The talented boys at Sneaky Zebra have done it again! Xbox UK and Halo 5 sponsored our favorite duo of capturing cosplay to cover Blizzcon 2015 and film with some next level cosplayers!
Attendees of Blizzcon 2015 brought out their best, featuring all sorts of impressive armour builds, costumes and even 3D printing that put them in awe by the level of skill, craftsmanship and passion from everyone who attend Blizzcon in the Anaheim Convention Center. Featuring characters from the full range of Blizzard games: World of Warcraft, OverWatch, Diablo, Starcraft and Hearthstone.
Not only that, Sneaky Zebra is running two contests on behalf of their sponsors. For a chance to win a Halo 5 Limited Collectors Edition click here or enter for a chance to win a Blizzcon swag bag here! Competition winners will be randomly selected on Monday 16th of November at 8pm on a live stream. Only 1 entry per twitter account will be counted. Competition only available to Europe and North America due to shipping costs.
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The thing most of us forget about the gaming industry is that the entertainment value of what they provide for consumers is only half of the equation. It’s still an industry – and surrounding all of the fun gameplay and epic stories are the business deals that happen just outside our field of view. So perhaps not a lot of people thought much of the fact that Activision Blizzard acquired King Digital this week. Some folks scratched their heads. Some probably didn’t register more than a “meh” before they went on about their day. I on the other hand went full on metageek, paying attention not to the fact that Diablo just bought Candy Crush, but more to the fact that the deal involved money to the tune of $5.9 BILLION.
If you want to put that to scale, Microsoft paid Mojang about $2.5 billion for Minecraft. And for some real perspective – Disney paid roughly $4 billion for the Star Wars franchise – $2 billion less than the Candy Crush deal. Let that sink in for a minute, because that is incredible.
Activision Blizzard is home to the wildly popular Call of Duty franchise and the realms of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo. King Digital, famous for its mobile and browser-based games, is most famous for bringing us Candy Crush. And on its face to most people it could seem like a pretty random buy. The former makes mega-large scale games in the FPS, fantasy and MMO space, while the latter caters to mobile, with what some would call “casual” gaming. They’re two companies that have close to zero overlap in any gaming sector. And that’s why it makes sense. The acquisition gives Activision Blizzard a foothold in an area they’ve yet to really conquer, with the exception of the free-to-play Hearthstone now available on smartphones and tablets.
As software and games change, it’s a clear trend that mobile is the new hotness. The current generation has grown up with solid mobile platforms which include increasingly strong smartphones. This is especially true with younger gamers 17 and under, according to global information company The NPD Group. And even from my personal experience, when I’m traveling (and let’s face it, even when I’m in the office) there’s never a shortage of people tapping away at their touchscreens getting their game on.
I myself have been epicly thrashed in Hearthstone on my phone during my lunch in my office – sandwich in one hand and disappointment and sadness in the other, thanks to Thrall and his incessant totem dropping.
So given the trend, why spend dollars creating something to compete in that space when it’s more effective to acquire a group that already does it well? Picking up King Digital brought in a lot of talent with a ton of experience in the mobile gaming space, which opens up a lot of opportunities to not only create new IP, but to bolster their existing game lines as well. That had to be Bobby Kotick’s thinking, probably spurred on by the success of Hearthstone.
And I have a sneaking suspicion that King Digital’s 474 million monthly active users had something to do with it too.
The fact of the matter is that this deal will have almost zero effect on the 474 million candy crushers out there, but could prove to bring some enhancements or new features to the Activision Blizzard franchises that we love. Early this year they released Call of Duty Online in the Chinese market, spearheading the movement to bring their well known franchises to mobile and pick up a new audience for their games. Let’s be real, not everyone is drinking the Kool Aid in Azeroth, and there’s a lot of players they could now provide more content to that they couldn’t before.
According to Bobby Kotick in the official press release:
The combined revenues and profits solidify our position as the largest, most profitable standalone company in interactive entertainment. With a combined global network of more than half a billion monthly active users, our potential to reach audiences around the world on the device of their choosing enables us to deliver great games to even bigger audiences than ever before.
