The Blizzard developer who was caught using World of Warcraft game master (GM) abilities to insta-kill two bosses for some friends has been fired from the studio.

Earlier this week, a Reddit user posted combat logs of a Mythic+ dungeon where a boss with almost full health died instantly to a GM ability. Not long after, another Reddit user found evidence that the GM did the same thing to a boss earlier in the run.

One of the players who was present for the unauthorized intervention then went onto a Twitch stream and admitted to asking their GM friend to cheat so they wouldn't have to redo the dungeon: "I go to my GM friend and I'm like bro please can you do me a solid? This thing has 20 million [health] bro, can you please just one-shot it?"

The only way for the GM to kill the bosses on command would've been if they were spectating the run, which is pretty uncommon these days, to the point that most people were surprised GMs still existed when they heard the story. Most customer service problems are solved on Blizzard's website instead of in-game. The only times GMs need to be on-call like this is when players are testing raid fights on PTR or competing in the world first raid races.

Because of this, many people were speculating that this wasn't an isolated incident and worried that GM friends could've been secretly assisting with other Mythic+ runs. According to Blizzard, that's not the case. "We can confirm that this was the action of a single Blizzard employee, in violation of our Code of Conduct," community manager Randy "Kaivax" Jordan wrote in a forum post today.

Blizzard says it will also be "taking action against the player accounts that were complicit in this violation." There's been a lot of speculation from the community, but it is not clear how many people were aware of the GM in the group.

"It has always been the case that a small number of Blizzard employees can use developer tools and spells on live servers: this lets us test and make urgent fixes to the live game when they’re needed," Kaivax says. "Every use of these internal spells and commands on live realms is logged and shared with our Platform Security team to help ensure that the occasional use of this access is warranted. The use of development tools for anything other than development work is against company policy. It's because of the process we have in place around use of these tools that we're confident this incident was isolated to one individual."

Even though the Mythic+ dungeon wasn't a particularly notable one—the players just wanted to finish it for a title—the record of it has been disqualified by ranking site Raider.io. You can, however, still go and look at what went down.

A cheating scandal has erupted in the World of Warcraft community after a Blizzard developer was caught using special game master (GM) abilities to kill two bosses for some friends. The GM seemingly didn't realize that one of the players was recording combat logs of the whole thing.

Late on Tuesday, Reddit user Acrobatic_Pianist688 posted evidence of the GM's meddling on the WoW subreddit. Their post links to a combat log that shows a non-player ability called "Area Death (TEST)" being used to instantly kill a boss with nearly 90% of its health left. Not long after, a commenter on the thread found the GM using a separate insta-kill ability on a boss earlier in the run, too.

Surprisingly, one of the players from the accused group went onto a Twitch stream to talk about what happened. When streamer Yumytv asked them to explain, they said they were just short of finishing the Mythic+ dungeon in time to get a seasonal title when they called for help from their GM friend: "I go to my GM friend and I'm like bro please can you do me a solid? This thing has 20 million [health] bro, can you please just one-shot it?"

The player went on to say that they don't care if Blizzard disqualifies the Mythic+ run and revokes their title because they believe "it was harmless."

"I didn't expect him to do it," they said. "In hindsight, he shouldn't have done it. He was just doing me a solid."

World of Warcraft community manager Randy "Kaivax" Jordan acknowledged the situation in the original Reddit thread, saying Blizzard is looking into it. "Thank you to those who flagged this," he wrote. "We are reviewing and will take action as appropriate."

The dungeon run has been disqualified on Mythic+ dungeon ranking site Raider.io, but can still be viewed for posterity.

Part of the reason the player thought it wasn't a big deal is that it's a relatively low-level Mythic+ run, which they referred to as a "homework key". They seemingly thought it would go unnoticed, but didn't account for the fact that many Mythic+ players regularly record runs to compare them online.

Many WoW players are skeptical that the full story has been told. The WoW GM had to have been spectating the run using special tools to be able to kill the boss on command. WoW GMs aren't supposed to watch runs casually; it's normally reserved for PTR raid testing and world first races, where Blizzard developers can fix bugs directly to keep things moving.

I've asked Blizzard if it's made any progress on its investigation and will update this post if it responds.

Not to fully transform into the Pepe Silvia meme pointing at a wall of "evidence" but I'm convinced Blizzard is gearing up to announce something StarCraft-related at BlizzCon this year.

The first reliable clue came from Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier's 2024 book on Blizzard's history where he said the studio was "incubating" a StarCraft shooter (not that one) under the helm of former Far Cry producer Dan Hay.

A couple of years passed with no news on that StarCraft project. But in April of this year, Blizzard was looking to hire a lead designer of innovation for an "AAA open-world shooter" using Unreal Engine—a game engine that it's never used before. Blizzard game designer Jeff Hamilton said on Bluesky that the person who got the job would have a "fairly unique design role" as part of the team.

While that was the last direct evidence for a new StarCraft game, Blizzard recently surprised-dropped a massive patch for StarCraft 2, which feels like the kind of thing you'd do to remind people you still care about the series. The update wasn't just a bunch of bug fixes and minor tweaks either. Blizzard said the focus was to spice it up with meta-changing tweaks to early- and mid-game build variety. The people still playing StarCraft 2 seemed to love it.

That brings us to today where Blizzard has just announced some free rewards to celebrate BlizzCon this year. Its popular games, like World of Warcraft and Diablo 4, will get cosmetic packs you can buy, but the Heroes of the Storm and StarCraft 2 items won't cost a dime. Specifically, StarCraft 2 will get a 15-day co-op XP boost for Commander progression. It's small, but could be another wink to fans that Blizzard hasn't forgotten about its sci-fi universe.

A new StarCraft shooter may not be what the RTS fans want, but anything new in the series will still get people's attention. Blizzard has already set a precedent for going back to its older games and releasing new stuff for them: Look at how successful that Diablo 2: Resurrected warlock expansion was.

If I'm connecting the wrong dots here, we'll find out when BlizzCon kicks off on September 12. Blizzard said the opening ceremony (where all the big announcements happen), and the major panels where developers go into more detail about the new stuff, will be available to watch via streaming for free.

Here are all the BlizzCon cosmetic packs that will be available starting today:

• World of Warcraft BlizzCon Bundle ($29.99): Rabbit’ath Flying Mount, Garb of the Dawnfire Phoenix Transmog Ensemble, and the Perch of the Dawnfire Phoenix Decor.
• Overwatch BlizzCon Bundle ($29.99): Lich Queen Mei Legendary Skin, Frostmourne Ana Weapon Skin, Lichimari King Weapon Charm, and Lich Queen Mei Spray.
• Diablo 4 BlizzCon Bundle ($29.99): Streamsnout Pet, Indigo Cat Mount, and Escapeproof Armor Mount Armor.
• Diablo Immortal BlizzCon Bundle ($24.99). Rimedarter Familiar Transmog, Seekers of Riddergrove (Violet) Portal, 20 Legendary Crests, 10 Telluric Pearls, and a Mother’s Lament 2-Star Legendary Gem.  
• Hearthstone BlizzCon Bundle ($24.99). Bloodmage Thalnos Signature Legendary Card, Blade of the Black Empire Card Back, and 5 Standard Card Packs.
• BlizzCon Ultimate Collection Bundle ($49.99). Everything from the five individual digital bundles, plus a World of Warcraft Murk’atath Pet, an Overwatch Lich Queen Mei Player Icon and Name Card, Diablo 4 Indigo’s Light Trophy and Indigo’s Master Trophy, a Diablo Immortal Astral Celebration Portrait Frame, and five additional Hearthstone Standard Packs.
• Free Player Rewards: In addition to the BlizzCon Digital Bundles, players can claim two free rewards in the Battle.net Shop for a limited time, all in celebration of BlizzCon 2026. 
  • For StarCraft 2, gain a 15-day co-op XP boost to accelerate Commander progression.
  • In Heroes of the Storm, charge into the Nexus as Fix It Gear Head Thrall. 

In what feels like an inevitable move to combat an avalanche of criticism over the new Diablo 4 season, Blizzard has dropped an emergency patch that alleviates all the frustrations at the cost of undoing the entire point of it.

The Season of Death Awakening has the usual stuff you'd expect from a Diablo 4 season, including a new boss and new mini activities that reward buckets of loot. But it also introduced a controversial change to the most powerful items in the game: Mythic Uniques.

Instead of having a handful of these Mythic Uniques available to drop from the toughest bosses, Blizzard decided to expand the definition to include any upgraded normal Unique. On paper, it seemed like a way to broaden Mythic Uniques into a category of items rather than a select few that might not even work for your character build.

The problem was that you'd almost never see Mythic Uniques because the drop rates were abysmally low, and even when you did it wouldn't always be an upgrade. Fishing for one or two specific items in a pool of a hundred is a lot to ask in a game that has historically required much less time to gather perfect items compared to other action RPGs.

Blizzard seemingly predicted that this would be a problem before the season went live—although I think that should've been the first red flag that maybe this was a bad idea altogether—and allowed you to craft your own Mythic Unique with a new seasonal currency. But the problems continued: Despite the recipe saying you could "upgrade" a Unique, the resulting item would be random but of the same type (confusing everyone), and you could only equip one crafted Mythic Unique. Diablo 4 has three ways to make Mythic Uniques and all of them counted as crafted, meaning there was no real reason to keep grinding the seasonal activities once you had one equipped.

For the past few weeks, all of this drove Diablo 4 players mad. Blizzard increased the Mythic drop rates earlier this week, which was a welcome change, but it wasn't enough to reduce the grind it would take to find a Mythic you actually wanted. Many players were begging Blizzard to just drop the crafted Mythic limit and let everyone have fun.

On Thursday, Blizzard caved and did just that.

Patch 3.1.1a is Blizzard throwing in the towel on Season 14. Mythic drop rates? Considerably buffed. The crafted Mythic limit? Gone. Players are already reporting that Mythic Uniques are pouring out of the new seasonal boss, and are celebrating the fact that you can just make your own and use them all at once.

"Seasons are where we experiment with new ideas and push Diablo 4 in new directions," live service design director Dan Tanguay wrote in a forum post. "Not every idea lands exactly as intended, but we'll continue listening to your feedback, addressing what's not working, and applying those lessons to future seasonal updates."

Blizzard has also said that another patch will come in the near future that will increase the drop rates from other sources too and that it'll consider bringing back the crafted limit only for Mythics made in the Horadric Cube in the next season.

When I heard the that Team 4 would be stopping work on Overwatch's Stadium, I didn't feel very surprised. Then when I learned that only 6% of the playerbase actually engaged with the game mode, and I was even less so. But that doesn't mean I'm not really sad to hear the news.

I didn't take to Stadium at first, I found its third person perspective to be a bit jarring, and its huge number of items were something of a hurdle to get over. But that quickly changed after some time spent in the mode, figuring out its intricacies.

I spent 100 hours in Stadium—even with its ridiculously long support queues—it became something more than just a game mode I'd dip into when I was bored of the regular queue. I appreciated how it offered something else for players to enjoy, and how it showcased all the creative and innovative ideas that Team 4 has to offer, but didn't have a chance to add to the game.

See, much of Stadium was made from ideas Team 4 had been mulling over for years before it was announced. There were even elements included which were initially meant to be a part of Overwatch's now controversial PvE mode. I was just happy to have these fun and creative ideas recycled into something fans could appreciate and experience, but it seems like history is repeating itself.

I didn't mourn the loss of PvE as much as others. I always preferred the competitive side, so I didn't give much thought to the story modes—playing against bots just wasn't as fun. But I was sad to see it go, because I saw it as one less area of experimentation and opportunity the devs could use to better showcase the great attributes of Overwatch—in this case, its story and characters.

But it's easier not to miss something we never really had, which is why I feel that this is an even bigger fumble—Stadium got much further than PvE ever did, and it had proven traction. It became Overwatch's most popular mode with 2.3 million matches played during launch week. Even with scaled back involvement, I think a different approach to balancing and more time would've been good for Stadium as extra heroes (aka reasons to play) would be added and players got a better feel for it.

More leeway may have also given the devs time to iron out some of its discrepancies, namely how bloody long a match takes. Team 4 did change the format a few seasons ago to be first to three, but switched it back to best of seven quite quickly after the change.

I'd love to see Team 4 build on what it's created over the last 10 years, and not just be tied to the same old modes. But that's a wish that isn't realistic, especially given that there's been so much pressure on Xbox-owned studios, especially over the last few weeks, to capitalise off the best areas on the game. I'd wager it'd be harder to justify hard work on such a small area of the game now more than ever.

It's the loss of this creativity and innovation that I'm sad to see dialled down, more so than the game mode itself. I also don't think this kind of experimentation can be undervalued, not at a time when Overwatch has more competition to deal with and players to keep engaged. But I'm sure we'll still see it in other areas of the game, not least the Hacked Quickplays, the most recent of which carries the promise of a new kind of 6v6.

Ever since Overwatch let the 5v5 cat out of the bag in 2022, it's spent most of its time trying to get it back in. The format has been met with a lot of backlash over the last four years from those who don't see it as a good alternative to the classic 6v6. It's a problem Team 4 has tried to solve by bringing in 6v6 open queue as an alternative mode. But that hasn't stopped the developer from trying to find a compromise between the two modes.

The latest attempt at compromise falls in the current Quickplay Hacked Event, a limited time mode where Team 4 trials ideas to make the game better and looks to the community for feedback.

For those who want to test it out, you can now play a new form of 6v6 which attempts to utilise certain characteristics from 5v5—it's the 1-3-2 flex mode where teams can have one tank, three DPS, and two supports with the catch that one of the DPS can also flex to the tank role if they want to.

I get what it's trying to do. With there only technically being one tank needed for a game you'd keep the shorter queue times that 5v5 promises while also adding an extra person into the mix for more team-based and chaotic skirmishes that 6v6 offers. On paper it seems like a good fix, but in practice it just feels like a bad compromise.

I only played this hacked mode last night and after the first few games a trend emerged: teams that had two tanks stomped those that only had one—who'd a thought? Me, and honestly most players.

Because there's a capacity to have two tanks on a team, it means the role is balanced on the side of a 6v6 game with the tanks having slightly less health and abilities which are tuned down (aka Zarya having one bubble not two). This is okay if you have two tanks, but painfully weak if you only have one.

In one match where my team had two tanks and the enemy team only had one, we rolled through them, pushing the payload to the first two checkpoints with no issue. But the enemy team flexed to two tanks right before the final objective and managed to stall the point from there. I played games where I was the solo tank against two tanks and it sucked—every time one of the enemy tanks made a mistake the other one would correct it before I could capitalise off of it. The only way to win against a 2-2-2 comp with a 1-3-2 comp is to have vastly better players, which isn't a reliable option. Without fail the team with one less tank lost.

This makes the 1-3-2 flex mode completely redundant, no matter the tweaks or balances it will almost always be better to have two tanks rather than one. And if that's the case having a 1-3-2 option is entirely redundant, with its only use being it may make for shorter queue times.

Needless to say I don't think this is the answer to the 5v5 or 6v6 debate. Unfortunately, these two formats are just too different to find any useful common ground. I play both formats, and I like them for different reasons—the chaos of 6v6 can be fun to navigate and manage but I prefer the 5v5 matches because you can make more of an impact on games and it rewards a more deliberate and skilful approach to fights as mistakes are easier to capitalise on.

So, I'll say the same thing I always do when it comes to the 5v5 vs 6v6 debate: I think Overwatch should prioritise 5v5, its new direction is better for what the game is now. 6v6 certainly has a place and should still be an option for those who want it. But, a compromise between the two—at least in how this hacked mode frames it—should not be on the table, it is just the worst of both modes.

Despite the surge in Overwatch players since Blizzard's decision to drop the 2 and take the hero shooter in a new direction earlier this year, the noise around its MOBA-inspired Stadium mode has died down. And so has its popularity, which has prompted a halt in development plans according to a new blog post by game director Aaron Keller.

Keller provided daily player counts for each mode as of June 28. The data shows that around 54% of players queue up for 5v5 unranked, while only 3% of them head into unranked or ranked Stadium. Even the 6v6 modes are more popular.

Because of this, Blizzard has decided to stop adding new heroes and maps to Stadium. Keller says "we'll continue supporting Stadium with seasonal balance updates, rank resets, and rewards," but the team of developers previously focused on it will be moving on to other projects.

