Blizzard have put out a release date for the single-player adventure secton of their popular free-to-play card game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. The release date across all platforms (that is PC, Mac and iPad) will be July the 23rd with a month-long launch event running.

The blog post reveals that there will be five ‘wings’ of the extension to come, released across five weeks. The first chapter, the Arachnid Quarter, will be free permanently for all those who start the adventure during the launch event. The other four will be priced at 700 coins a wing or about 5.99 EUR/ 4.99 GBP in real money. Blizzard are also planning to sell the other wings in bundles packages.

The rewards include special cards to be unlocked by progressing through the five wings of the adventure, including those gained by beating certain ‘bosses’.

Release date post: [x]
Pricing and gameplay post: [x]

Good news for all European fans of the Oddworld series eagerly awaiting the release of the remade version of Abe’s Oddysee: New N’ Tasty. Seems that all the prices have been equally across all regions, and that means a slightly lower price for all of Europe.

Originally the game had a digital total for £19.99 in the UK and €24.99 for the rest of Europe. This didn’t really compare well against the US total of $24.99 which is about £14.64 or €18.35. So a lot cheaper for North America. However now to guarantee a much fairer deal for the European fans, the prices have been revised down to £17.99 and €20.99. Still not totally equal, but better than it had been.

The price changes were announced as part of an EU pre-order bonuses post (or ‘quikbuy’ as it’s put on the news post) outlining the Alf’s Escape bonus mission and the Scrub Abe costume.

New N’ Tasty will be releasing onto Playstation 4 on July 22^nd, and then coming to PC, Mac and Linux later on.

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If yesterday’s article (that can be found here) about the Hearthstone qualifier in Finland with access restricted to only the male sex made your blood boil then be angry no more. The International eSports Federation have changed their mind and the male-only tournament will now be open to both male and female players. Result!

The scandal began on Tuesday when a flier for the event was passed about online, specifically on a sub-Reddit with the entry restrictions highlighted. The Finnish organisers then replied to the criticisms by revealing that they were only in place due to the IeSF’s own rules that split tournaments between male and female players as an attempt to get eSports taken seriously as sport. Upon hearing the outcry from the gaming community and the gaming press Blizzard themselves got involved, making it clear that they wouldn’t stand for such restrictions of entry and would in fact prohibit any event that tried to as they wouldn’t want to be seen to promote the exclusion of women from the gaming community. Upon hearing the opinions the IeSF held an emergency meeting of their board to make a decision on what should be done.

“IeSF shall have two event categories: “Open for All” events and events that are reserved for women. The events which were initially set aside as the male division will now be open to all genders, and the events which were initially set as the female division will remain as they were.” read the statement that they released declaring the change of the rules.

They further justified that the female-only events were staying as they were to encourage more women into eSports with the hopes that they would eventually grow in confidence enough to move to the Open for All events and make eSports less a less male-dominated industry of the gaming community.

Just shows what we as a community can do when we seek to go against the sexist stereotype that gamers often get tarred with

An eSports group has been forced to justify their decisions when people noticed that their listing for a Finnish qualifying tournament for the popular card game Hearthstone specified that only MALE Finns were allowed to enter.

The organising group, the Finnish eSports Federation have pointed to the organisers of the event the tournament is a qualifier for – a South Korean group called the International e-Sports Federation – as they are the people who are responsible for the restrictions. As part of their efforts to get eSports taken seriously as ‘real sport’, IeSF separates their tournaments between the sexes – guys against guys and women against women.

“In accordance with the International e-Sports Federation’s (IeSF) tournament regulations, since the main tournament event is open to male players only. This is to avoid possible conflicts (e.g. a female player eliminating a male player during RO8) among other things.” said head admin of the qualifier Markus “Olodyn” Koskivirta in a statement made to PC Gamer. He then went on to say that the reason the entries are restricted is because if they allowed the tournament to be for both sexes, the winner could ultimately be female and then unable to progress to the next stage of the competition because of the IeSF’s rules.

The problem is that if you look over all of the qualifiers being played, there IS no Hearthstone tournament for the female players to compete in. Only two qualifiers are being run for women – Starcraft 2 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2, while men get the afore-mentioned Hearthstone, Starcraft 2, Ultimate Street Fighter IV and Dota 2. It all just seems very strange.

Koskivirta adds that they are actively campaigning to get both sexes involved in tournaments together, but for now the Hearthstone tournament is remaining male-only until the IeSF changes their policies.

As a female gamer and a Hearthstone player myself, I can’t say that the idea of segregating the sexes in eSport makes much sense to me. It isn’t a necessary thing required for it to be taken seriously, and how can someone truly be the ‘best’ in a tournament if they haven’t had all the opportunity to play against everyone able to compete at that level of play? Gamers and the gaming community are often seen as being very sexist towards women and stories such as these don’t really help to dispel that image.

Hearthstone’s singleplayer adventure expansion, Curse of Naxxramas, is being targeted for a July release a post on the Blizzard forums has confirmed.

In the post the Blizzard Community Manager said that they are hoping to get the expansion out during the month of July, but said that there was still a lot of bug-testing and implementing to get done before they could release it. He also said that the pricing information was to be released on the first day of that month.

A Hearthstone Adventure, Curse of Naxxramas, is to be a single-player campaign that adds an Adventure mode to the free-to-play card game, set within its own gameboard. It is set in the ancient necropolis Naxxramas, the base of operations for the powerful lich Kel’Thuzad and his plague-bearing undead host. It will be rolled out over 5 weeks, with the first part The Arachnid Quarter being free for all Hearthstone players while the other four will be purchasable with either in-game gold or real money for those wanting to continue through.

It will be released at the same time on PC, Mac and iPad.