Well there’s that, and also the deal makes a pretty penny for King CEO Ricardo Zacconi.
So what’s my verdict? I get the deal and it does make sense to me. I’m not completely convinced of the valuation – there’s a lot of financial mumbo jumbo I’m not going to bore you with – but the deal itself makes sense. I feel like Activision Blizzard now having a crew of mobile experts and a platform to work from could really enhance Hearthstone as their current big mobile game, but also allow them to make Battle.net bigger and better, and spark some creative revitalization for some franchises that, to be quite honest, have gone a bit stale. And my hunter, my barbarian, my monk, my crusader, and myself – all hope that I’m right. We’ll have to wait until Spring to find out.
Tushar Nene
Staff Writer
@tusharnene
Blizzard’s latest installment in the demon-slaying action RPG series turned 3 this past weekend, and they decided to do something a little special for D3 players by addressing all things bovine and the secret cow level.
The cow level was mostly a running gag by Blizzard that began back in the first game in the Diablo series. If you clicked one of the cows in Tristram enough times, instead of the requisite “moo” the player’s character would break the fourth wall and talk to the player – telling us either “Yup that’s a cow alright!” and reminding us that “Hey, I am no milkmaid!” As we clicked more, the game cycled through more of these quips from our character. This little easter egg was what prompted the rumor of a secret cow level, which as legend has it, stated a portal to it could be opened if a player clicked a cow enough times. It’s alright, I clicked the hell out of those cows too – it was such a ridiculous thing that I had to see for myself.
Of course while taking the official stance that there is no cow level, they fed the rumor machine by making “thereisnocowlevel” a cheat code in Starcraft.
Diablo II took that rumor and ran with it, creating a cow level that could be accessed combining a tome of town portal and Wirt’s leg in your Horadric cube. It eventually became a popular place for players to grind experience and culminated in a battle with the Cow King.
Diablo III, I suppose sort of in that vein, replaced some treasure goblins with treasure bovines instead. And much like the rainbow goblins open up a portal to Whimsyshire, these treasure cows open up a red portal described as the following:
Leads to a place that does not exist. The Burning Hells are not responsible for events that transpire there. If you claim to have been to this place, you will be called a liar. Void where prohibited.
The cow level NOT the cow level is filled with shrines that you will need because of the mad quantity of mad cows coming to get you. I was playing on Master difficulty with a 40-something monk and those shrines and sweeping wind were my best friends for the next few minutes. Scattered around are farmers, no doubt slain by the new bovine masters, dropping tons of gold on top of the already ridiculous number of chests on the map. I had to make 2 trips to town for salvage to actually collect all the loot.
There are gags harkening back to Diablo II, like a quest from the ghost of the then-slain Cow King, who wryly quips that these cows must have some sort of beef with you on a quest called “Tipping Point.” And if you take a look at the pictures, that’s right, some health globes are actually steaks.
I will close by saying this – this place is difficult. On Master difficulty rare spawns showed up with multiple packs of elites (seriously always with fire chains) and my first time through while dealing with them I stumbled upon the map boss, the Cow Queen. She throws so much lightning that I would rank her as more difficult than many of the bosses in the game just based on the sheer damage output she hurls at you, and in my case my gear wasn’t exactly dripping with resistances. This is one of the rare times I died playing with this character so far – she takes very little damage, and there were times when both potions and breath of heaven were on cooldown, leaving my to my doom. But when you’re done with her you do get 4 radiant chests. With a twangy banjo track in the background no less.
Unfortunately no, there were no bovine-themed legendaries, at least none that dropped for me.
The cow level was over on May 21st, but who knows? From the minds of those that came up with both the cow level and Whimsyshire, you never know what’s next in the realms of Sanctuary. Check out some more images in the gallery below:
Tushar Nene
Staff Writer
@tusharnene
Every WoW expansion pack that has been released over the past few years was shipped with its own personality. Over the classic “vanilla” build of the game, Burning Crusade was markedly more difficult but had a lot of good content on your way to level 70 (not to mention replacing your epics on the first quest reward). Wrath of the Lich King came about and it was a far less challenging than its predecessor, but had what I consider to be some of the best endgame content raids in Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel. It also brought the story full circle for those of us that nerded out on Warcraft III before Blizzard’s MMO days. Cataclysm brought back the pure grind-it-out progression and the fall of Deathwing. Mists of Pandaria? Well, they had pandas and an eastern flair but I never got into it too deeply.