Stadium is basically an over-the-top version of Overwatch where you create MOBA-style builds with items and powers that transform your hero's abilities, like shrinking Ashe's robot sidekick B.O.B. into a mini killing machine. People ate it up in the first few weeks it was out, making it one of Overwatch's most-played modes. But with only a portion of the game's roster available to play, it started to fall behind on updates as Blizzard began rapidly releasing new heroes for the rest of the game. Season 1's Jetpack Cat was the last hero to be Stadium-ified.

Although the most recent midseason patch was filled with plenty of balance changes for Stadium, it seems like the effort it takes to translate new heroes and maps to the mode is too much for Blizzard to juggle alongside the rest of the game. Part of me is glad to see that Blizzard won't be deleting Stadium outright, but another part of me is surprised that it's already effectively over. I'll be curious to see how substantial future balance changes will look if the team focused on it has largely moved on.

The news was tucked into a blog post about two upcoming experimental 6v6 modes Blizzard will be testing soon. From July 16 through July 19, Quick Play will turn into a "Flex Queue" where every team will have one tank, three damage dealers, and two supports. At any point in the match, however, a single damage dealer will be able to swap to a tank hero. Keller says Flex Queue will help improve queue times and add a little more strategy compared to the regular 2-2-2 team compositions.

The second test will run from July 28 to August 3 and will use the same Flex Queue format but only when the matchmaking system fails to find two tank players. The goal with this so-called "Dynamic Queue" will be to see how people handle shorter queue times in exchange for varying team compositions. Right now, queuing up for multiple roles tends to just make you a tank because it's the least popular. This is supposed to alleviate that a bit.

Keller says both tests are to gather data about various things and won't "necessarily mean that we're going to be changing the main format of the game." He said they could lead to tweaks to regular modes or entirely new Arcade modes. "Like with any good experiment, we won't know the results until we complete all the steps."

Although it certainly wasn't pitched as one, it seems like Stadium will go down as one of the many experiments Overwatch has conducted in the last few years. Overwatch's perks system—which lets you choose two of four ability modifiers mid-match—was inspired by it and changed the game for the better. Stadium might be more or less over, but it probably won't be be the last time we see pieces of it show up in the rest of the game.

Blizzard took a big swing at loot in Diablo 4's latest season and completely whiffed it—at least in terms of keeping players driven to grind for its most powerful items. Today, it dropped a patch to try to remedy some of the problems, starting with a noticeable boost to everyone's loot drops.

The biggest criticism over the new Season of Death Awakening was that the juice wasn't worth the squeeze when it came to Diablo 4's new Mythic Unique items. These build-defining items just weren't dropping at a rate that made them realistically attainable for anyone, not even streamers who play all day.

According to the patch notes, this might've been caused by a bug that prevented Mythic Uniques from dropping from popular sources like bosses. Following this update, everything seems to be working as intended, or at least as you'd expect. Players are already finding noticeably more of them a few hours after the patch.

Mythic Uniques are still pretty rare, especially if you haven't reached the highest Torment difficulty yet, but they seem to drop at a rate that is reasonable for an action RPG that is usually good about respecting your time. I've been keeping an eye on streamer Wudijo since the update landed and he's found a handful of Mythics even while playing a weaker character who can't blast through a dozen bosses in a few minutes. This tells me normal people like you and me can expect to see some purple drops before Diablo 5.

There are also scattered reports of players finding a whole new type of Mythic loot that didn't exist before the patch. Reddit user Meansingleguy found a Mythic Unique Charm, which is basically an alternative version of the item that can be equipped on your Talisman instead of your character. A few players found some of these around the launch of the Lord of Hatred expansion but they were believed to be unintended drops due to a bug. Nobody knows if the ones people are finding today are intended to be in the game or not, but hey, we'll take what we can get.

Some issues with the season still remain, like the limit on wearing only one "crafted" Mythic Unique. You're supposed to complete the new seasonal events for materials to craft them, but once you have the one you want there's no reason to keep doing it. The patch also doesn't fix the fact that Mythic Uniques still have largely random stats on them, which kind of kills the excitement of finding one when it's terrible. I would bet some changes are probably going to be saved for next season.

Even if I still think the Season of Death Awakening was a surprisingly lukewarm follow-up to an excellent expansion, I'm happy to see Blizzard has put in the work to make it less of a slog.

Original story: I'm pretty neutral on World of Warcraft's current in-between patch content—this sort of thing isn't necessarily Blizzard's strong suit, and you get losers and winners. I'm already deeply ambivalent to the Omnium Folio, but I've been having an acceptable time in its void invasion zones. Sometimes it's nice to just turn your brain off for a few quests and scrape some hyper-specific currency together.

Well, except for one feature—the Lighthook Grapple. Being an MMO, my action bars are already flooded with mounts, transmog outfits, potions, and my actual abilities. So imagine my surprise when I zone out of Naigtal, and the big, obstructive "put this on your action bar" button for the Lighthook Grapple is still staring at me.

If you put it on your action bar, the button vanishes. If you dare remove it from your action bar, however, it returns like a scorned spectre from beyond the grave. This is the first time I've ever felt "Just Monika"-'d by a user interface.

I should note, for the uninitiated, that this ability is pretty much useless anywhere that isn't Naigtal, a middle-of-the-patch cycle, optional quest zone with zero bearing on the rest of the game. There's basically no reason for this thing to be on your UI if you aren't in Naigtal, it can't be used anywhere else.

And yet, it insists—as has Blizzard on the game's forums, with one developer writing: "After investigation by the development team, this is apparently and technically working as intended, and we do not plan on changing how this works at the moment."

Which is a little baffling. Nothing game-ruining, mind. I can deal with it—but it raises a few questions. If these void invasion zones aren't time-limited (and it's likely they won't be) will the Lighthook Grapple go away, or will it be in my spellbook, and my action bar, forever? And if so, uh, why. Why are we doing that?

Salvation for your action bar real estate might be in the future, though, as a follow-up post by another dev in the very same thread reads: "While we have no specific details or ETA to share, I’d like to inform y’all that the team is still looking into this situation and possible changes/fixes to the Lighthook Grapple action.

"So while what Yryadorne mentioned above still applies, please rest assured that your feedback is heard and options are being evaluated to address your concerns and reports." As to how this happened, I've got some theories. The first is that a developer did indeed look at this and go 'yes, this is good', which I honestly think is unlikely.

My money's on the idea that this is a band-aid solution because for some archaic reason, having it work the other way messed something up. Like that time a fixed elevator from a 13-year-old raid broke Player Housing. And, at some point in the process, a developer went 'this is good enough, we've got a patch to ship' and put a more reasonable grappling hook on their to-do list.

One of the most controversial bits of World of Warcraft: Midnight was Blizzard taking aim at UI mods (addons) that impacted combat, with the idea that you probably shouldn't have to make your game look like an airplane dashboard designed by a drunk person just to play a videogame. Something that I've come around to, for the most part.

In a recent interview with PCGamesN, game director Ion Hazzikostas has affirmed Blizzard's choice to revoke addon author's access to combat information (with a few exceptions): "I know this may be a controversial statement, but I will say that, overall, [the new UI] has been successful so far. It's not done, it's not perfect; there's more work to go, and we are continuing to undertake that work."

"Controversial" is somewhat correct, mind. While I've been handling the shift absolutely fine, I'm also primarily a DPS guy—during the last raid tier, healers were suffering due to a complete mismatch between Blizzard's encounter design and their UI's ability to track dispellable debuffs.

Essentially, while Blizzard has touted that it's designing its encounters with an addonless world in mind, a raid encounter in Midnight's first season, Crown of the Cosmos, had a debuff called Null Corona that needed to be dispelled. However, because the studio's changes made it impossible to track dispels, healers were forced to squint at their party member's health bars to find a tiny purple jpeg.

This was eventually hotfixed, but that's far from the only issue. The homegrown DPS meter could, er, be better. It's missing a huge amount of functionality that was there with meter addons before, a step back by pretty much every metric. And it's not like Blizzard isn't working on it, but it's easy to feel salty about a sweeping lack of convenience—the rapidfire development cycle of hobbyist mod builders absolutely beats the often-complicated and difficult tasks of a major development studio.

"I think that, by and large, the vast majority of people are completing the same level of content that they were before, and far more are doing it without feeling like they need to seek out external tools. There have been some exceptions to that where the community has figured out ways of making some computational logic work, and we didn't want to keep breaking things in the middle of a patch."

That's another asterisk to the whole thing—many high-end raiders have figured out ways to gain the same functionality they'd lost before, but because of both the new rules around addons and the usability lost from the death of something like WeakAuras, these addons mostly aren't accessible to the general public.

Hazzikostas says that patch 12.1 should iron out a lot of those kinks, though: "The 12.1 update has what we think is a more comprehensive overhaul of the security backend of our addon interface, which should make it a little easier for addon authors to write addons, but also close some of the loopholes we've seen pop up here and there. Alongside that, we're continuing to improve our base user interface."

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

"And as we, frankly, internally relearn some aspects of how we can build encounters in this new world. I think that's going to open up new doors and possibilities for players in raids, dungeons, Delves, and everything in between."

No matter how good at questing in World of Warcraft Classic you think you are, I'm pretty sure we've found someone better—a singularly determined madlad has hit level 60 on every single class in the game's hardcore self-found mode.

For the uninitiated, that means that they've gotten to level 60 without dying and without any outside help, as self-found players can't trade with anybody, send or receive mail, or use the auction house. Essentially, any gear or materials have to be found or plucked from the earth with your own bare hands.

But user Foxdog175 on the r/classicwow subreddit has done it. As a matter of fact, they've done it 11 times (thanks, WoWHead): "If I'm being brutally honest, only three of my toons should have made it to 60. I've had razor-close calls on just about every class to 60," they write.

For instance, their Warlock nearly died in the ocean to Stranglethorn Vale boat captains on a HP so low they couldn't see their health bar, their rogue barely survived a disconnect in Tanaris, and their paladin was saved from a pack of bloodthirsty elites by an aggro reset bug.

This is my favourite anecdote, though: "On my paladin, I told a hunter I was with in Searing Gorge that we could jump down the hole as long as I BoP'd him, to quest in the caves below. Before I could even say 'GO', he immediately jumped. I jumped in after him, got the BoP off mid-air, and was able to bubble myself milliseconds before I hit the ground." I think we should all aspire to this level of heroism in our day-to-day lives.

Foxdog achieved this feat by seemingly following the adage 'slow is smooth, smooth is fast'—for example, they start their characters off by levelling in two 1-4 starter zones, hoofing it on foot to another race's spawning area: "This step sounds silly to some; it's not. Every level you gain on mobs compounds from the first level. Remember, every level you are above a mob, you gain hit, crit, and dodge and they lose that amount on their end."

And, hey, you can't argue with the results—Foxdog hasn't just levelled every class to 60, but has done a naked fire mage run as well: "Naked fire mage had a TON of close calls. Near-deaths in Ashenvale aoe'ing furbolgs with another mage, in Southern Arathi under water getting netted and beaten on near the boat quests while collecting those crystals (was saved by my group member who just happened to be close enough to get to me in time).

"Had an elite rock-giant beating on me when I ported down in Azshara using the NPC teleport, had a near-death helping a warrior kill furbolgs in Northern Felwood when the denwatcher called about half a dozen other furbolgs at low hp. Warrior bailed and I was on my own. Barely escaped. Naked fire mage was a damn cat with nine lives."

Godspeed to everyone attempting this challenge, whether via a completionist, all-classes route or by doing it on a DDR mat. That annoying minimap orb in retail (that I hate) doesn't seem anywhere near as bad, now.

The Xbox reset is afoot, and while there aren't strictly speaking any studio closures yet, with multiple developers in the process of moving elsewhere, the shockwaves from its impact are still being felt across Xbox's continually-shrinking staff. All in the service of a mathematically improbable 1 billion daily player count, or something. It's hard to keep track.

Anyway, given Blizzard was namedropped in the announcement post as a target that'd be experiencing "reductions" and "shifting investment", one might wonder if the developer—which Microsoft acquired for an eyewatering $68.7 billion—was on the chopping block.

The evidence points towards Blizzard escaping the reaper's scythe, for now. First up is this Windows Central article, which both quotes anonymous sources to the affirmative and has an email from Blizzard President Johanna Faires that reads: "While you can expect to hear more details regarding the day's events and what they mean for Blizzard in further communications."

Then, there's narrative designer and union member Benjamin Wagner, who wrote: "No union employees at Blizzard were impacted by today’s bloodbath—and I sincerely doubt that was because the powers that be think that we’re all vital. Odds are, they wanted easy cuts. Status Quo makes you not easy."

Not every worker at Blizzard is unionised, but there's also this statement from the World of Warcraft Gamemakers Guild-CWA, posted here by the union's Reddit account to the r/WoW subreddit. In it, the union expresses solidarity with "all other affected studios" which, by process of elimination (and the other posts above) suggests a relatively near-miss.

Lastly, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier writes: "The staff of Blizzard Entertainment were told today that they won't hear how the reorganisation impacts them until 'further communications'."

That last bit is, indeed, what I can imagine feels like a great sword dangling over the heads of every Blizzard developer. Not only because this isn't the first time Microsoft has made cuts to the studio—an acquisition-led bloodbath immediately after its purchase, for instance, saw many developers left in precarious situations by the unfeeling corporate growth machine.

But also because, as stated in that announcement post, Xbox is far from finished. Around 1,600 roles have been removed, but by 2027 another 1,600 jobs will be lost. Which I'm sure is absolutely splendid for morale, and won't have any deleterious effects on an already-terrified workforce. You simply have to give it up for Microsoft. Is it clear I'm gritting my teeth, yet?

The maddening thing here is that I cannot genuinely think of a world in which Blizzard's games aren't raking in cash. We're talking about World of Warcraft here. Overwatch seems like a free money printer with its season passes and cosmetics—the same for Diablo 4. If there's a world in which Blizzard somehow isn't profitable enough, then I'm starting to think there's no corner executives won't plunder for a shareholder bump.

It could be worse, though—Zenimax Online Studios has been hit far harder, with the Elder Scrolls Online developer suffering major cuts despite a fierce effort to bring the MMO back into the spotlight and bright plans for the future.

World of Warcraft's had another brush with a digital plague—on the Moon Guard US server, capital cities were overcome with waves of toxic activity that saw vitriol line the streets. But enough about trade chat—there was also a debuff spreading around and killing people.

The incident occurred late last week, when Stormwind was suddenly assailed by AoE markers and explosions of green slime—captured here by meggoart on Bluesky, you can cleanly see the debuff melting the faces off innocent players by the Trader's Post (thanks, WoWHead).

uhhh corrupted blood 2.0 is happening on Moon Guard right nowwww.reddit.com/r/wow/commen...

— @meggoart.bsky.social (@meggoart.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-07-06T12:39:44.900Z

The culprit? Withering Contagion, which occurs in the Brackenhide Hollow dungeon from Dragonflight. The debuff is a DoT that can spread to players within five yards of the victim. How exactly it escaped the dungeon seems unclear, though I'm sure the discovery of the glitch has something to do with the current timewalking event, which is encouraging players to run Dragonflight dungeons.

Regardless, it swept through popular social hubs—including the, er, rather infamous inn Goldshire, which you can see exploding in a splatter of goo (and not the usual kind) in this video by ParallelGTA on YouTube. Here's a longer video by Starry where you can see a tide of pus nearly drowning Stormwind's Cathedral Square.

Blizzard's swiftly hotfixed the bug, and while that means I've missed out on the fun, though, I can't help but get flashbacks to a plague I actually was there for—the Corrupted Blood incident of 2005. Almost 21 years old at this point, the plague (obtained from Hakkar the Blood God) swept across the game in such a widespread and persistent way that it was actually studied by researchers, who would then go on to fight Covid-19.

No, seriously. Speaking to our own Wes Fenlon back in 2020, Eric Lofgren said: "It was a good illustration of how important it is to understand people's behaviours … And also that these things are very chaotic. You can't really predict 'oh yeah, everyone will quarantine. It'll be fine.' No, they won't."

As it turns out, noncompliance and laissez faire attitudes to quarantining and disease spreading is somewhat analogous to the kind of griefing that goes on in MMOs—after all, both this buff and the corrupted blood incident were continued by people deliberately spreading it for a jolly.

