Monthly Archives: November 2017
Can World of Warcraft Classic Servers Really Let You Go Home Again?
There was once a quiet little tavern in the Park District in Stormwind where a small band of soldiers, sorcerers, scavengers, and scamps would meet to lighten their loads long into the night. I never had a neighborhood bar in the real world like you see on sitcoms, but that cozy little nook nestled far away from any of World of Warcraft's quest-givers, auction houses, flight masters, or class trainers felt like home. Few who frequented it knew my real name, but everybody knew the name of my human paladin, Trathas Valorwind.
That establishment is long gone now. It quite literally fell into the sea when Deathwing desolated the kingdom during 2010's Cataclysm expansion. The couple dozen of us who used to park our avatars by its hearth to swap stories of adventure, and sometimes even confide in each other about our real life problems, drifted away to other haunts. Most, myself included, eventually drifted away from the game altogether. The Lich King’s final breaths were the sound of an age ending.
New CS:GO Matchmaking System Analyses Steam Behavior
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) has received a new matchmaking system that analyses player behavior across Steam.
According to the Counter-Strike blog, the new system has created something called a Trust Factor for Steam players. This system takes into account total time playing CS:GO, times players have been reported for cheating, and time spent playing other games on their Steam account, with all of these contributing to create a player's Trust Factor.
Valve says the results of the experiment have been positive, allowing them to keep the parts of the Prime system that were working, while ditching parts that caused issues in the CS:GO community. The Trust system is already live, but players will be able to opt to use Prime matchmaking for a little while longer.
World of Warcraft Ditching Classic Feature in Next Expansion
In order to provide more players with more flexibility, Blizzard has opted to do away with traditional raid class sets in World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth.
"We're currently not planning on carrying forward traditional raid class sets," World of Warcraft game director Ion Hazzikostas said of the MMO's recently revealed expansion in an interview with Game Informer at BlizzCon 2017.
In addition to noting that "gear will be more heavily themed from the place it comes," Hazzikostas said Blizzard has more customization it wants to feature through the game's new Azerite system, which will feature options like enhancing abilities so players can tailor their gear around their specific strengths.
Metroid, Earthbound Composer Answers Your Questions Live
Music has been a fundamental component of the video game experience since the arcades of the 80s. From the earliest chip constrained sounds of the 8-bit consoles to today’s fully orchestrated productions, VGM has shaped our collective gaming memories and inspired a generation of musicians.
Streaming Wednesday’s at 4pm PT / 7pm ET / 12am UK on Thursdays / 12pm AEST on Thursdays on IGN, Red Bull Radio’s Diggin' in the Carts explores the history of VGM and its impact on today’s popular music. The VGM radio show features a deeply curated selection of game music from hidden NES gems, to 32-bit shooters and more, and conversations with the original composers and inspired musicians.
Cuphead Dev Wants to Stick With 2D Animation
While Studio MDHR has yet to reveal its plans for the future following the release of Cuphead, the developer does intend to use hand-drawn 2D animation for whatever comes next.
On the latest episode of our monthly interview show IGN Unfiltered, lead game designer Jared Moldenhauer said he thinks it "would be a shame" if the studio moved away from classic hand-drawn animation, noting "a large part of
is the love of 2D animation" and maintaining its relevance in a changing industry.
"So many talented people out there don't have the opportunity to use their talents in any which way, and most of the companies that used to have switched to 3D. And times do change, but I want to always be a part of
Top 25 Nintendo Switch Games
The Nintendo Switch has been out for a year and a half and in that short time, dozens of awesome games have hit Nintendo’s hybrid console.
We did the homework and put together a list of our 25 favorites.
Let’s go!
25. Blossom Tales
Blossom Tales feels right at home on the Nintendo Switch. The game has no shame in how much it actually borrows from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and that’s in no way bad thing. It may be a short game, but the moment to moment gameplay brings a ton of nostalgia and satisfies the craving to play something so familiar yet adds new challenges along the way.
– Brian Malkiewicz
24. Kirby Star Allies
BattleTech Brings XCOM-Style Management to Mech Combat
BattleTech takes place in a grim future where you might prefer to sacrifice a soldier’s life over leaving some scrap on the battlefield. It’s been a long time since we got a new game set in the official BatteTech universe, and it’s coming back in a time set far past the golden age of mech warfare - one where the giant mechanical weapons are now a far more scarce commodity.
We’ve already seen a good bit of BattleTech’s combat as it moves toward launch next year, but last week developer Harebrained Schemes gave me a look at its metagame - an XCOM-style management sim where you take control of a crew of space mercenaries just trying to get by. It’s a seriously cool and complex way to tie together some already exciting combat.
Super Bomberman R: New DLC Adds Story, Characters, eSports
Konami has announced a new update for Super Bomberman R that adds many new features, including extra story content, 9 new characters and an additional gameplay mode geared towards eSports.
The new "Grand Prix" is a 3-vs-3 mode which has been designed specifically with future eSports in mind; it features a "Basic Bomber" mode that operates under usual Bomberman rules, as well as a "Crystal Match" which sees teams fighting to collect the most crystals while dodging bombs.
The free pack also adds a new world - World 7 - to Story Mode, as well as a selection of new stages and accessories.
The DLC pack also adds a full nine characters to the game, drawing from various Konami franchises:
Call of Duty: WW2: Dedicated Servers Returning
Sledgehammer Games has announced that dedicated servers have been reinstated on Call of Duty: WW2's PC, PS4 and Xbox One versions.
Responding to recent technical issues, it identified that last Friday's game update, whilst improving the game's overall stability, adversely affected server performance, forcing a switch to P2P servers (which could lead to worse in-game performance).
STATUS UPDATE: Global Dedicated Servers are currently live on all platforms. If you experience any issues, please be as specific as possible in your replies by including connection type wired/wifi, NAT type and region. Also, please include @ATVIassist.
Battlefront 2: Unlocking Everything Will Take a Long Time
For anyone who's wondering exactly how much of a commitment it will take to unlock the full bevy of content in EA's Star Wars: Battlefront 2, we have good news for you (or bad, depending on how you look at it) - someone has figured that out for you.
Dedicated number-cruncher Soeren Kamper over at Star Wars Gaming created a formula estimating the percentage chance of card drops, the credits given for duplicate cards and the average number of crafting parts given per box. Using Kamper's formula, it emerges that players are looking at over six months' of playtime - 4,528 hours, to be precise.