World of Warcraft: Forever fans have worried about the potential of real-money trading since Blizzard first unveiled the new MMO during BlizzCon 2026 – but, thankfully, it appears that the studio is cracking down on it prior to the full release.

Now that the World of Warcraft: Forever Beta is out in full force, some players have begun to suspect certain content creators for engaging in, well, real-money trading for in-game gold.

The suspicions have risen to an all-time high after fans spotted the gold that Twitch streamer Ziqo ("ziqoftw" on the platform) supposedly accumulated naturally – or at least not via any illicit means – as he somehow boasted some 380 gold or so.

That's a lot… so much so, in fact, that it comes in at $200 or so in real-life money, as one user points out over on X (that is, if you use shady websites to purchase it – websites I will not be linking to here).

Players immediately called for Ziqo and others they suspect like him to face in-game bans or some other form of punishment from Blizzard. In the words of the linked fan above, "I call for a 12 months ban, including the tournament."

They add that the developers "promised us even 20 year old accounts would get banned," referencing how Blizzard previously stated that World of Warcraft: Forever's economy is "something we're taking very seriously" – which, honestly, it seems it is.

That's because the studio did indeed take action against Ziqo, as a separate thread with a clip of the streamer attached points out. It actually took back his gold.

In it, Ziqo confirms as much, saying, "Blizzard did sweep up all my gold." He goes on to describe how "they cleansed it; they left me with nine silver," showing his inventory – and, yep, he's no longer rich… that's for sure.

So, there you have it, Blizzard is cracking down on fans likely engaging in real-money trading, and it's a welcome sight. Some players think the devs should be even more strict, though.

Comments show calls for "permabans" and the like – but Blizzard itself hasn't done so, as far as I can tell. Will they? Perhaps. They've been targeting inappropriate names recently as well, so it's not outside the realm of possibilities.

WoW: Forever dev says quest drops aren't changing in the MMO, but Blizzard has added " a bit of under-the-hood functionality" that makes them fairer

It's no secret that Microsoft's plans to cut 3,200 employees at Xbox are still in action, having just affected a whopping 268 employees earlier this month, many of whom were working at Halo Studios – the team largely responsible for the Halo franchise.

At the time, chief content officer Matt Booty said the role eliminations were focused "across Halo Studios, other first-party studios, and the XGS management and central functions layer." As for the future of Halo, Activision took control of the franchise from Halo Studios with a promise to deliver "the greatest Halo game ever."

So, how exactly will it do that? Perhaps by looking to those who were laid off for ideas?

Frank O'Connor, industry veteran with nearly 20 years of work on Halo as both a writer and franchise creative director under his belt, certainly believes that the company should.

He shares as much under a new LinkedIn post on the matter, commenting on which paths he thinks that Activision could take to make a successful Halo entry – but "none of these are easy, guaranteed, or necessarily viable," as O'Connor writes.

The first path? "Make a 'classic' Halo movement/sandbox/shooter experience tailored to a core audience and scaled to be successful with that core audience and attractive to a broader one so it can grow." He adds the obvious fact that multiplayer "is better with more people playing, by mathematical default" – which, yeah.

And, the second? Well, that one moves away from what the Halo franchise is already known for for something "new."

O'Connor's second suggestion reads as follows: "Make something new, modern that reinvents the game/universe in a surprising but fantastic way. An action/sandbox game (maybe it's a new take on the FPS, maybe it's an action RPG but it's fundamentally different) and succeeds with a combination of strong story, IP use and gets a small head start based on curiosity or loyalty."

I suppose I could see it – but it's certainly riskier.

The Halo veteran's third potential path for Activision involves "translating" the IP into its new parent company's "comfort zone," with "player, progression, and business models that are proven to work" and "a big annual or semi-annual spectacle and constant content."

He does warn against tying it to hardware launch cycles and abandoning Halo's sandbox elements – and suggests hiring laid-off devs.

"Hire Bungie, Halo Studios, and other laid-off folk who are bursting with talent and ideas that got nerfed or shut down over the years," as O'Connor's comment concludes – and boy, would that be a nice idea if I thought for a moment that Activision would consider it.

Am I hopeful that it will? Of course, but the industry is shaky at best right now, and it's been a while since we've heard good news akin to O'Connor's suggestion here.

A girl can dream, I suppose – and I'll keep my fingers crossed that executives hear our (and O'Connor's, apparently) prayers and deliver a solid Halo entry… perhaps even "the greatest Halo game ever," as per Activision's own words.

Halo cinematic director "promoted and laid off in the same week" as Microsoft continues sweeping Xbox layoffs

World of Warcraft: Forever has made rounds online for seemingly standing as Blizzard's own take on Classic+ – but how faithful does the new MMO truly stay to its 2004 predecessor?

Well, as showcased during BlizzCon 2026, it does feature some quality-of-life improvements alongside its cozy revamped visuals. One of these, according to senior game designer Josh Greenfield, has to do with the way that quest-related items drop for players in groups.

He explains as much in a new post over on X, first stating that drops aren't totally changing – but that doesn't mean they're not improving at all, per se.

"Someone asked me something earlier about how quest drops work in WoW: Forever and if we are changing that," writes Greenfield. "The short answer is no; however we did do something cool that we haven't really had a good opportunity to talk about yet. In the interest of our Pro-social approach, we added a bit of under-the-hood functionality to quests to more predictably round-robin quest items to people who are grouped."

Thank the Light – if there's one thing I think we all hate, it's feeling left behind while every other player in your group is getting drops left, right, and center… and Greenfield gets it.

"There's nothing worse than killing a million furbolgs and having one guy in your group have 8/10 furbolg butts, and the other guy has 1/10. In WoW: Forever we've got something in place that makes it a bit more consistent that everyone in the group will get drops evenly."

The World of Warcraft: Forever Beta's ever-changing, though. As Greenfield puts it, "We are still dialing in this system" – but folks should still give it a go.

"If you are afraid to group on drop quests, I'd encourage you to give it a try. It's still going to take time, just like vanilla WoW, but it'll be less feast or famine, and you'll definitely kill things much faster." And, again, the developers aren't completely overhauling the old in favor of the new.

"A bit of grind on these drop quests are part of the vanilla magic we are maintaining, but we can do small things to help it feel more natural and encourage grouping while still maintaining that original design, and that's our goal," as Greenfield concludes.

He expands on this in the comments, too: "There's still some randomness, but it's more like a bad luck protection if you haven't seen a drop in a while and others are pulling ahead."

Honestly, I'm fairly pleased with group play in the Beta myself so far. Drops do feel even enough, and if one person does get a lot more of something than another, they can trade.

Here's why we think World of Warcraft: Forever gives old school fans nearly everything they could want after spending just 20 hours in the stunning MMO.

A games industry analyst says that Xbox is being acquired in reverse after the publisher announced that it is placing some of its studios under Bethesda and Activision.

Microsoft announced last week that the next wave of redundancies, as part of the planned 3,200 jobs cuts across Xbox throughout FY27, would not only result in the loss of 268 jobs – with the likes of Halo Studios and The Coalition affected – but also mark a major reshuffle for Xbox Game Studios. Notably, Playground Games and Turn 10 have been merged, Bethesda Game Studios is now managing Obsidian Entertainment, while Rare, World's Edge, and the Halo franchise have been moved under Activision Blizzard.