If anything, I'm just sort of sad that modern MMO hotfix cycles mean the Withering Contagion debuff didn't get a chance to really thrive. Not because I'm some kind of plague-obsessed Nurgle-worshipping scientist (I am, but it's entirely a coincidence), but because these sorts of emergent sandbox events are pretty lacking in today's seasonal MMO structure.

World of Warcraft's no stranger to borrowed power—after Blizzard learnt its lesson making borrowed power features the entire focus of an expansion's progression, it instead started to weave them in as seasonal patch incentives. Broadly optional mini-grinds that were good if you wanted a cheap boost and something to do, or were hankering for best-in-slot gear, but nothing that'd hoover up all of your time.

I've been middling on these—the Reshii Wraps, the DISC belt—but I at least think they've been broadly interesting so far. For instance, the Reshii Wraps gave you some extra bonuses while you were phase-diving. And, for the most part, getting a new shiny bit of gear's cool.

But the latest one, the Omnium Folio, is kind of baffling—to put it bluntly, I kinda don't really get why it's there.

For the uninitiated, the Folio is a borrowed power system that sees you jaunting to the arse-end of Silvermoon every week to complete a quest chain that, so far, has been mostly filled with the same weekly activities I was doing anyway.

Most features like the Folio have had some degree of interactivity—take the Onyx Annulet ring from Dragonflight, which had a bunch of gems you could find in the Forbidden Reach. And yet the Omnium Folio is just sort of… there. Take a look at this talent tree.

A single lonely line, a linear path, filled with abilities such as "sometimes, you do more damage" and "sometimes, you do more healing". Three weeks in, I cannot say I've felt a single one of these abilities impact my time hitting stuff in WoW one bit—beyond a flat numerical increase. If there are fiery explosions happening, they're blending into the overstimulated machine of gunshots and big smoke clouds.

It's not interacting with any of the weekly activities beyond a quest to go and do them, sometimes. It's not making the routine of hitting enemies feel any different. It's not impacting my rotation in any way. And it's not interacting with any patch-specific mechanics. It pretty much just makes me hit slightly harder, and if I don't do my weekly quest, I miss out on a power boost until I get around to handling it.

You can make the argument that patch 12.0.5 has been—to a detriment, one might argue—rammed with so many optional activities that the Omnium Folio is just a way for Blizzard to get you to try them all.

There's (deep breath) ritual sites, abyss anglers, decor duels, the voidforge, void assaults, void invasion zones—along with the usual weekly activities of prey, delves, dungeons, raids, so on and so forth. The Omnium Folio forces you to interact with some of this stuff—ritual sites, void assaults, and void invasion zones—but only for a little bit, once per week.

Which means that whenever I log in, I'm staring at this great big orb Blizzard's stuck on my minimap and thinking: Man, what's the point?

It's true that I'm being the kind of overly cynical that comes with sticking with an MMO for a long time—the Folio is inoffensive and basically does its job, but it does its job in such an archetypal, bland way that it invariably represents the worst aspects of itself. I think these sorts of optional grinds can be a great time—and I'm broadly in favour of patch-specific mechanics (I loved drifting in my car in Undermine).

But the Folio feels like the most boiled-down, reduced-to-formula version of a borrowed power mechanic imaginable. It is ostensibly just there, it gives you incremental increases just powerful enough to make participation mandatory, while not being visible enough or interactable enough to feel satisfying to get. It's not a gear piece, so it's not even part of the core item level dopamine grind. It hangs on your navigation tool like a limpet, saying "hey, remember when you had to do some ritual sites to fill me out? Wasn't that neat?"

This lonely-looking talent tree will just sit on my minimap for the next two patches, a reminder of the set-and-forget nodes giving me a 2-4% damage boost—and while Blizzard might expand on it in the future, I don't really get why it's there now. Especially in a patch filled with so many little checklists to tick off? It's making me resent my weekly marching orders from Umbric. And I don't want to resent Umbric. That's my guy.

Diablo 4 is easily in the best spot it's ever been. The Lord of Hatred expansion gave it depth where it sorely needed it without ruining its strength as a straight-forward action RPG where numbers go up and loot rains from the sky. It's never had a better foundation for Blizzard to build on as it sets course for whatever's next.

The newest season, the Season of Death Awakening, is essentially a test run for another foundational change that, while controversial, is probably a healthy decision in the long run. But everything else in the season feels like a step back.

Lord of Hatred restructured Diablo 4 around customization. It gave every class powerful (and flavorful) new skill trees, the bones of an incredible item crafting system, and a bunch of ways to curate the endgame into a loop of activities you like the most.

For the first time, Diablo had me excited to experiment with everything as I pushed a character to max level. I finally got to see my best friend—who I convinced to give the game another shot—see how fun it is to slowly build a character up into a demon-slaying god without resorting to a guide. For a lot of people, Diablo 4 finally felt like an action RPG with a vision that wouldn't be thrown out and reworked in a few months.

Almost nothing in season 14 acknowledges this massive leap forward for the game. All of it is still there and just as good as it was a few months ago, but it's largely the same experience with some new enemies tossed into the mix. I'm not asking for another expansion's worth of stuff to do; I just want Blizzard to let me play with all the new toys it's given us.

Missed opportunities

The new "Ruptures" that appear in the world are easy to understand: All you do is stand in a circle and kill monsters until they stop crawling out of the ground. They're a fun little event that brings players in the open world together and supercharges your journey to max level. They lose all value the moment you don't need a boost in XP and want to hunt down specific upgrades for your character.

I had no problem with these mini events losing all relevance in the endgame in past seasons. Diablo 4 simply wasn't built to do much more than funnel you into higher and higher difficulty tiers for better and better loot. Seasonal events were usually appetizers for the main course, whether it was a reworked dungeon type or a set of build-modifying powers.

In a post-Lord of Hatred world, however, season 14's Ruptures feel like a missed opportunity for Blizzard to utilize the excellent systems it just brought to Diablo 4. Ruptures are completely left out of the endgame loop where you cycle through a random set of activities given to you by the War Plans table. They also don't have a skill tree or any way of increasing their challenge beyond raising the difficulty level. As a result, they feel like a leftover from an older version of the game, one that was frequently criticized for lacking meaningful depth.

Instead of doubling down on a new mechanic, season 14 does what older seasons did and abandons them as soon as you hit max level. Unless I'm fishing for junk items to salvage into crafting materials, I've started to skip every Rupture I see. There's nothing uniquely valuable from doing them that I can't get anywhere else in the game.

The same goes for the new world boss encounter—a return of the big Realmwalker demon—and the "Deathtoll Chamber" you can enter afterward. Both of them are opportunities for the same amount of loot you can get by doing all of the standard endgame dungeons. Even if Blizzard swoops in with a significant buff to the quality of items they drop, they still won't be anywhere as robust as everything else in the game. The only thing worth doing is the new boss fight for more chances to craft one of the newly-reworked and super powerful Mythic Uniques, but even that just reminds me that I would've loved to see more shakeups to the crafting if only for the length of the season.

A better way

Blizzard has said that creating new seasons takes quite a while, which means it was working on season 14 well before Lord of Hatred came out. I'm sure it's tough for developers to predict what's going to be a hit with players when you're completely in the dark. But I would've waited another month or two to play a season that properly follows up on the best parts of the expansion.

It's a shame because Diablo 4 is still as good as it was last season, if not better, with the amount of bug fixes and balance changes Blizzard made in the last few months. Season 14 might be a sign that its approach to seasons needs to change so that there's no glaring disconnect between the current state of the game and what's being added. And if that means untethering stuff from requiring the expansion, then so be it.

I usually can't stand the way people online compare Diablo 4 and Path of Exile, but Grinding Gear Games has proven that it knows how to repeatedly expand on a seasonal action RPG. I appreciate that Blizzard found a way to add systems clearly inspired by PoE, like item crafting, without ruining Diablo 4's relative simplicity. But it's disappointing to play a new season that doesn't even attempt to expand on what's there.

Lord of Hatred proved Diablo 4 needed more to chew on and exceeded my expectations for all that it did to a game I already enjoyed quite a bit. New seasons should serve as both an opportunity for new players to jump in and a chance for Blizzard to experiment with new ways to improve the game. I still believe Blizzard is capable of doing that, but season 14 misses the mark.

World of Warcraft's ramping up to its first major "big number" patch, Curse of Ula'tek—in addition to some interesting changes to how world bosses work, Blizzard's also taking aim at some quality-of-life features. And while these updates haven't all exactly been frictionless, I've gotta tip my hat to Blizzard, here—a lot of these are major plusses.

A recent blog details what Blizzard's already implemented, as well as what's to come. The most notable items here are fixes to auto-looting and area looting, but there's also been performance upgrades to the very-pretty Silvermoon City, faster Prey hunts, EXP buffs, and—in a move that's genuinely really important for the hardcore raiding scene—reduced repair costs.

But Curse of Ula'tek's got a few big upgrades to come, too. Profession knowledge points can now be reset once per profession, crafted housing decor should be cheaper, and the Voidforge will be accessible from Silvermoon City.

There's also UI improvements—and while I'm excited about certain bumps to the experience, like finally being able to see map coordinates without an addon, the most vital by far is the auto-loot setting, which no longer resets when you make a new character.

For those of you who've never had to experience the utter existential horror that is figuring out where a setting in an options menu is more than once, it was genuinely kind of annoying—WoW has a setting that lets you automatically loot everything from a monster with one click, instead of shift-clicking like some sort of peasant.

However, this option was character-specific for some arcane and unknowable reason, meaning any time you made an alt, you'd have the experience of looting your first monster, wondering if you were having a lagspike, remembering that you don't have auto-loot on, and then spending five unreclaimable minutes of your life finding and enabling the option again. No more.

There are also some bug fixes, the one I'm most excited for being: "a number of recurring patterns that could cause players to become stuck in outdoor world combat far longer than expected. This will not address all of these situations, but it should be far less common in Curse of Ula’tek."

I am not kidding when I say that 90% of the reason I play a rogue is to be able to Vanish my way out of combat without having to wait for whatever's chasing me to stop locking me out of my mount. That, and the big annoying smoke cloud I can ruin people's day with as part of my rotation.

World of Warcraft caught some heat earlier this year for a messy patch that broke a whole lot of stuff. Patch 12.0.5 was a bit of a disaster, taking an accidental wrecking ball to multiple systems and allowing some long-flagged issues to sneak their way into the game.

The takeaway that I—and many other players—had was that Blizzard's rapid patch cadence was impacting its QA, and while I still do partially wonder if that's to blame, at least in the case of problems that were long-flagged, Ion Hazzikostas has peskily introduced some nuance to my grand narrative. Gee darnit.

That's per an interview with YouTube channel Psybear_tv, where the director speaks on what went wrong with Patch 12.0.5: "If it ever feels like something is rushed, or half-baked, that's not something that we're gonna take lightly—I think we wanna understand what more players were hoping for from a given system or a given feature, take that to heart, and do better the next time."

Hazzikostas is proud of the "faster patch cadence from Dragonflight onwards," one that he says lets the team get out a wider spread of content for folks with different tastes. However, he emphasises that "just because we move faster doesn't mean that we are sacrificing quality—we are never going to put something in a patch if it's not ready."

Which might come as a bitter draught to players who were impacted by 12.0.5, though Hazzikostas says "It's obviously not lost on me that—pretty recent was 12.05's release, and a lot of understandable consternation among players about like: 'Wow, this seems really buggy, is Blizzard moving too quickly, are they sacrificing quality for speed, for quantity?'"

Speed isn't the problem, says Hazzikostas, but a hiccup in logistics: "If anything it was actually us being a bit too aggressive in trying to fix bugs very close to the patch release time."

One example he uses is the fact that player housing got disabled for a whole day: "Not a good look, right? … What happened was, what we discovered during our internal checks that day, the day the patch deployed, was that people who zoned into their houses [who] had any decor that was off the ground in any way? It snapped to the ground, and did so in a way that permanently changed their placement in their house, destroying a lot of people's setups."

The culprit? An elevator from 2013. No, seriously: "This is going to inspire some spaghetti code memes, but … There was a last-minute bug that we found with the Siege of Orgrimmar elevator, where players would fall through the elevator. It was like 'well, okay, we should fix this bug, it's legacy content but there's people still mount farming and stuff.'

"That bug fix went in just a few days before 12.05. Because of the complex interdependent nature of 20-25 years' worth of code, aspects of what controls how a player attaches to an elevator object also touched on some aspects of how different objects can be parented to each other or stacked in housing placement."

Ultimately, Hazzikostas cops to the fact that "We did not go back and check housing during that final day and a half before the patch went live. Until, of course, it blew up."

Hindsight is 20/20, though Hazzikostas admits that "we should've gone ahead with the stable build, released it, and then rolled that out as a hotfix later on with not the same immediate short-term risk. It's that sort of thing—it's lots of moving pieces."

While I'm still not certain the developer equivalent of putting 'I work too hard' as a flaw on your CV is entirely the truth, it does explain some of the more baffling glitches that came with the wonky patch in April—and why some of them might slip the net, despite being so completely major.

Hopefully, Blizzard's been able to sort out its bug-fixing engine to dodge most future snafus, especially given patch 12.1 has some interesting new challenges I'm keen to tackle, hopefully without my character's head popping off because somebody messed with the ground geometry of Molten Core, or something.

One interesting trend of the MMO genre is its slow drift towards a seasonal structure. Final Fantasy 14's getting properly-named seasons with Evercold, World of Warcraft's got its Mythic+ and Delve seasons, The Elder Scrolls Online's gotten them, and so on.

And there are plenty of advantages to this. Borrowed power grinds that span an entire expansion are obnoxious, and were thoroughly trashed back in Shadowlands: It doesn't feel great to fall behind on the treadmill, and having a routine reset to put everyone back on a level playing field is smart.

It also means that there's an easy excuse to come back. I, for one, don't play World of Warcraft full-time (I have too many games to keep up with, alas) but I will always come back and sink a few dozen hours into every major patch. MMOs that've adopted this model also tend to have fewer content droughts, the death knell of any game that requires (or encourages) you to pump out a monthly subscription.

But there are plenty of downsides. WoW's been struggling with its seasonal cadence lately, bogged down by bugs and balancing issues. There's also the seasonal weariness, too—unlike a sandbox MMO, these seasonal games don't offer much in the way of permanent progression.

If you get your BIS, it'll be replaced 3-4 months later. If you miss a reward, it'll likely be gone or harder to get as things are depreciated.

Most of all, seasonal zones drop off pretty quickly. Studios put all this work into an area that'll only stay relevant to the expansion in question for… well, a season. And while most of these games'll let you come back and still play through their storylines or snag the gear attached to them, there's precious little reason to do so for the gear-motivated.

More to the point, doing so makes you fall behind the current seasonal grind, kicking your can further down the road.

Contrast this to other ways of building MMOs: "Sandbox" games (air-quoted here because I might be stretching that definition here) like Old School RuneScape, EVE online, or Project Gorgon are all less concerned with some seasonal play metric and more concerned with offering you a broad ocean with things to do.

And more to the point, your progress is more permanent. No resets, no moving the gear goalposts—you can set your own objectives, and your progress'll still be there when you come back to them.

Others, like Guild Wars 2, take a more hybrid approach, still offering big zones in major patches, but keeping all progression horizontal so there's no real reason to do the new stuff aside from the fact it's, well, newer.

Which makes me curious: You, my smart, tasteful, and dare I say sensual Terminally Online reader. What's your preference? Do you think the seasonal treadmill's a nice concession between your limited personal time—or is it a pressure cooker that you're growing weary with? You can either give your hot take in the comments, or fill out this handy poll I've made just for you.

Diablo 4's upcoming season was shaping up to be a big disappointment after the excitement around its latest expansion. Blizzard threatened to completely flatten the identity of the most powerful loot with a change that—while healthy in the long run—spoiled the fun of having ultra-rare items to chase in an action RPG.

But after holding a week-long playtest, Blizzard has taken the overwhelmingly negative feedback and found a promising compromise.

Season 14, the Season of Death Awakening, will bring a permanent change to Diablo 4 that redefines how its rarest items work. Blizzard's goal is to take Uniques, an item tier that was previously pretty niche, and expand their usefulness for a variety of character builds. To do that, it will make Uniques less powerful and their bonuses more random—two things no Diablo player who is looking to perfect their build wants to hear.

