo 2, in which low-level gear still drops in the endgame but can be used to make something much more powerful. Diablo 4 loot will now operate on a similar ethos, although the finer details are quite different.

"We feel like the game just feels a lot more hollow now where you just don't really see anything except orange beams, and then you become accustomed to it, and it just doesn't feel like there's texture to it," design director of systems Colin Finer tells PC Gamer, which got the scoop on Lord of Hatred's loot overhaul.

Blizzard also revealed that any item, including those boring old blue and white ones, will have the chance to drop with a greater affix attached. Greater affixes are Diablo 4's most powerful item modifiers, and they'll instantly make the game's loot system more varied and interesting by giving you a reason to pick up those lower-tier items. From there, you'll be able to use the Horadric Cube, a new crafting tool ripped straight from Diablo 2 and coming to Diablo 4 with Lord of Hatred, to turn common items with greater affixes into legendary gear. Pretty cool!

And if you're understandably worried about screen clutter with all of the new loot types coming back, don't forget, Lord of Hatred is adding a loot filter that'll let you choose what type of loot is visible on the ground. Blizzard has yet to fully detail the breadth of customization options included in the new feature, but we know already that it'll let you hide, highlight, and recolor items both on the ground and in your inventory, making it a lot easier to chase that perfect greater affix.

As I've mentioned again and again, I'm a Diablo 2 diehard who's been playing since launch 25 years ago, and I genuinely think it's the perfect ARPG. Diablo 4's much more refined, modernized loot system will likely never adopt everything from the Wild West that is Diablo 2 loot, but it's a step closer with these changes that I think will make looting demons feel all the more rewarding when you get that god-tier greater affix from a blue item.

Ex-Diablo 2 lead character artist says "there's no way you could ever" give the iconic ARPG a new act: "Would it be in a location that Diablo 3 or Diablo 4 has already fleshed out?"

Jeff Kaplan have forever become known as "Jeff from the Overwatch team," but once upon a time he was "Jeff from the World of Warcraft team." And he's sorry – sorry for those of you who had to deal with the infamous Green Hills of Stranglethorn quest. Nonetheless, it still holds "a really special place" in Kaplan's heart, both because of the writing he did for it and the lessons it offered to him as a young quest designer.

"The Green Hills of Stranglethorn holds a lot of emotional value for me because amongst WoW players back in the day it was unanimously hated as one of the shittiest, most annoying quests," Kaplan explains in an interview with Lex Fridman, as spotted by our friends at PC Gamer. "But it holds a really special place in my heart. First of all, it's one of the few times I just wrote a short story that's actually in the game. It's me paying homage to Hemingway."

If you've been spared the horror of dealing with The Green Hills of Stranglethorn yourself, the idea is that the author Hemet Nesingwary – no points for figuring out why he's named that way – has misplaced the pages of his manuscript. So you need to find them as drops from mobs throughout Stranglethorn Vale.

The problem, as Kaplan explains, is that "players had very limited bag space. And as they're fighting in Stranglethorn Vale, I'm just shitting up their inventory with all these pages. And they only needed so many! You might be unlucky and you have, like, three page fives that are just junk in your inventory, and I might have, like, eight page sixes.

"This was the goal – the designer trying to puppeteer everybody. Everybody in Stranglethorn chat is like, 'Hey, I'm looking for a page six!' 'Anybody got a page three?' That was my fantasy as a designer, of like, 'and then they're gonna be social and meet each other and players are gonna be appreciative of each other!' Eventually no one did the quest, they just were super annoyed or they went to the Auction House."

Kaplan cites a bit of wisdom from legendary Civilization designer Sid Meier, who said that there are three types of fun: fun for the player, fun for the designer, and fun for the computer. This particular quest, unfortunately, fell into the "fun for the designer" category. Players didn't enjoy it nearly so much.

"It was the typical hubris of a junior game designer who thinks he's clever but is actually a dipshit," Kaplan explains. "That's The Green Hills of Stranglethorn summed up."

"It felt surreal": Overwatch co-creator allegedly left Blizzard after a former exec said he'd be responsible for 1,000 layoffs if the shooter didn't hit financial targets.

Diablo 4's upcoming Lord of Hatred expansion will address the long-running issue of overpowered builds from a new angle. Instead of countering those builds with nerfs, which everyone hates, Blizzard is adding a whopping eight new Torment, or difficulty tiers, in an attempt to give players a better excuse for their stupidly overpowered characters.

The news was quietly revealed in a recent interview with YouTuber Wudijo, in which associate game director Zaven Haroutunian explains the reasoning for adding so many new Torment tiers beyond the current four. "Big numbers feel cool, they feel good for players to get. Just, you know, 'oh I got an upgrade, it's a very clear step up in my power progression' ... is the game actually asking you to have numbers that need to be that high to begin with?"

