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.

Blizzard has partially caved to Diablo 4 players outraged over changes to Mythics introduced in a recent playtest and planned for a permanent release in next week's Season of Death Awakened. Instead of completely reversing course, the studio is meeting players in the middle, insisting that the fundamentals of the updates are necessary for build diversity in the long-term.

ICYMI, Blizzard revealed the full details of Diablo 4's 14th season in a recent blog post, showing off a slick (but slightly jarring) Overwatch collab, a new endgame activity, and a Warlock free trial. But despite all of that cool and fun stuff, everyone's talking about Mythics, which are now just Mythic Uniques instead of their own distinct item rarity. The big hullabaloo is that Blizzard planned to completely remove the guaranteed stats that synergized with a Unique item's, ahem, unique powers. Suddenly, Uniques didn't sound so unique anymore, and the most powerful, rarest loot in the game, Mythic Uniques, were shaping up to be barely indistinguishable from Legendaries.

As you might expect, that didn't go down well with Diablo 4 players, and after testing the changes in the PTR, Blizzard has a pretty significant update tucked into the new season's announcement. Mythics are still just charged-up Uniques and any Unique can still be turned into a Mythic at the Horadric Cube, but crucially, Mythics will have two guaranteed bonuses instead of being completely random. The other two stat bonuses will still be random, but one of them will be able to be re-rolled through the Enchantress in town. Also, you'll still be able to convert a Unique to a Mythic Unique at the Cube, but now it'll give you something for the same slot, whereas in the PTR you could chuck in a Unique helmet and get a Mythic shield.

All in all, this updated system seems like it'll restore a lot of what made Mythics so fun and rewarding to chase in the first place without letting any single item completely dominate the meta, which of course means everyone's happy and no one's upset and life can just go on now, right? Right?!

Nope.

"So they ignored all the PTR tester feedback on the Mythic changes and they still went ahead with them?," reads one of the top comments in a Reddit thread discussing the new season. So much for that.

While that comment has more than 400 upvotes at the time of writing, suggesting, at the very least, people on Reddit who play a lot of Diablo aren't happy with Blizzard's compromise, there's no denying there is a compromise happening here. The original plan as tested in the PTR was for Uniques to drop with completely random stats just like any old item, which I was admittedly baffled by, but with the new setup of two fixed stats and two random ones, Blizzard is essentially going halfsies with players. It gets the randomness it wants for long-term build variety, and players get the thrill of chasing down one of a kind, incredibly powerful items as a reward for all their clicking. That's the way Blizzard sees it anyway.

"There's a handful of them that just become best-in-slot," Diablo 4 live-service lead Dan Tanguay says of the current selection of Mythics in an interview with GameSpot. "Once you can earn that, you get lucky enough to roll it, drop it, or craft it, that's it–you're never going to worry about that slot again.

And it kind of narrows the types of builds that players will pursue, especially if they're reading Maxroll or Icy Veins or something like that. We really want to increase the possibilities at the end of the game for what your build can be, and we need to look at mechanics that allow us to do that."

Blizzard softening its initial plan from the PTR and making Uniques considerably less random is part of its plan to "split the difference" with players wanting a full reversal of the new structure. That's not going to happen, but Tanguay says Blizzard will "keep iterating" on Uniques "until we arrive at something that we think is good for the long-term health of the game and that players really like."

You have to feel for the people at the frontline fielding these sorts of problems at Blizzard, constantly in a push-and-pull with the community over issues that, realistically, 90% of the player base will never even encounter. Again, Mythics are the rarest items in the game, and unless you're at the point where you're farming endgame bosses to get an item you need for a build you read about on Icy Veins, you'd never even know or care that those drops went from fixed stats to random ones. But because Blizzard is wisely taking on feedback from its most devoted players, I can only imagine the people calling the shots on this sort of stuff are in a near-constant state of stress.

Evidence of Diablo 4 coming to the Nintendo Switch 2 ramps up, as Blizzard Entertainment's RPG gets another rating.

A crossover between Diablo 4 and Overwatch should be an easy win. They're both owned by Blizzard, and they each have huge fanbases who generally love aesthetics and a bit of novelty. The in-game rewards are all well and good, but the action-RPG's new skins from the FPS aren't getting the strongest reaction from players.

Just like World of Warcraft and Starcraft before it, Overwatch is stepping into the hellfire of Diablo 4. Starting June 30, you can earn Eye of the Overwatch currency through defeating Elite and Champion foes to spend on special loot, for a limited time. In the game's regular shop, you'll find skins themed around the hero shooter, though players don't seem too fussed about those from first impressions.

"None of these look appealing or fit the universe to me," a fan bluntly says on Reddit. I can sympathize with the latter, because a couple of them are close to their original designs. Mercy's the biggest perpetrator, in my eyes, and the skin sticks out from Diablo's gloominess.

Commenters aren't holding back. "Mercy looks like a 90-year-old grandma here," writes another fan on Reddit. "This some bad comic con cosplay type shit," says a Redditor. "And even that's being disrespectful to cosplayers because most of them are miles better than this."

The frequency and pricing of these collaborations are big factors for the disdain. The StarCraft skins, for instance, ran you $185 for a complete set. World of Warcraft's came to over $540. Those are comfortably more than what it would cost you to buy the individual games and their expansions.

One player on Reddit notes the pricing on Fortnite, where such crossovers are rife, is much more reasonable collaboratively. "For context, an expensive bundle in Fortnite is generally less than half what the 'discounted' WoW bundle cost," they write. "Diablo 4's item store is completely insane and totally unacceptable for a game someone has already potentially spent £100 buying."

The Overwatch collaboration kicks off as part of Diablo 4 season 14, on June 30.

Overwatch charges nearly $100 for cosmetic bundle introducing a new skin rarity, and even cat maid outfits aren't enough to quiet the backlash.

Overwatch's Nyan Cafe bundle should be a slam dunk for the game as far as cosmetic packages go. Pink cat-themed maid outfits on five fan-favorite heroes? What's not to love? Blizzard Entertainment has all but assured its otherwise fun new outfits are steeped in backlash, however, thanks to a hard to swallow price and a new rarity of skins.

For those who aren't deep in the Overwatch trenches, bundles that package a bunch of themed Legendary outfits and cosmetics normally cost around 6,900 OW Coins or about $60 in real-world cash. The Nyan Cafe bundle instead costs 9,900 OW Coins, meaning most players will need to fork out an extra $100 since, like most live-service games, Overwatch doesn't let you buy an exact amount of coins.

Blizzard's reasoning for the bundle's higher price is that it's introducing two Ultra Skins for Sierra and Kiriko, a new rarity of skin, alongside three regular Legendary outfits for Reaper, Orisa, and Ashe. Buying the Ultra Skins in their individual character bundles costs 4,500 OW Coins ($40).

What sets Ultra Skins apart are the extra sound and visual effects added to reloads or eliminations, in this case a puff of pink cat-shaped smoke lands wherever an enemy dies, though Blizzard says it's "leaving things open for future innovation."

Fans were almost immediately dismayed at the new prices. "The quality of this game's cosmetic content keeps getting lower and lower while the prices get higher and higher," one player writes on the game's subreddit. "To quote one of this game's own characters, 'you shame yourself.'"

"As someone who's totally comfortable with blowing money on things I enjoy, no expense spared, this is just insulting. I don't enjoy the microtransaction culture in businesses and I'm disliking it even more seeing its evolution to macrotransactions," another response reads.

Similar sentiments are echoed up and down Overwatch's various online communities. The main worry is that Ultra Skins are just Blizzard's Trojan Horse dressed up in bright colors – a way to charge even more money for what would've been labelled a Legendary otherwise.

Pretty much the only person not irked by the price bump is noted Conker enjoyer and freshly-minted Overwatcher Doja Cat, who tweets: "On another note there is a new Nyan Café bundle on overwatch and it is one of the best things that has ever happened to me on this planet. I can't believe this is fucking real. Sierra’s skin is so good like I can't breathe."

Overwatch has always had pretty steep cosmetic prices, even compared to its direct competition, and so I can definitely understand the player frustration after seeing costs inflate without that much value being added on top.

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

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

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

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

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

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

PTR notes update from r/starcraft

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

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

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

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

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

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

A newly discovered version of World of Warcraft, called "World of Warcraft Camelot," once again has the MMO community hoping and theorizing that an enhanced version of WoW Classic is on the way.

This week, a dataminer over at Wowhead came across something called 'World of Warcraft Camelot.' Rather than a new expansion for the retail version of the MMO, though, things are pointing to something else. That's because the new discovery is attached to patch 1.60, which was initially released in July 2006.

And that's not all. The dataminer also uncovered Epic and Heroic versions of World of Warcraft Camelot, which does point to something substantial, but probably not something related to the current trilogy that the main version of World of Warcraft is going through.