Joost van Dreunen, a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business and games industry analyst, posts on Substack about the changes, describing it as a "reverse acquisition of Xbox." Van Dreunen says "folding Halo, one of Xbox's prized IPs, into Activision, the firm it acquired in 2023, is surprising at best. At worst, it's evidence of how poorly Xbox was running its studios."

"Bringing Halo under Activision, even with a dedicated team, is a logical step. But it doesn't guarantee success," Ven Dreunen notes, citing that Call of Duty's biggest launch with Black Ops 6 saw a sharp drop-off of players by the time spring rolled around. He adds that we're now watching "a reverse acquisition in slow motion, where the publisher Microsoft paid $69 billion for [what] turns out to be the division best equipped to run the studios Microsoft built itself."

Van Dreunen likens Xbox's recent acquisitions to Disney's 2006 purchase of Pixar, in which senior Pixar members were put in charge of Disney's then-struggling in-house animation studio while Pixar was in the midst of a generational run. He adds, "It's becoming evident that Microsoft's acquisitions were less about the IP and more about the managerial talent."

Microsoft has had annual rounds of layoffs since acquiring Activision Blizzard King in late 2023, and we're now reaching the point where – through rampant studio closures and a number of studios now falling under the remit of Bethesda, Activision Blizzard, and King – Xbox Game Studios is down to a handful of studios.

Post-Xbox, Double Fine boss Tim Schafer is baffled by the terrible state of the game industry: "People are making money, so I don't know why there's a big loss of jobs"

Following Blizzard's big reveal of World of Warcraft: Forever at BlizzCon 2026, the MMO's official Beta release went live – and it's almost too popular.

So much so, that senior game designer Josh Greenfield said he was witnessing "the craziest numbers I've seen in 17 years working at Blizzard" as the studio's servers kept breaking thanks to the WoW: Forever Beta.

The developers remedied the issue by, you know, simply increasing the MMO's population cap – something they've just had to do again over the weekend, because folks apparently can't get enough of it.

World of Warcraft executive producer and vice president Holly Longdale reveals as much in a new post over on X, writing, "So… we had to increase the WoW: Forever Beta population cap again. The wild ride continues." It continues, indeed.

Although Longdale doesn't specify whether Blizzard lifted the population cap for EU or US players, I'd wager it's for both. Despite costing at least $59.99 to access, the Beta boasts plenty of fans worldwide from what I've seen.

Heck, the initial launch was a bit of a debacle itself, as senior game producer Tom Ellis dubbed it "a bit excessive" as countless fans struggled to get into the game.

Although the devs figured the release out eventually, it seems as though the World of Warcraft beta is just as popular as before – or even more so, seeing as Blizzard is actively raising the population cap over time. It spells a good future for the MMO, honestly.

Its popularity makes sense, too. Devs previously described World of Warcraft: Forever as an edition of Blizzard's decades-old MMO that's "for the millions of people who have had their accounts lapse" in Classic – and I'd say that resonates.

Not only that, but it's managing to reach entirely new audiences as well, like myself… and after spending all weekend playing the Beta, I can safely say that it's also succeeding there.

Here's why we think World of Warcraft: Forever gives old school fans nearly everything they could want after spending just 20 hours in the stunning MMO.

Although it feels like Blizzard only just unveiled World of Warcraft: Forever during BlizzCon 2026, some time has passed now and the beta is out in full force – and, unsurprisingly, folks are already catching bans for inappropriate behavior.

What inappropriate behavior so early on, you might ask – and it all boils down to character names. People are choosing, erm, less than respectful titles for their avatars, and it's caught Blizzard's attention.

As the studio writes in an online post, "Reminder to keep your character names in the Forever Beta respectful and within policy. Forced name changes are going into effect and users with the most extreme violations have been removed from the Beta."

While that all sounds valid enough, some fans aren't having it. There are various threads circulating the web with claims of overaction from Blizzard, as players say they're mildly crude or silly names have been targeted wrongfully.

The developers disagree, though – as per a statement over on Twitter from senior game producer Tom Ellis, the team is not just taking accounts down willy-nilly. Not at all, in fact.

Ellis explains, "Anyone saying they were removed from beta for naming their character 'Billy Mcsuckmahballz' is telling little white lies. That character likely just received a forced name change. Multiple unfortunate humans read through every name that was removed from beta today. If you're genuinely confused, remember that it's our database, we can see every character you've created, not just the one you're playing."

He then concludes, "I read the list. No sympathy. Be a better human next time." That checks out, honestly – and it's hard to counter the devs when they've got an active database of the bans they've issued.

A handful of fans are still upset, judging by the comments, but I see plenty more celebrating Blizzard's crackdown on its initial announcement. As one reply puts it, "Based. Thank you." It can't be easy keeping things SFW, after all.

Especially not within such a massive MMO community. There are responses noting that the devs have missed some inappropriate names, for example – but they are only getting started here. World of Warcraft: Forever's full release is on November 4.

World of Warcraft: Forever is "for the millions of people who have had their accounts lapse" in Classic, dev says.

When Blizzard first unveiled World of Warcraft: Forever during BlizzCon 2026, many fans saw it as the MMO developer's answer to their Classic+ prayers – and, according to world builder Matthew Armstrong, it sounds like it basically is just that.

The dev goes into detail on who Forever is truly "for" in a lengthy new thread on Twitter, saying that he had a very particular type of player in mind while helping design Blizzard's revamped take on its 2004 gem: the hardened Classic fan who didn't feel satisfied with the non-retail version and how it deviated from the original game.

"I'm seeing a lot of discourse about who WoW: Forever is being made for," he writes. "While I cannot speak for anyone else on the team I can speak for myself. I am making WoW: Forever for the Classic gamer and for the millions of people who have had their accounts lapse over the years because they were not satisfied with changes that were made to the game. Whether those changes were to the art style, the story, social aspects, game design, or changes to their favorite class."

World of Warcraft: Forever is no retail, that's for sure. "I did not spend the last year of my life relearning and mastering how to do things like we did it 20+ years ago for retail players," as the world builder puts it.

"I could have taken it easy and just kept doing things like I had done for the past eight years on retail… because I was much more familiar with it and it actually takes a lot less time to do (height maps on textures do a ton of heavy lifting)."

And, as Armstrong points out, "because the reality is that the majority of retail players wouldn't care and would probably actually prefer it." That's not what he did, though.

"I felt I had a duty to uphold an artistic vision and integrity that millions of people expect from us" – both players and fellow devs "past and present who worked on it over 20 years ago." He wanted to "create something that resembled their work.

That's what Forever is – an Old School RuneScape-style upgrade to the original World of Warcraft MMO many folks know inside out and love. And, Armstrong clarifies that it's not a diss aimed at fans of the retail version.

He simply "wanted to make Forever as authentic of a vanilla experience as possible," which is "wildly different" than retail, obviously. There are three "sayings" he says he's followed throughout development, too.