Now we’re a few weeks into Warlords of Draenor, the most recent expansion pack to the wildly popular World of Warcraft MMO. And I’ll say it briefly before I get into the meat of this – I like it. And it’s not wholly because of the content or of the throwbacks that will let you nerd out on character origins (like seeing Akama as a full on badass Exarch instead of an ubroken roaming Outland). This expansion answered the call for player housing from a lot of the fanbase, and they did it with style by implementing the garrison system. I probably spend more time tending to my garrison and doing garrison-related quests than I do much else. My main toon has been a level 100 for a week or so and I think I’ve only run 2 dungeons. And there’s a reason…
My garrison is a giant project. And one of my real life off-specs is project management.
The whole campaign starts with bringing people in from the Capital and creating a central outpost under your command to run operations in Draenor for whichever faction you represent – be it the Alliance or the Horde – when you have to sign off on the plans from the first buildings. And from that point of initial construction, 100% of the mechanics involve running things (albeit in a much more toned down way but you know) in any sort of project. As you level up more things open up to you in terms of crafting, garrison resource generation, heroes from around the land that follow your lead and run missions for you, and how much time and money it’s going to take to get it all done and customize it to exactly what you want.
(In other words, I just listed timelines, stakeholders, project resources, personnel, production/manufacturing, and change controls).
The player picks what buildings they wants to be constructed to produce items or unlock certain rewards. And other buildings are there to provide resources to get there. My tannery lets my leatherworking department make stuff for me as well as higher grade materials for crafting and selling high end moneymakers. My inn is a recruiting place where I can interview potential followers. Hell there’s even a shack for fishing. Everything can be laid out (almost) exactly like you want it. And there’s a panel to track all of it.
And then… there’s the garrison missions.
Every mission that’s run has a reward, but they all have a set resource cost and personnel cost. When you see a slate of available missions it’s up to you to figure out which skillset goes where, how long it will take and whether the cost and time is worth the reward. Because nobody wants to wait 8 hours for just a tiny handful of coin. I mean it’s insulting really.
Take the mission “The Infernals’ Fury,” for instance. To guarantee a win in 4 hours I need level 100 followers with skills to counter the following: Wild Aggression, Massive Strike and Deadly Minions. As you can see my girl Qiana Moonshadow has wild aggression covered handily, but I’m short on the other two. My Dwarven associates Delvar and Bruma are my go-to aces to deal with massive strike and deadly minions. But here’s the problem – they’re on another mission that is taking forever. And even while they’re spreading the word of badassery in my name, that doesn’t give me something as good as that armor enhancement token. So I can’t do this one right now – and that’s called opportunity cost, kids. When they get back they’ll be assigned here because it’s a more important reward.
I can always put in my junior team in though. They have the same skills, but since they’re not maxed out, my chance of getting that token would drop. I mean you don’t take Peyton Manning out of the game unless he physically can’t play, know what I’m sayin?
So if Burning Crusade brought the gear, Lich King brought the break, Cataclysm brought the grind, and Pandaria brought the… well, the furries – Warlords brings the project. And I am loving every second of it.
Tushar Nene
Staff Writer
@tusharnene
I’m surprised at how long it takes for some companies to learn that the internet is a thing now, and that a good action should be executed before fan or customer backlash forces them to. This is the case of the male-only championship policy of the International e-Sports Federation (IeSF), how it affected the actions of a Finnish qualifying tournament, and how the internet told them to knock that noise off.
Yesterday afternoon I read some disturbing details on the Hearthstone competition at the Finnish Assembly Summer 2014 eSports tournament coming up at the end of this month.
You had to have two things:
(1) Finnish citizenry
(2) A Y-chromosome
Yes you read that correctly – the Hearthstone tournament was classified as being for Finnish men only. So all those ladies with their two X chromosomes were asked to hit the bricks.