That's about it for the latest discovery so far, though it's worth mentioning that it's the latest in a string of circumstances that everyone thinks lead to WoW Classic+. Plenty of eyebrows were raised in the community when several content creators revealed they visited Blizzard to see something, though other teases are even starker. One being executive producer Holly Longdale gearing up to announce what's next for WoW Classic before being comically cut off.

Regardless of what's happening, it's something Blizzard appears happy to tease. Just last year, in fact, the developers released a yearbook that mentioned developers "cooking on the long-term future of WoW Classic."

So what is WoW Classic+? It hasn't actually been confirmed by Blizzard yet, so there's no one way to explain it. Broadly, though, fans are hoping for a new version of World of Warcraft that branches off from the main MMO and resembles something like Old School RuneScape. Naturally, the original WoW Classic was Blizzard's initial take on something new based on something old, but we have been slowly catching up with retail WoW with the release of new expansions, so it's clearly time for something fresh in that space.

Out of everything we've seen so far, the datamine is certainly substantial. It remains to be seen if World of Warcraft Camelot is the WoW Classic+ fans have been hoping for, though it wouldn't be surprising if it is, as Blizzard's future plans for the MMO in its various forms have often been spied early thanks to the efforts of dataminers. With BlizzCon set to take place later this year, we should hopefully find out before too long.

"They will hopefully p*** off": As World of Warcraft players take on the Casino Bots themselves, lead confirms Blizzard has "a few folks looking into ideas" to get rid of them.

For the first time in its decade-long run, Overwatch is finally giving its newest hero a proper rideable vehicle in the form of a kickass motorcycle that can Akira bike slide all over maps and also doubles as a huge, comical throwable.

Overwatch has never really included any drivable vehicles for the last 10 years, unless you count the flying nest that Jetpack Cat lounges on or things like skateboards that show up in a few emotes. That's all changing come June 16 when Overwatch Season 3: Into the Tiger's Den launches alongside the game's next menacing damage-based hero, Shion.

Shion already looks like an absolute battlefield bully mostly thanks to her kickass bike that can drift around tight corners, quickly cover large distances, and then deal a bucket of damage whenever you're ready to dismount. Smash Bros. Wario mains can rejoice! And even though you can't chomp up the vehicle if you're feeling peckish, one of Shion's major perks does let you recover health gradually while mounted. So, same difference?

But the rest of Shion's kit sounds just as lethal. Her dual pistols are locked to her primary fire, with each shooting out a three-round burst before alternating to the other. Her secondary fires an x-shaped volley, which you can tighten by holding the ability. She also has access to a quick dash that also dishes out overshield, the aforementioned bike, and an ultimate ability that has her rush in three directions like Marvel Rivals' Cloak and Dagger.

While we only recently got a look at Shion's kit and sleek design, she's been a pretty big presence in the game's lore for months. As the leader of the Hashimoto Clan – you know, the shady criminals that have been running Japan since the OG Overwatch days – she recently captured dear old Genji in a new short story. Which prompts the question: Big bike versus deflect... who wins?

Shion will be the seventh new Overwatch hero this year, with two more unnamed characters still to come. We've only seen a silhouette of the two remaining heroes, although one looks like another noir-style omnic, while the other resembles the bulky shape of D.Va's mech.

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

If you've been wandering around Azeroth of late, especially in any of the bigger cities, you've likely spotted casino bots – automated advertising for local gambling. They're meant to be against the rules in World of Warcraft, but real-money traders – RMTs – have been using them to get richer, quicker, and as players blow them up, Blizzard's looking into further preventative measures.

These nuisances can be found standing on wooden boxes, dancing away to pull you in for a gamble or give a winner a moment in the limelight. Users have gotten weary of the distraction, and in lieu of developers patching in more constraints for them, they've taken to taking them out.

A compilation on Reddit by user sozbro_ shows several being quite literally exploded. "I can't be online 24/7, and I certainly can't drop infernals on every casino bot myself," they say in the caption of the video. "Fortunately, this isn't a one-warlock problem."

As this is happening, Blizzard is on the case. "The casino thing that's vogue right now. Just to confirm we're aware, it's still against policy to advertise a casino so keep reporting them (or dropping infernals on them)," Tom Ellis, senior game producer on World of Warcraft, says on Twitter (thanks, Wowhead).

After some "digging in," he pins it on RMTs, because it's "an easy way to make gold quickly and cheaply." A blockade is being constructed, but don't expect much fanfare when it happens.

"We have a few folks looking into ideas on how we can make getting these people out of the game much faster so the activity is less lucrative and in turn, they will hopefully piss off," he explains. "Don't expect any sort of big fanfare 'Mission Accomplished!' banner for this one, this is one of the ones that you hopefully don't even notice stopped happening if we get it right."

As one Reddit commenter points out, gambling can be incredibly difficult and problematic for people. The allure of such activities could be triggering, especially if unexpected. Hopefully Blizzard's able to clamp down on this problem sooner rather than later.

"It has been an honor": World of Warcraft fans gather in popular private server Turtle WoW to say goodbye as it ends 8-year run following Blizzard lawsuit.

One former World of Warcraft veteran has officially joined Riot Games on its long-awaited League of Legends MMO, which is clearly still trucking on in the background.

Brian Holinka took to Twitter yesterday with the news, announcing: "First official day at Riot Games working on the League of Legends MMO!" Per his LinkedIn page, he's now the MMO's principal game designer.

It's definitely safe to say that Holinka is experienced when it comes to MMOs. He spent almost 11 full years at Blizzard before leaving in 2023, in which time he served as World of Warcraft's lead PvP designer, before going on to become the lead combat designer, leading the "team responsible for all combat-related systems for World of Warcraft, including class design and player versus player content," as described on his LinkedIn.

After that, he joined Fantastic Pixel Castle as gameplay design director – a studio led by former League of Legends MMO lead Greg Street, who was making a whole new MMO codenamed Ghost. Sadly, however, the studio was shut down last year after parting ways with NetEase Games, and while Street noted at the time that "there is still a chance we can secure funding after that date," ultimately, "it will depend on how much of the team remains."

Now, though, Holinka has taken his talents to Riot. We still know incredibly little about the League of Legends MMO, which was announced back in 2020. With that said, only a couple of months ago, Riot co-founder Marc Merrill stated that the studio is "more committed to" the idea of making a great MMO "than ever" before, and bringing in new folks like Holinka certainly suggests that effort is being made.

Holinka isn't the only WoW veteran to join the team, either. Former World of Warcraft lead producer Raymond Bartos announced that he'd joined Riot's project at the start of the year as senior game producer, and in doing so, he reunited with Orlando Salvatore – once a lead software engineer at Blizzard, and now senior engineering manager on the LoL MMO. Needless to say, there's a strong team behind the upcoming game – let's just hope it won't be that much longer before we can actually see it in action.

For now, you can check out our list of the best MMOs to play today.

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

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

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

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

StarCraft II 5.0.16 PTR Patch Notes from r/starcraft

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ahead of Diablo 4 Season 14, a new Public Test Realm (PTR) is on the way, with major balance changes, new features, and more arriving next week.

As announced by Blizzard in a new blog post, the 3.1.0 PTR will go live on June 2 at 10am PDT and run until June 9 at the same time, giving you a week to sample the changes arriving in the base game's upcoming 14th season.

First up, Pandemonium Ruptures are being added – these can be opened by killing "the guardians around Death's Head Idols," and the longer you manage to keep them open (by killing monsters and closing Tears), the more tasty loot you'll earn. Completing a Surging Rupture (a medium-sized one) with Mastery will also give a chance of summoning a Realmwalker (returning after first being added in Season 6) – you can also guarantee a spawn of one of these by completing a Colossal Rupture in the Fields of Desecration.

The reason you'll wanna do this is because defeating a Realmwalker opens a portal to the Deathtoll Chamber – a mini dungeon that Blizzard says "will be the best source for Betrayer's Husks, which are required to open the Seasonal Lair Boss's Hoard in Torment I+." You can also enter the Deathtoll Chamber "inside a Nightmare Dungeon with the Rupture affix after closing enough Tears within Rupture." It'll also boast even more rewards for folks who "complete a special Rupture activity" inside.

As for that new seasonal lair boss, it's the Corrupted Reaper, found in "Pandemonium Threshold's entrance in Zarbinzet." Blizzard reveals "it will also give the best direct drop chances for both Mythic Uniques and Mythic Unique Upgrade currency than any other activity." And that brings us to a change that's already proving unpopular – from season 14 onwards, "every Unique can be Mythic," with the Mythic status changing from an item Rarity to a modifiable Item Quality, letting you "make any Unique item into a game-altering Mythic through Item Quality modifiers."