Previously, the plan was to ditch the guaranteed bonuses Uniques currently have for completely random stats. Nobody, including me, liked the sound of erasing the identity of the cool Uniques in the game to basically make them Legendaries with a different color. This would've made the game unnecessarily grindy and broken the whole point of Uniques having curated stats that synergize with their unique powers. Why would you want a sword that empowers your critical strikes to not even have any critical strike chance on it?

Thankfully, that's not how it's going to work anymore. Blizzard has given Uniques back two guaranteed stats to fit their themes. The other stats will still be random, but you'll be able to swap one of them out to fit your build.

The solution, as is laid out in the updated patch notes for season 14, is to preserve each Unique's identity while allowing some flexibility with the random stats they can have. This solves the problem Blizzard was originally targeting by moving away from Uniques only working for hyper-specific build archetypes. It was always a bummer to find an item that, for example, boosted your damage only if you invested in fire skills on a sorceress. Now, that item will retain its general damage bonus but could roll stats on it that synergize with cold skills instead.

On top of all of that, Uniques will be able to appear as Mythic Uniques. Diablo 4 already classified a pool of its rarest and most powerful items as Mythic Uniques, but now that title will refer to any Unique that drops with a purple tooltip, like how orange items (Legendaries) are better than yellow items (Rares). These new Mythic Uniques will have maxed out stats when they drop, or when you craft them, giving you a new item type to chase after.

By opening up the possibilities for Uniques, Diablo 4's loot should be more broadly useful and exciting. I was always confident it would be a healthy change for the game, but disliked the way Blizzard had initially decided to handle it. This revised approach is a compromise I'm willing to try when the season starts on June 30.

Inside me, there are two people. The first, a rational adult, understands the legalities of private servers, and how typically incompatible they are with… well, existence. I can't say that certain servers, like TurtleWoW, played it safe either—while you do need to pay developers, opening up a cash shop for a game you're running off a stolen IP isn't smart.

The second has a grim understanding of the state of the genre by virtue of writing this very column. Not only have I personally observed that MMOs are an aging genre with very little in the way of newcomers, but I'm also not the only person who has identified a problem—I spoke to Raph Koster (Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies) earlier this month about the miserly state of things. Jack Emmert of City of Heroes fame also thinks there are huge problems. It's not just me getting nostalgic and misty-eyed.

Regardless of the cause, one thing is true: New MMOs aren't surviving, or they're being shut down. There are a couple indie outliers like Project Gorgon that're doing just fine for themselves, but we aren't getting the big hitters anymore.

And while I might not mourn servers like TurtleWoW or Project Ascension quite like I might, say, wince in sympathy for poor Matt Frior—who made Project Blackbird for years only for it to be slain in the cradle by Microsoft—I still feel a little sad to see Blizzard folding in on them, even if they're well within their rights to do so.

Because it's not like Blizzard isn't taking pointers, right? Of course, Ion Hazzikostas isn't gonna walk out one day and say "yeah, we were inspired by the private server we shut down". But there's absolutely a pattern. Blizzard will muscle in on a private server, and then a year or two later, come out with their own version of what that server was doing.

The original example is, of course, Nostralius, which Blizzard came for in 2016. The server reached a major height of popularity as a version of oldschool World of Warcraft maintained by passionate fans, something Blizzard had previously rebuffed with the now-infamous quote: "You think you do, but you don't."

Two years after Nostralius shuts down, Blizzard opens up World of Warcraft Classic, an experiment so successful it's still working through expansions today, both in the OG Classic and in Anniversary servers that are doing the whole time loop again.

I also don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of these servers were offering Classic-adjacent experiences with clever twists around the time Blizzard put out its Season of Discovery servers or Remix events, either. Or, indeed, that Blizzard has a mysterious "Project Camelot" on the horizon in the wake of these C&Ds.

I'm not accusing Blizzard of copying homework, mind. These versions of WoW are very much distinct from the dying servers—whether that be Project Ascension's ability draft or TurtleWoW cooking up entirely new classes. But they were made in an environment where there was concrete proof that an appetite for interesting, experimental takes on the good old days are incredibly popular.

To be clear: I'm certainly not in the business of defending Microsoft, and I don't think Blizzard needs defending when it comes to what it's done. Stating that Blizzard has a right to shut these servers down is an outlining of the facts, rather than what I purposefully believe should be the case in a utopian society. The law and what I want are two different things.

But the facts are: We do live in a capitalist society with copyright laws. Blizzard is legally obliged to snub these things to protect its IP. There are alternatives, such as NCSoft's treatment of the City of Heroes server Homecoming—but that was achieved under years of meticulous and very, very careful manoeuvring by the private server's devs, who never once accepted donations beyond what they required to run the server.

They certainly didn't open a cash shop. Again, TurtleWoW did itself absolutely no favours, even if I think what it was doing was rad in a vacuum.

So why am I still sad? Well, two reasons.

Well, in isolation, I think these private servers are often just doing cool stuff. I think it's neat that Project Ascension had an ability draft version of WoW. I think it's neat that TurtleWoW was cooking up entirely different classes and zones—just as I thought it was neat that Homecoming made new archetypes and story arcs.

While the scale of passion projects to actual illegal business varies from server to server, the MMO genre is a space that's in dire need of innovation. And if Blizzard has been taking notes, it's these servers we have to thank for a lot of the precious scraps of invention the company has been allowed to make.

Not necessarily because the devs have been nicking ideas. As a matter of fact, I think they're plenty creative—but they're bound to the laws of capital in a way these private server mavericks just aren't, and they can't just disagree with management because… well, it's their career. A private server getting popular, however, means developers can point at their playercounts when pitching to the people with money.

I am willing to bet that we probably wouldn't have WoW Remix or SoD without some of the servers that're getting shut down. We certainly wouldn't have had Classic without Nostralius.

But I'm also sad because, in a healthier videogame industry, with fewer layoffs and studio closures, might some of these private server devs have found positions within actual studios? In a world where companies aren't obligated by copyright law to send cease and desist to fan projects, could these private servers tick along just fine?

And more to the point—in a world where the MMO genre wasn't suffering from companies hounding after the next quarter (and, to be fair, ballooning development costs)—would these servers even exist in the first place?

It's a pipe dream, I know. But I think private servers are a symptom of a wider illness, not a disease—and I have watched genuine creativity and effort be poured into them by people I can't rightly blame for being unable to find legitimate work in this utter hellscape of an industry. It's a sorry state of affairs, one I doubt will change in my lifetime—but I'll quietly wish it would.

Patch 12.1 is on the horizon, and it looks like we were right—that ominous monologue Zul'jan had during World of Warcraft: Midnight's main story quests was absolutely a setup for the next major patch. Curse of Ula'tek is going to take us to The Coiled Isle, where we'll be digging further into the troubled history of the Amani trolls.

One surprise from the patch is the inclusion of Mythic+ world bosses via lairs, as explained in the overview video below.

Essentially, a lair is a one-boss delve-like instance that plucks out the usual world bosses that'd be prowling a patch zone like this and places them in an instanced, delve-like arena with some variable difficulty settings, all the way up to "flexible Mythic" 15-25 man groups, which'll presumably have the same bite as the other Mythic content in the game.

I'm of two minds about this, honestly. On the one hand, I think it's really neat that WoW's continuing to add varying difficulty to all of its activities—using the whole buffalo is the smartest way for MMOs to design their encounters, and I was a huge fan of the Prey system on launch for making my open world activities spicier.

And yet I'm not too excited about them being instanced. Part of the appeal of a world boss is… well, that it's a boss in the world, and the MMO feeling of piling onto some schmuck with a gaggle of strangers in a chaotic melee of spells is more appealing than this alternative from a community perspective.

The patch also includes, naturally, more story quests, an in-zone talent tree, a new dungeon, delves, a raid—all that good major patch stuff. As well as some much-needed brush-ups to the cooldown manager, the ability to add pets to housing (score!) You can read the full details on the official website,

Life is about to get much easier for World of Warcraft players tired of having to track down guildmates to get a group together for a raid. Blizzard is officially acknowledging that Discord is the most convenient solution to this problem and will be integrating its chat directly into the MMO in the next update.

Blizzard announced that patch 12.1, Curse of Ula'tek, will bring cross-platform chat between Discord and WoW guild chat. Messages will show up in the MMO and in Discord, and can be set up so it's all-in-one combined chat or separated into individual channels.

The only requirement is to link your Battle.net and Discord account and have a guild leader or officer adjust how they want the chats to work. Once that's done, you'll be able to see people chatting directly from Discord with the logo next to their messages in-game.

This is big news for guilds with hundreds of players across different time zones. WoW's in-game chat just isn't equipped for that, especially without an easy way to scroll through an archive of messages across multiple days. I have two monitors so it's not particularly hard to swap between Discord and a game, but I'm sure solo monitor and laptop players will be relieved to hear they don't need to stop doing their dailies to answer a ping.

This does make me wonder if we're about to see Discord chat show up in more games as a replacement for developers having to build a guild or clan chat system. It's not just MMO players who need to wrangle people together; I could see this being useful in other multiplayer games, like Arc Raiders or Overwatch.

All of this might be moot by the time Discord gets around to rolling out its extremely unpopular global age verification, which is supposedly happening sometime before the end of the year. If that goes awry, WoW players might be back to juggling chat apps trying to see if enough people are online to run some Mythic+ dungeons.

A new version of World of Warcraft was just discovered and it's called "World of Warcraft Camelot". Instead of some kind of Arthurian spin-off, however, the dataminer who found it theorizes that it's just a codename for an enhanced version of World of Warcraft Classic.

Dubbed "WoW Classic Plus" by hopeful players over the years, this hypothetical version of the MMO would branch off from the original and become something new based on something old—just like Old School Runescape.

Wowhead dataminer Stiven found licenses for two versions of "World of Warcraft Camelot" on Blizzard's servers, suggesting that it will have multiple editions available to purchase. They also said that this branch of WoW is on the July 2006 patch that introduced a raid you might remember from the viral Leroy Jenkins video.

That happens to be the same patch a version of WoW was mysteriously running on last year. With BlizzCon coming up in September, it would make sense for Blizzard to start testing WoW Classic Plus so that it's ready to be playable on the show floor. Not to mention that it recently invited a bunch of WoW Classic streamers to its offices in Irvine to see something new under an NDA.

Blizzard has a track record of letting things slip by way of their internal server updates. Most WoW players know to start preparing for a new patch when a PTR server shows up on there. And sometimes big announcements, like Diablo 4's new paladin class, are accidentally leaked by poorly named internal builds.

At this point, WoW Classic Plus has been talked about so much that it would be hard to imagine Blizzard won't give it a shot. It already dabbled with the idea of mixing things up with the original MMO via Season of Discovery, and it's hinted that something similar could happen again.

With WoW Classic's popularity waning these days as the MMO gets closer and closer to catching up with the regular version, a WoW Classic Plus could be Blizzard's solution to the problem. I'd like to see it try because playing a version of the game without the conveniences of modern WoW always puts me off of it. I'd be way more inclined to try something that isn't so beholden to the kind of suffering players went through a decade ago.

It's finally over, we're free. Overwatch players no longer have to live in fear, cowering from the skies in anticipation of what is essentially an AH-64 Apache appearing overhead and gunning us all down, because Jetpack Cat has been nerfed yet again.

This comes as part of Overwatch season 3's patch notes, where Jetpack Cat has undergone some decent changes, including a reduction in the shield minor perk, a speed decrease, and crucially, a fuel regeneration penalty while carrying a target, which has been increased from 2x to 3x slower.

The latter is big news for anyone who's fallen victim to Jetpack Cat's ability to carry allies into enemy backlines. What started as a goofy joke graduated to a viable strat as Jetpack Cat and Bastion quickly became meta. Jetpack Cat is one of the most mobile characters in Overwatch, so she's pretty hard to hit as is, but add a flying Bastion in the mix, which can switch to turret mode and mow down any poor soul that can't duck for cover, and then you have a server admin-level threat.

"While Jetpack Cat's win rate and play rates remain low, Lifeline is highly effective at higher ranks when continuously carrying certain heroes," the patch notes explain. "Increasing the fuel regeneration penalty while carrying a target and reducing the strength of Transport Shielding weakens this strategy, while weapon improvements increase effectiveness outside of Lifeline."

If you're still not convinced of the sheer power of Lifeline then just look at the recent Overwatch World Cup, where teams were forced to either ban Jetpack Cat or play into the Cat and Bastion meta—it was pure chaos.

This isn't to say Jetpack Cat has just been left in the dirt, though, as she has got a couple of buffs. Damage and healing from Biotic Pawjectiles has been increased from 4 to 4.5 per pellet and the Headbutt major perk has had its damage increased from 30 to 50.

I'm not opposed to making Jetpack Cat stronger in these areas; so far my biggest issue with her has been her ridiculous mobility and the Lifeline ability, both of which have been addressed to some extent. Although, I'll still probably ban her in competitive matches—I don't want any of that smoke.

Overwatch's next hero might carry twin pistols and has a quick dash, but she's no Tracer. Tomorrow, when Shion makes her debut, Overwatch will have a hero who fights like a Devil May Cry character.

In fact, the character action game series was so much of an inspiration that Blizzard originally gave Shion a Devil May Cry-esque style rank meter to measure your moves.

"We did have a style meter," lead hero producer Kenny Hudson said in a recent group interview with PC Gamer. "We had this little style meter UI in the beginning and it would start at D or E and then move its way up to S, depending on how [many abilities] you could link together."

Hudson said it "would've been cool," but it was too stressful to manage in combat. The team also had troubles figuring out how to reward you for earning an S rank. "At one point we had it so she has super speed or she has double the run speed of other heroes in the game," Hudson explained. "That was kind of wild, and we felt that the bike [was] going to be enough of a challenge."

Even without the style ranks, Shion still has some Devil May Cry DNA in her kit. The motorcycle he mentioned isn't just for racing around the map. Shion can take off with it into the air, hang for a beat, and then kick it towards enemies. Some characters have rocket launchers or grenades; Shion has an explosive bike—a core part of her design that everything else was built around.

The rest of Shion's abilities are made to be used interchangeably so you can combo them together based on what you need in the moment: Each pistol shoots a three-round burst before she swaps to the other, they can both be unloaded in an X pattern for a huge chunk of damage, and she can use her dash to move in or out of the fray.

I can already see several ways you can optimize Shion's abilities for the different heroes you'll face in a match, like forgoing the accuracy you gain from charging up her pistol volley when fighting a bulky tank hero. This flexibility extends to her ultimate ability, which gives her three charges of an AoE barrage that she can use in place or after a short dash. In the brief demo Hudson gave us, it looks like Shion will be particularly good at pouncing on weak targets before they can react, but will struggle to survive anyone prepared for her arrival.

That also might mean Shion's about to become the most banned hero in ranked. Erratic movement abilities can be as much of a pain as a hero with auto-aim. Hudson said a problem in early playtests was that it was nearly impossible to take her out while she was riding the bike because her hitbox became smaller than intended. That's fixed now, but I still expect it's going to take some practice to stop her before you've been turned into roadkill.

Shion will Akira slide into the hero roster tomorrow when Overwatch season 3 begins.

Earlier this year, the private World of Warcraft server Turtle WoW announced it would shut down after Blizzard served it a cease and desist and filed a copyright infringement suit. Second verse, same as the first: Project Ascension, a different private server project with several realms, is the subject of a new suit filed last Friday (thanks, Aftermath).

"The defendants … have built an entire business on large scale, egregious, and ongoing infringement of Blizzard's intellectual property," the complaint reads, noting that Ascension is "among the largest private WoW servers available today … with 'over a million players.'"

If you're unfamiliar with the fan server, it's a modded, classless, free-to-play version of the game where you stitch together existing and custom spells to fashion unique playstyles. "Build the character of your dreams," the website beckons. It also looks like there's a different project in development which adds new ideas to World of Warcraft's classic incarnation, not unlike Turtle WoW or that secret thing Blizzard seems to be working on.

