As of about an hour ago, Hearthstone’s single player adventure expansion, Curse of Naxxramas has launched to all players of the game.

The expansion will be downloaded upon opening the game launcher, and during the launch event which will last through to sometime in Early September (although a concrete end date hasn’t been announced) the first wing of the expansion, The Arachnid Quarter, will be available free to all players who have already unlocked all 9 of the playable Hero classes in the game.

The expansion has a further 4 wings to play, which can be purchased with in-game gold (700 per wing) or with real money (5.99 EUR/ 4.99 GBP per wing). Blizzard is also offering package deals to buy more than one chapter at a time for a slightly reduced price.

If you want to go fight the bosses and undead hoardes though, wait a little while. Currently both the North American and the European servers have been experiencing problems that are causing them to crash as the servers are being taxed with the player surge. We will update when both servers are back to normal.

Today another bunch more of the new Naxxramas cards were revealed to us on the Hearthstone Facebook. Again they’re all very ‘death’ related, but there’s a bit more variety now in the effects they have:

Zombie Chow
Minion, 1 mana cost, 2 attack and 3 health. Deathrattle: Restore 5 Health to the enemy hero.

Wailing Soul
Minion, 4 mana cost, 3 attack and 5 health. Silences all your other minions upon summoning.

Unstable Ghoul
Minion, 2 mana cost, 1 attack and 3 health. Taunt, Deathrattle: Deal 1 damage to all minions.

Stoneskin Gargoyle
Minion, 3 mana cost, 1 attack and 4 health. Restored to full health at the start of your turn.

Spectral Knight
Minion, 5 mana cost, 4 attack and 6 health. Can’t be directly targeted by spells or Hero powers.

Sludge Belcher
Minion, 5 mana cost, 3 attack and 5 health. Taunt, Deathrattle: Summons a 1/2 Slime with Taunt.

Nerub’ar Weblord
Minion, 2 mana cost, 1 attack and 4 health. Battlecry minions cost (2) more.

Maexxna
Legendary Minion, 6 mana cost, 2 attack and 8 health. Destroys any minion it damages.

Mad Scientist
Minion, 2 mana cost, 2 attack and 2 health. Deathrattle: Put a Secret from your deck into the battlefield.

Kel’Thuzad
Legendary Minion, 8 mana cost, 6 attack and 8 health. Summons all friendly minions that died that turn at the end of the turn.

Haunted Creeper
Minion, 2 mana cost, 1 attack and 2 health. Deathrattle: Summons two 1/1 Spectral Spiders.

Echoing Ooze
Minion, 2 mana cost, 1 attack and 2 health. Summons exact copy of itself at the end of the turn it is played.

Deathlord
Minion, 3 mana cost, 2 attack and 8 health. Taunt, Deathrattle: Opponent gets to put a minion from their deck onto the battlefield.

Feugen
Legendary Minion, 5 mana cost, 4 attack and 7 health. Deathrattle: Summons Thaddius if Stalagg has also died this game.

Stalagg
Legendary Minion, 5 mana cost, 7 attack and 4 health. Deathrattle: Summons Thaddius if Feugen has also died this game.

Thaddius
Legendary Minion, 10 mana cost, 11 attack and 11 health.

Also, two new card backs have made their way online – one as a prize for beating Naxxramas and the other next month’s Season cardback:

Curse of Naxxramas will launch on July 23rd. Have any of these cards excited you? Tell us in the comments below!

The people at Comcept have released a new gameplay video for their crowdfunded game Mighty No. 9, which shows off some of what we’re to expect from it.

Although recently another crowdfunder has gone up for the game to receive english voiceacting as well as the Japanese original, fans of the Megaman franchise will probably be interested in the game. Like those games the hero Beck can defeat and absorb powers of his enemies, and the video demonstrates a few of the transformations. It also gives us a look at Call, the other playable hero who wears pink armour and is equipped with a jetpack.

Check out the video below:

Ubisoft have brought forward the beta for their upcoming game The Crew on PC by two days. This means that it is now due to start on July 21st, in just two days time. This beta will then run through to July 25th after which it will close. Interested players should register on the website for The Crew and also have a uPlay account to allow them access.
 
Ubisoft have also outlined what parts of the game will be available for play in the Beta:
 

The Map: Explore the entire United States with no loading screen and complete a variety of exciting challenges:

• Midwest: all missions and skill challenges.
• East Coast: all skill challenges.
• Rest of the country (The South, Mountain State, West Coast): free roaming at will!

 
 
The Cars: Expect to discover new vehicles that, in order to drive across a variety of terrains, you’ll be able to customize in the following specs:

• The Street Spec: You’ll get this one in Detroit!
• The Dirt Spec: This spec will be available in New York!
• There are three other specs – Perf, Raid and Circuit – and you’ll have a glimpse of those during the beta

 
 
Playing with your friends:

• The Crew was built from the ground up as a breathing, living world, meaning that in this Closed Beta you will be able to play with your friends at any time – or challenge rivals from all around the world. You will also have access to two PvP lobbies, one in the Midwest and the other on the East Coast, where several races will be waiting for you to prove your skills against other players

 
The Crew will release on PC, Xbox One and Playstation 4 on November 11th.

Beta access can be gained here: [x]

Google have decided that they will stop listing free-to-play titles with in-app purchases as ‘free’ in the EU after a press release release by the European Commission appealed for companies to make it clearer when a game could potentially involve spending real money despite being touted as ‘free-to-play’.

The press release targeted a number of companies, including Google, Apple and other software entities and asked that they help make sure that games listed as ‘free’ on devices did “not mislead consumers about the true costs involved”. They made a list of recommendations including that games should adequately inform consumers about payment arrangements, that consumers shouldn’t be debited by defualt with their consent, games should not encourage children to make real-money purchases or to persuade guardians to make them on their behalf and that traders should provide an active e-mail to be contacted in the situation of queries or complaints about the games.

Google’s response has been to announce that they plan to change how these games are listed on Google Play, which provides for their Android devices. They hope to have made the changes based on the recommendations by the end of September.