Blizzard explains: "This season, any Unique can now drop as a Mythic Unique or be upgraded into a Mythic Unique using the Horadric Cube."

On the whole, these Mythic changes haven't been going down very well – one player on Reddit says they "drastically reduce the value and desirability of what is supposed to be the 'apex item' tier," and "the idea of randomizing stats on Mythic Uniques annihilates any remaining value they once had."

"I'm NOT looking for constant RNG within my RNG," another says. "Uniques and especially Mythics need some consistency to their stats or they're just not worth mixing into your build. I'm already gambling if they'll drop and now I'm gambling if they will drop in a usable state."

Elsewhere, there's also a whole slew of balance changes, notably including a big nerf for the Whirlwind Barbarian build. As outlined by content creator Rob2628, a number of incoming changes are going to have a significant impact on the build, including the Limitless Rage aspect being changed from giving you a potential damage buff of 1.5% for every point of Fury to just 0.2%. Heir of Perdition's damage is substantially reduced from 80% to just 15%, and the Dominate Glyph is "reduced from 23.6% per stack to 1.8% per stack at Glyph Level 150." The Banished Lord's talisman's damage per stack has also gone down from 15-18% to just 8-10%.

As one commenter writes, "RIP barb again for 9 more seasons lmao." Another says: "Limitless rage from 1.5 to .2 smh thats not nerfing thats destroying."

All in all, it's looking like a slightly mixed bag of a PTR, and season to follow – the Mythic changes are already leaving a bad taste in the mouth for many, but it's not all bad news. Solo Self Found Mode is finally coming to let people craft characters without any help from others, which means no trades to give them a boost. With their own leaderboard filters being added, it'll allow you to show off something that you've done all the work for yourself, with no shortcuts.

What's more, in perhaps the greatest change of all, "pets can now be renamed." Be sure to take a look at the complete patch notes if you want to see the full scope of what's to come.

Diablo 4 lead says small teams crunch "because the company is on the verge of collapsing," but even though it's not "necessary" for AAA studios, "you might still have a culture of crunch."

Overwatch Season 3's new hero has seemingly been teased, and it's all thanks to an upcoming in-game event that's also bringing fresh cosmetics and an animated music video from a real-world J-pop group.

Blizzard Entertainment today announced a new Overwatch event coming on June 30, billed as a collaboration with pop duo Yoasobi. The event promises new skins for the game's Japanese heroes (Kiriko, Genji, Hanzo), an original song from the group, and an animated music video. All in all, it follows the same blueprint the team set out with its Le Sserafim K-pop collab.

What's different here is that the Overwatch team also dropped a pretty substantial short story a whole month early as part of the crossover called The Fall of a Sparrow, written by E.C. Myers. The lore drop sees Genji on a recon mission to gather information about the seedy Hashimoto Clan that's been teased elsewhere, too.

Things get real interesting near the end when the criminal clan captures Genji and brings him to a "shadowy figure" who's running the whole show. Here's the closing interaction in full:

"What is this supposed to be?" The figure spoke in a disdainful tone. There was a mechanical, robotic tinge to her voice. "A Shimada, judging by his sword and fighting style," the lieutenant said. Metal thunked onto the desk. "Really?" the elder said, leaning forward. "You have my interest."

Overwatch fans have for months theorized that Season 3's hero will somehow be connected to the Hashimoto Clan after the devs released a roadmap promising a new Japan-set map alongside the horned, mechanical silhouette seen in the headline image above. Together with a Mizuki short story that also made mention of an intimidating lady behind the organization, it's not hard to see where the speculation comes from.

Overwatch Season 3 should be arriving sometime in the middle of June, so we'll find out if Hashimoto's mysterious leader is the game's next hero pretty soon.

While showering fans in loot boxes, Overwatch director agrees the game's 10th anniversary disappoints and promises celebrations throughout the year.

It's a sad day for the World of Warcraft community, as players say goodbye to a longstanding fan server, Turtle WoW. Following a legal battle against Blizzard itself, the lights are being totally switched off on the custom homestead, prompting players to host their own special goodbye as they await the end.

If you're unaware, Turtle WoW is a collection of custom servers for World of Warcraft that host an old-school version of the beloved MMORPG. The idea is, or was, to provide a way for people to continue playing WoW as if it never evolved much beyond its early years. That means less cosmic battles and grandiose ideas, more fantastical questing. The version is dubbed 'Vanilla+', and the whole platform is a hotbed for modified approaches to Azeroth.

A fan-made expansion eventually emerged, Mysteries of Azeroth, that delved deeper into the mythology through this lens. But after eight years, the whole venture is closing down after Blizzard managed to serve a cease-and-desist order to the group behind it.

"Working on Turtle WoW has been the highlight of our lives," Torta, a member of the Turtle WoW team, says in a forum post. "It has been an honor to build with you and for you. Whether you were exploring new stories, leveling, raiding, PvPing, roleplaying, or just enjoying a quiet moment in the world, seeing how much this game means to you has been our greatest privilege."

This spectre has been looming for some time. There was a legal tussle for the server's existence, and an open letter to Blizzard sits on the Turtle WoW homepage. "Unlike other studios, Blizzard does not yet have a framework that allows projects like ours to operate without risking legal conflict," the team wrote. "With that in mind, we respectfully ask that Blizzard consider establishing a formal ecosystem for licensing fan‑run community servers."

Several points are raised, including how popular games such as GTA 5 and Skyrim have vastly expanded their fanbase thanks to mods. Turtle WoW had a thriving fanbase, and many of them will probably hang around in the game, but this is the kind of thing that pushes players away. Never underestimate the damage resentment can do.

The YouTuber Pespline uploaded a clip of Turtle WoW diehards huddling together on a riverbank for the end of days. Honestly, it's enough to bring a lump to your throat. Godspeed, one and all - I hope you all find each other elsewhere.

World of Warcraft streamers attend top-secret Blizzard event, leaving fans hoping for the version of the MMO they've tried to manifest for years

Overwatch fans are lamenting that Fortnite is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the hero shooter better than Blizzard itself is.

Earlier this week, the Overwatch 10th Anniversary Event kicked off in-game, and very quickly, fans discovered that it kinda stinks. Most of the new cosmetics are the Decennium Skins, which are purple and white recolors for the original cast. But at the same time, the Fortnite x Overwatch collab also kicked off this week, which brought Tracer, Genji, Mercy, and D.VA to the game as skins, as well as making some changes to battle royale mode with Tracer's guns, Mercy's Staff and a number of POI's taking the form of iconic Overwatch locations.

Over on Reddit, a post laments that Fortnite's crossover does Overwatch more justice than the game's own devs, with responses saying "I'm actually more excited to play Fortnite's Overwatch mode than the actual Overwatch." Another adds, "Epic just made Blizz look absolutely pathetic." Meanwhile, another puts it simply: "When the crossover vastly outshines the anniversary…"

It's even inspired some more conspiracy-minded posts, with one user theorizing: "The Anniversary event is so hilariously bad that I wouldn't be surprised if it was part of the Epic deal: push the playerbase over to Fortnite until the end of the season." In the same vein, another says, "I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard did this on purpose; make a lackluster 10th anniversary event in their own game and let Epic do the heavy lifting with a Fortnite collab to rake in profits that way," and that it's "kind of a shame they'd put so much stock into another game rather than their own honestly."

Truthfully, I highly doubt the event is intentionally bad, but I can definitely understand how underwhelming some are finding it. Although, to Overwatch's credit, it did just relaunch with multiple new characters earlier this year, which is a pretty significant thing for a big milestone year.

Fortnite's most embarrassing cause of death has been removed, but Epic Games has managed to balance it shockingly well.

Uh oh – it appears, in making some changes to Warlocks in Diablo 4, Blizzard's managed to break the class to a pretty drastic extent. A particular combination of equipment will make you practically unstoppable, by way of enabling you to one-shot much of what comes your way, even in a high-ranking dungeon.

There are four aspects to this intersection of pain. You have Command Fallen and Command Ae'grom, then the Paingorger's Gauntlets, Oikos-Hewer of Mutilation, and the Evisceration Fragment. As of the last patch, having these together lets you just run through many of the RPGs enemies with ease – particularly Elites, due to the Rampage skill.

See, the patch sorted a problem with the Mutilation on the Evisceration Fragment, but it's over-corrected and made the associated effects go haywire. Diablo-focused YouTuber wudijo demonstrates as much in a short video explaining the build and just showing off its power. At the core is his own custom Lunatic outline, which uses Fallen and Ae'grom, a popular way of playing as Warlock in Diablo 4.

Put this all together, and you'll get damage scaling to the point of just mutilating anything that steps in your way. This makes Level 150 of the Pit of Artificers, the peak of the whole gauntlet, a bit of a breeze by normal standards.