Also similar to Turtle WoW, the server allowed players to buy in-game items with Donation Points—the complaint alleges this has made the Project Ascension team "millions of dollars." The complaint also says the game's pirate servers are "hosted on 'bulletproof' servers associated with the Russia-based Aeza Group," which the U.S. Department of the Treasury has targeted for "enabling cybercriminals and technology theft"—an association which allegedly "signals willful intent to engage in unlawful activity."

While the team behind Turtle WoW initially urged Blizzard to consider an official licensing framework for fan servers, no public word has come from Project Ascension just yet. Fans of the server are not hopeful: "Welp, we're fucked," reads one thread from Reddit user AnaTheSturdy.

User micro_Ampere replied, "Thanks for the memories. I had a better time here than I had on any other [private server] currently out there. Shame to see all that creativity gone to nothing. Good luck devs, but surely you knew this was coming."

In a downright intriguing turn of events, it looks like real money trading (RMT) gold sellers—whose peddling of gold for actual cash is against World of Warcraft's terms of service—have taken to the streets of WoW Classic Anniversary to advertise casino games as a way of raking in cash (thanks, WoWHead).

They are spending money to boost level 58 casino bots now 🤣🤣🤣 from r/classicwow

These bots, boosted to level 58 (presumably because doing so via the store gives you 25 gold to play around with—and to protect themselves from ganks, more on that later) have been standing on street corners in major cities and trying to lure players in with the promise of gambling. Which—and I write this with pride—has led to players devising new and inventive ways to kill them.

Take this example posted by Reddit user Purple_Resident2930, which suggests players travel to the Netherstorm, pick up a debuff that spawns a monster on expiration, Hearthstone back to the city and run at the casino bot in question. This is a little like voluntarily letting an Alien-style chest burster sit in your ribcage so you can sic it on a spam caller

This doesn't work as well if they buy the aforementioned boosts, mind, but there are other ways of gambling-based murder—for example, kiting a level 60 elite over from Ashenvale to squish them.

Anyway—anti-casino arms races notwithstanding, Blizzard has marked, recognised, and promised to do something about these yapping slot machines. Tom Ellis, a senior game producer on World of Warcraft, writes via his personal X account:

"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). Digging in, it looks like the RMT crowd (that's gold sellers) have realized this is an easy way to make gold quickly and cheaply, which has driven an uptick in the behavior.

"You caught Watcher's attention so 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."

It's a fascinating little development, all told—though it makes a certain kind of sense. Casinos in real life operate by tipping the odds in their favour, and drawing people in with the allure of being one of the rare lucky winners that makes it big (this is where the saying "the house always wins" comes from).

In other words, it's absolutely a smart, albeit ToS-violating, strategy to encourage people to gamble with a game of chance because, writ large, it will make you more money than it loses you. Unless, of course, you get repeatedly murdered any time you try.

"Don't expect any sort of big fanfare 'Mission Accomplished!' banner for this one," Ellis adds, "This is one of the ones that you hopefully don't even notice stopped happening if we get it right."

Overwatch's soft reboot earlier this year has kicked off more story development than I can keep up with. There are several new short stories, comics, and even webcomics that are building up to something big. And it looks like they're going to be necessary for figuring out what is going on with its newest hero, too.

The trailer for Overwatch 52nd hero, Shion, doesn't actually tell us much about her that we didn't already vaguely know from some of the hints in the past few months. She's one of the leaders of the Hashimoto clan—Overwatch's near-future version of the yakuza—and dual wields pistols.

People have already been debating if she's a robot (an Omnic in Overwatch parlance) or a human based on the early info, and the trailer refuses to give a clear answer. At first, it looks like Shion wears a demon mask like many of the other Hashimoto members, but when she starts talking through speakers in her neck it almost seems like it's not a mask at all and that she is indeed a robot.

This isn't helped by the fact that she tells Sojourn that she "fights well for a human," which is the kind of thing an Omnic would say. But Sojourn says she was thinking the same thing and now I don't know what to believe.

Right now, all we know is that she's the clan's "most terrifying elder" and that she's going to be a villain in the next season. Her dialogue with other heroes or a new comic will likely explain her whole deal.

For now, we'll have to wait until she is playable in season 3 starting on June 16 to find out more. It's not super clear what kind of hero she'll be. She has those pistols and an electrified knife of some sort that she stabs Sojourn with. Maybe Blizzard is about to drop a damage hero who can stun you in close-range and then turn you into swiss cheese.

Overwatch's anniversary event has come under quite a bit of fire over the last few weeks. While the nostalgic modes were a hit, fans have complained that the rewards are simultaneously not good enough and too much of a grind, and they're not wrong.

While the anniversary loot boxes weren't too bad—allowing players a chance to get everything on offer with no duplicates over the three weeks—the player titles were a slog. The rare title required you to complete 24 anniversary challenges, the epic needed 36, and the legendary needed a whopping 48.

Bear in mind that there were only 24 base challenges in the game, which were a mix of playing one to 20 games each week alongside playing five games on tank, DPS, and support in that week's anniversary mode.

So, to reach 48 challenges meant you needed to complete an extra 24 challenges. The catch is that these extras were the 'Decennium Contributor - Repeating' challenges, which meant players had to complete 10 games (wins and Stadium granted double progress).

That means if you won every game or just played Stadium you'd need to play 120 games, but at the high end players had to complete 240 games over three weeks, which boils down to 5.7 or 11.5 games a day. That's a lot of Overwatch. I play too much Overwatch and I nearly didn't get it—I only finished the Meta Challenge: Decennial Hero and got the legendary title yesterday, hours before the timer was set to run out.

You shouldn't have to grind to get the anniversary rewards. They should be accessible to everyone who's played Overwatch over the last 10 years, regardless of how much they play. And Team 4 has finally cottoned onto this, albeit too late.

Yesterday Overwatch's game director, Aaron Keller, announced that Team 4 would be "making changes to the anniversary event because the requirements to earn the Table Flip (legendary title) weren't entirely clear."

"We do want some rewards to feel rare and meaningful, but many folks didn't realize the effort required to earn this particular title," Keller continues. "As a result, many people who could have earned it may have missed the opportunity. These changes are meant to address that."

So, the requirements to earn the legendary title have been lowered from 48 challenges to 38, and players will get until the end of the season in two weeks to complete them. Good stuff, right? Well, although it's now easier to get this legendary title, the issue of having an unachievable reward for some still stands, as Team 4 is now handing out an even rarer player title to those who already grinded the challenges.

"Players who earned the original Table Flip title before that will receive a special Double Table Flip title in a future patch," Keller explains.

Honestly, I don't think there was any way out of this. As someone who grinded the event I'm really not bothered if people get extra time to get the same reward, but I understand why some people would be frustrated at the notion. Really, this should have never happened in the first place.

There's always plenty of opportunities to grind for exclusive rewards in Overwatch. But this event should have been about celebrating Overwatch and every single player that made it so special over the last 10 years, regardless of how much they play. Because time played doesn't necessarily equal dedication or love for the game. The time you have to put into a live service game is largely circumstantial—lord knows I won't be able to play as much as I do now in 10 years.

The saga of TurtleWoW was perhaps inevitable—operating pretty brazenly under the nose of Blizzard, the World of Warcraft private server featured bespoke content for its own vision of the game, and advertised itself as an actual game might.

It also featured in-game microtransactions, and while some private servers for other MMOs (like City of Heroes) have received official permission from the developers to keep operating, they've usually done so via years of muddling by on strictly-documented donations that only cover server costs.

In other words—regardless how neat the work of TurtleWoW's developers was? Legally-speaking, that's cruisin' for a bruisin'. In October of 2025, Blizzard filed a lawsuit against TurtleWoW, and while the team behind it put on a brave face, it didn't matter. Come April 2026, TurtleWoW was given a cease & desist and announced its closure several days later.

Well, as per the TurtleWoW (now Moonwhisper Games) Discord, its developers have said they'll make their own MMO: "This isn't the end of our journey together, but rather the beginning of a new one! We'll be transitioning the team into a game development studio Moonwhisper Games.

"... We've decided to begin work on our own MMO! We know this is an enormous undertaking. MMOs are among the most ambitious and demanding projects in game development, and we're under no illusion that this is something that can be built quickly or easily."

However, as the team points out, it's also sort of been getting in a lot of practice with TurtleWoW itself—regardless of whether the server was playing stupid games and getting stupid prizes, the amount of work put into its extra content was commendable. We're talking new zones, classes, dungeons, the works.

"At the same time, we're not starting from scratch completely. We have spent years building MMO experiences, managing communities, creating content, and learning both the strengths and shortcomings of the genre. We know how challenging this road will be, but we also know it's a challenge worth taking on."

Honestly? Bully for them! While I wish we'd all live in a world where IP laws allowed people to make cool stuff, I do absolutely understand why Blizzard had to put the screws on, here. TurtleWoW was playing with fire—but that doesn't mean its devs shouldn't get to keep making cool stuff. I'm excited to see what Moonwhisper Games'll put together in the coming years. God knows the scene could use an injection of new talent.

Six years ago, in October 2020, Blizzard announced the end of new content updates for StarCraft 2, its storied real-time strategy game, although it promised to continue supporting the game with tweaks and balance patches "as needed." It's followed through on that commitment over the years since, and today (technically yesterday, but I didn't notice it then) brings as a new one, and it's kind of a banger.

The focus of this update is on "extending the early and mid-game experience, allowing players to remain competitive on one to three bases for longer periods," Blizzard said. "We’ve introduced changes to make non-warped Gateway play a more viable path, while also increasing overall strategic diversity across all three races."

The top-line change is a reduction in starting workers from 12 to eight, which fans in the StarCraft 2 subreddit seem generally supportive of, because it provides for more varied builds and, as redditor GoGoGoRL put it, because "shaking stuff up in this stage of the game in general is a breath of fresh air."

"The idea is to force harsher compromises in builds, in that you can't get counters for everything online as quickly," redditor Appletank added, explaining how the change fits with Blizzard's strategy of extending StarCraft 2's mid-game. "This increases [the] need to scout, increase time spent in the 80-150 supply range before everyone maxes out, makes supply slightly less free with expanding, makes it slightly less punishing to be a bit later on expanding as your main base minerals aren't half gone by eight minutes."

Redditor RedErin was a bit more succinct: "With 12 worker starts you have to get a third base ASAP or you're dead."

There are a handful of other economic tweaks, gameplay changes to zerg, protoss, and human forces, and a surprisingly beefy list of bug fixes and quality of life updates—all told, a more impactful update than you might expect given that StarCraft 2 is now 16 years old and, at least in terms of new content development, effectively abandoned. StarCraft 2 players are already kicking around ideas on how the patch will change strategies.

Comment from r/starcraft2

starcraft 2 changed warpgate after like 10 years whattt

— @hatmasteryt.bsky.social (@hatmasteryt.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-05-29T18:41:09.643Z

The StarCraft 2 5.0.16 patch is live now on the public test realm—depending on how that goes, it's possible some of these changes will be reworked. The full patch notes as they currently stand are below.

Economy

• Starting workers reduced from 12 to 8.
• Default Large Mineral patch resource count reduced from 1,800 to 1,600.
• Default Small Mineral patch resource count increased from 900 to 1,200.
• Total Default Minerals per base increased from 10,800 to 11,200.
• Default Vespene Geysers' resource count increased from 2,250 to 2,500.
• Total Default Gas per base increased from 4,500 to 5,000.
• Rich Vespene Gas Geyser harvest return value decreased from 8 to 6.

Zerg

• Hatchery, Lair and Hive
  • Supplies provided reduced from 6 to 4.
• Creep
  • Spread/Recede rate slowed from 0.45 to 0.55.
• Spore Crawler
  • Damage against Biological increased from 20 (+10 Biological) to 20 (+15 Biological).
• Carapace Upgrades
  • Level 1 cost decreased from 150/150 to 100/100.
  • Level 2 cost decreased from 200/200 to 150/150.
  • Level 3 cost decreased from 250/250 to 200/200.
• Infestor
  • Microbial Shroud range increased from 9 to 12.
  • Microbial Shroud can now be cast without requiring an upgrade from the Infestation Pit.
  • Neural Parasite on builder SCVs will only expire at structure completion.
  • Now has an auto-attack weapon.
• Viper
  • Abduct now considers Sieged Tanks a valid target.
• Overlord
  • Speed without Pneumatized Carapace decreased from 0.9 to 0.7.
  • Can now issue 'Load Nearby Units' commands.
• Overseer
  • Changelings automatically inherit the current order queue of the casting Overseer.
  • Changelings’ deaths are contagious to other nearby Changelings.
• Mutalisk
  • Mutalisk Glaives now prioritize targets.
  • Arc slop increased to 180.

Terran

• Command Center
  • Supplies provided reduced from 15 to 13.
• Ghost
  • Supply increased from 2 to 3.
  • Health reduced from 125 to 100.
  • Attack damage changed from 10 + 10 vs Light to 20.
  • Attack range increased from 6 to 7.
  • Steady Targeting:
    • Damage increased from 130 + 40 vs Psionic to 170.
    • Energy cost increased from 50 to 75.
    • No longer cancels upon taking damage.
• Medivac
  • Can now issue 'Load Nearby Units' commands.
  • Subgroup Priority:
    • Priority order updated from (Raven, Ghost, Battlecruiser, Marine, Marauder, SiegeTank) to (Ghost, Marine+Marauder, Raven, Battlecruiser, Siegetank).

Protoss

• Nexus
  • Supplies provided reduced from 15 to 13.
• Warpgate
  • Warpgate Research moved to the Gateway from the Cybernetics Core.
  • Warpgate Research speeds up Gateway unit production time by 35%.
  • 'Transform to Warpgate' cost increased from 0/(0) to 50/(50).
  • Warp-in Time is no longer determined by 'slow power fields'.
  • Warp-in Time decreased to 3s (from 3.6s and 11.4s).
  • Warpgate Cooldown Values:
    • Zealot: from 20 to 22.
    • Adept: from 20 to 22.
    • Stalker: from 23 to 22.
    • Sentry: from 23 to 22.
    • High Templar: from 32 to 35.
    • Dark Templar: from 32 to 35.
• Gateway
  • Pre-Warpgate Production Time Values:
    • Zealot: from 27 to 28.
    • Adept: from 30 to 28.
    • Stalker: from 27 to 28.
    • Sentry: from 23 to 24.
    • High Templar: from 32 to 40.
    • Dark Templar: from 32 to 40.
  • Post-Warpgate Production Time Values:
    • Zealot: 18.
    • Adept: 18.
    • Stalker: 18.
    • Sentry: 16.
    • High Templar: 26.
    • Dark Templar: 26.
• Sentry
  • Hallucinations automatically inherit the current order queue of the casting Sentry.
• High Templar
  • Psi Storm total damage reduced from 110 to 100.
• Disruptor
  • Now has a 'phantom attack' weapon.
• Warp Prism
  • Can now issue 'Load Nearby Units' commands.

