Well, after a year off it seems that a new Assassin’s Creed game is coming sometime this year. Big surprise.

Rumours are now going around that the game titled Assassin’s Creed: Origins will be released by Ubisoft in autumn this year. Building upon rumours that were published back in early 2016, which talked of an Assassin’s Creed game with the working title of ‘Empire’ set in ancient Egypt with the potential for a trilogy of games that would see the protagonist of Empire going to ancient Greece and then ancient Rome in the two games after. The new rumours still set Origins in ancient Egypt with players being able to sail the Mediterranean and go “even as far as Greece.” It’s also been said that the extra year of development time has allowed this to be the “biggest” Assassin’s Creed game to date.

The plot deals with the original Assassin’s Guild (explaining the ‘Origins’ title), and will contain a male and a female character much as Syndicate did with players able to choose between the two as they play. While the main action is centred around Egypt, apparently an internal teaser trailer has been reported as showing a number of times and locations “including an Asian country, WW2 era France, and a modern day Abstergo Industries facility.”

As well, a Reddit user named Sirusavath has claimed to have seen some of the pre-order material for the game, showing off the ‘main assassin’ in Egypt carrying “a shield, a bow, and…a hawk of some sort on his shoulder.” They also show a planned Gold edition for Origins with the base game, a season pass and a steelbook all included. Apparently they are due to be “shipped on the 30th” with the announcement officially coming before that date.

As always, we urge you to take rumours with a pinch of salt. E3 is approaching after all and rumours aren’t always true, although a lot more often they’re turning out to contain some grains of truth. Whether that’s due to sanctioned ‘leaks’ or not is up to you – but if you’re a fan of the series and Origins does turn out to be real, now might be the time to get excited. That extra year should hopefully have made a difference. Hopefully.

Right now there’s a lot of big tournaments for all kinds of games going on around the world. ESports are big business but then smaller events are no less important, especially to followers and fan of the game they’re being played in.

Wargaming.net have just revealed the details for the finals of their game World of Tanks, whicxh will gather together 12 teams of the best tank crews to compete for their share of the $300,000 prize pool available. Starting on May 23rd, the twelve teams will kick off with a group stage where they are split into four group of three. The rounds will be the best of five and will crown an overall group winner along with a runner up. The group stage will conclude the next day on the 24th, leaving just four of the teams to compete for the overall grand prize and the crown of 2017’s Final victor. These quarter-finals, semi-finals and actual finals will be taking place over May 27th and 28th.

The location for the finals will be the VTB Ice Palace in Moscow, with the rounds being streamed on Facebook and Rostelecom for those who can’t actually be there in person. And for those people who can’t Wargaming.net will be running contests on social media for follow tank commanders to win special prizes. There will also be two Grand Packs and a Fan Pack available on sale in the World of Tanks Premium Shop, all offering players special team emblems and lapels in support of their favourite competing teams.

Also, Wargaming.net is apparently going to consult Tomato the clairvoyant lobster before the Grand Final on May 28th to predict who the winner will be. Because.

For details on the tournament schedule, current standings and all the teams competing, make sure to check out the official World of Tanks Grand Finals website.

A new law in China has seen Blizzard having to reveal the drop rates of loot boxes and packs of cards in both Overwatch and Heathstone in the country. We got the loot box rates earlier, and now that the pack rates have been revealed it seems that guesses taken about the card drop rates from packs were actually pretty accurate.

Of course, the document that reveals the drop rates is in Chinese but a quick translate works out as reading something like every Hearthstone pack will contain at least one card of “rare” value or better (which is widely known about already); “epic” cards will appear on average around every one in five packs, while the sought-after “legendary” cards have a drop rate of about one in every twenty packs.

Players had already previously done their own research on the rates, with them estimating that the legendaries dropped every 18-20 packs of cards – so if the Chinese rates are true across the board they were pretty close. What else is interesting is that the existence of the ‘pity timer’ is talked about in the last line of the Chinese announcement which reads (roughly translated) “actual odds of getting better quality cards will increase in tandem as players open more packs.” For those unaware of what it is, the ‘pity timer’ is said to increase chances of legendaries appearing in your packs the longer you go without finding one.

While we can’t know if these are just for the China region or if these rates apply across the board, it does seem to correlate with previous player research as mentioned. Even if it’s slightly different elsewhere, it’s just interesting to read.

Outlast 2 released at the end of last month, a sequel to one of the horror hits of 2013 – a good year for Youtubers playing horror games. The second game took the series out of the asylum and into north Arizona and mostly got positive reviews. Of course, despite this there were some complaints about the difficulty and so developers Red Barrels have addressed this in a patch released yesterday.