What's slightly troubling is that it's not hard to figure out this setup, as wudijo points out it was his normal build, plus the Mutilation and Evisceration fragments. Minor tweaks on their face that change the whole complexion of the game.

He reckons there'll be a hotfix for this soon, and I'd agree. It skews all the demon-slaying to a pretty drastic degree. If you want to get some kicks from it, boot up Diablo 4 as soon as possible.

Blizzard was working on Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred before the base RPG even launched, and that's why some of its biggest features were "deployed early."

Overwatch is almost 10 years old, and Blizzard has kicked off the anniversary celebrations, promising new skins, other cosmetics, and "a legendary good time." Unfortunately, the fanbase has been left rather disappointed with all three of those things, with one player summing up the mood by saying it "genuinely feels like we're being pranked."

The main rewards on offer for anyone who plays during the 10th Anniversary Event (which started yesterday and runs until June 1) are the Anniversary Loot Boxes. You can earn 15 of them over the course of three weeks, which contain a limited pool of rewards – most notably, Epic-rarity skins of the original Overwatch roster. Called the Decennium skins; they're purple-and-white recolors, and… that's about it. The loot boxes also contain new name cards, player icons, and sprays.

"My expectations were zero and I'm still disappointed," one Reddit user writes, sharing a screenshot of the shiny, purple Reinhardt skin. They add: "The 10th anniversary should be unforgettable, as it only ever happens once. They were on such a roll with the Overwatch refresh, new heroes, faster response to player feedback. How could they mess it up this bad? Genuinely feels like we're being pranked."

My expectations were zero and I'm still disappointed from r/Overwatch

Another asks, "what were they thinking with the Anniversary Lootboxes?" They write: "I thought although the Anniversary event was trash, we would at least with the Anniversary Lootboxes get something???? Like idk any Legendary or Epic from the game with a 100% rate or prism or something good . What THE HELL do you mean is just the ugly anniversary skins, stickers and sprays?" On a separate thread, another says: "I didn't know it was possible to be let down even more."

What doesn't help matters is that players in China are able to access a very different 10th anniversary event, which everyone agrees is just significantly better. As showcased by Reddit user Link4750 (below), the celebration includes a log-in bonus to grant Mythic Prisms, a premium currency which can be spent on valuable Mythic skins, as well as challenges to earn loot boxes and other currency, which can be spent on returning battle passes and other skins.

China's 10th Anniversary Event - In-Depth Look from r/Overwatch

"The previous battle pass skins loadout is actually such a missed opportunity for the rest of the world," one fan comments. Another writes: "This just makes me bummed out, rewards and loot boxes aside even the event interface is so much more unique and cool." As another puts it, "Ugh, Blizzard did us dirty."

While players outside of China can still receive a total of three Legendary loot boxes if folks complete the event's Global Lootbox Charge by finishing enough challenges, you can understand why people are feeling a bit let down. What's more, new skins – like the bunny-themed White Rabbit skins and the Date Night cosmetics – have been added to the game's shop to coincide with the event, but these all cost Overwatch coins, which Blizzard isn't forthcoming with giving out during the anniversary.

The whole thing has prompted comparisons to Marvel Rivals' big first-anniversary event last year, too, with one user saying that, in contrast, "this is super sad and disappointing."

Whether Blizzard decides to throw disappointed players a bone and hand out some extra rewards remains to be seen, but so far, it seems to be a very underwhelming celebration for the game, especially on the back of its recent rebrand and resurgence following the decision to drop the '2' from its name.

10 years later, Overwatch co-creator Jeff Kaplan debunks the game's first controversy: "We actually didn't nerf Tracer's butt."

Game development is tricky as is, but on games like Diablo 4, it can be especially tough because of the ambiguity around what approach to take. Many decisions boil down to just making a move, seeing how it lands, then adjusting based on feedback, according to one of the leads on Blizzard's hellbound action-RPG.

"We're often faced with solving real problems, and we don't always have the ideal solution in front of us," Zaven Haroutunian, associate game director on Diablo 4, told IGN. "In fact, there's often no ideal solution. Often, we just have to pick a thing."

As you may well know, the collective Diablo community is not shy about what works and what doesn't, and frequently the devs will move with how players are feeling. "It's only after you step back from the stuff you've made that your perspective changes and you understand the impact of your decisions, both positive and negative," Haroutunian explained. "Really, that’s only when you can get a clear picture of what you've actually made."

Looking through the patch notes for many of the team's updates will reveal as much. Amid the bug fixes and such are lots and lots of minor nerfs, buffs and tweaks, frequently across practically every facet of the game. The fine-tuning is constant, as fans continually test the mechanics to their limits.

This goes further with additions like in Lord of Hatred, where the Warlord and Paladin classes were added, disrupting the status quo of the skill tree and the respective power balance. "A lot of it is just repositioning. Making sure everything is in the right place to have the right impact," he says. "Customisation in the Skill Tree. Power with the items. Crafting in the Horadric Cube. The Talisman bringing depth. Every skill has options, and every class will reap the benefit of the work we've done."

In fact, it gave an excuse to do a top-down revamp that proved useful for all involved. "It solves a problem while refreshing every class in the game," he adds.

World of Warcraft streamers attend top-secret Blizzard event, leaving fans hoping for the version of the MMO they've tried to manifest for years

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.

The first substantial patch post-Lord of Hated rolls out on Diablo 4 in a couple of days, and Blizzard's revealed the long, long list of changes. Besides a cavalcade of minor bug fixes, we've got a number of quality-of-life improvements and tweaks across many aspects of the game, including to Talismans, War Plans, and plenty more.

An immediate stand-out in the patch notes is actually buried towards the bottom, in the endgame section. If you've been having real problems with the Burning Butcher, it turns out the odds were stacked against you. He's been debuffed substantially; he now has considerably less health, and one of his abilities has been toned down.

He won't suddenly exit if you're in stealth anymore, either. On the Talisman side of things, charms now have a distinct sound and minimap icon to make finding them considerably more straightforward. For something slightly more obtuse, a "useless unique item" can't be transmuted anymore.

A problem where players were respawning in out-of-bounds areas has been remedied, something that no doubt inspired some extremely passionate feedback, and an issue involving repeating and overlapping NPC dialogue after you re-enter a room a number of times. My personal highlight is the change to a puzzle in the Path of Riddles that pointed to "Destruction" instead of "Corruption," tripping players up.

For War Plans, an infinite farming exploit in Nemesis Boss Lairs has been sewn up, and some unintended rewards are once again gated off as required. Many of the classes get their own sets of specific alterations and fixes, and there's a slew of other changes.

It's a solid slate that should make playing that much smoother for all involved. It goes live on May 13 - Butchers beware.

For Diablo 4's Lord of Hatred DLC, Blizzard designed the new warlock class to feel like it could beat the necromancers and sorceresses in a "fist fight."

If you asked me back in summer 2023, I'd have told you Diablo 4 was a notable next chapter in Blizzard Entertainment's action RPG series. But as we all know, grindy online RPGs have to evolve fast as their communities demand more content and more polish. Almost three years later, the Lord of Hatred expansion has positioned it as a serious contender for the ARPG crown, and most of its strengths come from its much-maligned predecessor Diablo 3.

With Lord of Hatred and Season 13, it truly feels like a convincing long-term vision for Diablo 4 is coming into focus. Its present and future are combining lessons learned from the entire series and not just Diablo 2, which continues to get its fair share of love through new Resurrected content anyway. At long last, I'm proud to say: we are so back.

The runes dilemma

As sturdy as its core always was, Diablo 4 was stuck in a "no man's land" of MMO-lite design circa Destiny 2, unsure whether to commit to the more casual crowd or try to entice genre diehards who would always be better served by Path of Exile's sicko-first priorities. This resulted in muddled progression systems and an approach to skills and perks that largely resulted in a hodgepodge of numbers that didn't amount to much for too long, with most players only getting a few hours into their seasonal journeys before deciding their time was better spent elsewhere.

The (demonic) elephant in the room was that its old-fashioned skill tree was kind of bad, actually. Veterans would try to convince you it gave them far more control over their builds, but we mostly had a regular amount of skills with small increments through additional nodes plus passives that didn't do much when compared to the late-game bonuses and unique effects enabled by high-level gear.

With Lord of Hatred's launch, all skill trees - not just those pertaining to new classes - have received a substantial rework, putting them way closer to Diablo 3's originally divisive (but more impactful) system.

Secondary nodes alter or totally transform skills in tangible ways, and passives are essentially gone on a class level. The reworked Equipment system and the absolutely daunting Paragon Board take care of those now, and instead, you're getting cool gameplay changes based on your choices. Like transforming chain projectiles into flaming, spinning chains that are planted on the ground. Welcome back, Diablo 3 runes.