The winner of this tournament would qualify for the IeSF World Championships later this fall, where they will be representing Finland in the contest. So I get the part where you have to be a bona fide Finn to enter the digital ring here. But why – why why why in seven hells weren’t women allowed to play? It’s 2014, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why.
PC Gamer, who picked up and later confirmed this information from a member of the Reddit Hearthstone community named Karuta, seemed to be wondering the same thing. So they asked Markus Koskivirta, the head admin for the Assembly Summer 2014 Hearthstone Qualifier:
“Your information is indeed correct, the tournament is open to Finnish male players only. In accordance with the International e-Sports Federation’s (IeSF) tournament regulations, since the main tournament event is open to male players only. This is to avoid possible conflicts (e.g. a female player eliminating a male player during RO8) among other things.”
Oh. So that’s the issue. The IeSF championships are men only. So if a woman wins the Finnish tournament, then they wouldn’t be eligible to compete there. Further, according to the IeSF’s site and Facebook event page, the IeSF even went as far as to have different games for different genders at the worlds. Male competitors will be playing Hearthstone, Dota 2, Starcraft 2, and Ultra Street Fighter IV while the female competitors will be playing Starcraft 2 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2. In this case, The organizers of Assembly Summer 2014 are doing it this way because of IeSF rules, and doing it under protest.
So to make it even worse, women were only to compete in 2 games at the championship level while the men’s division got 4. And not only that, but while they will both be playing Starcraft 2, it won’t be together.
Naturally this caused some waves in the gaming community, as it damn well should. A number of users took the IeSF to task on their Facebook page, and received some answers explanations thinly sliced excuses for those asking questions. Direct from their Facebook page:
“Let me elaborate a bit on the decision to create both male and female competitions. This decision serves two main goals of the IeSF:
1 – promoting female players. We know that e-Sports is largely dominated by male players and females players are actually a portion of the overall player base. By hosting a female-only competition, we strive to promote female gaming on a global scale.
2 – International standards. IeSF is very close to get e-Sports recognized as a true sports like it should be. Part of that efforts is to comply with the international sports regulations. For example, chess is also divided into male / female leagues.
But, we want you to know that we listen to you, and appreciate your feedback! Our efforts does not clash with the community opinion – but on the contrary – we are here for the future of e-Sports and will do our best to promote it as best as we can.”
Ok.
As I tried to bend my head around it all I could come up with were different ways of saying WTF:
Why is an all-female gaming competition the only way one can come up with to highlight and promote female gaming on a global scale? By making it a different thing, what’s being said is that it’s different than men’s gaming, and in this particular case, unequal as well. If equality was a factor to the IeSF, then there wouldn’t be male and female brackets in their Starcraft 2 contests. But there are, and that’s absolutely absurd. The one and singular reason I was able to come up with was that maybe some female gamers would be more open to joining all-female tournaments due to the boy’s club that is e-sports as a whole and the very real sexual harassment that happens in the gaming community. A lot of these cases began coming to light (well, really coming into light publicly) a couple years ago. We remember Aris Bakhtanians’ creepy-as-sin antics at CrossAssault and his defense that sexual harassment was “part of the culture.” And we all remember the steady stream of misogyny and vitriol flowing Anna Sarkeesian’s way just by merely suggesting that the design of female video game characters fit lazy stereotypes and tropes. Last year Starcraft 2 player Eve retired and deleted her social accounts due to sexual harassment. So there may be a lot of points leading to a women’s division being a logical thing to make women feel more comfortable at events. But it still feels wrong.
Then Ben Kuchera over at Polygon actually summed up my thoughts on that far more eloquently than I could: “The onus is on YOU to make every player feel welcome, safe and invited. Segregating the genders is evidence that you have failed at that job, or simply don’t feel you’re up to the task.” I can’t really put it any better than that. Now instead, IeSF had decided to lean into that image and strengthen it further.
Are they trying to do something like weight classes like there are in grappling sports? Is it to make eSports the “true sport” it deserves to be? Well luckily I have some experience in grappling sports, so allow me some words on the matter.