"Convenience is the death of the journey" is the first – which checks out. Then, "If you're making a game for everyone then you're making it for no one." Again, that aligns well with what Armstrong says regarding Classic and retail fans. Finally, "Every change we make incurs a debt to the authenticity of the game and sooner or later that debt will be paid." I suppose Classic (and all the Classic+ requests) proves this point.

"These are my core beliefs and I had a specific group of people I was targeting with my work," he concludes. "These beliefs cannot be shaken and I will try to hold the line against anything that goes against them and will continue to pester the team about things that feel out of place."

Armstrong does still hope World of Warcraft: Forever "will pull in as many people as possible," Classic, retail, or otherwise.

"I hope you can all remember what made this game so special in the first place and that starts with understanding why we are so passionate about keeping it authentic."

I certainly do, and judging by the comments, it's safe to say the majority of players do.

"You can't tell me this isn't WoW 2": Blizzard says World of Warcraft doesn't need a sequel thanks to Forever, but MMO fans say it already made one.

The massive Xbox "reset," as the brand's leadership calls it, continues. Yesterday, the company announced another 268 jobs eliminated along its quest to lay off 3,200 employees throughout the fiscal year. We also learned that several Xbox studios and franchises were coming under the Activision Blizzard banner, including Age of Empires developer World's Edge.

Studio creative director Adam Isgreen says there have been substantial layoffs at World's Edge alongside that transition. "I am of course disappointed that this is the way the time with World's Edge and Age ends for myself and many of my talented teammates that were also impacted – we had some great plans for what's next – and I hope the team that remains can rise to the occasion down the line," Isgreen says in a LinkedIn post (thanks, Rock Paper Shotgun).

In a separate post on ResetEra, Isgreen adds that "just under half the studio was let go." We have reached out to Microsoft for comment and will update this story if we learn more.

Isgreen's roots in the RTS genre go back decades. He was a designer on the first Command & Conquer: Red Alert, working at Westwood Studios from 1995 through 2003. He worked on the beloved Star Wars: Empire at War at Westwood successor Petroglyph, and eventually joined Microsoft in 2010.

He served as creative director on a number of projects at Xbox, including such varied projects as Killer Instinct, Crimson Dragon, D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die, and ReCore. Eventually, he helped lead the company's Age of Empire revival, again working as creative director on a massive pile of remasters and 2021's Age of Empires 4.

"I never thought that I'd work at Microsoft, let alone spend a significant amount of my career here – 16 years! – especially in a creative-first role," Isgreen notes in his LinkedIn post.

"What's next?" he asks. "No idea. Maybe games? Maybe not? Pinball machines? Always loved the combination of design + art + engineering they represent."

These are the best RTS games you can play today.

Xbox's new reshuffle has seen Rare moved under Activision, 24 years after Xbox outbid the publisher for the studio.

Rare has mostly been seen as one of the biggest drop offs in games. While the studio's Sea of Thieves is seemingly super successful, it was one of the powerhouse developers of the 1990s only to flounder throughout the 2000s and 2010s; the big shift being when Rare was purchased by Microsoft.

While the studio did release some great games during this era like the Viva Pinata duology and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts (which I get why people don't like a new genre slapped onto an existing franchise), it never reached the highs of its SNES and N64 output.

And with Xbox's latest wave of redundancies that continue the planned 3,200 jobs cut throughout FY27, Microsoft has announced that Rare will be moved under Activision as part of this reshuffling. But as pointed out by co-founder of The Game Business, Chris Dring, this could've been a reality for the studio back in 2002.

Dring notes that when Nintendo declined to buy the remaining 51% of the studio a bidding war for the developer started that was eventually won by Xbox, with the studio being purchased in September 2002 for $375 million. However, other than Xbox and Nintendo (who Microsoft's Ed Fries claims was part of the bidding war after declining to purchase the studio), the other major interested party was none other than Activision.

And now, just over 24 years later, Activision is the home of Rare. Of course, it's a very different company now than it was back in 2002, with the studio focusing on its successful live service title Sea of Thieves. But it does mean the PS1 and N64's biggest platforming icons (outside of Mario, obviously) are now all under the Activision banner as Banjo joins Crash and Spyro.

The Rare SNES game that became Banjo-Kazooie has been preserved thanks to a leaker who wants you to "delete Microsoft and Sony from your lives."

Xbox has announced a major reorganization of its entire first-party studio ecosystem. Rare and World's Edge will now operate under Activision Blizzard. The Call of Duty publisher is also taking stewardship of the Halo franchise.

This is a significant shift, with Rare and World's Edge having previously operated under the Xbox Game Studios banner. This means that Activision Blizzard will assist Rare in steering the evolution of Sea of Thieves, and take command of the Age of Empires franchise moving forward.

The decision to move Halo to Activision is also something of a surprise. 343 Industries has overseen the Halo franchise ever since Bungie regained its independence from Microsoft in 2007, having shipped Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Halo 4, Halo 5: Guardians, and Halo Infinite. The team was rebranded to Halo Studios in 2024 as it sought to push the franchise in a new direction – the recently released Halo: Campaign Evolved serving as an example for how the series would function on Unreal Engine.

Activision president Rob Kostich said this of the change:

"We're thrilled to welcome Halo, Rare, and World's Edge to Activision. It's an honor and a responsibility that we do not take lightly. These teams and their games have inspired fans around the world for decades."

"For Halo, our goal is clear: make the greatest Halo game ever, worthy of its universe and legacy, while staying true to what made players love it in the first place. It is a bold ambition, one that this franchise deserves. We have already begun assembling a purpose-built team, unique in capability and talent, ready and excited to deliver this next chapter with the community."

"To the World's Edge and Rare teams, we can't wait to get to work together."

The 2026 remake of Combat Evolved is expected to be the only new title released by Halo Studios, with the group now operating in a support capacity for existing Halo games. The studio is expected to endure a substantial reduction in headcount as a result of the franchise control moving to Activision.

While Xbox is yet to make any further announcements regarding the next mainline Halo installment, a new team – rather than one of the studios responsible for keeping Call of Duty on its annual release cadence – will be put into place to steer its development. Matt Booty, Xbox's chief content officer, has said in a statement that Activision's Halo will be "led by a new, purpose-built team that is separate from ongoing development and plans for Call of Duty."

In addition to these changes at Activision Blizzard, Xbox has also announced that Bethesda will begin managing Obsidian Entertainment (the two studios are already developing a new Fallout title), and that Playground Games (Forza Horizon) and Turn 10 (Forza Motorsport) will "come together as one studio" to help define the future of Forza, Fable, and the ForzaTech engine which powers both open-world games.

These big changes in the way that Xbox operates come as part of the broader Xbox Reset that CEO Asha Sharma and chief content officer Matt Booty announced earlier this year. Touted by Sharma as "the most significant restructure in Xbox history", the reset has already led to over 1,600 redundancies and a divestiture with Compulsion Games, Double Fine, and Undead Labs as the group attempts to "return to growth" and streamline its content portfolio.