Bug Fixes & Quality of Life Updates

• Fixed an issue where Carrier Interceptors owned due to a player casting Neural Parasite would not inherit the opponent's upgrades.
• Fixed an issue where EMP visuals did not provide clear visual indication of effect radius/affected units.
• Fixed an issue where Motherships would warp in adjacent to the Nexus rather than overtop.
• Fixed an issue where Guardian Shield visuals would persist even after loaded into a transport.
• Fixed an issue where melee units targeting builder SCVs would lose their attack order when the SCV moved through the structure.
• Fixed an issue where SCVs could not have build orders queued sequentially onto structures already being constructed by another SCV.
• Fixed an issue where Guardian Shield visuals would not update player color post-initialization.
• Fixed an issue where the KD8 Charge could knock back immobile targets during Recall.
• Fixed an issue where the KD8 Charge lacked a placement model and AOE effect radius cursor indicator.
• Fixed an issue where the KD8 Charge would be thrown in front of a target unit rather than at the targeted cast point.
• Fixed an issue where some units' spells would not trigger Protoss shield-damage graphics (Purification Nova, Corrosive Bile, KD8 Charge).
• Fixed an issue where units with burrow move would lose their current orders when told to burrow.
• Fixed an issue where 'Zerg Rocks' were lacking polish. (Now uses correct wireframe, has a Zerg building armour icon, and uses animation state to communicate health level).
• Fixed an issue where a variation of large diagonal rocks still did not receive an attack command if certain portions of the rock were within vision but not others.
• Fixed an issue where attack commands with Adept Shades in the selection behaved erratically (Example: finishing a shade caused the attack target to be lost if the command was not issued by smart command/right click, units could unexpectedly move command etc.)
• Fixed an issue where the Nexus had no indication Nexus Recall nor Energy Recharge abilities' cooldowns were global. Command card now displays charge counters and minimap displays all Nexus range radius.
• Fixed an issue where the Nexus Energy Recharge ability range radius actor would display permanently rather than when the ability was being targeted.
• Fixed an issue where Lurker Attack Spike sounds could be heard through the Fog of War.
• Fixed an issue where Lurker eggs lacked polish during creation/destruction. Eggs now take less time to appear due to faster birth animation and play a death cry to communicate when destroyed early.
• Fixed an issue where the Warp Prism would not display an unload visual model indicator.
• Fixed an issue where the Warp Prism would not display a load range radius actor when the ability was being targeted.
• Fixed an issue where the Warp Prism movement was highly variant/ sluggish if ordered to queue pickup orders or pick up units slightly out of immediate range.
• Fixed an issue where Banelings in splash range of enemy units but killed by enemy units would not spawn an audio cue indicating splash damage had been dealt.
• Fixed an issue where non-disguised Changelings would not play their full birth animation.
• Fixed an issue where commanding Oracles to build Stasis Wards in areas inside their range could result in slower execution than being commanded to build outside their range.
• Fixed an issue where Oracles would teleport short distances if told to build a Stasis Ward while overlapping with other air units (such as other friendly oracles).
• Fixed an issue where Stasis Wards lacked a distinct audio cue for their death.
• Fixed an issue where players attempting to attack a Stasis Ward could easily accidentally move command underneath it instead.
• Fixed an issue where Colossus could not be created/unloaded in space an air unit already was (this mostly affects the predictability of colossus drop positioning due to collision with the warp prism).
• Fixed an issue where Voidray Prismatic Alignment lacked a termination audio cue.
• Fixed an issue where Immortal Barrier lacked a termination audio cue.
• Fixed an issue where beam attack visuals would not terminate if targets were picked up by transports or teleported away (Sentry, Void Ray).
• Fixed an issue where the Sentry's beam attack visuals were misleading due to being significantly delayed during creation and termination. They should now feel much more responsive to control.
• Fixed an issue where the Cyclone basic weapon was unable to damage friendly cloaked/buried units.
• Fixed an issue where the High Templar's basic weapon's visuals and sounds were not proportionate in size/volume to its impact.
• Fixed an issue where Vespene Geysers did not update their model to tolerate shaders if players' shader graphics settings changed mid-match, allowing for re-enabling of the higher graphics option.
• Fixed an issue where Phoenix would not face their channeled Graviton target.
• Fixed an issue where killing a Viper prior to its Abduct tongue connecting with a target would not cancel the abduct.
• Fixed an issue where Nexus would still play Blinding Cloud visuals (despite no longer having Photon Overcharge).
• Fixed an issue where Planetaries lacked or had misleading visual and audio indicators (splash damage impact visuals, sound).
• Fixed an issue where Archons lacked several visual and audio indicators (birth sound, splash damage impact visuals, movement sound, attack physics).
• Fixed an issue where Disruptor Purification Nova cooldown/firing status was difficult to discern. Ability status should now be much more obvious due to increased colour states.
• Fixed an issue where friendly Disruptor Purification Nova range radius actors were displayed permanently, even if the unit was on cooldown, causing unnecessary clutter as unit count increased.
• Fixed an issue where Swarm Host range radius actors were displayed permanently, even if the unit was on cooldown, causing unnecessary clutter as unit count increased.
• Fixed an issue where Swarm Hosts lacked an equipment (weapon) display indicator for the Locust.
• Fixed an issue where Microbial Shroud's appearance happened gradually and unnoticeably due to lacking a sufficient impact model for the cloud.
• Fixed an issue where Hellbat walk animation speed was faster than expected.
• Fixed an issue where casting Generate Creep would only affect a subselection of Overlords or Transport Overlords rather than both variations.
• Fixed an issue where Creep Tumors lacked placement and placeholder models when spreading themselves.
• Fixed an issue where it could be difficult to distinguish if a research structure was active (Twilight Council, Fleet Beacon, Armory, Evolution Chamber).
• Improved an issue where injecting Queens 'shuffle'. Allowed re-issuing inject during ongoing cast so orders are not offloaded to others queen. Long-range orders are invalid if another queen is nearby the target hatchery.
• Improved an issue where units with their primary attack order on a changeling would lose their order if the Changeling subsequently disguised itself.
• Improved an issue where gather orders were clunky for workers. Workers adjacent and move commanding to a geyser now update their command to a gather order if a refinement structure gets built.
• Xel'naga towers can now be selected through the Fog of War. Xel'naga Towers now show their vision range radius when selected.
• Active Creep Tumors will now take selection precedence over Inactive Tumors.
• Active Creep Tumors in a control group at the time of exhausting their charge will now transfer control group membership to the spread tumor.
• Critters and destructible neutral objects have been standardized to share similar targeting/selection/collision values. They will no longer collide with/block player structures or units.
• Larva/Eggs will no longer collide with/block player structures or units.
• Locusts that were previously uncommandable during their swoop animation are now also unselectable (if already selected they will stay selected).
• Neural Parasite will now add the target unit to the current selection if the selection only contains one infestor.
• Protoss structures now generate additional 'damaged' graphical models.
• As larva increases, they will now spread further upwards around the sides of the hatchery. Larva will still start from the bottom of the hatchery.
• Music selection for spectator players has been adjusted to feature a greater pool of suitable tracks for spectating. Duplicate entries have also been removed.
• Slightly polished Oracles' Revelation and Build animation transitions.
• High Templar and Ravagers are now less likely to aggro towards faraway targets.
• Adjusted Warp Prism and Raven visual fly height to minimize clipping inside other models and reduced Warp Prism shadow size on low graphics to minimize shadow-casting on unloaded units.
• Commands to unsiege Warp Prisms will now be issued to all Warp Prisms in the selection.
• Healing Shrine visuals/sounds have received a minor polish pass.
• The Warp Prism will now attempt to immediately siege when instructed rather than prioritizing deceleration.
• Mapmaker support tools now include proper Worker-Only-Path indicators, No-Resource footprints, air unit height modifier doodads, and variable rock reduction units.
• Mule Repair is now set to auto-cast by default (Mules with a harvest order still do not attempt to repair units).

Overwatch fans have been dreaming of an official animated TV series for as long as I can remember. Sure there's plenty of stellar animated shorts, but with a narrative this good, fans want to appreciate it all in one cohesive project. But so far that's all it's been: A dream. Especially after word got out that Blizzard fumbled its chance at a Netflix adaptation.

But perhaps not all is lost, as in a recent interview with IGN, Overwatch's general manager Walter Kong explained that he wouldn't "rule out" an animated series in the future. "Every time we release assets, whether it’s a hero trailer or an event piece, there are all of these comments about, 'Hey, we would love an Overwatch animated series. Blizzard, what the hell? When's that happening?'

"So we certainly hear that and I think that it is not a huge stretch to believe that there would be a lot of demand for that type of content. So certainly, no, I won't rule out that sometime in the future there could be other storytelling experiences in the Overwatch universe.

“I think we got the sense that there was this desire to know more about the story of Overwatch, because we had quite a few of the cinematic pieces released before launch. I think they helped establish that kind of emotional resonance prior to the game's launch, but what we weren't prepared for was being able to support so many ambitions. I think very early on we knew that we wanted the game to have an ongoing release cadence to it and you don't know how hard that's going to be until you actually do it."

Overwatch's great animated shorts didn't just end on its release, though. Some of my all time favourites aired years after. Doomfist's origin story, Honor and Glory, and even the recent Reign of Talon are all icons in my eyes.

"We did give it a try in terms of resuming development of the story missions and releasing the first chapter in Season 6 of 2023," Kong adds. "We did get the signal back from players that it really wasn't resonant and I think that's when we made the decision to focus our resources on the core PvP experience."

But the tides have shifted once more. Overwatch's recent rebrand has brought a whole new wave of stories with it. After the Reign of Talon cinematic we saw a bunch of new comics get added to the game, labelled as Story Time, which sees an Overwatch voice actor read through each comic. Then there's Sierra's hero trailer which also brought this overarching story to the forefront. In other words, there's been a real effort to prioritise the overarching story.

This is all to say that it would be an excellent time for Blizzard to take Overwatch's narrative one step further by releasing an official animated series. It fits with the new direction of "narrative first" and would be an excellent way to celebrate 10 years of amazing storytelling.

For the first time in a while, I'm not so sure about Diablo 4's latest loot experiment. The prevailing complaint about the current season in Lord of Hatred is that Blizzard made the benefits of its strongest items too random compared to what we had in previous seasons. While Blizzard is working on a solution to that in its next season, it's also leaning even harder into uncertainty by gutting the only items we could really rely on.

Mythic Uniques, Diablo 4's rarest and strongest items, will no longer be limited to the same Mythic Uniques we’re used to going forward (not just season 14): Mythic will instead be a variant for all the Unique items in the game. Basically, this means the items that were once the ultimate tier of loot—and came with several guaranteed stats on them—won’t be anywhere near as powerful anymore.

Mythic versions of Uniques will occasionally drop and can be created through the new crafting system introduced in Lord of Hatred. These Mythic Uniques won't have set stats, though, nor will they have new skill-enhancing powers on them. The only difference between a Mythic Unique and a regular Unique will be that the stats on them are locked to their highest values and their powers will be slightly increased. The old Mythic Uniques will still drop as “Iconic” Mythics, but their relative strength compared to other Uniques will be gutted.

Theoretically, this solves the problem where some old Mythic Uniques were ignored because of their mediocre stats. There's a staff that randomly gives you powerful shrine buffs (periodic explosions, unlimited mana, etc.) that nobody used because the stats on it weren't particularly good. With the changes in season 14, it's possible you'll find one or craft one that might work for your build. Might.

The biggest issue I see with this change is the loss of knowing your desired Uniques will be powerful the moment you see them drop. Every top build uses the Heir of Perdition helmet for the surplus of rare stats on it and its whopping 80% damage boost. When you see that helmet drop, you know you're about to become a god.

In season 14, though, Heir of Perdition will only have movement speed guaranteed on it and its damage boost will be knocked all the way down to 15%. It’ll be more in line with other Uniques, which also received nerfs, but you'll probably trash more of them than you ever have before.

I imagine Blizzard's reasoning for dramatically nerfing almost every old Mythic Unique is because they want to normalize the power of this tier of items across the board. To maintain some semblance of balance, their absurdly strong buffs will have to come back down to Earth if they're not locked behind hours and hours of grinding. But I kind of liked the concept of having a small set of items that have no variations, making them feel like stumbling onto ancient artifacts passed down from well-known figures in the lore.

Season 14 will diminish that pinnacle tier of loot and replace it with items that will only be good if you're lucky. It opens the door for more Uniques to be dusted off and used for once, but it makes the late-game loot chase extremely RNG-heavy and grindy in a way that I'm not looking forward to.

Nothing is set in stone yet, however. Blizzard will be letting us test out all of this on a PTR starting June 2. I won't be surprised if some of the specifics on how these new Mythic Uniques work will change before the season properly comes out. My hope is that there's some kind of middle ground that doesn't completely tarnish the value of the old Mythics while still allowing some flexibility for the weaker ones.

Role queueing as a tank in 5v5 Overwatch requires you to have three things: the mental fortitude of a monk, the siteline knowledge of a OWCS player, and a heart of gold, because good lord can this role feel hellish.

That is partially because a good tank can make and break your team, more so than any other role, mostly thanks to the fact that there's only one per team now after Overwatch's shift to 5V5. Instead of having a main and an off tank, you're required to be everything wrapped up in one: someone that can make space, hold the front line, and peel when your supports need you. Needless to say there's a lot of pressure.

For those who don't want to succumb to the stresses and strains of that life, you can still play 6v6. Although, it doesn't have a role queue, and the heroes currently in it are mostly balanced for 5v5 (aside from some health and ability tweaks). For this week only, though, you can queue pre-OW2 6v6 Overwatch as part of the 10 year anniversary celebrations.

I've played all of the nostalgia modes, including OG Overwatch and the Mystery Heroes tribute, and I've enjoyed each one of them for different reasons. But playing this version of 6v6 Overwatch actually made me enjoy the tank role again.

I am, however, lucid enough to realise that this is the version of tank I like the most because I always played off tank. If I had been a main tank queuer, I perhaps wouldn't like it as much, as you have less impact on team fights. But as someone who enjoys hunting down enemy flankers with my DPS without having to worry as much about our backline, this mode is brilliant.

I'm also aware that while nostalgia can be fun, change is also necessary. I've largely appreciated the shift to 5v5 as it's streamlined teamfights, made individual contributions have more impact, and just generally made everything more concise. As a support main I forget how stressful it is to keep not just one but two squishy tanks up.

Either way, I can't get too used to this 6v6 mode as it'll disappear back into the ether at the end of the week when the 10 year anniversary celebrations finally come to an end. It's a melancholy thought. Although, on the bright side, Aaron Keller has already confirmed that more free stuff is planned for later this year. I'll always get out of bed for free stuff.

They say time flies when you're having fun, and boy did these past 10 years of Overwatch sure zip past. For the last few weeks Team 4 has been celebrating the momentous milestone with nostalgic game modes, cosmetics, loot boxes, and more loot boxes. But now game director Aaron Keller has taken to social media to share his own celebration: Overwatch's creation story.

"Happy 10 year anniversary Overwatch," Keller says. "While the game launched 10 years ago, Team 4 started working on it in mid-2013. I'd like to take you all through some of that original journey that the team took to launch the game."

It won't come as a surprise to many of you that Overwatch actually originated from a scrapped Project Titan, but Keller shows us just how much was used with concept art that would later become Cole Cassidy; it doesn't look like they changed a thing. But I suppose that's to be expected when the team was just given a few weeks to pitch Overwatch.

Keller then goes on to explain how Team 4 "codenamed the new project Prometheus and the development team called ourselves Prometheans," which is pretty fitting all things considered.

From this point onwards, the team began working on several aspects of what would later become Overwatch: "We quickly got to work, figuring out key issues for the new project like character and environment scale", alongside the "combat feel" including what being low health would look like in-game.

One feature I've always loved about Overwatch is how it can convey masses of information efficiently. This is through small aspects like a tinted screen to relay when you're low health or being healed, the sound design which can tip you off to what hero is around a corner or what ult is about to be launched into your team, or by the simple fact that its in-game UI holds so much information yet never feels overwhelming.

This precision also translates to Overwatch's character designs, which are still some of the best in the business. But they were so good at the time of pitching back in 2013 that it was actually credited "as the moment where the room transformed from doubtful to excited about what this game could be." I get it, I was also overwhelmed with excitement the first time I saw Roadhog.

Then there were all the map mockups located around the world, including what would later become the legendary King's Row and the not-so-legendary Throne of Anubis. Funnily enough, Anubis went on to become the "first real map" after the team "worked in paper for months", as they waited for the engine to be rebuilt from the scraps of Project Titan.

Overwatch's creation story is one of resilience, and that's something Team 4 have continued to draw from over the past 10 years, through all the ups and downs. But here's hoping for more ups going forward. "I am so grateful for our community, its players, past, present and future," Keller ends with. "This world means so much to us, and to me personally. I sincerely hope that 10 years from now, we're celebrating another decade together. From the bottom of my heart, thank you."

The Fortnitification of videogames has seeped into just about every live-service excursion at this point. You can play as Nicki Minaj in Call of Duty. Final Fantasy 14 is getting an Evangelion raid series in its next expansion. Tekken 8 just announced a Baki character as its final Season 3 DLC fighter. Media can no longer exist on its own, it must merge and coalesce into an amorphous glob of characters and celebrities.

One notable exception has been Riot's games, particularly League of Legends and Valorant. While there are skins that certainly appear inspired by other famous media, it's never outright crossed over with other characters. And it'll be staying that way, according to League's lead designer August Browning.

During a stream on his Twitch channel (clipped and edited by HeWhoQuacksss), Browning responded to a question on how open Riot was to including third-party skins. "We've been pretty not open to that," he said. "The second you do third-party skins, the tone of your game completely changes."