Here’s the thing about e-sports and (hell I’ll say it, someone should) real sports. They’re different. I’m into martial arts and have been so competitively in the past, where we’re divided by gender and weight class in competition. The last time I competed (many moons ago) I fought heavyweight, meaning everyone i was matched up with was like me – men above 219 lbs. Why? Because that’s fair, and a fair contest is what it’s all about. Making me square off against a lightweight weighing in at 130 is crazy, because the odds would be ridiculously stacked in my favor on size and weight. The thing with games on the other hand, especially one like Hearthstone, is that it’s purely a mental exercise in strategy. Hearthstone is just about strategy and fun, where a player gets out the effort they put in. There’s no muscles or weight involved. It’s mind vs mind. A match between two opponents of equal skill would not favor one or the other due to physical prowess or strength. So why can’t everyone compete in an open contest? It’s another message that men and women aren’t on the same level.
Well, with all the posts on the IeSF’s Facebook page and all the backlash on Twitter and Reddit and most social media and the internet at large, As of this morning (Friday July 3, 2014), the IeSF has reversed their position on a men-only championship. In a release on their site today they publicly changed their tune:
On 2nd of July, 2014, the IeSF’s policy about gender division, which separates the female division and the male division, has been brought into question. The IeSF has listened to the gaming community and has carefully considered their opinions. Upon hearing these concerns, the IeSF convoked an emergency session of the IeSF Board to respond.
As a result, IeSF shall have two event categories: “Open for All” events and events that are reserved for women. The events which were initially set aside as the male division will now be open to all genders, and the events which were initially set as the female division will remain as they were.
The IeSF Board addressed its reason for maintaining events for women, citing the importance of providing female gamers with ample opportunities to compete in e-Sports—currently a male-dominated industry. Female gamers make up half of the world’s gaming population, but only a small percentage of e-Sports competitors are women. The IeSF’s female-only competitions aim to bring more diversity to competitive play by improving the representation of women at these events. Without efforts to improve representation, e-Sports can’t achieve true gender equality.
Well damn.
Is it the ideal scenario? No, not really. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m very pleased that the main championship is now open to all and that everyone has a chance to play for the title. But it still classifies a women’s division as a separate entity from the main championship. Arguments can be made for it along the same data I presented a little ways back up this page, but it’s a band-aid on a much deeper wound.
The problem is a culture that prevents everyone to feel safe and included as part of that culture. While change – albeit very slow change – is happening, that culture has a long way to go for real intrinsic transformation into a self-policing community where everyone feels welcomed, and more importantly, safe. And until that’s achieved, more and more of these band aids will have to be applied. And while yes, they may stop the bleeding for a short time, the underlying cut will still remain. I wish there were answers for an easy fix, but systemic change is anything but a speedy process.
While the IeSF made a change for the main championship, it took a great amount of internet backlash to do it. The fact still remains that without input from the masses, they themselves thought a men only championship was a good idea. So I’ll call this a good step in the right direction, but with a long way to go for the community.
Tushar Nene
Staff Writer
@tusharnene
PAX East had a lot of great things to see all over the huge show floor at the Boston Convention Center – enough to confuse a person about which booths to hit first and which games to demo. Luckily for me, we’re spoiled with shiny media badges, which gave us an extra hour before general admission to roam peacefully and make that decision. As a dude that has played Warcraft and Diablo games for over a decade, I decided to hit up Blizzard first.
Last year’s PAX East being their launch platform for Hearthstone, I was excited to see what they had in store for us this year – and as far as I’m concerned, they didn’t disappoint. While Blizzard crew was still setting up the last of the demo stations, I settled in to try out World of Warcraft’s upcoming expansion, Warlords of Draenor, and their upcoming free-to-play mashup barn burner of a title, Heroes of the Storm.
World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor
Let me be straight here – what I played was definitely not a complete representation of the game. The demo was a limited, but I’m not going to hold that against them – they had an alpha build, and for those of you that have never worked in software or game testing, an alpha build is early earrrlllyy goins on. So naturally I wasn’t expecting everything to be in final form. That’s just how alphas go. At least they were giving us what they got.