As a part of today's news, Xbox announced a further 268 redundancies across the business. It also confirmed that Arkane (Marvel's Blade) will remain in consultancy throughout the rest of the year, and that Ninja Theory (Senua) is facing the prospect of closure after two potential deals to secure its future fell through.

For more on Xbox, check out the full list of upcoming Xbox Series X games.

Xbox has announced a new wave of redundancies, with 268 staff set to exit the business. In a statement on the Xbox Wire, chief content officer Matt Booty says the role eliminations are focused "across Halo Studios, other first-party studios, and the XGS management and central functions layer."

This all follows the 1,600 role eliminations that were made in July, after Xbox CEO Asha Sharma instituted "the most significant restructure in Xbox history."

The decision to 'Reset Xbox' is expected to ultimately cost up to 3,200 jobs throughout FY27, and this announcement only builds to that number. The reason for the restructure is multi-faceted, although Sharma has said that change is necessary for the company to return to growth and profitability.

As part of the restructure, a number of first-party studios have already exited the Xbox Game Studios ecosystem. Xbox separated from Compulsion Games and Double Fine Productions earlier this year, with the developers of South of Midnight and Psychonauts 2 regaining their independence eight years after they were originally acquired.

Undead Labs and Ninja Theory were undergoing similar considerations. Xbox has announced that Undead Labs "has now successfully transitioned on similar terms," and has located a new publisher for State of Decay 3. Unfortunately, the news isn't as positive for the Hellblade creator. Booty says "two separate agreements for Ninja Theory fell through. We will now begin consultation with employees on a proposed closure while continuing to explore other paths forward." It's unclear what all of this means for the future of Senua, which is slated to release in 2027.

As part of the Xbox Reset memorandum in July, Xbox had announced that Arkane's future was also uncertain and that, in accordance with French law, the studio's management was required to consult with its "Works Council to review potential strategic options." Xbox says that "consultation with Arkane remains underway and is expected to continue through the end of the year." There are no updates of what this means for its Marvel's Blade project.

This latest round of layoffs means that Xbox is around three-quarters of the way through its total planned redundancies, and comes on a day where the company has announced a fairly significant restructure. Obsidian Entertainment is now being managed by Bethesda, with the pair now collaborating on a new Fallout title.

Activision Blizzard King is also expanding its remit; the Call of Duty publisher will now have operational control of Rare and World's Edge (including the Sea of Thieves and Age of Empires franchises), and will establish a new team to lead production of the next mainline installment to the Halo series.

Diablo 5 takes place in a world where the titular Lord of Terror has already won, taking over Sanctuary and reshaping the world in his own image. For Blizzard, telling this dark chapter of the story means telling multiple stories in parallel: the past, the present, and the future.

That's according to game director Joe Shely, who tells our friends at TechRadar Gaming that there are "three stories that we're telling" within the world of Diablo 5. The past story is the tale of how Diablo took over Sanctuary in the first place. The present, of course, seems to consist of the main action of the game, where the familiar world has been taken over by the minions of Hell.

Diablo's top minions in this desolate world are called Dread Commanders, and they take an active role in reshaping Sanctuary in Hell's image – hence the future part of the story. "We call it terror forming because these Dread Commanders will actually transform the environment, transform the biome into a version of hell that relates to personal powers and powers at station," Shely says.

"The procedural world gives us a lot of levers to pull for that," narrative director Jennifer Hepler adds. "You can go to a place, and it is under the control of the Dread Commander of Undeath, and it's going to be full of zombies and things like that. And then later in the game, you could return there, and it's either been reclaimed by humanity or taken over by a different Dread Commander, and the environment will be totally different as a result of that."

Blizzard's publicly stated goal for Diablo 5 is to make sure it's got "the best campaign ever," and the studio is taking a big swing with the setting to make sure that's true. The devs are also insistent that a full sequel is necessary because the return of the titular big bad is too big for a mere Diablo 4 expansion. We'll have plenty of time to speculate on how these choices will pan out, since the game isn't scheduled to launch until 2029.

Diablo 5 is Blizzard's darkest ARPG yet, and that's the best way to honor the game that changed my life 30 years ago.

Following the big reveal of World of Warcraft: Forever at BlizzCon 2026, many fans dubbed it Blizzard's answer to their Classic+ prayers – but others see it as such a strong revival of the original MMO, it might as well be a sequel in its own right.

World of Warcraft: Forever is many things: a revamped take on Blizzard's beloved 2004 gem, an MMO with new content that nobody has previously experienced, and an all-around cozy game to pour hundreds of hours into between school or work.

What it technically isn't, however, is an official sequel – but fans enjoying its paid beta period feel it's got enough bang for its buck that might as well be World of Warcraft 2, apparently.

One fan taken aback by Forever's stunning nighttime visuals declares as much, writing in a post on Twitter, "You can't tell me this isn't WoW 2." Over on Reddit, commenters discuss how the new game "opens up so much potential," with a response calling it "a pretty smart way to develop WoW 2."

Threads on the official World of Warcraft forums echo this sentiment, as folks write that "WoW Forever feels like WoW 2.0 and it makes sense."

It's certainly an interesting take to read, especially seeing as Blizzard itself essentially said that World of Warcraft 2 isn't happening because the developers aren't sure what a sequel to the old MMO would "give you that World of Warcraft: Forever isn't already giving you" – so, yeah.

It's undeniably a downright huge project for the studio, and it seems that even they liken it to a successor of sorts… even if it'll coexist with Classic and retail.

Honestly, I'm personally thrilled with the beta so far myself. Blizzard has nailed everything from the ambience to the quest design, placing me in the shoes of a giddy child booting up their new game for the first time ever once again – and, yes, I even happen to like the controversial Skyborne race, regardless of its hefty $30 price tag, and its opening story.

The devs have something very good cooking here, y'all.

That, plus the fact that Blizzard is waving goodbye to combat add-ons (much like it did in retail before) and GDKP – thank the Light. I just can't wait until everyone gets to hop into World of Warcraft: Forever on November 4.

World of Warcraft: Forever dev tells fans concerned by datamines and screenshots to "reserve judgment" until they play Blizzard's new MMO.

World of Warcraft has been running for 22 years, and even now Blizzard sometimes struggles to keep up with demand. Yesterday, the WoW: Forever beta launched and immediately broke under the weight of everyone trying to get in at once. How is this still happening when Blizzard has decades of experience with launching new MMO content? The devs themselves say they were genuinely taken aback by just how popular the Forever beta has been.

"Man, it was hard to sleep last night, I was so excited," senior game designer Josh Greenfield says on Twitter. "Beta has been... crazy. The craziest numbers I've seen in 17 years working at Blizzard and almost 8 years on classic. We've got something really special here."

Maybe that sounds hyperbolic, but senior game producer Tom Ellis has posted a more exhaustive technical breakdown of what went wrong for the opening hours of the Forever beta. "It's not a Production stack by a long, long, long, long, long, long shot," Ellis explains on Twitter. "Betas for WoW aren't usually huge meter movers so this environment just isn't that powerful."

Because "our little BETA environment only uses one REGIONAL realm," Ellis says, math on the servers started getting screwy as this one little connection point was suddenly having to funnel in so many players. This is why people kept getting disconnected after sitting through the lengthy login queues.

