News | Rogue class for Diablo 4 revealed

Blizzard unveiled the Rogue class for Diablo 4 at the opening ceremony of BlizzCon 2021.

It is the fourth class to be revealed after the Barbarian, Druid and Sorceress. That means that one more class has to be announced.

The Rogue is a new version of an original class from the first Diablo. It moves very quickly across the battlefield and can run at close range as well as from a distance. In addition, players can completely customize the look, play style and backstory of the class.

The Rogue reveal features Diablo 4’s first new gameplay since the game was announced at BlizzCon 2019. Diablo 4 is coming to PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, although it is likely that versions will also appear on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S. There is no release date yet, although it is already clear that Diablo 4 will not be released this year.


News | Blizzard reveals Blizzcon's schedule online

Blizzard has posted Blizzcon's schedule online.

The fair is on 19 and 20 February and will be held completely online this year due to the corona virus. Previously, fans could buy a ticket to physically visit the fair, or buy a ticket to view it virtually. This year Blizzcon is completely free for everyone.

The schedule shows that an opening ceremony will be held on 19 February. After that, viewers can switch between six channels. In addition to the main channel, they focus on World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Heartstone, Diablo and a strategy channel for games such as Warcraft 3, Starcraft and Heroes of the Storm.

The complete, interactive schedule can be viewed via the Blizzcon website.


News | Virtual Blizzcon will be available for free next year

Blizzconline, the online version of the annual Blizzcon event, is completely free to watch next year.

Blizzcon is held physically every year and features all kinds of new announcements, videos and interviews about popular and upcoming Blizzard games. It was previously known that Blizzcon did not physically continue early next year due to the corona virus. Instead, the event will be held entirely online under the name Blizzconline.

Now it is clear that people don’t have to pay any money to watch the live stream. “We don’t have a physical show next year, but we’re really looking forward to Blizzconline,” said director J. Allen Brack in a new video. “We want to make it a big virtual celebration, so it’s free to watch and participate.” Via an email to PC Gamer, the company confirms once again that the live stream will be free.

This is striking, because previous Blizzcon events could also be attended virtually, but only by purchasing a virtual ticket. So it looks like Blizzard will drop that next year, unless the company puts tickets on sale with various privileges. However, nothing is known about this yet.

Blizzconline will be held on February 19 and 20 next year.


News | World of Warcraft: Shadowlands postponed to later this year

Blizzard has delayed World of Warcraft expansion Shadowlands for sometime later this year.

The new expansion should have been released on October 27th. However, the company has announced via social media that it will take a little longer. There is not yet a precise new release date. According to Blizzard, a little more time is needed to finish the expansion.

Shadowlands includes a new area called Exile’s Reach for beginners. There are also new dungeons and a new raid to explore.


News | World of Warcraft: Shadowlands will be released on October 27

Blizzard has unveiled the first animated short and trailer for World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. The expansion will be released on October 27.

Shadowlands includes a new area called Exile’s Reach for beginners. In a new trailer Blizzard shows new images of the expansion.

Afterlifes is a hand-drawn animated series featuring short stories about the afterlife in the World of Warcraft universe. The first episode is titled Bastion, Exploring Other Episodes: Malraxxus, Ardenweald, and Revendreth leading up to World of Warcraft Shadowlands.


News | Warcraft 3: Reforged releases in January

Warcraft 3: Reforged releases on January 28, 2020, as Blizzard has announced.

The game was originally supposed to be released this year, although a multiplayer beta appeared in October. Blizzard needs the extra time to perfect the game.

Warcraft 3: Reforged is a remaster of the classic RTS, Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos and the extension The Frozen Thrones. This Reforged version offers 4K support, has a new interface and an improved version of the original engine, so that old mods remain playable. Users can also create their own maps and play those of others using the updated World Editor.

Warcraft 3: Reforged releases on January 28, 2020 for PC.


News | Short story from Overwatch tells what happened to Mercy

Blizzard has released a new short story called Valkyrie. In the story you can read how Mercy went through her life after the collapse of Overwatch.

Valkyrie is set in Egypt and continues where the comic strip of Overwatch hero Ana ended. The story is told from the perspective of Dr. Angela Ziegler, better known as Mercy.

Mercy discusses her experiences as an Overwatch agent and also explains why she was forced to stop this. As used to from Blizzard, a number of famous heroes pass by. For example, she talks about former colleague Genji who is looking for his brother Hanzo (Which is a reference to the short video Dragons).

At the end of the comic we see a picture of a Mercy outfit that we have not seen before. Perhaps this is a new skin.

It seems that the different short stories of Overwatch come together and start to introduce an Overwatch 2 character together. However, it will take a while before we can get started with the next part of the tactical shooter, as it has just been announced.


Preview | Diablo IV

Good news for everyone who hated Diablo 3: in Diablo 4 the most frequently heard criticisms will be resolved.