The demo allowed players to see all the skins for all of the genders and races (including the updated Alliance models), but restricted player selection to Horde characters only. It made sense to me really, since the first quest is literally speaking with Durotan in this tweaked timeline, and it wouldn’t exactly be a Gnome carrying that out now would it? So I made a Blood Elf hunter (deviating from my Night Elven lineage), cranked him as brown as a Blood Elf can get and away I run. The problem was that whenever I summoned a pet, debug windows came up instead of said pet, and I got good and killed in a sea of mobs despite my best efforts trying to close windows. That’s ok though.
The gameplay (at least as far as I can tell for hunters) is not drastically different at level 90 when you just start out. BUT if big numbers jumping all over your screen is the life you’re about then prepare to make an adjustment. We were equipped in character level 90 greens comparable to Mists of Pandaria endgame gear, but the numbers and damage I was doing was tremendously downsized. With this expansion they’ve gotten away from the crazy exponential increase in stat values and damage, meaning I wasn’t throwing out six-figure damage with my critical strikes like I’m used to seeing. It doesn’t mean that it takes that much longer to down enemies though – their HP is scaled to match your decreased stats.
Thank the lords of Azeroth for that too. Right now my hunter is walking around with half a million HP unbuffed, and I get 1000+ agility from just my bow. My endgame bow in Wrath of the Lich King didn’t even break 200. The numbers now are just getting out of control and more or less have lost all meaning when my 140k DPS is the low number on Recount charts.
The big change with Warlords that everyone’s excited about (and with good reason) is the concept of the garrison – it’s like having your own little Warcraft III style homebase with peasants running back and forth gathering materials for you. I wasn’t allowed to take game footage pictures, but I got some screenshots from the press kit, and as more data is available I’ll make sure to get that out to you kids. I got in on the closed beta, so when I kick that off I’ll have some real goods for you.
Heroes of the Storm
Is there anyone that doesn’t love a good crossover? How much fun did we have with Super Smash Brothers? Kingdom Hearts saw Disney and Square-Enix collide. The Marvel universe squared off against Capcom a number of times behind the controller, and even went head to head with DC Comics on the page before that. And we love it. There’s something about different universes coming together that is just pure meta appeal for the geek inside all of us.
So what happens then when one company has enough isolated universes to do it within itself? The answer is Heroes of the Storm – a crossover that pits the heroes (and villains) of the Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo universes against each other in a good old-fashioned melee.
Now you see the thing is this – upon first glance this looks like the MOBA style (multiplayer online battle arena) we’re used to seeing in League of Legends and DOTA. Do not be fooled though, it’s not. Well not completely. I mean it does have the concept of lanes, and you have to take said lanes to crush your foes. But you don’t have to do a million things to be successful or have fun. It’s like they stripped out all the annoying parts of the MOBA genre (sorry MOBA fans) and… the only way I can put it really is that it combines that with some old Warcraft III charm, down to unit jokes.
The heroes are split into different types – Warrior, Assassin, Support and Specialist, each bringing a different type of play style into the game. One of the interesting new heroes they revealed under the Support style was Brightwing the Faerie Dragon. She has the ability to not only heal but to blink from ally to ally throwing heals anywhere on the map. With her other skills she can be a pretty complex hero to play. Tyrael on the other hand is a Warrior class, primarily dealing damage with high defense, having a less complex play style.
… and then there’s Murky. Yes Murky the Murloc is a hero because as the developers put it, “we decided to make a hero that was awful” and one to consider the “Wile E Coyote” of the game. Murky has almost no health and no attack, but lays an egg before charging in. When he dies, in a few seconds he will just respawn from the egg – over and over again. It was absolutely hilarious to see Murky use this method against Diablo and ultimately run him off with a Murloc army. So how’s that for varied play style? Each hero has his or her own signature attacks to customize it that much further.
As far as skins and upgrades are concerned, yes there are some for purchase, but there are also some that can be unlocked just by playing a particular hero a lot without a fee, including what they call “ultimate skins.” There’s some humor in these too, like having the abomination Stitches in a bikini.
I’ll let that one sink in for a bit.
I’ll be looking forward to when I can get my hands on HotS for real.
Tushar Nene
Staff Writer
@tusharnene