The problem comes down to, in Haroutunian's words, when players feel like they're just "getting numbers higher" without "actually meaningfully changing" how they play the game. Basically, bringing the Torment tier up to 12 is Blizzard's answer to the Diablo 4 player asking these questions: "'What do I do with these numbers, what do I do with the power I get?'"

Haroutunian did clarify that that the difficulty level in the highest Torment tier still won't be higher than the most challenging level of The Pit of the Artificers, so this is more about letting maxed-out endgame players feel some sort of challenge outside of the Pit.

"So we're not actually inflating the numbers past the current ceiling, what we're actually doing is saying, 'hey, all these activities, all of this content, can be competitive so you're not just stuck in this one place at the very end of the game," he says, adding that the top-level Torment tier "goes right up to the edge" of the toughest Pit difficulty.

Talking to PC Gamer, director of systems Colin Finer and game designer Aislyn Hall lay out Blizzard's thinking on progressing through these new Torment tiers.

"Philosophically where we want to go is difficulty is something you opt into risk/reward-wise, and that's where the meta progression steps in," Finer says. "You can think of torment as your floor—you're going to constantly increase that, and that's much more granular now in this 12 torment world, the jumps aren't quite as big."

Meanwhile, Hall says Blizzard wants players to have "a very clear progression through each of them as you're finding all these different additions to your build," warning that the final tier is not for the faint of heart. "It's going to be really fucking hard," says Hall.

I'm more of a Diablo 2 guy these days, but when I do play Diablo 4 it's to wind down at the end of a long day when clicking demons to death sounds more relaxing than pottering around Animal Crossing. That's to say, I am not the target demographic for these updates, but I've also been covering the Diablo beat for long enough to know there are plenty of people who get their kicks by creating utterly broken builds.

For those players, I hope you have a little more to chew on with Lord of Hatred, but something tells me you'll quickly find a way to take the torment out of even the highest Torment tier.

Lord of Hatred, Diablo 4's second expansion, is out April 28.

For the first time in Diablo history, the Butcher will be a playable character in Diablo 4's new Season of Slaughter

The new Overwatch, formerly named Overwatch 2, but now just Overwatch has been upon us with five new heroes for about a month, and one thing is clear: people really, really don't want to play against Jetpack Cat. Little Fika is the most-banned new hero in the game, but Blizzard seems pretty sure Domina doesn't deserve to be the runner-up.

"Surprising absolutely no one that's played a Competitive game over the past few weeks," Blizzard writes in a new blog, "Jetpack Cat has been catching more bans than any other new Hero. In Role Queue 5v5 Competitive matches across the globe, poor Fika faces ban rates from 66.5% on North American servers to a staggering 80.7% on South Korean servers. Sheesh."

Jetpack Cat's overall ban rate is 69.1% across all platforms and regions – excluding China – which is not a very nice introduction for the kitten Overwatch fans had been waiting a decade for. Blizzard seems to have learned its lesson, with associate game director Alec Dawson recently saying the team doesn't want new heroes "to be perma-banned."

Jetpack Cat has already gotten some nerfs, but Fika isn't the only one high on the ban list. Domina has a 59.7% ban rate, which is far above any of the other new heroes introduced in the last update. But it seems Blizzard doesn't really believe that ban rate is justified for Domina. Maybe you all just need to counter her?

"Our balance team believes Competitive players might be following the perception that Domina is overpowered, even though her win rate says otherwise. Her ban rates may drop over a longer period as clear counters to Domina emerge. Have a bonus hint from our devs: look to aggressive Heroes like D.Va and Reinhardt to shut Domina down," Blizzard advises.

Here, let me translate that into terms modern gamers can easily understand: Blizzard is saying Domina haters need to get good. I haven't played much Overwatch since the game first launched in 2016, but I certainly remember the days when everyone thought Bastion was an absolute OP terror. Thankfully, that was in the era before hero bans existed, because we quickly learned that nah, we all just needed to play better. Nowadays I guess Blizzard is just willing to say it to our faces.

Overwatch Season 1 is the "beginning of a comeback," Blizzard says as the hero shooter claws back fans: "You dream of these type of things."

The World of Warcraft community has been buzzing after Blizzard's big Midnight release, new housing system and all – but some of the optional accompaniments haven't exactly been impressing fans with their prices.

As a Final Fantasy 14 and Elder Scrolls Online player myself, I know the controversy that surrounds real-money purchases for MMOs very well, and World of Warcraft certainly offers no exception (if you know about the $475 mount from way back when, you know). It's hard to justify spending hard-earned cash on cosmetics when you already dish out so much for a subscription and expansions like Midnight, after all.

World of Warcraft fans are facing this dilemma right now, as new shop updates bring a slew of pretty pricey decor items for the recent housing update. "Blizzard just dropped a $180 in-game shop update," as a player writes on Reddit, linking to the official Battle.net digital storefront.