He then goes ahead and talks about some of the games that have gone all in on collaborations. "Now that doesn't mean it's bad—it's really cool to play Overwatch and play all these anime characters and K-pop idols and things like that, right? It's cool to go into Fortnite, and have Goku and Jinx fighting Ariana Grande and Peter Griffin. But tonally speaking, it is also very different from the tone of all the characters in [League]."

Browning goes on to say that "historically, Riot has been pretty hesitant to do skins from other IPs," though highlights that the game does have a Louis Vuitton skin for Sena as well as a Swain skin that "looks very similar to certain chicken establishments." But overall? Browning calls straight-up crossing over other characters "a big step."

I mean, I get it. I don't need every videogame I ever play to put all my favourite characters from other stuff in it. I love Persona 5, but I don't need Joker making an appearance everywhere I go, you know? I have to agree with Browning's sentiment that all of these collaborations can drastically shift your game tonally, and I'd even go so far as to say it can really water down a game's identity.

Is putting Godzilla in Crocs and making him do K-Pop dances in Fortnite inherently funny? Obviously it is, but that ridiculousness loses its edge when everyone is doing it. Though I wouldn't consider myself the biggest enjoyer of Riot's library, I certainly appreciate its desire to stay in its own lane.

The MMO is in dire straits at the moment. Don't get me wrong, it's popular—but it's an aging genre, to the point where we even didn't have a single MMO make it to our Top 100 list last year, because while there are still many popular ones going, they've been losing too many points for recency and relevancy.

Meanwhile, when it comes to new MMOs, it's a bloodbath. They're either getting axed like New World or snuffed in the crib like Project Blackbird—and the ones that do truck along with a few thousand players are small-scale indie projects like Project Gorgon. Everyone else is an old dog in search of new tricks to keep humble playerbases ticking over.

Sharing my consternation over the state of things is Jack Emmert, an MMO veteran designer who has worked on games like City of Heroes/Villains, Neverwinter, Champions Online, Star Trek Online, and more—many of which are still up and running.

Speaking with Gamesindustry.biz, Emmert puts it plain: "People want MMOs, and the sales of New World proved it. But I don't believe that the infrastructure and the strategy was there to sustain it, and so ultimately they shut it down.

"I think that the idea that the MMO crowd doesn't exist is belied by the number of players who are still in World of Warcraft, or in my games, or in the Daybreak games … They want something new."

He still believes that the spectre of being a WoW killer is haunting newer MMOs even to this day—killing them via ballooning scope: "In [the publisher's mind], they needed to spend hundreds of millions of dollars, and they also needed to appeal to the widest possible audience.

"These new MMOs or MMO-adjacent games become so watered down by the expectations that it's got to be everything. And so you see games that are basically features, but without any soul... And so they fail, and you've seen it over and over again."

The antidote—and it is a big ask—is a publisher that's comfortable with setting reasonable expectations, rather than desperately trying to make the next WoW or Destiny. They need to "establish a reasonable budget with a reasonable projection, stick to it, and have a very distinct vision of what you're trying to do."

He uses the example of Neverwinter, which released with a pretty straightforward set of features: "A major publisher would have said to this game, 'Oh well, you're going to need to build your own house, and you're going to need to cut down forests: What's going to differentiate you from World of Warcraft?'

"When I made Neverwinter, I never even thought like that. I was just trying to make the experience of what I had work. I didn't worry about competitors. I didn't worry about the X factor that's going to make me stand out. Just didn't even think about it."

Makes sense to me. Sometimes the only winning move is not to play: "Players don't mind, it's the publishers who thought you needed a bajillion number of things."

I think Emmert's assessment here is fair—I can certainly see echoes of it in the horror stories surrounding Anthem, wherein Mark Darrah said that the ability for mechs to fly was tossed back in very nearly last-minute as part of BioWare's "highly dysfunctional relationship with decision-making."

But sometimes a game just gets kneecapped out of nowhere even if it's doing fine. Maybe New World didn't have too much soul—but it's still very possible to make money off a game with 10,000 players. Perhaps Emmert's right in a different sense. There's a humbler, leaner version of New World that would've made its publisher comfortable with those numbers.

Diablo continues to be a huge deal, and I'm not just talking about the latest entry, even if it is Blizzard's fastest-selling game ever. Millions of people went straight back to Diablo 3, and as the series' lead producer Matthew Cederquist told Polygon in a recent interview, Diablo's 26-year-old sophomore release is still surprisingly active.

It makes sense that there's renewed interest in D2 given that it just got an additional class, the warlock, via its first new expansion in a quarter-century, but the extent of its popularity might surprise you. Polygon points out that players created 1.92 million warlocks between Feb. 11 and March 11. Players also collectively played the expansion for a whopping 93.4 million hours, suggesting that Diablo is pretty moreish no matter which decade it's from.

"There's so many fans that were just screaming at the top of the mountain to give them something," Cederquist told Polygon. "It was nice because players moved extremely quickly from, 'I can't believe Diablo 2 has a new class, oh my God,' to actually doing what players do best, which is digging into the game, testing builds, arguing about synergies, making build guides, and then preparing for the new ladder that came out with it."

With a potential future for the pre-expansion version of World of Warcraft on the horizon and Heroes of the Storm continuing to get balance updates years after it was shifted to maintenance mode, it's interesting to see Blizzard's approach to its older games shift with the times.

The studio is so gargantuan these days that it can keep several versions of the same game afloat and active simultaneously. Given how diverse the larger ARPG space is even outside of the big dogs—a paradigm PC Gamer contributor Russell Adderson called "a golden age" for the genre—it's hard not to feel spoiled for choice.

Earlier this year, Overwatch shook things up: It dropped the 2, it dropped five heroes at once, and it dropped more story than it's ever had. Blizzard kickstarted a new era for the live service hero shooter almost 10 years after its debut, a plan that was partially inspired by the explosive success of Marvel Rivals.

When Marvel Rivals landed in late 2024, the Overwatch team saw it as the first direct competitor it had in years. As Rivals' player counts skyrocketed and the comparisons to Overwatch took over social media, Blizzard knew something had to change.

In a recent group interview with PC Gamer, Overwatch GM and SVP of Blizzard Walter Kong admitted Marvel Rivals' success "scared us a bit." The boundless enthusiasm for NetEase's crude hero designs prompted the team to "be less risk averse because we felt that if we stayed conservative then we're definitely going to feel some of the competitive pressure."

The first product of this reset came in the form of in-match perks introduced to core modes. Then came Stadium, a round-based mode with MOBA-style powers and builds, soon after.

While there were certainly concerns from players about the amount of sudden change, Overwatch was more vibrant and enjoyable than it'd been in years. Rapid patches to Stadium and perks, as well as regular communication from game director Aaron Keller, helped assure players that nothing broken or unfair would last very long. This was also around the time I would regularly see people in Reddit threads and on social media saying that Overwatch was finally back.

It took another year for Blizzard to overhaul some internal processes—primarily the time it takes to create new heroes—so that it could maintain this new, faster pace. Now, the plan is to kick off every new year with something huge, like releasing five heroes all at once. It also includes constant updates to the story and a new hero every season.

Whether or not Marvel Rivals sparked any of these specific ideas, it seems to have made Blizzard far less concerned about tainting the spirit of Overwatch. Nothing about it feels like it'll be left stagnant for too long. Several old maps and heroes have major reworks on the way, and fan-favorite features, like post-match accolades, have already made a return.

Things are going well: Season 1 saw one of the highest player counts Overwatch has had since the sequel was released in 2022. Players are busy speculating on who the next hero will be and if it'll be a recognizable face from the lore (it sure seems like it). And Doja Cat hopped onto a stream to settle the debate and proclaim that she thinks Overwatch is better than Marvel Rivals (she's correct).

Show of hands—how many of you know that the payload in Overwatch can heal you? How many of you know how to counter switch? And, now this is crucial, how many of you know not to run out and take on the enemy team all by yourself? I'm going to go ahead and say 100% of everyone reading this, but sadly not everyone can be as savvy as us.

But worry not, one Overwatch player has come up with a plan to help those who don't have great game sense figure it out, and the answer has been in front of us the whole time: "I thought the Overwatch spawn doors were a big unused billboard that could communicate effectively to players."

I thought the Overwatch spawn doors is a big unused billboard that could communicate effectively to players. from r/Overwatch

The idea's simple: you could place huge messages to players on the spawn doors, meaning they'll see it every time they respawn. Player pogstream comes up with a few tips which could be easily conveyed such as:

• You are staggered Group UP
• You have died x amount of times
• Interact Key not bound
• Ultimate held for x amount of minutes
• You are alone in voice chat
• Push the payload (it also heals you)
• Current K/D

Let's not forget old faithful:

• It looks like you are being countered by the enemy team. Have you considered switching heroes?

And the best part? It's actually not a bad idea. Having some visual queues could be a real asset for Overwatch, given how much its grown and changed over the last 10 years. Obviously, if this were to ever grace the game there would need to be an option to turn it off, but I'd certainly be up for a couple of reminders every now and then. I, too, have been guilty of holding my ult for a tad too long.

Just as pogstream says, "A little ego check never hurt anyone". I couldn't agree more. Yesterday, I played a competitive match with a Genji who went the full game against a Moira and Zarya without swapping. It didn't end well for them, needless to say my team could've really used one of these spawn door signposts for that match.

Week two of Overwatch's 10-year anniversary celebrations kicked off with more challenges, loot boxes, and a gamemode for us to try out. Instead of the OG mode that players got to check out last week, this time we've got a play on Mystery Heroes, the mode where each player gets a random hero when they respawn.

This version, called Mystery Showdown, is slightly different but just as chaotic. There's a little less uncertainty as you first pick a role queue, meaning there'll always be one tank, two DPS, and two supports in a team, and instead of swapping heroes when you die, you swap heroes when you get an elimination, or three assists as a support. Or, as I found out, until the game mercy swaps you if you're particularly awful at a hero and are incapable of getting elims or assists.

While I have enjoyed my fair share of regular Mystery Hero games, I wasn't prepared to enjoy this mode quite as much as I did. Largely because of how hilarious it is to change into a hero you've never played before in the middle of a huge teamfight during overtime.

I found myself in the middle of a ball of chaos several times, as I'd be gearing up to use a D.Va bomb against a whole team only to accidentally get an elim mid team fight and suddenly switch to Winston, with no bomb to use or clue as to what I'm doing.

I'm largely a support main, thanks to a time before role queue, but I still pride myself on knowing enough DPS and Tank heroes to role fill where needed, or at least I thought I did. Playing this mode on either of these two roles made me appreciate just how many heroes are out there and how little I know about them.

I understand the concept of plenty of heroes, but executing those skills is harder than it looks. Picture this: we're in the middle of a fight on payload, the enemy Orisa uses her ult and pulls my entire team into her AoE attack, but I'm playing Symmetra and I know I can teleport my team out of here, I just need my synapses to connect fast enough.

I place one teleport down and then the other, and then, we all die to the ult anyway. Turns out my synapses did, in fact, not connect fast enough and instead of placing the second teleport outside the range of damage I just TP'd us all back into the same ult. Whoops.

Aside from humiliating myself for most of the matches Mystery Showdown is a chaotic yet incredibly fun mode which showcases all the weird and wonderful heroes and abilities Overwatch has to offer. It feels like the right way to celebrate 10 years of Overwatch.

World of Warcraft: Midnight seems inclined, like its past couple of expansions, to be less demanding of entry-level requirements for Mythic+ and high-end raiding—there's more ways to gear up a character solo than ever via activities like Prey, and there's no mandatory Torghast-esque chores to tick off or borrowed power item to grind out points on.

And yet, some players have found themselves on an economic treadmill—as broken down by this solid analysis on WoWHead. This had mostly passed me by, given I'm not pushing keys—though I'd been aware of shield-wielding tanks getting shafted.

The issue? Repair costs. Now, repair costs are important to your average MMO—see, MMOs are technically printing money all the time. Every mob you kill, every bit of trash you vendor, every dungeon you complete, adds some form of money into the economy.

And if there's too much cash going around, then inflation becomes a major problem. And you can't just make non-player sources of gold generation more generous, because that'll only make it worse.

Still, when you look at WoW's repair costs for the highest-end players, it's nasty. Gear quality (what "track" it's on) makes a large impact, with Mythic gear being around 67% more expensive to repair—WoWHead compares a Mythic-tier two hander (523 gold) to a Champion-tier one hander (93 gold) to demonstrate.

Overall, WoWHead puts the average cost of a single death for a Mythic at 250 gold—if you want to kill the latest Mythic boss, WoW's Progstats puts that at an average of 343 pulls, rounded down. That's 87,750 gold to clear one boss—and that's not even including the extra gold costs required to raid at that level.

As a matter of fact, let's figure it out with the prices on my current server, even being charitable and assuming I've got a crafting friend who's willing to foot the bill for my gear and gems and enchants. WoWHead's Outlaw Rogue BiS for consumables suggests the following:

• Flask of the Shattered Sun (917g per hour).
• Thalassian Phoenix Oil (40g per hour).
• Void-Touched Augment Rune (846g per hour).
• For a total cost of 1,803 gold per hour of progression.
• (I've not put the recommended food here since it can be shared with the whole raid.)

That's just the hourly stuff—Light's Potential, a combat potion, and the SIlvermoon Health Potion can be added onto that per-pull cost, a combined total of 585 gold on my server. Using progstats' average progression timing of 29 hours (rounded up), we can actually figure out how much it costs to beat the Midnight Falls raid, purely in repair costs and consumables.

• Repair costs are 87,750 gold (250 gold x 343 pulls).
• Per-encounter consumables are an eye-watering 200,655 gold (585 gold x 343 pulls).
• Hourly consumables are 52,287 gold (1,803 gold x 29 hours).
• 52,287 + 87,750 + 200,655 = 340,692.

So if you're a Mythic raider, being as tryhard as you possibly can, it costs 340,692 gold to prog and clear Midnight Falls. Now, that number's probably a little high—that Light's Potential and health potion are by far the biggest cost factor, and you might not be using a per-encounter consumable on every pull if you still haven't seen enrage.

But even without them, repair costs being significantly more expensive than your hourly consumables budget is wild, and players are feeling the sting in their wallets. As one player pointed out on the WoW subreddit this month, it all adds up very quickly: "I as a Warlock am paying 20 THOUSAND gold in repairs and APPARENTLY I am on the LOWER END. The Protection Warrior is allegedly (in his words) paying over 35k a raid night."

Which is rough. I can absolutely see why some costs are there—again, MMO economies do need gold sinks, or stuff gets out of hand real quickly. You don't want a SWTOR situation circa 2023 where a level 24 accessory is being sold for 49 million credits.

But it does seem countermand to WoW's anti-busywork philosophy in recent years. Sure, you can get gold from just about anywhere, but demanding players foot a steep bill just for the honour of hardcore raiding does seem like an extra layer of unnecessary punishment.

A single skill tree upgrade in Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred has sent its most loot-hungry players into a frenzy. In one click you can gain more power than Blizzard probably intended, covering the ground in so much loot the game can't handle it.

Lord of Hatred's new activity skill trees let you customize the game's various dungeon types with things like bonus loot and tougher bosses. Many players overlooked an option to respawn slain enemies while a shrine buff is active early on, but now they've recognized its true power. With it, you can create a chain reaction of respawning treasure goblins, Diablo 4's most lucrative monsters.

YouTube user FP has proven that the Nightmare Dungeon "Gauntlet" upgrade can net you over 2,000 treasure goblins—2,401 in their case—in a single dungeon. But, they warn, this is far too many treasure goblins for one player to kill. All the bright piles of loot eventually start to disappear as the game struggles to maintain the number of individual items on the floor, like some kind of cosmic punishment.

If anything, FP's video is a proof-of-concept for a farming strategy that beats out everything else in the game as long as you don't push it too far. The trick requires finding a dungeon filled with guaranteed shrines and resetting it until you find some treasure goblins—a rare event that can take quite a while to show up. Before you start smashing them, you need to plan out a route so you can activate several shrines in a row. Any goblins that are killed while the shrine buff is active will respawn as it ends, giving you an opening to activate another shrine and keep the chain going.

The "Gelatinous" goblins are what you're looking for because they split into several smaller goblins when you kill them. Those smaller goblins will respawn as bigger ones, raising your goblin stonks exponentially as they multiply.

