Okay, I know it’s still November, but we’re very close to December here which is when Christmas stuff is allowed. Also, this is worth a listen just because of how bizarre it is.

Blizzard are most well known for the World of Warcraft game, with it’s massive world and lore – it even spawned a card game of Hearthstone which is where the less serious WoW stuff tends to end up. And indeed, that’s where this video was released – onto Blizzard’s Hearthstone Youtube channel.

A video of a lovely warm log fire, which slowly gets more and more decorated until the room is the very picture of all that’s good about Christmas. It’s up to you whether or not you think the carol singing makes it better or ruins it.

I’m not sure we’ll be playing any of these carols in December, but it’s still very nicely done I think. Heck, even the Tinyfins are joining in and isn’t Christmas supposed to be about gathering together and having a good time?

Arcade modes have recently been introduced into the game of Overwatch, along with the new character of Sombra who after the long hunt and trail many players were finally glad to actually see arrive. One of the new Arcade modes is the Duel Arcade mode where players go 1v1 against each other in match-ups. For reasons of interesting play, Mercy and Lucio are excluded from this mode… but it seems so was another character much to Blizzard’s dismay.

Game director Jeff Kaplan was explaining why Mercy and Lucio weren’t in the Duel Arcade mode when he let slip that Ana was also not in the rotation, due to a bug.

“Also, we just discovered a bug that causes Ana to almost never show up in a 1v1 match (well, she has shown up twice since we patched). That bug will be fixed soon so you’ll be seeing more of Ana.”

Lucio and Mercy are currently out because of their healing skills, with Kaplan noting: “We removed Lucio because the battles (if played a certain way) would always end in a draw. Also, when we buffed Mercy, she ran into a similar situation.”

The good news is that Kaplan said that they “have some other ideas” to solve these problems, so hopefully in future we can see all the characters in Duel Arcade. At least for now all the invitations that were sent for the party have been received properly.

Last week in my Gadgetzan new card article I theorised that Blizzard was revealing the cards one crime family at a time, and that after so much attention spent on the Grimy Goons we could soon expect to see focus shift to another of the families.

Well, I was right. An awful lot of the cards revealed this week have been focused on the Kabal classes – Mage, Warlock and Priest – which means finally Warlock has some new cards! Now the only class without any revealed is Shaman and as they are Jade Lotus we can probably expect to see a few coming in a few weeks time if not next week.

Anyway, here are the new cards revealed to us this week:

Druid

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Mage

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Priest

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Warlock

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Tri-Class

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Neutral

As you can see, both Mage and Warlock got a lot of new cards this week. Priest not so much, but they’ve had cards come in the last few weeks and it could be that next week if still Kabal focused might be more Priest-heavy. It seems that the Mage cards are focused more on bringing mana costs down, while Warlock makes use of previous mechanics the class is known for – spells that buff Demon Minions and damaging your own Hero to gain advantage. On the non-Kabal class cards revealed, I’m interested to see just what a Jade Golem looks like.

Interestingly enough, we have two ‘alternate’ versions of two other Minions that have been around since Hearthstone’s start. The Backstreet Leper is a slightly more costly and powerful Leper Gnome, while the Poisonous Swamp Ooze is a much tougher but more costly Acidic Swamp Ooze with a slightly less impressive ability. I can’t see the Backstreet Leper being too popular as more attack doesn’t really make up for the 2+ mana cost, but the Poisonous Swamp Ooze may find a place in some decks. If the downgraded Battlecry doesn’t put people off. Acidic Swamp Ooze‘s popularity was always in it being one of the few commonly available cards that could outright destroy a weapon and just taking one Durability could be a dealbreaker for some.

At the moment eSports are becoming a very big industry, with a lot of money being exchanged and made through tournaments watched by eyes from all around the world. That being said, in some ways major eSports is still a fairly young industry and now a story has emerged from a South Korean team, alleging that the coaching staff of the team badly mistreated the actual pro players.

Mighty Storm is one of the top Overwatch Korean teams has provided a statement to an eSports site in the country describing the conditions they say they were forced to endure. They’ve said that among other things that practice times extended from noon to 4-5am, with only one or two meals a day of ‘2-3 quail eggs and pre-made kimchi and kongjaban’ (a sweet and salty bean paste) and while they could get more meals it was at the player’s expense to do so. What’s more, they claim to have been made to sleep in a single bedroom with 10 people in the room or a living room with 4 people to the room.

There are also claims of not having been paid for events they’ve already competed in, and detailed incidents that occurred during some of those events. Before the final match the team played against Lunactic-Hai, a very strong Overwatch team who took them out of that tournament on November 16th, they claim to have been told by coaches that ‘you guys will probably lose 3-0 today’ and weren’t provided any strategic advice. Upon being knocked out, they were told that they ‘did not deserve to eat’ and the players were given no more meals for the day. A prior loss on October 19th saw the players being screamed at to leave the vehicle home and forced them to walk 40 minutes back to the team house, only to be greeted with a statement that ‘you aren’t even worth the effort to teach’.

One player, Gang ‘SIP’ Jun Hyeong, expressed a desire to leave the team but was told by management that if he did he’d be in breach of contract. He was then told that if the management reported him to KeSPA (Korean eSports Association) for this breach, he would never be able to play Overwatch professionally again.

On the other side, the management and coaching staff dispute all this. They claim that the captain of the team, Jun Hyeong, has not fulfilled obligations in his one-year contract and so therefore they had not released the funds to him until these things were done. They also say that no underfeeding of players ever happened and that the coaches told the players that “if you continue to practice this way, you will lose 3-0” rather than outright calling them useless.

KeSPA has stepped in to mediate the dispute, with the Mighty Storm players being given legal support according to the chairman Byung-Hun Jun.

“We have received extensive reports of this unfortunate happening over the last month,” Jun said. “eSports has multiple teams across numerous games, but we are aware that not all players are guaranteed the proper rights that a professional gamer deserves. The fact that pro gamers are often young further exacerbates problems when it comes to gaining the required resources and support of a properly constructed contract.”

Dishonored 2 released at last, after a long journey of teasers and trailers that all started with its premature announcement by accident on a livestream the day before it was due to be announced publicly. Unfortunately, quite a few people have found that the game has some major performance issues. Our station manager Digmbot did, and identified why as well – a CPU priority issue that couldn’t be changed.

Arkane did their best to help people get past these issues, but this still left a lot of people unable to play because all the suggested fixes weren’t relevant to them or they had tried them already. Fortunately, it seems Bethesda and Arkane are going to give the game a performance patch this week and finally free gamers to enjoy their time in Dunwall.

Speaking via the Bethesda news wire, Arkane Studios wrote: “We have been monitoring the PC forums and social channels and while we’re excited to hear that many of you are enjoying the game, we are disheartened that some of you are experiencing PC performance issues on some systems. We are actively working to provide an update to address your concerns. The patch and its release notes will be available in the coming days.”

The problem have mainly been reported in mid-range systems, although some higher-range systems (like our own Digm’s) are also finding themselves missing a lot of frames. Some console gamers have also been having problems. Hopefully we should have some word on the patch and when it’ll be available soon for those of you holding off until you can play with the amount of frames you expected from the new game.

Until then, some kind souls over on the Steam community forums are busy putting together a set of tips in how you can eke as many frames out of the unpatched version as possible. Give it a check if you’re up for giving the game another chance before Arkane patch it and (hopefully) solve a great deal of these problems.