One of the main complaints about the difficulty level had to do with the speed at which the batteries used in your camera were consumed. Much like the last game, Outlast 2 has a style of ‘found footage’ gameplay, and seeing through the camera especially while using the night-vision capabilities will use up battery life and once they run down you need to change out those batteries so you can see in the dark again. Battery conservation is one of the mechanics but a lot of players felt that Outlast 2’s camera just chewed through the batteries at a fair rate. The patch sees that the camera’s microphone will now no longer use extra batteries so you’ll be able to locate enemies through the walls now without having to be worried about using too much power.

On the game’s Steam community page the devs said that the patch “introduces some minor adjustments to the game’s difficulty in key areas and moments. On Normal difficulty this will offer players a more appropriately balanced experience while still maintaining higher levels of challenge on Hard and Nightmare difficulties.”

The full patch notes can be found here.

Another week for me venturing through World of Warcraft and both my characters have travelled a fair distance, leaving behind the places they were previously and entering new territories and meeting new people.

Dungeoneering

Teddired started off my week and Lone decided to take me into a few dungeons, playing with his own Pandaren as we journeyed through various dungeons with a group of other people who had been placed into our instance. Now, I used to have an opinion of MMO games. I used to think they had a few too many people who were dicks solely for the sake of getting their laughs at the expense of others. Most of the people we played with were fine. One person we ended up grouping with twice and refused to do his job as tank, allowing myself and Lone to take aggro. Fortunately last week’s experience with Blackpowder Inc. had already introduced me to the nicer side of dungeons so I didn’t take it to heart.

Also, my boar decided he wanted to sit in the same chair as me after one of those aggravating dungeon runs, and it’s nice to know that he’s there for me through it all…

After the dungeon running I finally finished up where I was and headed across to the Stranglethorn area I’d accidentally found my way into last week before realising I was following the wrong quest marker. Picked up some missions and then decided to get a nice little photo to commemorate being near lush green plants again that weren’t super creepy.

I headed down into the camp where the majority of my picked up missions were set and began killing enemy soldiers, trying to get to them and pick them off before the other players in the area could wipe the map clean. I’ve never known such competition, and many of them ignored my attempts to offer to share kills (i.e. we both land a hit, we both get loot) so I said ‘Fuck it!’ and joined them in the ruthless hunt for targets to fulfill my quota.

And then I met a new friend.

I became a Hunter because I love pets. Now I have a tiny raptor following me around as well as my lovely boar, and although he doesn’t really do anything or contribute to attacks I’m glad to have him with me. This hatchling is an unexpected bonus for completing some missions down in that camp and although I have a feeling at some point I will have to give him up I’ll enjoy his presence while I can.

Travelling Further By Accident

Meanwhile Bodeclaw was wrapping up missions where she was. I had a choice of two left to finish off, one to instigate a Furbolg uprising with the aid of a magical rod; the other to report to a place in the next area of the Stonetalon Mountains. I decided to pop over quickly and get the Stonetalon missions rolling before coming back when I hit a dead end to finish off the furbolg quests.

After a little confusion about which way I had to go to get up to the outpost (the path was behind the other post I got the mission from) I ventured into the Stonetalon Mountains only to find that this was an area that not only other Alliance players were in – but I saw the odd Horde player too. And the first one killed me seeing me dash away from an NPC opponent with half health.

Bastard.

Because of this after completing the first missions I had taken, I decided to race forward to complete those quests and then I’d go back for that Furbolg mission. That would be what I’d do. So I raced forward and eventually found myself at the Northwatch Expedition Camp.

Some interesting quests saw me racing all over the place and eventually collecting all the components for the Ramlette, I encountered the first Horde NPCs who weren’t hostile to me. The Grimtotem Tauren. I like the tauren race, especially their background. I’d be a tauren, but I want my eventual Horde alt to be a Warlock and I don’t think Tauren can be Warlock… I’ll have to double check that.

So eventually I found my way down to the Grimtotem Post and began recruiting their aid for the Alliance. I have respect for them, and frankly the skull facepaint looks awesome on the models.

I then continued on to more Alliance settlements along the way and eventually made it to Honor’s Stand where I took on a quest to fly a survey vehicle. It flew… rather further than I thought it would. Now I’m at Northwatch and although I have the flight points marked along the way, I’d rather run back and complete all the quests along the way…

… I guess the Furbolg uprising’s going to have to wait until next week to get started.