Barbarian players using the popular Whirlwind build, like FP, can spin through the dungeon without having to actually see what's going on underneath all the item text. Everyone else might want to utilize Lord of Hatred's new loot filter settings to make only your desired items visible. I'd also recommend flipping on a podcast or a YouTube video while you sort through the heaps of loot the goblins drop.

FP says they lost pretty much all of the loot and will be reigning it in for the next run. They hope that a more modest 399 goblins will keep the game from deleting their rewards. Here's my worry though: Diablo lore tells us that demons never truly die and instead regenerate in the depths of hell. FP may be setting up their own demise when these goblins inevitably come back to life with a thirst for revenge. None of that loot will matter when an army of goblins come to take back what's theirs.

The Overwatch gang has finally arrived in Fortnite, and you know what that means. That's right, we're talking about Tracer's butt again. Fans are convinced that Tracer's backside got buffed in her Fortnite incarnation, and you know, I think they might be right.

Some quick history, for those who either weren't around 10 years ago, or are fortunate enough to have memory-holed the whole thing: One of the big controversies in the early days of Overwatch (and this is going to sound incredibly stupid, but I swear it's true) was the bodaciousness of Tracer's booty. First, gamers complained that an over-the-shoulder victory pose had too much ass, so Blizzard changed it and then other gamers complained that there was not enough ass.

Ten years later, former Overwatch boss Jeff Kaplan said the amount of ass actually "stayed exactly the same"—it was merely the pose itself that changed. As PC Gamer's resident knower-of-Overwatch Elie Gould said, a decade of water under the bridge had turned the whole thing into something of a joke, although there's no doubt in my mind that an undercurrent of resentment and rage continues to flow through some corners of the online world.

Which brings us to today. Just a month after Kaplan's comment, Tracer's caboose is back in the conversation, because some of the folks on the TracerMains suibreddit—and today I learned there is a TracerMains subreddit—seem pretty sure that she's been re-proportioned for the Fortnite crossover.

Tracer has a bigger butt in Fortnite from r/TracerMains

Look, I'm not here to objectify videogame characters or anything, but speaking entirely observationally and clinically, yeah, that's a big dumper. The Unreal Engine's really working overtime to render this one.

For purposes of comparison, here's the original Tracer tush that caused all the uproar a decade ago:

So yeah, maybe it's just me, but I'm thinking that one of these things is not like the other.

Another angle:

The way I see it, there are two possibilities at play here—three, I suppose, if you include the possibility that we're all just imagining the maximizing of those glutes: One, the good folks at Epic know what they like and they're not afraid to let their freak flag fly, or two, the Unreal Engine is just naturally back-loaded, so to speak. I have no idea which it might be, but I hope it's the former.

As a conscientious videogame journalism professional, I have reached out to Epic Games to ask if they did indeed give Tracer some newly embiggened ham cakes, because that's the sort of thing I do on a Friday afternoon when everyone just wants to get out of the office and go home. I'll let you know if anyone replies.

Overwatch players expected a lot more for its 10th anniversary in-game event. For many, grinding for loot boxes that contain old skins with new colorways and some sprays didn't feel worthy of such a significant milestone, not to mention the huge amount of games you have to play to earn them in the first place.

In a game with a massive catalog of cosmetics—many of which were only available for a limited time—players had hoped there would be a way to earn them through the anniversary event. It was a reasonable expectation to have considering Overwatch 1 used to offer anniversary loot boxes that contained almost everything that has ever existed in the game. And it didn't help that the Chinese version of the event seems to shower players with rewards, some of which aren't even available for everyone else, like skins from old seasonal battle passes.

The disappointment players expressed on social media was strong enough to prompt a response from game director Aaron Keller on X. In it, he called the reactions "fair" and announced some improvements to the rewards coming next week.

Instead of needing to grind out almost 100 matches to earn the anniversary loot boxes, you'll only need to complete 60, with wins counting as two. In addition to that, the loot boxes rewarded to everyone for filling up a meter based on players collectively completing challenges will be doubled next week and tripled the week after. And in the final week, everyone who logs in will get a special anniversary loot box that has four Legendary skins.

Keller also announced that the next season will have a new event with "even more rewards" and that the team is working on ways to offer more free cosmetics "later in the year." In other words, the 10th anniversary celebration will continue for the next few seasons in some shape or form.

"I understand that future rewards don't make this specific event bigger, but I hope it gives some context for how we're thinking about this year as a whole," Keller wrote.

Early reactions to the news are mostly positive, although some players still think the recolored anniversary skins aren't good enough. I've seen people argue that Blizzard should be handing out some of the most expensive skins in the game for free and others say that they're surprised they got anything for free.

Personally, the flood of pricey shop cosmetics over the last few years has kept my expectations low when it comes to events like these, but I still think Blizzard could've done something more exciting for the 10th anniversary. The "classic" mode that attempts to emulate the original game as it was when it launched is a neat addition, and it would've been cool to see a bunch of cosmetics that actually tie into the game's history. It's Overwatch after all, an FPS that basically created an entire sub-genre. Not a lot of games do that and also manage to stick around for a decade. A set of slightly renewed skins and some sprays that recreate memes doesn't really match the gravity of such an achievement.

Blizzard recently dropped the first big patch for Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred, addressing several issues that cropped up in the first few weeks of the expansion. Disabled items that were breaking the game came back and a mountain of bugs were fixed, including one that was supposed to help players make their characters a little tougher against the demons of Sanctuary.

It was not, however, supposed to grant them near-immortality.

One of the main defensive mechanics in the game is called resolve. Basically, it's a buff several classes can stack up that reduces their damage taken from all sources. In Diablo 4, this kind of damage reduction is incredibly important as you move up in the difficulty tiers in your search for better loot. Monsters fling lightning bolts at you, leave poison pools on the ground, and make all sorts of other attacks that frequently overlap when you're clearing through crowds of them.

To not get popped like a balloon, you need a lot of damage reduction. The recent patch fixed one of the strongest ways to achieve this: a Legendary power called Glynn's Anvil. Before, it did absolutely nothing. But now, when you slap this power onto one of your items, you'll gain 4% damage reduction for every stack of resolve you have, capped at eight stacks, or 24% damage reduction, by default. That would be a lot on its own, but Blizzard didn't catch a separate bug that takes this to game-breaking levels of damage reduction.

Several classes, like paladins and spiritborn, can add a stat onto their gear that increases their resolve cap by three. That wouldn't be a problem if upgrading your item—and therefore the stat—didn't inexplicably bring it up to 12, an increase that was clearly not intended. You can exploit this weird math on three pieces of gear and increase your total resolve stacks to 44. With Glynn's Anvil now working, that gives you 176% damage reduction, AKA the closest thing to immortality you'll ever achieve in Diablo 4.

Diablo 4 creator MacroBioBoi demonstrated how ridiculous this bug is in a recent video. Without the resolve stacks, he took a 30,000 damage hit. With them, he was tickled for merely 4,000 damage. He still takes damage because the math for damage reduction is multiplicative, which essentially means you can't perfectly negate 100% of it. But Macrobioboi's results show how absurdly powerful this can be for max level characters who are already built to be pretty tanky. It's the difference between needing to chug an emergency potion and not drinking one ever again, especially if your build naturally regains life over time.

And this is without taking advantage of the unique mechanics different classes have that interact with resolve, like a Legendary power that gives you an increased chance to block incoming attacks for every stack of resolve (a 100% chance to block is easily achievable with this bug).

Blizzard must've been so busy playing whack-a-mole with people achieving infinite damage it missed a bug that let people achieve infinite defense. It's been a few days and the studio still hasn't mentioned that a fix is incoming, but I doubt this is a bug that will last very long. Some of the game's most valuable loot is locked behind bosses who can one-shot you with some of their attacks and I'm sure Blizzard wouldn't want half of the classes essentially getting it all for free.

Overwatch, one of the pioneers of the live service model, has finally come full circle with an official Fortnite collab this week. For years, Blizzard kept its iconic heroes close to its chest, but now they've been released, free to show up as premium cosmetics elsewhere in the live service multiverse.

It already felt like Blizzard was becoming less precious with its Overwatch characters after spending the last three years flooding the hero shooter with brands like Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Porsche. Collab skins went from being sorta like cosplay to near-copies of characters from other games.

In a world where Destiny 2 has a whole Star Wars-themed expansion and the stars of the Fallout TV show are earning killstreaks in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, anything is possible. So when the rumors of a Fortnite collab started a few months ago, they seemed plausible.

And here we are: Mercy from Overwatch has officially hit the Griddy, Genji is dancing to Cardi B, D.Va is editing her way to a victory royale, and Tracer is blinking across the Sandy Strip. Overwatch heroes are now skins in the game that took what Blizzard started and turned it into the business model that every major publisher is desperate to emulate.

Alongside the skins are recreations of popular Overwatch maps, like Hanamura and King's Row. While you're gathering loot, you can find Tracer's twin pistols which shift your view into first-person. It's just like playing Overwatch, if Overwatch were a massive battle royale where the only objective is to kill anything that moves until you're the last one standing.

There's something wrong about seeing Mercy, a support hero in Overwatch, carrying around an AK-47. Overwatch's universe is supposed to be a hopeful version of the future, and while there are major caveats to that, dropping these heroes into a completely different context renders them into the same charmless, plastic toys that every iconic character seems doomed to become.

It doesn't help that they all spout lines from Overwatch like you're pulling a string on their backs. In the trailer, Mercy floats onto the screen to say, "Heroes never die" like she does in the original Overwatch teaser cinematic, except she isn't really saying it to anyone in particular. She's just there to kick off more references as Tracer and D.Va join in with their own phrases from Overwatch. D.Va's "Nerf this!" is particularly nonsensical because, without her exploding mech, it's unclear what she's even referring to.

This is what the age of collabs has brought to gaming: An insatiable maw that chews up once-memorable characters and spits them back out as barely recognizable cosmetics for $19.99. Overwatch is just the latest game to be swallowed up in a trend that doesn't show any signs of stopping soon.

Overwatch's 10 year anniversary celebrations have begun and aside from giving players their body weight in loot boxes Team 4 has also added an OG game mode for day one Overwatch into the Arcade, and boy is it a reality check.

I really only tried the OG mode thanks to a mix of curiosity and a need for more anniversary loot boxes, but I ended up staying for more than just the required number of games mostly because it was just so chaotic. We played matches with 12 Winstons engaging in epic sky battles and fighting over the last med pack, subjected enemy teams to the cursed Reinhardt, Bastion, and Mercy team up, and relished in a time when Widowmaker had so few shields to contend with. It's a lot of fun and a very nostalgic experience, but it's also a complete mess.

First off, why is everyone and everything so slow? D.Va may as well be standing still when she's walking with primary fire engaged, trying to reach your team while in a Zenyatta ult is like wading through quicksand, and Roadhog? Well, he is actually completely still when self healing. It's so funny to me that all of this was normal once upon a time, especially when I see a Hog stop dead in his tracks in the middle of a barrage of fire to hopelessly heal himself only to flop over dead moments later.

I also forgot just how weak tanks were, with a Bastion being able to shred through a Zayra's bubble and health in seconds, and just how quickly ults were charged. It felt like ults were available for almost every single fight. Not to mention just how few heroes were available to play at launch.

Now, none of this is to dog on OG Overwatch. I loved it then and I love it now. But what playing this old version does do is make me appreciate just how far this game has come over the last 10 years.

The vast majority of heroes have improved leaps and bounds since they were first added. Bastion's grenade and Winston's right click both balance the heroes so well while giving them some much needed burst / long range damage. Removing crowd control abilities like Cassidy's flash bang or Mei's freeze effect also make such a huge positive difference, especially for tanks who don't like getting stunned every other second.

Even small things like adding some self healing or speeding up individual heroes over the years has gone a long way to making the game feel more exciting.

Many of these tweaks are small enough and have been implemented over such a long period of time that it's easy to forget just how much Overwatch has changed. But bringing OG Overwatch back really puts a spotlight on just how good we have it right now, and I think that's a pretty great way to celebrate the 10 year anniversary.

World of Warcraft: Midnight has had some trouble with its class balancing—some of this is fair enough, given Blizzard completely redesigned the game's specialisations (there's close to 40 of them) to better suit a world without UI mods. This had, uh, some consequences.

Consequences like, for instance, five bears rocking up to your dungeon and flattening it with absolutely no regard to the holy trinity. See, the Guardian druid tank spec received some buffs to help it maintain threat, as bear players were struggling to keep mobs hitting them as nature intended (thanks, WoWHead).

About two weeks ago, Blizzard wrote: "Guardian Druids have continued to overperform in single target contexts, while experiencing difficulties with threat and sustained damage outside of cooldowns. With these changes, we’re aiming to reduce burst potential and transfer some of that power into more reliable and consistent abilities to aid in generating and maintaining threat."

That's all well and good—Midnight's also been struggling with a burst-based meta that saw a lot of classes' power being funnelled into big damage spikes, which doesn't feel great in solo content especially.

The buffs, largely to the spec's damage with Thrash (200% to its direct damage, 100% to its bleed damage) quickly resulted in five Guardian druids rocking up to a level 20 Mythic+ dungeon key and managing to "time" it, which just means beating the dungeon within the stringent time limit. For context, gear rewards cap out at level 10.

Just hopping on over to the warcraftlogs of the run, and oop, yep. There's Thrash on the top tank of the group accounting for 59.38% of their damage. Anyway, Blizzard quickly stepped in to revert the change yesterday, with community manager Kaivax writing:

"Our recent adjustments to Guardian have made the Elune’s Chosen build stronger than intended. We’re going to take steps to bring this back in line with realm restarts during scheduled weekly maintenance this week."

Reactions have been pretty funny, all told. Here's a thread on the WoW Subreddit directly blaming these five bears for getting the class nerfed:

Guardian druids right now from r/wow

Honestly, while WoW's recent problems with its latest patch have been… let's call them not great, I think this sort of chicanery is to be celebrated. Not on Blizzard's part, but the players'. I just think it's neat to see folks trying absurd things just because they can. And also because Blizzard buffed one of their abilities by 200%. That also.

Ever since Blizzard released World of Warcraft Classic (and maybe even before), players have been begging for it to take a version of the old MMO and experiment with it. This proposed "WoW Classic Plus" wouldn't follow the timeline of updates the original MMO did, but veer off in a new direction as if it were a modern game—much like Old School Runescape.

With no major WoW Classic releases announced, WoW Classic Plus believers are convinced their time is almost here. Blizzard recently invited a bunch of well known WoW Classic creators to California for something none of them can talk about until an NDA is lifted. As far as I can tell, this hasn't happened before and is, at the very least, compelling evidence that Blizzard is working on something that isn't just another expansion re-release.

"I did just get approval to say that I will be gone a little bit next week," WoW creator Xaryu said during a recent Twitch stream, smiling as his chat exploded with "Classic+" messages. "Because I am visiting Blizzard next week—good news—for something that I cannot say, but I will be there."

If it wasn't for the fact that Blizzard specifically picked WoW streamers who focus on WoW Classic, like Sodapoppin and Esfand, I would've written this off as wishful thinking. But you don't invite these people to see the next release of an old expansion early. It might not be Classic Plus, but it's gotta be something new.

Even though Blizzard has never said it's working on a WoW Classic Plus, there have been a couple signs that it's interested in doing more with WoW Classic as a format. Chinese players currently have access to a version of WoW Classic that remixes old raids, and it doesn't seem to have an expiration date. And a 2025 wrap-up post teased that the team has been "cooking on the long-term future of WoW Classic," with a bunch of plus signs drawn below it.

It's possible the streamers are seeing the result of Blizzard's only WoW Classic Plus-like release, Season of Discovery. A seasonal version of the MMO that let you bend the rules with things like healing mages and tanking warlocks, Season of Discovery was an exaggerated version of the old MMO that didn't quite satisfy people who want a permanent version with new material. However, Season of Discovery's surprise success could've sparked Blizzard to start working on a Classic Plus for real.

Given how much nostalgia there is for playing with WoW's old systems in its old world through the likes of WoW Remix and Season of Discovery, I think a WoW Classic Plus, be it limited-time or permanent, is inevitable. BlizzCon is in September, which makes this seem like the perfect time to start teasing a new-ish version of WoW.