And, if you scroll down to the "housing" tab, you'll see what they mean. All of the furnishings add up to quite a bit, utilizing Midnight's Hearthsteel currency.

New housing items in store, a bit pricey though from r/wow

For reference, 100 Hearthsteel is $1, so one decor pack is $25. And, amusingly, one tree – yes, just one – from the new Spring Blossoming collection started out at $7.50 on its own. That's quite a lot for virtual furniture, especially when you don't get multiple to use.

As the top comment under the Redditor's thread jokes, "Even in-game I can look at my neighbor and say, 'Damn, he has so much more money than me.'"

What the f*** are these prices? from r/wow

A separate post dubs the new housing items "a bit pricey" (although commenters say "a bit pricey is an understatement"), echoing the sentiment that, uh, yeah… eight bucks for a tree is certainly a choice.

Elsewhere, another fan asks abruptly, "What the f*** are these prices?" Thankfully, Blizzard copped on to the complaints quickly, taking the decor down… only to put it all back up for a bit cheaper. The Spring Blossom Tree, for instance, is now $2.50

Even though, as someone so eloquently puts it in a different online thread, the prices got a "nerf," the decor is "still comically overpriced" to many. "Yeah, this is like… 5% better," a still-disappointed player admits. I'm not sure there's any winning myself, really – unless it all goes free, which is incredibly doubtful.

Nonetheless, here's hoping Blizzard keeps fans' feedback in mind with its next optional release.

World of Warcraft players beg Blizzard to "turn down" the "noisy af" Sunwell after Midnight, but others surrender their ears to the light: "Please turn it up"

The Butcher has been terrifying Diablo players for three decades now, famous for randomly sprinting up to players and slaughtering them in the middle of dungeons, but soon he'll be a lot less scary... because you'll be able to control him.

Announced today during Blizzard's developer update livestream, Diablo 4's new season is titled the Season of Slaughter. As it turns out, that's an apt name for a season in which one of the big highlights is that you can "become The Butcher."

"As The Butcher, you wield brutal powers that for decades have inspired terror," Blizzard says in an accompanying news post. "Cleave through monsters, charge fearlessly into the fray and unleash a hail of hooks to drag your prey to a bloody end."

There will be a few different ways to embody the Butcher in Diablo 4's new season, starting with the seasonal questline, A Taste of Power. That'll kick off in Gea Kul in the seasonal realm and give you "a sampling of the carnage you'll experience while playing as The Butcher."

There's also a new Helltide event on the way with a consumable called Meaty Offerings, which can be used on the new Shrines of Slaughter to activate your Butcher powers and draw in hordes of enemies for you to kill and earn seasonal rewards from.

The Butcher is also coming to the Fields of Hatred PvP zones, and this is by far my favorite implementation of the otherwise fairly gimmicky feature. Every kill will increase your Savagery meter, and at the end of the ceremony, whoever has the most Savagery gets to take on the Butcher's Idol. If they win, they become the Butcher and get to run around slaughtering everyone.

Finally, there's the new Slaughterhouse activity. Blizzard is staying fairly tight-lipped on this because, in its words, "some things are best left to be experienced firsthand," but it does say you'll play "as the Butcher for the entire run. From the first step to the final blow, you're unleashed upon your enemies to do one thing: slaughter everything in sight."

As killing things in rapid succession seems to be the prevailing theme of this new season, it seems fitting that Blizzard is also implementing a new killstreak feature in Diablo 4 for the first time. Killstreaks will be broken down into five tiers: Killstreak, Carnage, Devastation, Bloodbath, and Massacre, with the chance to earn experience and seasonal reputation based on how many enemies are slain in a killstreak.

All of that kicks off on March 11.

Ex-Diablo 2 lead character artist says "there's no way you could ever" give the iconic ARPG a new act: "Would it be in a location that Diablo 3 or Diablo 4 has already fleshed out?"

The team of former Diablo 2 leads at Moon Beast Productions are in the unenviable position of developing a competitor to the iconic Blizzard ARPG they helped create with Darkhaven, but one of the indie project's leads has already accepted there will probably never be another Diablo 2.

"That's kind of been my whole career in a way, you know, always chasing Diablo 2. I gave up for a while, you know, with the space games. I said, 'I'm just going to make small games that reach a small audience,'" said former lead designer at Blizzard Erich Schaefer, in an interview with Path of Exile co-creator Chris Wilson. Schaefer acted in various capacities on Diablo and Diablo 2, including as project lead, design lead, and art director, so he definitely knows the ins and outs of the genre, but he still regards Diablo as a lightning bolt unlikely to be bottled again.

"Here with Darkhaven, I figured this is a great shot again for a big success, but it's impossible really to chase Diablo because, again, 25 years [since its launch]," Schaefer says. "I think [Diablo 2 programmer Peter Hu] said 25 decades, which I think maybe it might actually last that long. To have a game that lasts, that you can still play, and still people make content and stream for 25 years, that's unlikely going to happen again in my career. So yeah, sort of always under the shadow, but at the same time, it's a cool accomplishment, and people all know it, so I'm happy about it."