As important for a rewarding endgame grind the traditional loot showers and late-game toying with stats are, Diablo 4's class trees used to feel like a missed opportunity. Now, root-level build variety is back on the menu. This affects the moment-to-moment fun, as we're no longer encouraged to get used to two or three meta builds per season by a rigid system. More iteration on other fronts might be needed, but classes are in a pretty good spot right now thanks to one of Diablo 3's once-derided experiments.

Paint the town anything but red

A game that desperately tried to shake things up even if the initial effort wasn't quite there, an unsung strength of Diablo 3's is its more colorful art style and overall presentation. It was obviously influenced by World of Warcraft's success, but it helped set it apart from not just the second game, but also the rest of the Diablo-like subgenre. Diablo should've always been the ARPG series breaking new ground, not one living in the shadows of others.

While I think Diablo 4's gritty, less cartoonish aesthetic serves a function and appreciate how disturbing and fittingly dark its vibes can get, that's no reason to paint the entire game in muddy shades of grey, brown, and red with the sole intention of pleasing Diablo 2 diehards. Even in the lush jungles of Vessel of Hatred's Nahantu region, colors are annoyingly muted. Only the fires of Hell, angelic lights, and magical effects have a pop to them.

While Lord of Hatred doesn't retroactively alter Diablo 4's overall palette, the new Skovos Isles region - a Mediterranean-inspired zone controlled by the Amazons - is a breath of fresh air. The countryside, although infected by demons and other abominations, looks crisp and autumnal in shades of auburn. These more saturated hues cover the trees and vegetation in a conscious attempt to inject more visual dimension into the world of Sanctuary, and it more than pays off.

Lord of Hatred feels like Blizzard firing on all cylinders because it dares to look to the studio's more recent past to shape Diablo 4's present and future. Diablo 2 is a distant game that's been perfectly refreshed, and with Path of Exile 2 promising the densest and most punishing ARPG loop around when it hits 1.0, Diablo 4 must become its own thing: an immediately fun game that's easy to jump into and can satisfy in small or large doses without getting too lost in the weeds. That flexible approach is what made Diablo 3 enduring in the end, and that truth should've never been avoided or ignored for so long.

Though War Plans, a new optional endgame structure cutting down on management and bridging different activities together, needs a lot of work before it's accepted by the community, Diablo 4 feels finished now. All it took was a mix of accepting past wins and decisions tied to a game folks aren't nostalgic about just yet. With base-level issues squashed and confidence regained, Lord of Hatred's explosive finale could also be considered a new beginning. And, unlike a few months ago, I'm excited to see what comes next.

Check out some of the best ARPGs to play next if you're a Diablo 4 diehard!

After years of searching, Diablo 4's secret cow level has been uncovered. The mythological area was discovered through layers of bovine-themed jumping through hoops, right on the heels of the Lord of Hatred expansion's release.

If you're at all familiar with the Diablo games, you probably know about the secret cow level in Diablo 2, a hidden dungeon that requires players to follow some specific instructions in order to access it. Inside are a bunch of demonic bovidae who provide quite nice loot, as an extra reward beyond simply getting there.

The whole thing is a longstanding meme that carried into Diablo 3, and now the fourth installment. Since release, people have been piecing together in-game esoterica involving cows, including, but not limited to, going to a cow island and fishing cows out of the ocean. I wish I was kidding.

Finally, the portal's been unlocked, and it corresponds with Lord of Hatred's release. To keep things brief, on the day the expansion became available, a clue became visible that drops a hint about seeing something with your own eyes. Then, after going back to the cow island (where else?), you'll find a number of cattle in a circle.

Killing them all opens the hallowed gates to the realm of pure moo-jesty. Through there, you'll find similarly buff, bovine enemies to the previous two iterations, and if you bash your way around enough, you'll eventually find the Cow King, who drops his crown when you defeat him. A video from LoathBurger above goes through everything in finer detail.

This thing has different effects depending on the day you're wearing it, for added absurdism. Sadly, after all this digital archaeology, some players are a tad disappointed. "Both D2 and D3 cow levels were great for loot, and also had some whimsy in their sound effects/lvl ost. Compared to that, this cow level seems a bit... boring," one player states on Reddit.

"Cows don't even say moo, I'm uninstalling," another fan jests. "Eeeh looks like it needs more cows?" someone muses. "Given the amount of effort this took to reach (seriously, kudos) I did expect something a little more... idk, wacky?" a fourth Redditor adds.

Maybe the real treasure is the cows we passed along the way, hm? Perhaps Diablo 5's secret cow level will be more roundly satisfying.

Blizzard swiftly removes new Diablo 4 quality-of-life feature after players complain it was costing them valuable loot: "It missed the mark."

Though the series has been riding high for decades now, Diablo almost didn't make it to shelves. The original genre-defining action-RPG narrowly avoided death by bankruptcy, thanks to Blizzard, who made a lifesaving offer at the eleventh hour for the devs behind the fledgling project.

See, Diablo was the brainchild of a studio called Condor in the early '90s. Although progress was happening, it was looking increasingly like finances would run dry first, until a sudden call from the company behind Warcraft. "The offer was unexpected, but very welcome. The taxman was literally at the door, threatening to shut us down," Erich Schaeffer, co-founder of Condor, originally told Edge Magazine, now reprinted in Playmakers.

Blizzard offered not just to fund the game, but to acquire Condor, turning it into Blizzard North. Suddenly, resources were plentiful, opening up the possibilities for what Diablo could be. This completely changed the scope of the hellbound role-playing game, and proved to be a pivotal moment for the medium as a whole.

"At this point the budget was very low, under half a million dollars," Max Schaefer adds. "Once we were acquired, we sat down to work out what we could do now we were free from budgetary constraints and had a little extra time. How could we make this as big as possible?"

Thus, the world was introduced to the Kingdom of Khonduras in 1997, and Diablo was an instant best-seller. A sequel was announced in short order, and three years later, Diablo 2 arrived, to even greater success. The second installment remains a standard-bearer for loot-driven dungeon-crawling, with a remaster coming out in 2021.

But it all started with Diablo, a little experiment in combining Dungeons and Dragons with some roguelike structuring. Who knew a blizzard would be all such a venture through hell needed to survive?

Diablo 4 streamer pulverizes new Lord of Hatred expansion's difficulty tier in 17 hours, complains about lack of "aspirational content"

Oh dear, what once seemed like a good way to help players in Diablo 4 actually proved to be more of a hindrance, leading Blizzard to roll it back. Special portals, added for quicker escapes from pits and towers, were causing people to miss out on valuable loot, and have now been removed.

It's the topline change in the latest Diablo 4 hotfix. "Finishing a pit or tower run no longer spawns a portal to exit from," the patch notes state, followed by some further context: "Our intention with adding this portal was for [quality-of-life], but it missed the mark."

These gateways sound incredibly handy at first, as they arrive right when you're done and allow you to zip out of the dungeon. The issue is they would often spawn right near some nice treasure, unprompted, and a single miss-click would have you zipping away from the rewards you just killed a bunch of hellspawn to get.

This annoyance is compounded by the fact that players can already create portals if they so choose. In trying to streamline that mechanic, Blizzard made something way more inconvenient.

"Why in the name of Rathma did you put a no-confirmation portal out of a dungeon that you cannot return to?" wrote one frustrated player on Reddit. "That spawns on top of me. That causes you to forfeit your unspent glyph points. That has loot scattered ALL AROUND IT."

Their views are shared by many experienced Diablo 4 fans. "There's no reason to have a portal open when we finish the pit other than to screw us out of our rewards by accidentally clicking it when we are trying to finish off the mobs," writes another Reddit user. "When you finish a pit a portal appears, it needs to go away! I finished a pit and accidently clicked on the portal. I couldn't upgrade my glyphs or pick up gear," another fan on the Diablo 4 forums states.

Blizzard's heart may have been in the right place here, but the execution needs work. Making it a mechanic that people can turn on or off would probably help, as well as proximity detection to valuable items. Regardless, they've been thrown into the portal of bad mechanics - for now, at least.

Diablo 4 streamer pulverizes new Lord of Hatred expansion's difficulty tier in 17 hours, complains about lack of "aspirational content."

Diablo 4 streamer Mekuna just beat the new Lord of Hatred campaign's nasty new Torment 12 difficulty tier in 17 hours – and the fact that he was able to complete such a hardcore feat seems to worry him. Not because playing 17 hours straight of Diablo 4 likely does something funny to your organs, but because he thinks T12 is too achievable.

Mekuna writes in the description for his summary video on YouTube discussing what he calls the "Diablo 4 LoH Endgame Issue," "it just didn't take that long. With the right approach, anyone can do it."

To me, a person who cannot play a game for longer than eight hours without worrying she's forgotten what sunshine feels like, Mekuna's concerns here seem unrealistic – but they are also indicative of the rift beginning to form in the Diablo 4 community between no-nonsense players desperate for bigger and dirtier challenges, and those who just aren't.