It took the devs "around half an hour" to figure out that this was the bottleneck, because the game and Battle.net services both showed very little load. "We all recognized we need more logging and notifications when this system is kicking in, but this is the first time anyone's seen it kick in when [there] wasn't an obvious CPU issue to go along with it," Ellis explains. "20 years, always something new."

Ellis also addresses the long times players were experiencing while looting, accepting quests, and performing similar server-bound actions. "Our intrepid Oracle Database Engineers had to perform a manual analyze on all the tables and setup some automated jobs to periodically keep doing it," but because the servers were being hit so frequently, the typical rate wasn't sufficient. As soon as the devs addressed that, the database performance "cleared up instantly."

There were the restarts. "A few hours in, we noticed our WORLD pools that run, well, the game simulation you play on, were running crazy hot on CPU and almost out of memory," Ellis explains. Empty maps were not being correctly shut down, and those were slowly – or, actually, "not that slowly" – clogging up CPU and memory on the servers. The devs figured out a fix, but that fix needed restarts "to pick it up." Blizzard also took the opportunity to add additional worlds and expand the regional service for further stability.

Back in 2019, we interviewed numerous devs about why big online games always seem to break at launch, and it seems that all the same problems inevitably crop up. We heard one dev say "it's just impossible" to fully solve these kinds of launches, and WoW: Forever demonstrates how new issues crop up every single time. But hey, at least the fixes are coming faster. I'm old enough to remember when people were struggling to play Diablo 3 for weeks after launch…

WoW: Forever doesn't allow GDKP, Blizzard says the new MMO's economy is "something we're taking very seriously."

World of Warcraft: Forever has been on many a fan's mind since Blizzard's big reveal during BlizzCon 2026, especially as it's essentially a take on the long-requested Classic+. But how exactly will it differ from the other branches of WoW?

Well, according to senior game designer Josh Greenfield, there's one glaring difference: GDKP will not be a part of Forever.

In case you're out of the loop, GDKP stands for Gold Dragon Kill Points – an auction-based loot distribution system that sees a raid party's treasure go to the highest bidder, only for all of the accumulated gold to then be split across the players. It's controversial because lots of folks feel it encourages real-money trading.

So, what does Greenfield have to say about it? In a new Q&A session over on YouTube, the lead first explains that World of Warcraft: Forever won't allow GDKP.

"The short answer is no, we are not going to allow GDKP," he says. "I think the most important aspect of that to us is our first pillar – to nurture and protect social experiences. I think a lot of the concerns around GDKP start to get bundled up into that conversation, around things like that."

Is Blizzard making this choice because of real-money trades? Not entirely.

"The actual main reason that we are not going to allow it in WoW: Forever is that it has that sort of tendency we've noticed in the regions where [GDKP] has been popular for longer to reach a level of ubiquity," Greenfield says. "That can kinda overtake the traditional guild structure, and that's one of the really difficult decisions about being a game designer, managing this game at this scale."

It's not an easy decision, as Greenfield states. "Sometimes, you have to make difficult choices. We never really want to tell people how to play" – but systems like GDKP can get in the way of others' experience with the MMO.

They can act as a "big barrier to entry for new players, or players that do not have that many resources," he says. Longtime fans can quickly make some gold, while newcomers end up feeling forced to "buy gold."

That's no bueno, and "something we're taking very seriously in WoW: Forever," Greenfield explains. Plus, it feeds into the whole economy and real-money transaction debacle.

"GDKP is an excellent way for bad actors to launder large sums of gold," as he says. This complicates everything for both players and the developers alike, as they struggle to target bots and such. In World of Warcraft: Forever, Blizzard will "be very, very actively monitoring the economy."

Honestly, I'm happy to hear that Blizzard's settled on no GDKP runs in Forever – here's hoping the economy remains healthy, and the studio stays strong in its decision to restrict the auction-based raid loot system (and, it seems, combat add-ons, too).

World of Warcraft: Forever beta struggles to launch as devs say "the number of people hammering at the door of the Beta is... insane"

World of Warcraft: Forever is here in beta form, and the true WoW experience is intact, right down to the infinite queues and disconnects as players start banging on the door to get in. Even the devs seem a bit taken aback by the number of players lining up to participate, but they promise eager fans that everybody will be in soon.

"Thank you to everyone waiting to get into the WoW: Forever Beta," the official Warcraft account begins. "We're working through some final issues, and we expect the doors to open soon. Thank you for your patience!"

"Yeah, ok that’s a bit excessive for a beta," senior game producer Tom Ellis adds in a separate post. "Calm down now… give us a minute, this environment is taking a beating and we’re scaling various services up."

"Wow, the number of people hammering at the door of the Beta is... insane," associate production director Clayton Stone says in another tweet. "Thanks for showing up, everyone! We're scaling up and up and up (and up). You will all be in soon."

You can probably guess at the state of WoW discussion forums right now, and the WoW subreddit is predictably filled with memes about the queue times, early reactions from those lucky enough to get in, and big ol' threads for people to commiserate while they wait. And yes, everyone has already made the joke about it taking "forever" to get in.

World of Warcraft: Forever's controversial Skyborne race came from Blizzard veteran Chris Metzen himself - "We knew we wanted to add some sort of elves."

Although World of Warcraft: Forever impressed many Classic+ hopefuls last weekend during BlizzCon 2026, some fans left Blizzard's big reveal wondering why the new MMO looked so much like its retail counterpart.

That is, anyway, in terms of its art style and models. Conversations soared on the likes of Reddit as folks pondered why World of Warcraft: Forever feels "too retail" and more like a "retail minus" than a "Classic plus."

It's an amusing but reasonable concern, I suppose, as the community is understandably attached to the 21-year-old world Blizzard first invited them into way back in 2004. Is it truly something fans should worry about, though?

According to Classic developer Josh Greenfield, the answer is no – or, at least, they should give World of Warcraft: Forever a chance come its November release.

In response to a fan on Twitter asking why the art direction follows retail's aesthetic rather than Classic's, Greenfield says players should wait to experience the MMO in person to fully judge it, as it's not the same as viewing screenshots or datamined models.

"I'd encourage you to reserve judgement on any model you see datamined or in screenshots until you can see it in-game and in context with the rest of the world," writes the dev. "I can't get too deep into it… but what you see in datamining might not be fully representative of how things appear in-engine."

Honestly, that's valid enough, I suppose – trailers, screencaps, and model highlights can't match the vibe of the full game itself.

Fans seem content with Greenfield's response, too, with the original post replying, "Sounds good, thank you for communicating, judgement reserved." Another chimes in that they'll also "reserve judgement for now" but are "still concerned that models like these are too different as to not fit into the Classic world and player models cohesively."
More commenters share this sentiment, expressing that they're still unsure about the aesthetic.

I suppose we'll just have to wait and see how it all meshes together come World of Warcraft: Forever's big launch in a couple of months. Fingers crossed it feels more like an Old School RuneScape take on Blizzard's original MMO than the retail one.