Schaefer, Hu, and former Diablo 2 lead character artist Phil Shenk seem to share a similar sense of pride in their work with Blizzard – combined with trepidation in going up against such an iconic ARPG. Hu previously said "there's tons of conflicted feelings" about making a competitor to a genre titan like Diablo, while Shenk said, "we feel the pressure, but I don't hate them for it."

It's worth noting that Darkhaven isn't a Diablo-like. It's built around the same bones, for the most part, but it also features what Moonbeast is calling a "massively interconnected, MMO-scale network of realms," as well as procedurally generated environments and a "fully destructible open world" where you can build and level terrain. GR+ senior writer Austin Wood didn't come away wholly impressed by its Steam Next Fest demo, but it piqued his interest enough that he wants to see more.

Ex-Diablo 2 lead character artist says "there's no way you could ever" give the iconic ARPG a new act: "Would it be in a location that Diablo 3 or Diablo 4 has already fleshed out?"

Blizzard shocked the ARPG community last month with the surprise reveal of Diablo 2's first new class in 25 years, leading to speculation that a whole new act could be on the way. However, according to former Diablo 2 lead character artist Phil Shenk, there's "no way" that could happen.

In a recent interview with Path of Exile co-creator Chris Wilson, in which Shenk is joined by Diablo 2 programmer Peter Hu and designer Erich Schaefer, Shenk says just the idea of a new class is "a really big event," but that "everybody wants an act."

He continues, "I hadn't even considered an act. Like, classes have become one way that ARPGs easily produce more content. Like, we're doing a new class, right? So that's kind of a common thing that people see, and even new act content, too."

That said, a new act is a whole different beast, according to Shenk: "The thought of Diablo 2 getting a new act kind of blew my mind when you said that, because, I've always considered it as like, there's no way you could ever do that. How would you retcon all the lore that's happened since then? You know, where would it be? Would it be in a location that Diablo 3 or Diablo 4 has already fleshed out?"

Of course, Shenk knows a thing or two about Diablo 2 expansions, having served as art director on Lord of Destruction, which added two new classes and a fifth act to the original game. According to his LinkedIn, he left Blizzard in 2000 before the expansion's launch the following year, which he now says caused him great pain.

"It was super, super bittersweet and painful when that came out, because I just felt like, man, I wish I could have been there for a part of it. I left voluntarily, but I still really had my heart in it, and maybe that's where I made peace with, well, Diablo 2 is just going to be whatever it is."

Ultimately, Shenk says he's "anxious" to play Diablo 2's new Reign of the Warlock DLC, even though he thinks it's "really cool" to have "a new way to experience" the game he helped bring to life so many years ago. "I'm not a hardcore player though, so I'll just be casually bopping through the world," he admits.

Shenk, Wu, and Schaefer are now at Moon Beast Productions cooking up their own ARPG, Darkhaven, described as having "Diablo-like progression, skills, and itemization matched with open-ended, procedurally generated, dynamically responsive, sandbox worlds." The game's demo was one of the most-played at this year's Steam Next Fest, even if GR's Austin Wood didn't exactly fall head over heels for it.

Ex-Diablo 2 leads have "tons of conflicted feelings" about going up against the iconic ARPG with their new indie competitor Darkhaven.

Eight years ago, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 introduced battle royale to the series with its Blackout mode, a formula Warzone vastly expanded over the years. Still, some players continue to crave the more straightforward battle royale experience offered by the original Blackout, and Warzone's Black Ops Royale is poised to deliver exactly that.

Black Ops Royale launches on March 12 at 9pm PT, or March 13 at 12am ET, and as the devs explain in a lengthy blog post, it's "an original Blackout-inspired Battle Royale with no Loadouts, no Gulag, and no Buy Stations."

The Gulag has been replaced by Redeploy Tokens, which essentially serve as extra lives, and Redeploy Towers, which teams can capture to revive their allies. Similarly, instead of loadouts and buy stations, you'll scavenge all of your loot in the classic battle royale way, rushing to map locations to grab the good gear before opposing players do.

You'll be able to grab especially high-value loot from Cradle Breaches, which essentially replace the Zombie Zones of Blackout. During the match, a bomber will drop a hallucinatory gas canister that'll make you see a bunch of presumably fake zombies and certainly very real high-tier loot caches. Each Cradle Breach only lasts for a limited time, so you'll have to contend with both the zombies and other players gunning for that loot as you rush for the best gear.

It seems that Black Ops Royale will launch as an all-quads affair, so smaller squads and solo players are out of luck, but the blog notes that that's just "to begin with." This isn't an LTM, so it seems that the mode is here to stay, and it's very possible that more squad sizes will become available in later updates.

