Just as it might be true that for smartphones, if you can imagine it, “there’s an app for that”, when it comes to modern videogames, often if you can imagine it, “there’s a mod for that” – be it from flooding the majority of the world in Grand Theft Auto 5, to making Thomas the Tank Engine rain from the sky in Skyrim. World of Warcraft is no exception – but perhaps the most interesting mod yet is not an actual game mod, but one modder’s interpretation of a new look for the game.

Recently, a modder named Daniel Luchau decided to give one of the game’s most famous environments – and the hometown of newly created Human characters – a visual facelift through the use of Unreal Engine 4. In order to recreate The Elwynn Forest, Luchau took standard assets as seen in Unreal Engine 4 Tech Demos and combine them with actual models imported from World of Warcraft, though some of the latter’s textures were retouched for better visual splendour. While Luchau is keen to express that his video of the work so far is “an early build” – this only touches the surface of what Unreal Engine 4 can offer and many details and textures still look rough – there are many impressive moments even in the two short minutes of this preview. Outside of Elwynn Forest, players will recognize Goldshire, the second quest town in the area; as well as Westbrook Garrison, with the infamous wanted poster for Hogger outside…

Enough talk, take a look for yourself:

Feel free to head on over to the Forum to let us know what you think 🙂

Guild Wars 2 players get a chance to head into the Heart of Thorns this evening—that is, if they’ve already got a key to enter into the jungle expansion’s closed beta. The test consists of three two-hour sessions staggered throughout the day. Players who found a rare portal during last month’s Dry Top and Silverwastes events will be able to create a new beta character to test out a small portion of the new expansion.

“Participants will be able to use a revenant—or any of the existing eight professions—to play a small amount of expansion story content, followed by two beta versions of outposts and their corresponding adventures in part of the Verdant Brink map,” explains a news post on the Guild Wars 2 site. “An early, partially completed version of the day/night cycle meta-event experience from Verdant Brink will also be available.”

ArenaNet says they’ll be adding additional participants, picked from email addresses subscribed to the expansion’s newsletter.

Here are the times of the closed beta tests:

– 11:30 am – 1:30 pm PDT / 8:30 pm – 10:30 pm CEST / 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm BST
– 3:30 pm – 5:30 pm PDT / 12:30 am – 2:30 am CEST / 11:30 pm – 1:30 am BST
– 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm PDT / 4:30 am – 6:30 am CEST / 3:30 am – 5:30 am BST

For those without access, the test isn’t under any NDA restrictions. That means you can expect the beta to be streamed by players during each test window.

One of the most popular and well-known torrent distribution sites in the world, EZTV, has closed down. Surprisingly, it had nothing to do with the cops, or lawyers.

As TorrentFreak report, the site—which has served up TV show downloads for a decade—has been brought down by scammers, who took over EZTV’s domain name in what’s being calling a “hostile takeover”.

The scammers are still trying to operate EZTV, but given the nature of their takeover—company names were impersonated, and even the personal domains of EZTV’s founder Novaking have been seized—many other major torrent sites like KickassTorrents have banned EZTV uploads, and everyone’s being urged to avoid the site like the plague.

EZTV rose to prominence over the years due to its simple design and clear goal: to host episodes of every major (Western) TV show on the air. By only linking trusted and quality torrents, it developed a reputation as the place to go to get hold of a TV show.

As sad as it is for the site to get hit like this, maybe it’s a good time to go out. Ten years ago getting hold of TV shows in a timely manner was a pain in the ass! These days, between Apple, Google, Amazon and cable streaming services there’s really not many excuses left for not being able to pay for a show.

Conference Schedule
Conference & Conference Time
Bethesda  June 14 – 7pm PT / 10pm ET
Microsoft  June 15 – 9:30am PT/12:30pm ET
EA  June 15 – 1pm PT / 4pm ET
Ubisoft June 15 – 3pm PT / 6pm ET
Sony  June 15 – 6pm PT / 9pm ET
Nintendo June 16 – 9am PT/ 12pm ET
Square Enix  June 16 – 10am PT/ 1pm ET
PC Gaming Show  June 16 – 5pm PT/8pm ET

Bethesda – Sunday, June 14

Bethesda’s announced its first ever E3 conference on Feburary 10, 2015. While there is still little information about the conference, there are rumors that Bethesda will announce the next Fallout game. For those not at E3 2015, Bethesda is live streaming its conference on Twitch and Youtube on Sunday, June 14.

 
Microsoft – Monday, June 15

Microsoft’s E3 2015 conference will be aired on Spike TV and streamed on Xbox’s website and on Xbox consoles. Microsoft will present their conference on Monday, June 15 at 9:30am PT/12:30pm ET. Along with their conference, Microsoft announced Xbox FanFest: E3 2015.

 
Nintendo – Tuesday, June 16

In addition to the Nintendo Digital event that starts at 9am PT, Nintendo is revivng its World Championships. Nintendo will also have it’s Nintendo Treehouse live stream and another Nintendo Access event at Best Buy where a trail version of Mario Maker will be available. As far as games go, Nintendo has confirmed that the new Legend of Zelda game will not be at the conference, but they will have a playable version of the upcoming Star Fox for Wii U.

 
Square Enix – Tuesday, June 16

On April 23, 2015, Square Enix announced their first ever E3 press conference. Square Enix didn’t give many details on what we should expect from their conference on Tuesday, June 16, but they said they will discuss an “exciting slate of games coming out in 2015 and beyond. The conference will be streamed on Twitch and YouTube.

The Square Enix conference originally overlapped with the Nintendo 9am PT conference, so Square Enix rescheduled its conference for 10am PT.

PC Gaming Show  June 16 – 5pm PT/8pm ET

AMD and PC Gamer are putting on the first-ever PC conference at E3, PC Gaming Show. Sean ‘Day[9]’ Plott will host the show and will be joined by other speakers throughout the show, such as Blizzard Entertainment and Humble Bundle, to make announcements. The PC Gaming Show be streamed on Twitch from 5PM – 8PM PTD on June 16.

MMOs are finding a home on console, and Neverwinter is seeing success over on the Xbox.

The MMO world is currently in a bit of a lull, but Neverwinter is reporting quite a bit of success following its launch on Xbox One.

According to the official site, over 1.6 million players have downloaded the game, creating some 2.3 million characters, and slaying over 1 billion enemies. They even put together an infographic to show it all off.