The news about Microsoft’s possible purchase of Mojang, the studio famous for their popular hit game Minecraft took many by surprise because the news seemed to come out of nowhere. While opinions are still divided about whether it is a positive step or not, everyone’s waiting to see what will happen.

Now sources are saying the Microsoft are preparing a press release to announce that they have successfully bought out the Swedish studio in a deal supposedly worth about $2.5 billion. According to what we’ve heard the announcement will be made on Monday.

Previous updates on this story have told that Notch, the man behind Minecraft and Mojang was the person who started the talks with Microsoft months back. This was despite Notch having a reputation for loving the indie game scene and not really getting along well with larger companies and their interests, having once called Windows 8 a negative thing for indie gaming and famously pulled out of an Oculus-based version of Minecraft because the VR company was purchased by Facebook.

For now, all fans of Minecraft and Mojang’s other games can do is wait and see…

Over the last few years, Free to Play has not only become a staple of the MMO market, but big companies have moved their MMO from subscription, to Free to Play to entice new players in.

Blizzard, seem to think the opposite.

As announced on our forums on August 15, a change is coming to World of Warcraft subscription pricing for players who use pounds sterling.

We regularly look at our pricing around the world and from time to time we make changes in light of local and regional market conditions. As such, we want to give everyone a heads-up that we will shortly be adjusting the pound sterling subscription price of World of Warcraft.

The new price for recurring subscriptions will be £9.99 for one month, £28.17 for three months (£9.39 per month), and £52.14 for six months (£8.69 per month). The suggested retail price of the 60-day prepaid time card will be £20.99.

As a thank you for current World of Warcraft subscribers, we guarantee that players with recurring (auto-renewing) subscriptions at the time of the price change will retain their current price for two years, as long as they remain in the same recurring subscription without interruption. This applies to anyone who is already in, or signs up for, a recurring subscription prior to the price change, which is scheduled to take place at the Warlords of Draenor release. We will reach out to relevant players approximately two months prior to the price change with a reminder.

So what do you think?   With other high profile MMO’s going Free to Play over the last couple of years (yes Star Wars, we’re looking at you, you loser…), do you think Blizzard are going the wrong way, or cashing in on the market they know they have?

Last night there was a major upset in the Smite Pro league tournament. Cognitive Red, the top dogs and over all dominant team during the tournament were disqualified from their match against Team Dignitas. As the match was progressing COGR was pressuring DiG but a miscommunication between Dagarz and Divios on COGR resulted in a disqualification when their ADC player Snoopy disconnected, dying to the tower.

The combat pause is against SPL rules but has sparked a huge debate on Reddit where even Hi-Rez are admitting their current ruling is hazy:

“Pausing in the middle of any engagement such that it would give either of the teams any sort of benefit or advantage is strictly prohibited.” Many people are calling for a rule change, and to be honest it would be a much needed change. Some people are even calling for it to simply be a tournament points penalty not a match disqualification. As it stands the overall audience, myself included are saying merely changing the ruling to “Pausing while taking damage from objectives or other players is strictly prohibited and will be punished with a match disqualification.”

Tell us what you think about these penalties and rulings in the comments below.

So the release date for the re-releases of GTA on the next-gen consoles and PC have been made public. For the consoles, you can expect to get the games from November 18th. and PC? January 27th. 2015.

It’s a little disappointing for those of us who have been waiting since the game came out originally on the last generation consoles, but it’s not all bad. As we’ve covered before, GTA V’s PC version will have quite a few edges over the console versions. Among the changes will be a greater draw distance, better foliage, more traffic and enhanced radio stations with 100 new tracks and re-recorded and new DJ voiceovers available to listen to. And for those of you who prefer to treat the streets of any Grand Theft Auto game like a destruction derby (hey, I don’t blame you), there will be improved damage so that your vehicle-based hijinks will cause damage that should be more ‘realistic’.

This isn’t all that has been promised as improvements to the game, so maybe it is worth waiting for the extra few months to get the game. More time should mean a better port. Right?

Hearthstone’s been around long enough now that there are strategies that are well known to regular players. Love them or loathe them, strategy is strategy. Most annoying is when a strategy cannot be countered though, and once again Blizzard have stepped in with some changes to stop some of the more notorious.

Leeroy Jenkins for those unaware is a 4-cost Charge creature that has an attack power of 6 and a health of 2, who also summons two 1/1 Whelps for your opponent. The idea is that you get to smack your opponent with a powerful Charge hit, but also hand your opponent the means to remove said card in their next turn if they should choose to. Things never go as planned though, and the card is often the centre of strategies that combine him with cards such as Shadowstep and Power Overwhelming that aim to smack your opponent for ridiculous amounts of damage getting as bad as 20+ health at the more extreme ends.

The nerf seems minor, upping the mana cost to 5, but as you only ever get up to 10 mana per turn at best (unless you’re a Druid with the right cards) it puts a limit on how ridiculous a ‘Leeroy Bounce’ can get in a turn.

Another minion has seen some changes as well. Starving Buzzard is a Hunter card that cost 2 mana, had 2 attack and 1 health and let you draw a card with every Beast summoned. It’s a useful Beast, I have one in my own Hunter deck. Seems that Blizzard considered the card draw too high though because they’ve now seriously upped its mana cost to 5 and gives it new stats of 3 attack and 2 health.

It’s up to you whether you consider either of these changes as a good thing or a bad thing. Either way, you’re going to have to get used to playing a familiar deck with a slight balance change towards the higher mana cost cards.