The YouTube comments on the announcement trailer keep calling this "Blackout 2," and the devs are pretty explicit about the mode's inspiration. "There are clear influences from the core Blackout experience – like bullet drop and weapon handling, as well as the armor system and use of the Trauma Kit – capturing the Blackout pacing, traversal, and combat feel in a modern way," they explain in the announcement.

"This isn't a remake; it's a unique experience that pays homage to the Blackout core gameplay while keeping the flow of a match feeling right for Call of Duty: Warzone players," the devs say. Clearly, those players are more than ready for a mode exactly along these lines.

Here are the best Call of Duty games of all time.

World of Warcraft: Midnight early access has begun, and everybody's working their way to level 90. Ahead of the release, a major exploit seemed poised to absolutely break the leveling race, but Blizzard quietly announced it had been fixed less than an hour before launch. The studio is also making some notable changes for the first month of Midnight as a result of the exploit.

In the pre-release version of Midnight, players discovered that Endeavors – a new system tied to player housing – could be used to get obscene amounts of XP all at once. You could use this system to scale a low-level zone, rely on an unscaled player to kill mobs for you, and reap massive XP rewards. Some estimates suggest it would've been possible to level from 80 to the new cap of 90 in under 60 minutes.

Community manager Randy "Kaivax" Jordan confirmed that "Endeavor XP is temporarily disabled in Midnight Early Access" in a post to the Blizzard forums less than an hour before launch. "Furthermore, scaling for the older zones when doing Endeavor activities is disabled for the entire first month, and will return with the Endeavor that begins in early April."

Concerns about the exploit had lingered for some time before Blizzard finally addressed them, and the timing of the announcement so close to Midnight's launch has certainly annoyed some fans. Now we face the question of how rewarding Endeavors will feel with their XP payouts restricted, and what the balance will look like when those rewards return. Just another day in balancing an MMO for wildly different audiences that want wildly different things, I guess.

"He was the first person the Light called": World of Warcraft Midnight turns to the MMO's mightiest hero to help us push back against the Void – Leeroy Jenkins.

Overwatch might be enjoying a second wind of popularity, but that also means more people than ever are capable of finding and then exploiting any potential bugs that pop up after each patch or update.

Look no further than the last 24 hours in Overwatch Land, where players have been nuking entire lobbies with the power of chat and running around as a half-invisible Soldier 76.

Over the past few days, Overwatch griefers discovered a bug that would let them crash an entire lobby if they spammed "<" enough times into the game's text chat. Whether the bug was used to troll or end a game before a potential loss, it was probably the most annoying thing to happen to Overwatch since that godforsaken hamster.

Blizzard Entertainment has since slammed its big, red emergency patch button. Text chat was temporarily disabled for everyone and has now returned to the game, though some players online report that the bug can still be triggered under specific circumstances.

I have not seen anyone talk about this soldier skin bug from r/Overwatch

Game-breaking text chat is a relatively new bug for Overwatchers to contend with. Being eliminated by freakish, floating heads? That's a good old classic.

Anyone who's jumped back into the game since its Overwatch: Season 1 update might have noticed that Soldier 76's Valentine's Day skin - the one that makes him look like Prince Charming from Shrek - is really, really bugged. As in, it makes the hero all but invisible with only his head and cape on show.

Blizzard said it had "fixed an issue with missing textures on the Charming 76 skin" a few days ago, only to have disabled the skin completely just yesterday, February 26, because trying to shoot thin air in a competitive shooter feels a tad unfair. Curiously, another Soldier 76 skin was plagued with a similar invisibility bug an entire decade ago. Overwatch really is back, huh?

There's no timeframe on when the Charming 76 skin might return.

Blizzard reveals Overwatch Rush, a "top-down hero shooter designed specifically for mobile" that's being built by a dedicated team within the studio

Between the new housing system and removal of combat mods, Blizzard has been preparing World of Warcraft for its big Midnight expansion – the second chapter of the Worldsoul Saga – but it hasn't just been looking at new content.

The developers have also been reworking old areas and expanding on the decades-old lore that has kept the community so dedicated to the MMO since its 2004 release date.

They state as much in a new interview with PC Gamer, with associate game director Paul Kubit saying, "It would be a shame for us to say that every story has to be told entirely within the context of a new continent or island or liminal space, wherever we're going."

That's why Midnight – and The Last Titan, the third part of the Worldsoul Saga that's set to launch some few years from now – will build upon all of Wow, revamping past content.

"We've got this whole huge world with decades of world-building inside of it, and to have places like Light's Hope Chapel that we can't go back to, or Wyrmrest Temple, or Orgrimmar, or Stormwind – all these places that have such strong memories for us," as Kubit puts it.

"We should be able to use them, and we want to." And so they will – and no, it doesn't matter too much that older zones feature a more "aged" aesthetic, so to speak. "They were built with different art parameters and possibilities at that time," Kubit explains. "But when you're telling the full story, none of that really matters for most players."