Shortly after Mekuna concludes his 17 hour T12 run on stream – the Diablo 4 expert did the whole thing in one sitting – he laments the fact that "there is no, like, aspirational content" that motivates him to grind more and "makes me want to log in."

To developer Blizzard's credit, Diablo 4 associate game director Zaven Haroutunian recently addressed these demands from some players for more "aspirational content," explaining that, "What we've tried to do is as much as possible in Lord of Hatred is create opportunities for players to make their own goals, their own aspirational goals."

But Mekuna, and similarly competitive Diablo 4 players like him, don't seem satisfied with this populist approach. In his analysis video, which you can watch in full above, the streamer concedes that "T1 to T12 is, like, way better for the general playerbase, because it separates the progression way better for them."

That said, "I feel like the marketing that Blizzard put into that was, T12 was supposed to be aspirational content, and it was something we were going to strive for," Mekuna explains. "The way it was communicated to us was a bit misleading. We were thinking about reaching T12 in like two weeks of grinding, and unfortunately, that didn't happen."

"We are still missing something about the end game," the streamer says. Mekuna also makes a point to mention, "I also see people that's going to come and say it's because I'm a streamer, it's because I no-life the game. Well, that [T12 challenge] just took me 17 hours, and this has nothing to do with being a no life."

But a top YouTube comment keeps him in touch with the reality for people whose jobs don't require them to play Diablo 4: "What you did in 17h, I will take a month to do."

As Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred gets off to a poor start with login issues, queues, and bugs, Blizzard promises to get the fixes out as fans lose patience.

Diablo 4's new Lord of Hatred DLC might have had a shaky start thanks to long initial login queues and bugs, but Blizzard has been on the case with hotfix aimed at ironing out a progression blocker and fixing the missing Talisman tab.

The first hotfix – which arrived yesterday – takes aim at two slightly broken quests. The first is related to the aforementioned missing Talisman tab – a problem some players reported encountering at launch.

Community manager Rich 'filthierich' Bantegui explains in a post: "Fixed an issue where if the Last of the Horadrim quest was completed in a party, only one party member would be credited with completion and the Talisman tab would not unlock for other party members." Teamwork clearly seems to have been the issue here, as Blizzard previously advised anyone affected to complete the quest "solo on an alternate character" to get around the bug.

The other quest issue addressed in hotfix 1 relates to "The Soil, The Seed, the Fruit," which previously had a bug that could stop you progressing through it. Notably, the "She Sleeps Within You" quest – which was quickly highlighted as having a similar problem when the expansion first released – hasn't been fixed yet, but Blizzard is aware of the bug and is planning to address it.

Blizzard has definitely been busy, though, as a second hotfix has landed to fix more problems in Diablo 4 version 3.01. Specifically, it makes tweaks to two Necromancer skills, as well as the health of certain monsters. As Bantegui writes, "the Schadenfreude variant for Iron Maiden and the Bramble Variant for Bone Prison did far more damage than intended," so those have been adjusted, and "various monsters, such as Pangs of Duriel and Infernal Prison, had much higher health values than intended," so those will be lower now, too.

The change to Bone Prison seems fairly significant, too. One player on the D4Necromancer subreddit notes that they were previously "doing 705m at paragon 95" with the skill, but after the hotfix, they "do like 205k and can't kill shizzle." Certainly unfortunate for them, but it was clearly capable of doing far more than Blizzard had in mind.

Of course, the devs aren't done just yet, but this is a solid start as far as bug fixes go, particularly with the missing Talisman tab. After all, that's a new system introduced for Lord of Hatred, so it'd be rather unfortunate if folks couldn't actually unlock it properly. My condolences to the Necromancer players who were enjoying their broken skills, though.

Diablo 4 needs "aspirational content" to challenge players, director agrees, but don't discredit more casual gameplay like fishing.

Diablo 4 associate game director Zaven Haroutunian knows the action role-playing game should feature a compelling amount of "aspirational content" to keep players interested, but the challenge should never outweigh the intrigue.

He tells Diablo 4 YouTuber Rhykker during an interview breaking down the game's new Lord of Hatred expansion, "I think the game needs aspirational content" – which Rhykker worries "has been made accessible to the everyman." Haroutunian counters that, "I don't think that content, whatever it is, should present itself as the sole, or true, completion point."

Haroutunian astutely observes that, "If you present the whole game in this way, where you say, 'And the ultimate challenge is right there,' and everyone looks at that, and they rightfully expect to be able to reach it, right? Like if you present the entire game as this perfectly, linear straight path, then I'm going to expect, as a player, well, the things I'm doing in the path from where I am to where I'm going is going to prepare me for something I'm going to have to do there, right? Video game 101. It's just, like, a thing."

But, from developer Blizzard's perspective, this natural urge to march in a line becomes a problem when something in Diablo 4 is either harder or much easier than its developers intended. When this happens, it's time to rebalance – which does make some aspects of Diablo 4 more welcoming to an average skill-level player, as Rhykker says. But if Blizzard chases punishing gameplay over everything, "everything else we make afterwards has to bend in service to it as an outlier," says Haroutunian.

"What we've tried to do is as much as possible in Lord of Hatred is create opportunities for players to make their own goals, their own aspirational goals," Haroutunian continues to say about the expansion, which Blizzard is currently running through the dishwasher to fix its minor launch messes, like crazy login queues and bugs.

"I guarantee you there's a bunch of people who are motivated to find every fish," Haroutunian says in reference to Diablo 4's new fishing mini-game. And it seems like he's right. While some hardcore horde killers on Reddit can't imagine why Diablo 4 now features fishing (though I imagine even demons could benefit from a salmon's omega-3), one reply explains elegantly: "Big game that's fun for different reasons to different people."

Haroutunian would be proud of this response. It defines his egalitarian approach to game design, as he continues to tell Rhykker, "There's stuff in the game for all sorts of player types, which means not everything has to be for everyone. And that's great. Like, to me, that's very healthy."

Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred is so big that Blizzard decided the new season doesn't need its own theme, but it will include "major system upgrades."

Diablo 4's new Lord of Hatred DLC is here, but – perhaps to the surprise of no one – its initial launch hasn't exactly been the smoothest.

It didn't take long after the DLC's release for a telling statement to come from Blizzard on the official Diablo Twitter account. "We're aware that some players are currently experiencing issues accessing Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred," it said. "The team is actively investigating and working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. We'll share updates here as we have them." And it only takes a quick glimpse at the likes of Reddit and Twitter to see why – many folks were stuck in lengthy login queues, unable to access Lord of Hatred at all.

"Has Blizzard ever had a successful launch of anything?" one unlucky player asks on the Diablo subreddit, sharing a screenshot of their painful 52-minute wait. "Billion dollar company and this happens every time they launch anything. Worse, I was actually playing when it kicked me out." Another responds: "Was just in the opening cutscene just to get kicked and put into a 105-minute queue." Yikes.

Has Blizzard ever had a successful launch of anything? from r/Diablo

Unfortunately, lengthy queues haven't been the only issue. Others have been facing the annoying error code 300008, timing out their login attempts, and per Icy Veins, some have found the Talisman tab mysteriously missing, a problem Blizzard says will be "resolved in an upcoming update" (though for now, "players can resolve this by completing the quest solo on an alternate character").

Blizzard is also aware that Xbox users may not see their "Deluxe Edition and select Platinum products" available in-game, and advises them to go to the Xbox storefront to claim them, and knows that there's a progression blocker in the "She Sleeps Within You" quest, which it advises dealing with by quitting, reloading your character, and restarting the quest until it has an actual fix available. "We appreciate your patience with this," it adds.

At the very least, it should be noted that not everyone has been afflicted with login queue issues – one player on Reddit notes that they've been "blessed with hardly any issues on PS5 or PC," even wondering if this could be "the best Diablo launch ever" for Blizzard.

Around a couple of hours after Blizzard's statement about the game's queues, the devs shared an update saying that "we've made progress on the access issues impacting some Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred players," noting that "affected players should begin seeing improvement as fixes roll out," and it seems that was a success for some. "Literally by 5PM (1 hour after launch) they had fixed the server issues and they've been butter since. So yeah, this is a great launch," one fan says on Reddit.

With that said, it doesn't appear that Lord of Hatred's launch struggles are over. Even aside from the aforementioned quest progression bug and Xbox Deluxe Edition issue, more recent posts from the last couple of hours still show some players are struggling to log in, with one suggesting that the "servers are getting overloaded again."

At this point, it's safe to say that Diablo fans are used to this – some have even jokingly been discussing their favorite login error screens – but, once again, it's definitely dampening the launch, and frustrating those who were eager to dive in as soon as the DLC became available.

Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred is so big that Blizzard decided the new season doesn't need its own theme, but it will include "major system upgrades."

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

There's a fun new minigame in World of Warcraft that's essentially hide-and-seek, where you try and evade the seekers by hiding as a random object. The only problem is, Blizzard managed to leave on a mechanic that highlights other players on your map. Whoops.

The special mode is Decor Duels, a spin on Prop Hunt from Garry's Mod where the hiders transform themselves into furniture or other innocuous parts of the world, and those seeking them have to track them down using other magic. It's in Silvermoon City, and there are special rewards for competing.

That's all fine and dandy, but, as noticed by Wowhead, the devs accidentally forgot to lock out the Track Humanoids ability, putting other players on the minimap. Hunters have it inherently, and using a Blackened Worg Steak gives it to everyone else.

Decor Duels is now less about skulking about or trying to suss whether that candle over there is moving, and more a glorified game of tag. Still somewhat fun, on paper, just a very different kind of entertainment to what was intended, and a situation where there's definitely some embarrassment going around whatever team of devs allowed this to happen.

To be clear, it's an easy mistake, just a quite funny one that undermines the original intent. Meanwhile, players have also found out they can hide out of bounds relatively easily. This is less egregious, because it comes with the territory of pushing people to make use of their surroundings, and World of Warcraft has some famously dodgy seams.

At the very least, people seem to be having fun, and the patch has only been live for a short time. This can all be tightened up. That said, I think it'd be more fun if Blizzard embraced Decor Duel as more of a game of chase, but that might be just me.

Blizzard lawsuit kills huge private World of Warcraft server as a cease and desist ends another.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overwatch players are urging Blizzard Entertainment to revert the Mystery Heroes mode back to how it was before the launch of Season 2.

Overwatch Season 2 launched earlier this week, and while the game has been pretty well-received since it went from being Overwatch 2 to just Overwatch again earlier this year, Season 2 is off to a bit of a rough start thanks to Sierra's overpowered ult and underpowered everything else, and a Nintendo Switch 2 version that launched in a real rough state, and may actually be worse than the original Switch version in some ways.

While those bits have been taking the headlines, there's another big issue within the community, as Blizzard has decided to tweak one of the game's side modes in a major way. Mystery Heroes saw two teams of five take each other on, except you don't get to pick your hero. And, on top of that, every time you die you'll respawn as a different hero. It's a fun, chaotic mode that's been a staple of the game for a while.

In Season 2, however, Blizzard has changed it to be a 6v6 mode, which for some has made the chaos of the mode go from fun to miserable. One look at the Overwatch subreddit shows player complaints, with one post reading: "Who asked for this? The gamemode I know and played every day is gone." They say that "6v6 is too chaotic and removes a lot of the strategy the mode once had, good luck staying alive and getting kills until you get an ultimate without playing it extreeeeeeeemely safe."

Granted, some are willing to give 6v6 a chance, and shine light on what may be a deeper issue – the removal of perks. In regular Overwatch games, you can pick two of four perks for your characters as you play them during a match, while in Mystery Heroes you'd come pre-loaded with two already, but for whatever reason, Blizzard has removed those too. One post reads, "I don't see any benefit to taking the perks out. It was a fun way to be able to try all the variations of heroes that were in the game at the time. Now you get this very vanilla version of everything."

Blizzard will certainly be listening – in the Season 2 patch notes, it was stated that "we look forward to getting your thoughts on these changes!" Whether anything is altered is another matter, though – we'll just have to wait and see.

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

Blizzard Entertainment has acknowledged that the Nintendo Switch 2 version of Overwatch has launched in a less-than-stellar state after widespread player complaints.

Earlier this week, Blizzard confirmed that the previously announced Nintendo Switch 2 version of Overwatch would finally release alongside Season 2 of the new era, which saw Overwatch 2 go back to being just Overwatch earlier this year. The original post promised updates to visuals and "up to 60fps" performance, like the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game. However, upon the launch of Overwatch Season 2, some were shocked to find that the Overwatch Nintendo Switch 2 Edition really isn't all that different from the original Switch version.

Over on the Overwatch subreddit, player complaints emerged in various posts shortly after it launched, with some speculating that Blizzard had released the wrong build of the game because it ran worse than the version on the original Switch. Blizzard updated its known issues forum post, with a blurb that reads, "We are aware of an issue with the FPS limit on the Nintendo Switch 2 being lower than intended. We are working on a patch to resolve this issue."

Having played a game of Overwatch on the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, I can definitely say anecdotally that it feels way worse. The original Switch version on Switch 2 wasn't exactly a barn-burner in terms of performance or visual quality, but this new version is noticeably running worse than the original. Hopefully, the speculation of Blizzard releasing the wrong version of the game is accurate, and this is resolved pretty quickly, because there's no reason a console that can run Resident Evil Requiem and Cyberpunk 2077 so well wouldn't be able to handle 60fps Overwatch.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blizzard Entertainment has confirmed that Season 2 of Overwatch will also see the release of a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of its FPS title.

In the blog post detailing Overwatch Season 2 (that is, Season 2 of the game since Blizzard decided to rename Overwatch 2 to just Overwatch earlier this year), hidden right at the bottom of the post is an update on the previously-announced Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of Overwatch. Alongside the launch of Season 2 on April 14 (that's today, for anyone keeping score), a dedicated version for the platform which promises "better visuals, higher fidelity audio, and up to 60 FPS in both docked and handheld mode" will be available.

As someone who has been getting back into Overwatch in recent weeks, the Nintendo Switch version of the game (played on Switch 2) has become a favorite of mine. Since I'm not heading straight into the sweaty competitive zone, a nice way to casually pick up and play a game of the shooter makes for a shockingly good version. Plus, it actually has gyro aim, which Blizzard seemingly refuses to include in the PS5 version despite the DualSense having gyro control capabilities.

However, even on Switch 2 you can notice the cutbacks to the Switch 1 version. There are missing props in the spawn rooms, and a bit of general roughness that takes a bit to get used to (especially when the alternative I've been playing is 120fps on PS5 Pro). So, hopefully this Switch 2 Edition brings an uncompromised version of the game that allows me to pick up and play for a while and get annoyed when none of the team bothers to stick on the point and we manage to choke a game we were dominating because you just had to run in to try and get them at spawn.

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

World of Warcraft is the 800-pound gorilla of the MMO world – the undisputed titan that the entire genre is measured against. You might think that the developers behind RuneScape, an even older and far more modest online RPG, would've been a little nervous when Blizzard's game launched, but it seems that's not the case. Jagex was, after all, too busy suffering from success.

There was "surprisingly not" much worry about WoW's launch within Jagex, according to an interview with RuneScape design director Mark Ogilvie from the October 2014 issue of GamesTM. Ogilvie attributed the RuneScape's success to its very light design, which meant that the devs could implement new content at an extremely fast pace, and to the fact that it could run on just about any computer of the era. Those weren't areas where Blizzard was able to compete.

"Update frequency and accessibility were still our trump cards and actually our audience weren't that interested in WoW," Ogilvie said. "I think it did affect the rate of new customers, but frankly we were struggling to hire staff and build new servers fast enough to deal with the rate we did have, which was still tens of thousands of new accounts every single day."

Neither WoW nor RuneScape have lost much momentum in the past 20 years, as they're both still wildly popular, and counted among the best MMORPGs out there. Neither game has been without controversy in the intervening years – you can look at WoW's story criticisms and critiques of RuneScape's monetization for current examples – but that's some impressive staying power for a pair of MMOs that came to life when the very idea of playing online with other people was still pretty novel.

Stating no lies, RuneScape CEO says the MMO's players "used to be angsty 16-year-olds listening to Breaking Benjamin. Now it's 33-year-old accountants and CEOs who've got 41 minutes in an evening."

Anyone who was both chronically online and in the Overwatch trenches a decade ago might remember one of the game's first ever controversies, sometimes referred to as Tracer's butt-troversy. Former Overwatch director and co-creator Jeff Kaplan now says some fans were going through a Mandela Effect – Blizzard never actually did anything to Tracer's butt.

The controversy has been well documented but has also been shrouded in lots of misinformation over the last 10 years. It all kicked off when a thread on the official Overwatch forum took issue with a certain victory pose for Tracer that put the usually chirpy, sometimes goofy hero in a arguably flirtatious, over the shoulder pose.

"It's not fun, its not silly, it has nothing to do with being a fast elite killer. It just reduces tracer to another bland female sex symbol," the thread claimed at the time. Discussions and debates popped off almost immediately until Jeff Kaplan chimed in to promise a replacement pose. "We want everyone to feel strong and heroic in our community," he said in a comment in the forum.

Blizzard's all-new pose represented Tracer's personality much better, but also led to allegations that the company had nerfed her, urm, assets. Now, 10 years later, while streaming his forthcoming game called The Legend of California, Kaplan responded to yet another question related to the butt-troversy.