World of Warcraft: Forever takes page out of retail's book as Blizzard confirms access to add-ons will be restricted in the throwback MMO

World of Warcraft: Forever was unveiled this past weekend at BlizzCon 2026, giving us our first-ever look at Blizzard's official take on Classic+ (or, at least, the closest thing we'll get to it) – and much like the retail MMO, it won't be too supportive of add-ons, apparently.

Blizzard made waves in the World of Warcraft community after deciding to remove combat mods from the retail release, stating that it hoped to "level the playing field" with less outside help in raids and the like.

That decision wasn't too popular with folks at first, so it's not at all surprising that many of the discussions surrounding World of Warcraft: Forever online have pondered whether it too would cut add-ons out of the picture.

Well, as it turns out, the new version of Blizzard's 21-year-old MMO will indeed similarly restrict add-ons – even though they aren't in Classic.

World of Warcraft: Classic designer Tim Jones and lead encounter designer Mike Nuthals tell Kotaku as much in a recent interview, confirming that "computational add-ons" (think combat add-ons and those that automate communications and such) are something we won't have access to.

They tell the outlet, "the in-game or in-combat add-on disarmament where the programmatic, the calculations done to automate marking or communicating for players, we're going to bring that over so that players will not have access to those kind of computational add-ons."

In other words, Forever is taking a page out of retail's book here in restricting such add-ons – but it's not exactly a bad decision. Raiding in either isn't of the same caliber, after all.

Folks point as much out over on Twitter, with one person commenting, "Unless WoW: Forever combat is much harder and much more complex than I am expecting, this is not a big deal." Another adds, "The content isn't even hard enough to warrant it."

So, all in all, it's certainly not proving as unpopular a change as it did in retail – perhaps also because World of Warcraft: Forever is launching this way, rather than going on to remove a feature.

Here's hoping fans who want to use other sorts of add-ons are still able to, with all that said. Combat help is one thing, but quality-of-life is a whole other ball game – but I suppose we'll find out more when World of Warcraft: Forever releases in November.

World of Warcraft: Forever's controversial Skyborne race came from Blizzard veteran Chris Metzen himself – "We knew we wanted to add some sort of elves."

Following our first look at World of Warcraft: Forever at BlizzCon 2026 this past weekend, Blizzard's answer to everyone's Classic+ prayers, a lot of controversy surrounding the new Skyborne race has made the rounds online.

From the $30 price tag to the ill-fitting lore, fans have shared quite a few concerns about the Skybrone. So, what prompted Blizzard to implement the pretty blue elves in the first place?

Well, according to senior game designer Josh Greenfield, it all boils down to Chris Metzen – you know, one of the fathers of Warcraft in its entirety, basically. He explains as much in a new interview with GameSpot, saying it "started with a lot of questions."

Greenfield goes on: "We were talking about WoW Forever early on and we knew we wanted to add some sort of elves. Everyone on the team is a big fan of elves. We all love elves. They're very popular… and we knew we wanted to do something and came to him with a bunch of ideas and pitches and different variants of elves…"

Metzen's response? He "was really like, 'Yeah, we should do something; we should get a little crazy with it.'"

And, the rest is history. Blizzard "agreed and we had a lot of fun kind of concepting it with him." So, there you have it – a Warcraft legend himself approves of the Skyborne… but, it's not enough for many of the naysayers.

Over on Reddit, plenty of folks discussing Metzen's role in the new race's creation still believe it to be ill-fitting in World of Warcraft: Forever. As one comment reads, "They still look very out of place, they don't feel right…"

I wonder myself whether Blizzard will respond to all of the backlash the race has seen thus far – but I suppose only time will tell. As of now, access to the Skyborne is purchasable and will release with World of Warcraft: Forever in November.

World of Warcraft 2 isn't happening because Blizzard isn't sure what a sequel to the MMO would "give you that World of Warcraft: Forever isn't already giving you"

Blizzard gave WoW Classic+ hopefuls the news they were hoping for this past weekend during the BlizzCon 2026 reveals with a first look at World of Warcraft: Forever – a reimagining of the 21-year-old MMO's nostalgic beginnings.

In case you missed it, it ticks all the boxes and then some, with revamped visuals, a plethora of new quests, and much, much more… including a never-before-seen race, the Skyborne.

While that sounds incredibly exciting on paper, there's a bit of a catch: the Skyborne will cost you, and it's not cheap. In fact, it's at least $29.99, as per the official World of Warcraft website.

I say at least because it's DLC of sorts, and there are a few options. There's the Skyborne Epic Pack for some $20 more, and the Warcraft Forever Collection for a whopping $79.99, for example.

While these two come with more than just the Skyborne race – which is admittedly stunning, appearing as a soft periwinkle-skinned take on elves – the base $30 purchase is just to access the Skyborne come World of Warcraft: Forever's release in November… and, unsurprisingly, folks aren't thrilled.

Just have a search over on Reddit, and you'll find countless threads discussing the Skyborne race and its hefty price tag. Heck, there's even a huge "Skyborne feedback" post, given how hot a topic this is.

"I'm extremely positive about WoW: Forever and I'll be playing day one with high hopes," one comment reads. "That being said, not a fan of this race. They dropped the ball on that part."

It's not just the price, though. Others take issue with the fact that the Skyborne just… feel out of place.

As one person puts it, "From the aesthetic to the druid forms and mostly the blue variant has a weird retail vibe I just can't describe." Another dubs this a "mindbogglingly strange decision" on Blizzard's part, while many more consider it counter-creative. "They are just blue elves," after all – much like Night Elves.

"Should have been something else," one fan complains. "Something more interesting and new."

Honestly, there's a lot more to read through regarding the Skyborne controversy, from the race's price to its potential lore-breaking implications, but I do still have to admit I'm on the fence about it all myself.

I don't like the paywall or the lack of faction identity, but I find the design quite nice aesthetically.

I suppose the community will be split on this one as it is on just about everything, and that's that – 'tis the nature of MMOs, I fear. Blizzard also has yet to speak on the Skyborne debacle yet itself, but I'd advise keeping an eye on its channels.

World of Warcraft 2 isn't happening because Blizzard isn't sure what a sequel to the MMO would "give you that World of Warcraft: Forever isn't already giving you"

World of Warcraft: Forever has been making the rounds online after Blizzard's big reveal at BlizzCon 2026, standing as the closest official thing we'll get to the long-coveted Classic+, but it does also mean we probably won't see a retail sequel.

In other words, World of Warcraft 2 – which, honestly, feels a bit silly to even write. After all, World of Warcraft itself is an ongoing project as you know, standing as the biggest MMO to date… one that's over two decades in the making now.

With Forever underway, too, there's little reason for such a sequel to ever actually come to fruition, anyway, as principal designer Kris Zierhut tells IGN in a new interview.

"I think one of the things that's singularly great about WoW is we have this game and this world and this design that has been continuously developed for the last 25 years," he explains – and, yeah, that checks out.

As Zierhut puts it, "We keep making it better. We made the graphics better, we made the rendering better, we made the lighting better," you name it. It's all better in retail, and, yes, Forever. All of that, plus the way things work behind the scenes.