Who still remembers the controversy surrounding Diablo 3? The game was under fire both before and after appearance. Gamers were initially angry at the graphic style as it would be far too colorful compared to Diablo 2. And then it turned out that the game could only be played with an internet connection. Painful, especially because the servers were out the first days.

A little later the game introduced a marketplace for found weapons and armor with which you could earn real money. In this way, Blizzard hoped to earn a little pocket money after the launch, but soon this system turned out to ruin the metagame. The new skill system also felt limited for many, because you could only link upgrades to specific attacks.

Since then, Blizzard has polished Diablo 3 to turn it into a game fans were hoping for. The plug was pulled out of the marketplace and in the Reaper of Souls expansion a more dark and grim style was used.

A new talent system ensures that you can adjust it to your own taste. Once in so many levels you get new points, which you can invest in extra upgrades on a screen. A standard system in many games, but for Diablo 4 a return to the classic form. This gives you more freedom to customize a character to your own taste, which makes more potential builds possible.

Just like in previous Diablo’s, you are constantly looking for new equipment. In Diablo 3 that could sometimes be confusing, for example if you had to choose between pants with 5 percent extra attack power or 500 raw attack power,  because then you suddenly had to make difficult calculations. Blizzard hopes to prevent this hassle in Diablo 4.

The runesystem is back. You will find all kinds of runes during your journeys through dungeons, which you can then put in your gear. In this way, a weak weapon can eventually measure itself against a legendary sword. And because you choose the runes yourself, you can adapt a weapon to your playing style.

The world of Diablo 4 is dark and bloody. Slaughter a horde of enemies and your hero will soon be drenched in blood, leaving behind broken carcasses. The world looks brown and gray, with hardly any room for contrasting colors. With that, Blizzard recreates the style of Diablo 2. As a result, the game also feels like a kind of crazy reference to the late 1990s, when games tried to distinguish themselves by being as bloody and ‘mature’ as possible.

In the demo we had a series of simple missions. There was a short story to play, about a boy who had nightmares about a possessed cave. Once we arrived we saw the spirits of a father who drowned his son as a sacrifice to the gods. It is the dark undertone that Diablo 4 wants to convey more often in his stories, the developers tell us. There were no winners here: after crossing the dungeon and beating the boss, it appeared in the village that the dreaming boy had suddenly died.

Side missions sent us to the corners of the world to defeat enemies in a fairly standard way, but these are not the only ways to deviate from the story. Diablo 4 is an open game, with gigantic environments that you can explore freely. During a walking tour we encountered everything, including mysterious dungeons and adventurers who needed our help. In Diablo 4 it pays to blindly pull out, making the game feel more like a rpg than the previous part.

The areas in Diablo 4 also feel a lot more vertical than in the previous part. Dungeons are no longer linear paths, but require that you climb multiple floors. As a result, the environments feel more like a real world, rather than a set of mapped out levels. In addition, for the first time you can roll into the PC version of a Diablo game: that option was originally only introduced in the console version of Diablo 3.

It will probably take a while longer for Diablo 4 to appear, but the first game session promises a lot. This is the grim Diablo that people longed for in part three, with more freedom and a more robust system to adjust your character to your own taste. You still have to be online to play the game, but in 2019 we can live a lot better with it.

Diablo 4 is being developed for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It is not yet known when the game will appear.


News | There will be Micro Transactions in Diablo IV

Since the announcement of Diablo IV, information continues to flow in. For example, many people stumble over the possible micro transactions. One of the main developers has since confirmed that there are indeed micro transactions in the game.

Joe Shely, lead developer of Diablo 4, confirmed during a Twitch interview that there are cosmetic micro transactions in the new Diablo game. The main goal of the in-game store is to offer players “Options that would otherwise not be present,” said Shely.

Shely further emphasizes that it is absolutely impossible to make yourself stronger with the help of micro transactions, it’s therefore purely for cosmetic purposes. It is not yet clear what the shop will offer.

In an interview Blizzard developers Zaven Haroutunian and Sean Murphy said that Diablo IV will receive several expansion packages after publication. The developer therefore intends to support the game for a long time.

“We are going to release the basic game first,” said the duo. “Then we have plans for several expansions.” It is not yet known what is being dealt with in those extensions.

Curious about our first impression of Diablo 4? Read the preview here.

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News | A new patch for World of Warcraft adds two new playable Races.

A new patch for World of Warcraft adds two new playable varieties.

There are the Vulpera, a breed with cute, fox-like people. Last year they already appeared in the game via the Battle for Azeroth expansion, but thanks to update 8.3 they also become playable as an Allied Race. The second new playable variety consists of the Mechagnomes, a kind of robot version of the standard Gnomes.

The upcoming update is called Visions of N’Zoth and will add a new story, in which the Horde and Alliance have to take on a powerful elder god. There is no release date for the patch yet, but the update will be available on the public test realm today.