"We actually didn't nerf Tracer's butt," Kaplan says in an almost offended tone. "It stayed exactly the same. That was a good repose I just had."

There you have it – in case it wasn't clear before. Blizzard devs never did much to Tracer's behind; they simply put her in a different pose, and everyone who got angry over a virtual hero's potentially slightly smaller ass was living through some sort of mass hysteria.

The same discussions and debates over the character's body have, for some reason, followed Overwatch over the course of a decade. Similar 'butt nerf' claims were thrown around at the time of Overwatch 2's relaunch, as well. But at least those butt sickos can finally find solace in Marvel Rivals.

Overwatch will free Anran from her "baby face" in Season 2, director confirms, and her voice actor approves: "She looks much more like the strong older sibling we knew her to be."

The Worldsoul Saga in World of Warcraft just had its second act in Midnight. One person who definitely isn't a fan is Eric Covington, a former associate quest designer on Blizzard's mammoth MMO.

In an impassioned tweet, he tore down the conclusion of Midnight, snidely comparing the whole thing to an animated show for kids. "Is this what happens without certain voices on the team constantly fighting for plot and pacing?" he starts.

"Where are the stakes?" he adds. "Sunwell and elven unity wrapped up like a Saturday morning cartoon and the villain runs away to cause mischief another day/patch." Included is a picture of Harbinger, a major antagonist, literally saying, "We'll finish this another time, perhaps."

He finishes by saying, "This is Carmen Sandiego," since the central location will now change for The Last Titan, where the real final fight against Harbinger is likely to take place. Though flippant, I can see where he's coming from, since the narrative is remarkably neat for the second part of a trilogy.

The elven armies do indeed come together to defeat the Devouring Host, and the void elves are given special access to Silvermoon after. You can easily imagine this being a big season finale of some cartoon back in the day, building toward what might be the last season (but probably not).

Commenters on Reddit agree with Covington, to a point. "I do wonder where they're going next. It was wrapped up pretty quickly," says one. "I have conceded the fact that Warcraft's story is garbage but they make a hell of an end game that is perpetually fun for me," another adds.

World of Warcraft lead asks how players would feel about playing the MMO on a controller with a dedicated UI, but fans "fear that the PC experience will get worse."

After just under two months, Blizzard revealed the new look for Anran in Overwatch. After waves of complaints about her initial design, the studio decided to give her a makeover that's now more fitting for the kind of character the devs want her to be.

Aaron Keller, game director of Overwatch, introduces the changes in a short video. "We think she could come across older and that her original version was too innocent and playful," he says, over a contrast of her old and new looks.

"We made some adjustments to her face," he continues. "We focused on her eyes, eyebrows, and mouth, and we moved away from that baby face, look, and expression, to something more sincere and more mature."

He highlights the "simple posture change" that helps "Anran feel more like Anran." Some of these are subtle alterations, but combined they do make the character seem older and more distinct, whereas before she came across a bit cartoony and cookie-cutter.

One of the most important facets is how this makes her look compared to her brother, Wuyang. The family resemblance is generally more pronounced, which is a nice touch. Fareeha Andersen, the voice actor of Anran, approves of all the tweaks. "So grateful for this update, she looks much more like the strong older sibling we knew her to be!" they tweeted.

Anran's fresh look will come in Overwatch season 2, and this turnaround has been a learning experience for Blizzard when it comes to the slate of new heroes who'll be joining the roster. "We have five more heroes coming in this year, and we want all of them to feel true to who they are," Keller adds. "Going through this process has really helped the team dial in this next set of heroes."

"What if we could just drop 30 new heroes into Overwatch?": Marvel Rivals "definitely had an impact" on Blizzard, says Overwatch boss, and a big factor was the response to new heroes

It looks like Blizzard is testing the waters for World of Warcraft to become playable on controller. One of the longstanding MMORPG's producers is currently doing some research on whether players would enjoy as much, letting users have their say.

In a questions-and-answers session with Azeroth-centric outlet Wowhead, Holly Longdale, executive producer and vice president on World of Warcraft, proposes the question to the live Discord chat. "How many players would be interested in experiencing the game on a controller with a fully dedicated UI?" she asks, prompting a variety of responses and concerns.

For her, she sees the value in catering to as many players as possible, since her taste in games is broad. But there are a lot of considerations here, because World of Warcraft is built very specifically for mouse and keyboard and PC architecture. The consensus in the immediate aftermath skews negative on Reddit.

"We fear that the PC experience will get worse because they are trying to accommodate console users," one player comments. "For example removing add-on functionality, customizability, dumbing down classes, removing gameplay depth and complexity, etc."

This is the underlying anxiety, and as I'm sure you know, the fans often tend to be pretty critical of Blizzard's decision-making without other platforms being on the docket. "No game has become better when a PC game has to cater to a console game," another Redditor states.

There's a feeling that it might become reality sooner rather than later, though, especially in light of Microsoft now owning Activision Blizzard. Pushing towards whatever the next generation of Xbox devices is is a sound plan for goading people into dropping their hard earned cash.

"WoW port for the new Xbox/PC hybrid console thingy seems fairly inevitable," the top comment reads. "WoW will come to consoles at some point, won't it? It's just too much for MS to pass on," says another. Whatever the future holds, a joypad will probably be involved, for good or ill.

Blizzard is finally giving World of Warcraft fans an official Pride event in a new Midnight update, after 12 years of a community-led run: "Sounds gay, I'm in."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Many players have felt conflicted about Overwatch since the hero shooter rebranded to Overwatch 2, then re-rebranded to Overwatch, then introduced the eye-wateringly adorable Jetpack Cat, who also gets banned all the time for being too powerful. But it could all have been an even bigger mess. Ex-Blizzard vice president and Overwatch co-creator Jeff Kaplan could have decided to officially name the game "Monetized Shooter," which is what he first pitched it as.

"It was a seven-page deck," Kaplan tells AI researcher and podcaster Lex Fridman in a recent interview. "And it was called Monetized Shooter at the time. It just said 'Monetized Shooter,' and then the first slide was League of Legends plus Team Fortress 2 logos."

Overwatch's first title came from Kaplan's plan to make it "free-to-play, and you had to buy the heroes, which is fucking terrible. But, at the time, I actually thought that was a good idea." So Kaplan was inches away from pitching Blizzard his Monetized Shooter when he remembers initial Overwatch producer Matt Hawley stopping him and saying, "I refuse to put up a deck in front of the team where the first slide says 'Monetized Shooter.'"

Hawley requested Kaplan give his game idea a real name rather than an inflammatory placeholder title, and Kaplan remembers immediately saying, "It's Overwatch" – which Blizzard developers once wanted to name canceled multiplayer Titan.

"I basically named the game Overwatch to high-five my team," Kaplan reflects, and also to send a "middle finger" to an unnamed Blizzard dev who really didn't like the title for Titan. But, you have to admit, it's certainly more subtle than Monetized Shooter.

"What if we could just drop 30 new heroes into Overwatch?": Marvel Rivals "definitely had an impact" on Blizzard, says Overwatch boss, and a big factor was the response to new heroes.

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

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

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

EU Delve Hall of Fame is full from r/wow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If Jeff Kaplan had his wish, World of Warcraft would look quite different. During development of the MMORPG, he campaigned within Blizzard for the first-person perspective to be used, and he views his upcoming game The Legend of California as an indirect realization of those aspirations.

"I really wanted [World of Warcraft] to be first-person," he said during a livestream, as clipped by Majid Manzarpour on Twitter. "I argued a lot for that."

He believes "WoW is great" as it is in third-person, and there are "a lot of arguments about seeing your character more," but his playing history molded his preferences toward another direction. "I had come from EverQuest, they had this weird third-person camera that didn't really fully work that great, you didn't play with it on," he explains.

"[EverQuest] is all first-person," he states, before adding that The Legend of California is him indirectly coming back to the notion of a first-person fantasy sandbox. First-person was prevalent in role-playing games for years, as evidenced by The Elder Scrolls and Might and Magic series as well, before third-person became more fashionable.

Although the open-world shooter isn't heavy on the RPG elements, nor is The Legend of California very fantastical, you can see the elements strewn throughout. There's horseback riding through forest and mountains, and the guns give you long and short-range combat, and plenty of exploration. Most importantly, less of an emphasis on how your character specifically looks, which is a fundamental facet of playing a game with customizable equipment and such.

Kaplan showed the project off during the stream, which was a mammoth ten hour long session between him and Tim Ford. There's no release window for the game yet, but when it arrives, I wouldn't bother looking for the third-person toggle, because it likely won't be there.

Former Overwatch director has sage advice for those who complain about games they don't play: "Shut the f**k up"