"We've also made the way the engine draws things move more efficiently," Zierhut continues. "The way the server runs, handling players and moving them around, and all the things that handle spells and combat, all of that's been made more efficient and better over the years. We have this incredible engine and server infrastructure driving the game that is second to none."

So, "Why would you throw that away and start over?"

Why would you, indeed… not to mention the decades-in-progress lore that World of Warcraft sits upon. "It's not like there's something wrong with the story," as the dev says. "We love the story. So, going back to the beginning [with World of Warcraft: Forever], there's a chance to explore that story in new and different ways."

Considering all of this, Blizzard doesn't really have any motivation to move away from it all to try and conjure up a sequel.

As Zierhut concludes, "It's really hard to say, 'Well, what would a WoW 2 give you that World of Warcraft: Forever isn't already giving you?'"

I get it – it's not just a nostalgic rework with plenty of new features to look forward to, it's a chance to attract both fresh faces and longtime fans, too… the same way a World of Warcraft 2 would, except perhaps a bit better at grabbing the attention of the former.

I, for one, can't wait to dive into World of Warcraft: Forever come its November release – and, much like I'm not inclined to wish for a Minecraft 2, I'm not bothered about potentially never seeing a World of Warcraft 2 arrive.

World of Warcraft: Forever devs have "no plans" to implement Tokens or level boosts, confirms Blizzard, as "the journey is so important."

During BlizzCon 2026, we got confirmation that two massive games are coming to Battle.Net: The Witcher 3 Remastered and Cyberpunk 2077. As you well know, these are CD Projekt Red releases, and they join a number of games from Bethesda and other publishers that have been added to Blizzard's platform post-Microsoft acquisition. Despite this, don't expect their respective deals to be harbingers for some grand expansion.

"We're obviously not out there trying to do the Steam or Epic Game Store thing," Andrew Guerrero, vice president of product management and global insight at Blizzard, told Polygon. "We have our audience. We have a passionate core of people that play Blizzard games and games similar to Blizzard, and if something makes sense for them, we'll get after it."

Sure enough, Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 have clear overlap with the Blizzard fanbase, being large RPGs you can pour hundreds of hours into. The likes of Doom: The Dark Ages, The Outer Worlds 2 and Destiny 2 all fit, too.

The Activision merger brought a selection of games with less obvious ties, like Crash Bandicoot and Call of Duty, but you can understand the publishing mandate. Taking on projects from a whole other publisher could be seen as testing the waters for opening the storefront, but Guerrero maintains curation is key.

"It's a much more focused approach, I'd say, of 'What do we think our players would absolutely love? What are the top-tier quality experiences out there that we might be able to get some more exposure to, and does it make sense?'" he explains.

Of course, there are enormous drawbacks to even humoring becoming the kind of market Steam and the Epic Games Store offer. You have large-scale moderation, a huge increase in labor behind-the-scenes, and the uphill battle of trying to compete in a space with clear market leaders.

All of which is to say, I don't think we should expect Battle.Net to become a hive of indie development just yet. The Witcher 4 is probably a safe bet by now, however.

Blizzard's new StarCraft shooter is "not a seasonal game," says lead: "The story has a beginning, a middle, and an end"

Blizzard finally lifted the veil on World of Warcraft: Forever this past weekend at BlizzCon 2026, giving fans a taste of the official Classic+ (so to speak, anyway) that we're getting – one that apparently thankfully won't feature real-money currency like Tokens.

Clayton Stone, associate production director on WoW Classic, confirms as much in a recent interview on Forever with content creator Destin Legarie (below). The lead also says that there won't be any purchasable experience boosts, either.

He describes how Blizzard has "no plans for anything like a WoW token or a boost" in any online shop – and, even though I'm thankful myself, I do wonder why… but Stone says it's all about the "journey" to the top.

"The journey really is what the game is," he says. "I mean, the endgame is amazing… the endgame is epic. It's awesome. And, all the stuff we've done with the endgame is amazing, but the journey is so important and you play the game or you get better at the game by playing the game and it's all about that level 1 to 60 journey and the people you meet along the way."

That's why Blizzard is staying away from quick boosts.

"We've implemented these systems to really reinforce that because there's some players who just love that journey."

Honestly, I do get it, and while I'm thrilled at the prospect of less microtransactions (if you can call Tokens that, I guess), I am a bit worried that this decision won't, well, last forever.

I'm not alone in my concerns, either, as folks over on Twitter discuss World of Warcraft: Forever's lack of Tokens and what it might mean.

"'No plans' doesn't seem too convincing or permanent to me," reads one comment. "I'm still pretty sure they will be in the game sooner or later." Another speculates, "No plans is basically 'next year,'" while various replies similarly ponder whether Blizzard's choice of words here could pave the way for such real-money purchases later down the line.

There are also some worries about bots and the like, which are more than understandable.

So, how will this all play out? There's no way to really tell until World of Warcraft: Forever releases this November, but I've got my fingers crossed that Blizzard is indeed making the right move… and will stick with it, too.

World of Warcraft: The Last Titan launches 2027 and Blizzard says it's the "culmination of over two decades" of MMO storytelling.

It's been over a decade since the last proper new entry in the StarCraft series, but hopes for a new game have intensified alongside a new report suggesting that Blizzard is finalizing a deal to hand off the long-awaited next entry in the series to Nexon. While that report hasn't been officially confirmed, somebody at Blizzard is clearly keen to get StarCraft fans breathing a little faster. A mysterious new teaser has hit the game's official site just days before BlizzCon.

If you head to the official StarCraft site right now, it displays the normal marketing copy for StarCraft Remastered – except it's not actually normal at all. All over the page, various bits of it are glitching out. The glitches aren't normal web display errors, either – they're clearly designed as visually arresting displays of static.

There's no clear indication of what any of this means, but the timing couldn't be more conspicuous. Rumors of a new StarCraft game have persisted for years, with word of a StarCraft shooter (not the long-dead Ghost) in development at Blizzard dating back to 2024. This year, reports began to circulate of an entirely separate StarCraft project in development at Nexon.

Now we've got a follow-up report suggesting that Blizzard and Nexon are close to finalizing a deal for that mysterious StarCraft game, and a vague-but-unmistakable teaser on the official site. All this comes just before BlizzCon on September 12, an annual convention that always serves as host for the publisher's biggest announcements.

While the reports suggest that this project is in development at a Nexon subsidiary known for free-to-play shooters, surely – surely – at least one of these games has to be a proper StarCraft 3, right? I can only hope we're not about to have another Diablo Immortal situation on our hands.

There's a reason StarCraft tops our list of the best RTS games of all time.

Earlier this year, PS4 and PS5 got native ports of Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 and 2. Now, Microsoft and Activision are turning these beloved FPS titles into billboards for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, with a big ol' pre-order button for the upcoming game stuck right there in the main multiplayer menu.

These new "pre-order MW4" options appeared after recent updates to the PlayStation versions of both Black Ops 1 and 2. Call of Duty news account CharlieIntel tweets images of both the updated menus, which gives the Modern Warfare 4 pre-orders equal billing with such features as "play online" and "options."

