DayZ’s experimental servers have just gotten a fairly relevant update concerning the respawning and persistence of loot in-game. Namely the fact that it can now respawn without the server owner needing to restart it or do a refresh that amounts to the same.

Before now most servers would have to do a refresh every few hours to make sure the map wasn’t completely picked clean of all loot, which basically meant until now there was no such thing as night-time in Chernarus. This new update means that a day-night cycle can finally run properly in game without players having to resort to their fists and running every time they encounter a zombie or two. Dropped loot will also remain on the ground now without despawning, even between server restarts. This means that the pickings are no longer so slim in the zombie-filled wasteland of the apocalypse.

Other notable aspects of the update are the introduction of a new weapon; the CR-527 Carbine and a new model for the random cows you can find wandering around to slaughter for their meat.

Riot have been running an experiment within the MOBA game League of Legends in an attempt to see if they could clean up the community better with a strict policy as opposed to their usual ‘redemption’ methodology. One Redditor decided to see just how well this method was working.

PersianMG created a perl script that has collected the data from 100,000 of the recent Tribunals in the North America server regions, although due to the removal of Tribunal pages the sample pool is actually closer to 10,000 cases. The data was collected from the online Tribunal pages to see just how big a percentage of people were being punished or banned from the game as the crackdown on “extreme toxicity” went ahead.

The results revealed that in the majority of cases summoners were punished for their actions, although most of the punishments came in the form of ‘first-time warnings’. Just over 1000 summoners, a percentage of around 1.1% were actually permabanned from the game, while just under 8% of Tribunals resulted in a pardon or were dismissed. One of the most common complaints were racist chatter; one of the things Riot wished to cut down upon.

The first image of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justicehas been released by Zack Snyder  at San Diego ComicCon

I think it’s pretty spot on, what do you guys think?

Well there’s been rumours about it happening since May and now it seems that it’s become official. Google have bought the popular gaming-streaming platform Twitch for an estimated $1 billion through their Youtube division.

The previous rumours were not confirmed in any way by either party in the past, although there had been some concerns that the acquisition might be stopped by the US Justice Department. This was down to the fact that Twitch represented Youtube’s only major competition for the streaming of big eSports events, so the purchase could be seen as anti-competition. Although not publicly announced the news was spread via VentureBeat through sources there.

There had previously been other concerns about Google’s purchase of Twitch from the site’s regular viewers and also people who use the Youtube site for their videos. The previous year has brought about a lot of unpopular changes to the video-streaming platform and a wave of content strikes against content creators, especially those who review video games. There have also been those who pointed out that the acquisition of Twitch could be seen as Youtube and Google attempting to support the gaming video community.

Do you see Google’s purchase of Twitch as a good thing or a bad thing? Or somewhere in between? Comment below and let us know!

VentureBeat article: [x]

So after teasing us about it for over a month and releasing the cards we can win in it, Blizzard released their single-player expansion for Hearthstone two days ago; starting with the first of the five wings – The Arachnid Quarter. Awful lot of webs and squishy eggsacs in this part of the crypt.

I played through the 3 bosses of the wing one after the other during a livestream on the station’s Twitch channel. And my opinion is that Blizzard knows how to code challenging NPC battles. not perfect ones but certainly challenging and enjoyable battles.

Each one of the 3 bosses has a deck made up of the new cards (including some that weren’t spoiled before Naxxramas’ release) and some of the old familiars regular players will be familiar with. As a warning though – don’t expect the same deck restrictions imposed on the regular player to mean anything to the NPC bosses. They can and probably will have more than 2 of a card in their decks; and will always go second meaning they get the coveted Coin card. Playing them is an interesting way to learn how well you can use the newly added cards and ways you can play them for maximum effectiveness.

Each boss comes with their own special ‘hero power’. Anub’Rekhan has a 2-cost that summons a 3/1 minion to the field, Maexxna has a 3-cost that can put a minion back in your hand (similar to the Rogue card Sap) and Grand Widow Faerlina… well, her 2-cost ability rains down as many 1-damage fireballs as you have cards in your hand at the time. Beware that one, it can cause utter devastation. Expect to play each boss a number of times before you win, as they are all fairly tough even at the ‘normal’ skill level; while Heroic just ramps them up to ridiculously hard levels. It is possible to win each though with a decent deck, strategy and a little luck of the draw.

The two Hero challenges unlocked after making it through the three bosses are Rogue and Druid, Rogue being a battle against Maexxna with a pre-constructed Rogue deck and the Druid against Faerlina with a pre-made Druid deck. Both are difficult and if you thought either boss was hard using a deck you’re comfortable with, this just ups the level of difficulty tremendously.

Naxxramas has opened with a bang, presenting us with more of the gameplay we know and love from Hearthstone but presenting us with new challenging opponents to have them against. The balance might not be perfect in my opinion, but it is worth it when you win a match you’ve already failed at ten times previously. Can’t wait for the Plague Quarter next week.