I suppose that does make sense. Most of the visuals, old or not, are core to what makes WoW… well, WoW.

Game designer Jake Shillan has been hard at work on Midnight and its zones, likening the expansion of older parts of the MMO's story and world, particularly the Amani, to, uh, pizza.

"We got to flesh out Zul'jin and the Amani out of this little ball of dough – I don't know why it's the metaphor I'm choosing, but stick with me – this little ball of dough, and now it's a whole pizza, okay? Toppings, sauce, cheese."

Heads up, though. "There is no pizza in Zul'Aman. I'm gonna spoil that for you right now." There's plenty elsewhere, however, and I love how Shillan describes Blizzard's process.

"We sort of have to play Mad Libs, right? What happened in the interim between that moment [many] years ago and now, and how can we use that to launchpad into whatever comes next?" Mad Libs it is, I suppose – although I'm sure it's a bit more structured than that.

With the pre-Midnight patch 12.0 in mind and everything else Blizzard has going on before its expansion pack's release date next week on March 2, World of Warcraft is shaping up to boast some massive changes alongside its entirely new content.

Blizzard is so concerned with World of Warcraft expansion Midnight completely changing the MMO's meta that it's already loading over a month of balance patches

It's almost time for World of Warcraft's Midnight expansion to officially launch and introduce housing in full to the MMO on March 2, so developer Blizzard is making sure everything is ready for its arrival – getting out the nice silverware, preparing a hefty update based on Early Access feedback, and so on. But some players continue to want more.

Perhaps anticipating this, Blizzard disclaims in a February 24 post on the World of Warcraft website, "Housing is an evergreen feature that we will continue to build and iterate on." That said, the developer is already planning to issue several updates to Midnight "in the coming weeks."

"We're discussing this far in advance of when we'd normally talk about in-development features because we want your feedback early and often," says Blizzard. Currently, the developer hopes to increase house decor storage, improve functionality for decor deletion, and fix a "weird rotation bug" that shifts furniture when you save and re-enter your house.

Later, Blizzard wants to re-enable exterior lighting, introduce time-limited Visitor Codes so you can have friends over, and a "pets-as-decor" feature that will let you welcome home the fuzzy – or creepy – companions you've collected.

"Layouts and pets, YES!" says one comment on Blizzard's post. Others are more tortured about it, complaining that Midnight introduces a "digital dollhouse with no basic functionality that other MMO's like ESO provide," as another commenter says.

"Once people start to raid and quest and do M+ later, no one will step foot into their doll houses either," says a reply. Another player agrees, "Imo, we really need to hear about actual useful content for our houses. Reasons to use them."

Perhaps consider the most worthwhile reason of all: World of Warcraft Animal Crossing.

Blizzard is so concerned with World of Warcraft expansion Midnight completely changing the MMO's meta that it's already loading over a month of balance patches.

Darkhaven is a new ARPG "made by many of the original creators of Diablo and Diablo 2," and its developers are now part of an extremely exclusive club of people being forced to compete against their own game.

If you're an indie developer coming out with a new ARPG, Diablo is obviously the standard bearer that your game will inevitably be compared to. And with Diablo 2, arguably the most beloved game in the Blizzard franchise, having recently added its first new class in 25 years, Darkhaven is gearing up to launch in competition with a revitalized version of one of the most iconic ARPGs of all time, and one the founders of Darkhaven studio Moonbeast helped bring to life.

"There's tons of conflicted feelings there," Diablo 2 programmer Peter Hu told PC Gamer. "Yeah, not gonna lie about that … We're an indie company in a way, going up against a giant, and that's a tough hill to climb."

Added Diablo 2 lead character artist Phil Shenk, "Yeah, we feel the pressure, but I don't hate them for it."

On the contrary, Shenk said there's a sense of pride in seeing the game he and the other folks at Moonbeast helped create still endure some three decades later.

"Just the fact that people are playing this 30-year-old game, that it's worth it for them to introduce new content, is amazing to me," said Shenk. "It's super cool. I'm very proud, I guess is the word, just at the fact that it has so much legs."

While obviously Diablo-influenced, Darkhaven isn't quite as derivative as, say, Path of Exile. Darkhaven's Kickstarter campaign describes the game has having "Diablo-like progression, skills, and itemization matched with open-ended, procedurally generated, dynamically responsive, sandbox worlds."

"Made by many of the original creators of Diablo and Diablo 2" are big words for an action RPG, but the Steam Next Fest demo for Darkhaven feels like sampling bread by eating raw flour

One former Activision Blizzard exec has come to the defense of new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, saying that – from her own experience – "even though there is a LOT to learn for someone without a gaming background, it IS learnable."