Of course, it's not unusual for modern online games to include regularly updated "news" feeds that often include what are basically ads for new DLC or upcoming sequels. But ports of the OG Black Ops games were well-received, in part, because a big chunk of the COD fandom is frustrated with the state of the modern games. Those same players are, at their most polite, giving a big "yeah, no thanks" to these ads.

Clearly, Microsoft wants every eye it can get on Modern Warfare 4. While Black Ops 7 sales are monstrous compared to almost every other game in the industry, it failed to beat Battlefield 6 on the US sales charts last year. That's the first time in the long rivalry between the two series that EA's FPS has come out on top. Certainly, not the outcome that Xbox was looking for after its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

The price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is falling, and all it cost was day one access to new Call of Duty games.

World of Warcraft players enjoying Blizzard's Classic edition have been plagued by one very infamous PvP legend for a good couple of years now – but it turns out that banning him on Twitch wasn't the way to go, frustrations be damned.

If you've not heard of Redridgeguy, he might just stand as the most notorious PvP player on World of Warcraft Classic in all of Europe.

Why, you might ask?

Well, he absolutely destroys other folks – we're talking hundreds per day – by reaching hard (near-impossible) to access spots and sending his pet in to tear through unsuspecting Alliance players. He's been discussed over on Reddit and other online forums time and time again.

Heck, just two weeks ago, a fan asked if he was "allowed" to play the way he does, saying it felt unfair. It's safe to say that "infamous" is a bit of an understatement – and now, players have retaliated… or so they thought.

As a new post over on X outlines, Redridgeguy actually got banned on Twitch following various reports from disgruntled WoW fans. This "backfired," though, as Redridgeguy's streams were the only reliable way to tell where he was in-game.

How come? Redridgeguy's streams were the only reliable way to tell where he was in-game, basically. "With his stream no longer up it became an all-out bloodbath and even other Horde members joined in on the fight to camp the Alliance even harder," as Jerome puts it – and it's quite amusing all around.

As it stands now, Redridgeguy appears to still be banned over on Twitch, too. His YouTube channel is up, however.

It appears that players want him gone gone, though, with one comment writing, "People that do unhinged stuff like this guy deserve to be banned from the game entirely." I'm not sure I agree myself – but then again, I'm not a PvP enjoyer regardless.

The capacity to be downright annihilated (as Redridgeguy evidently does to just about anyone who crosses his path) is far too big, and I've got grinding to do elsewhere without fearing constantly my death.

I do wonder if Redridgeguy will reappear on Twitch someday, although part of me wonders if it'd be more amusing if he doesn't… Considering how he's known for obliterating hundreds while streaming, how many will he take down while completely concealed?

Blizzard takes rare World of Warcraft mount from players as the MMO's latest crackdown on real-money transactions continues

World of Warcraft is unsurprisingly no stranger to account boosting and other no-no forms of real-money transactions, with Blizzard cracking down every now and then on guilty players.

This month is no exception, as the developer has sent out another wave of bans against folks it believes are responsible for engaging in real-money transactions – namely in the EU.

You can find countless streams (some mid-raid and all) of entire guilds being wiped out by game mods over on Twitch and the like, seeing players pulled from the game unexpectedly. It's not the first time that Blizzard has taken action, and it certainly won't be the last.

One of the biggest talking points with this round of bans, however, is the removal of players that supposedly weren't participating in real-money transactions but were in guilds that have other people who are – and, you know, reports that Blizzard is also ripping a very rare mount from fans' accounts in the process: the Mythic L'ura mount, to be precise.

You'll find such discussions over on Reddit, where players post the message they got from the dev.

"During a recent review, we found one or more rewards gained on this account were connected to activity that violates our in-game policies," the supposed prompt from Blizzard reads. "As a result, we have removed these rewards from your account."

Comments also mention other allegedly affected players, with some describing how they lost the Mythic mount even though they didn't violate the Terms of Service.

"A LOT of people in my guild (including myself) lost it because people were in our group who paid for a boost without any of us knowing," as one reply puts it. "Kind of fucking sucks."

There are various other threads on the forum (and elsewhere online) claiming the same scenario. It's a tough one, for sure, because Blizzard technically isn't doing anything wrong by cracking down on real-money transactions.

On the other hand, though, it'd be nice to see a better system of detection that snapshots individuals rather than entire guilds – and, evidently, I'm not alone in thinking so.

Blizzard fires World of Warcraft dev after using "development-only spells on a live realm" to help a friend breeze through bosses

If the Overwatch battle pass already made your eyes glaze over with its multilayered doodads and rewards, cover your eyes now, because Blizzard is about to make it substantially more complicated – but also better, if Blizzard plays its cards right.

The Overwatch "battle mass revamp" will arrive tomorrow, August 11, as producer director Chris McCabe explains in a newly minted blog post. You can also see a bit of the new BP in action in the new Season 4 trailer (below).

With it, Blizzard is splitting today's 80-tier battle pass system into five shorter "tracks" which players can choose from at the start of each season. Each track leads to different rewards, letting players select what goodies they want to unlock first.

As McCabe explains, "if you’re a Support player, you may want to unlock a Brigitte skin as soon as possible. By selecting the track that features Brigitte’s skin first, you’ll now earn a new skin for our cat-loving engineer far faster than if her skin was placed in, say, tier 70 of the previous Battle Pass design."

Importantly, you can still unlock and clear all five tracks to obtain absolutely everything. "Play through one last track and you’ll finish the 80-tier pass; you’ll then start earning the usual prestige titles after that," McCabe adds.

I've progressed more battle passes than modern medicine would advise, and in my mind this proposition immediately raises two red flags: how long do these new tracks take compared to the old system, and how can I tee up all five tracks?

Blizzard is quick to address these points. "It’s important to call out that the number of tiers in the Battle Pass isn’t changing and you won’t have to work harder to complete your Battle Pass," McCabe tells Overwatch fans. So, the total reward count and the amount of time (or pass XP) it takes to unlock those rewards should stay the same.

Additionally, McCabe says "you can also change which track is active at any time, giving you total control over which rewards you want to progress toward."

The cherry on top is what Blizzard is calling a "Tier Hack" system. Uncover your battle pass-fearing eyes, because this bit sounds like a meaningful upgrade.

The buyable premium version of the Overwatch battle pass will now come with one Tier Hack that can be used to replace "any skin at the end of a track" with "a different Legendary skin of your choice from a curated list of past Overwatch Shop and Loot Box skins."

The selection of skins available to be hacked in will change each season. "This pool will always include skins for Heroes in all 3 roles, and it’s our goal to also represent Heroes that may not show up in seasonal Battle Passes as often," McCabe explains. "Season 4 is launching with 12 Legendary skins in the curated 'Tier Hack' pool, pulling from some fan-favorite skin collections of the past."

If everything works as described – and McCabe says the BP revamp will be shown in an incoming livestream alongside improved UI – this could be a nice change for Overwatch. Ideally, players get the new skins they want faster and have another way to acquire old skins they've missed.

"We also have other exciting BP updates coming in the not-so-distant future as well, including our Legacy Battle Pass Unvault system, arriving at the Season 4 midseason in September," McCabe concludes.

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."

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.

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.

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.