Sharma is replacing former Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, who is retiring from his role at the same time as Xbox president Sarah Bond resigning, ultimately making for an enormous leadership shakeup all at once. Many previously assumed that Bond would eventually take over from Spencer, and, confusingly, Sharma has no background in games, having joined Microsoft in 2024 as president of the company's CoreAI product. But Lulu Cheng Meservey, former executive vice president, corporate affairs and chief communications officer at Activision Blizzard, says that lack of experience shouldn't be a dealbreaker.

Taking to Twitter, Merservey – who departed Activision in early 2024 after first joining as a board member in April 2022 – acknowledges that some Xbox fans "are asking how much it matters that Asha doesn't have gaming experience," and she has "some thoughts since I've been there" before.

"I had never worked in gaming when I joined Activision Blizzard's board and later became CCO & EVP Corp Comms," Merservey writes. "And although I'd played games, I wasn't very good.

"The learning curve was huge. I had to quickly understand the products and players. Gaming culture is unique, and it's not just one culture! COD vs WOW have very different communities. Launching DIV was totally different from Overwatch work."

Merservey admits that "getting up to speed took a ton of listening and learning (often the hard way, because while you're figuring things out you still have to Do Your Job)," which involved studio visits, talks with devs and streamers, "and lots of reps getting absolutely murked in Modern Warfare II."

However, she continues, "The players made a huge huge difference. I learned from so many of you, whether you were sharing feedback or meeting up at BlizzCon or cooking me on twitter (tough crowd, strong feelings – never change!)"

Looking back, by Merservey's own reckoning, she definitely "didn't have the 'right' resume or a background in gaming," but she "did know how to communicate, negotiate, get creative, take care of people, and, when needed, fire shots." She continues: "I still made plenty mistakes. But my point is that skills from other jobs do transfer. Even though there is a LOT to learn for someone without a gaming background, it IS learnable."

She calls Sharma a "smart, effective, and a fast learner," and someone who "has no ego, just wants to get the job done. Playing lots of games in a short period is her way of preparing as best she can, and she shouldn't be put down for that."

What's more, "she's determined to make Xbox the best it's ever been, from the foundation built by Phil and Sarah and their team." Merservey says, "If I could've stayed after our acquisition, I'd be super excited right now to work for Asha!"

She wraps things up with her gratitude towards all the folks who were welcoming to her when she joined the gaming community, "and gave me advice and encouragement (even as I was far from perfect)." Concluding, she says: "I hope you'll give Asha that opportunity to load in, learn, and show what she can do. Don't judge the resume, judge the K/D."

Certainly, only time will tell if Sharma is the right fit for the role, although you can understand some folks' hesitance, especially at a time when Xbox has already undergone enormous changes, layoffs, and (for better or worse) has been waving goodbye to platform exclusivity on many of its biggest hitters. This was already a weird era for Xbox, and new leadership coming in on top of that was always going to raise questions – the CEO's CV is only part of that.

New Xbox boss says "I don't pretend to be the best gamer," but that's not her goal, anyway: "My focus is to make Xbox the best place to play, return to our roots, ship great things, and become stronger."

Diablo lead Gavian Whishaw hopes there will be even more Diablo titles released in 30 years time, aiming to beat more than another five by the series' 60th anniversary.

The end of 2026 (or the start of 2027, depending on who you ask) will mark the 30th anniversary of Diablo, with the series going on a weird release schedule from then onwards. Blizzard's iconic franchise was quick to get a sequel, with 2000 seeing the release of Diablo 2, but since then, the wait between mainline entries grew as it took 12 years for Diablo 3 to release, with Diablo 4 taking another 11 years on top of that (obviously, there were expansions in the meantime too). And, despite all of the negativity towards it, Blizzard counts the 2022 mobile title Diablo Immortal alongside the other titles, but Blizzard wants to beat that going forward.

Speaking to Variety, Whishaw – who is listed as executive producer and vice president, as well as production director of Diablo 4 on his LinkedIn – talks about the decision to update Diablo 2 with new content and a new class all of these years later, saying "It's kind of complicated when you're talking about titles that have been around for 20 years and people are still dedicated to and still playing and still going to get excited about new content."

When asked if news of a new Diablo game could be imminent, he explains, "I'll say at a high level, I think over 30 years of Diablo, we've done five titles. So I would hope that over the next 30 years we do a few more than that, maybe we get some out faster."

So, hopefully the series will have more than 10 total games under its belt by the time we get to the 60th anniversary, then.

It took 25 years for Diablo 2 to get a new class, and less than 2 weeks for players to realize how to make it invincible

Blizzard has made waves in the World of Warcraft community after its decision to remove combat mods, a plan that started to roll into action with the recent release of pre-Midnight patch 12.0 – an update that prepares the MMO for its upcoming expansion pack.

It does so by smoothing things out across the board – but the most significant change is undeniably the restriction of access to user interface add-ons, which folks used during more challenging content like raids to help with cues and combat information.

For many, it's come as quite a blow, but Blizzard thinks folks should wait until they actually get to experience the rest of the changes that Midnight has in store before casting their final judgment.

Speaking to Polygon, associate game director Paul Kubit defends the studio's decision to axe add-ons, explaining that the new expansion's content and tweaks will make it far less painful for players, as Midnight was crafted with the removal of mods in mind.

One of the big things, for instance, is "that apex talents unlock for classes, and so classes are going to have a little bit more structure to how they play out," as he describes. "And then also all the new content comes, all the new dungeons, all the new raids, and whatnot."

Lead encounter designer Dylan Barker agrees – fans should feel the difference post-Midnight. "We changed some of how we build encounters to suit this new environment," as the dev puts it. "We want to be able to provide clarity on what players are meant to do to succeed more through our own means."

This applies to more than just the user interface, too.

"And that's not just in the UI – that's doing extra levels of presentation on the creatures, in the world, and getting players to really look at the creatures that are trying to kill them, so that they can play better in that way," Barker states. "It's been a fun period for our team, because we've been focused on how to up that level of our game."

As for Blizzard's reasoning behind doing away with add-ons, Kubit reiterates that it's about keeping things fair – something the team has now stated multiple times, that it's to "level the playing field" overall.

The devs felt it's important they're "not giving players tools that shortchange the work that class design or encounter design does to provide challenges for players." It's all too reminiscent of Final Fantasy 14 and the topic of third-party tools, if you ask me.

Blizzard wants "to make sure that you don't feel compelled to have" combat mods, hence their removal and Midnight's rework of, well, a lot. Kubit and Barker acknowledge that World of Warcraft's encounters and their design were a large reason why the add-ons have been so popular, as they "were able to basically solve a number of problems that were intended to be solved by players."

For now, Kubit states they're "anxiously awaiting to see players' feedback" on how Midnight feels without any combat mods – but the work won't be over for the devs. "This is not going to be a '12.0.1 and done' initiative to make sure that players have all the tools that they need to be able to represent everything they want to see in combat," as he concludes.

Blizzard is going to continue "to find issues" and address any room for improvement.

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Diablo 2 Resurrected stole the spotlight from little bro Diablo 4 last week with the surprise release of its Reign of the Warlock DLC, which adds the iconic ARPG's first new class in 25 years as well as some handy quality of life updates. The DLC costs $25, which is either a greed-driven atrocity or "the ultimate sign of respect," depending on how you look at it.

As someone who's been playing Diablo 2 for 25 years, I fully understand the protective urge to tell modern-day Blizzard to keep its grubby paws off such a beloved game, and to the studio's credit, the original Lord of Destruction version is still available on its website for $10. But let's be real, Diablo 2 Resurrected is very pretty, and extremely faithful to the original game. It's also reasonable to hope Blizzard leaves it untouched as well, and it seems it is doing that... in a way.

From the perspective of Path of Exile co-creator Chris Wilson, who was obviously directly inspired by Diablo 2, Blizzard locking D2R's quality of life, base game updates behind a paid DLC is a sure sign that it's taking the utmost care in preserving what's become an "important piece of gaming history."

"When working on changes to Diablo 2, you need to be so careful. This is a special game. It launched the entire action-RPG genre," said Wilson in the above YouTube video where he shares his thoughts on the new DLC as a fellow ARPG veteran. "It feels like wherever I go in life, I can ask someone if they've played Diablo 2 before, and they not only say yes, but have incredibly fond memories of playing it as a kid, a teenager, or while at university.

"Diablo 2 is a common shared memory among all of us, and that's why it must be treated with the utmost care, and it's very clear that the D2R team does deeply care about this. This is most clear when you see how they have partitioned off the changes into a new era that you can choose on a per-character basis."

Wilson pointed out that, should Blizzard add any changes to the Reign of the Warlock branch of Diablo 2 Resurrected, players can always just go back to the original version of the game, which has very minimal changes to the original 2000 APRG, and play it "forever."

"I suspect that the intent [behind Blizzard "paygating" quality of life improvements behind paid DLC] wasn't about selling more copies, but about preserving a museum piece baseline," said Wilson. "To me, those features being only available in the new era is the ultimate sign of respect to the original game. The team seems fully aware of the care that needs to be taken around this important piece of gaming history, and is treating it with the respect that it deserves."

Wilson, who has frequently cited Diablo 2 as his main inspiration for co-founding Grinding Gear Games and co-creating Path of Exile, which he called an "homage" to Blizzard's ARPG, wasn't without his criticisms for the Reign of the Warlock DLC. In the same video, he also said Blizzard made "a strategic mistake" releasing the DLC without "substantial new exploration content" like a new act.

1 week after Diablo 2 got its first new class in 25 years, the playerbase is already fractured on whether it's perfectly OP or "completely unacceptable"