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Seems that CCP think that wormholes in their game EVE Online have gotten too predictable, they’ve made some changes to how they work to put a little mystery back into a game that currently publishes guides on the best wormholes to live in.
The Hyperion update will open up new wormhole connections. The ones with black holes inside are now places for fast-skirmishes between ships and class 4 systems will gain an extra reliable exit point. The changes to calculations of mass on ships entering wormholes have also been changed and will result in bigger ships drifting further away from the hole’s entrance and safer grounds – hopefully resulting in more “exciting skirmishes”.
Another addition to the game sees the addition of ‘burner’ pirates – solo attackers that wait behind space gates to attack frigate-class ships that open them. CCP have apparently take inspiration from player encounters in adding these ships and programming their behaviour patterns.
Hyperion is the third mini-expansion released for EVE, in a change from the traditional large expansions that CCP used to bring around to the game a lot less often.
Orcs Must Die Unchained is currently in closed beta, which means that it’s getting some fairly regular and sizeable updates as a result. The latest one will introduce many new things, including a new playable character.
Known as Tundra the Polar Bear, he has the ability to ignore crowd control effects and can deal damage through ranged and melee attacks. He’s also wearing a lot more fur than just his natural white.
There will also be around 20 new trap cards added as part of the update and a few new items. On the side of the minions coming at you, there’s been the addition of captains – stronger than normal minions who spawn towards the higher wave levels and take more attacking to bring down. The game’s also getting Twitch integration so that you can broadcast your matches out to be viewed by the public eye if you so wish.
The beta can be accessed by paying to become a follower, but since the game is going to be free-to-play upon release it’s up to you if the thought of the game attracts you enough to want the early access.
Today the Pokemon Company released a trailer that gave the first look at a new game that they are developing in partnership with Bandai Namco Games. Combining Pokemon with fighting game Tekken, Pokken Tournament is going to be a fighting game… with Pokemon. Finally, a chance to see how skillfully a Fighting-Type can be animated in game.
Just when we thought that we knew what was going on with Twitch and Google’s plan to acquire it, suddenly all we knew is flipped on its head. Previously it seemed that Google had bought Twitch and all that was needed was some loose ends tied up; even the changes that Twitch made to their VoD storage made it seem that Google was in charge. Yet Google wasn’t the only company bidding for the livestreaming service, and now Twitch have announced that yes, they have been acquired. By Amazon.
In a letter from the CEO posted on their website, the Twitch community was addressed and thanked for getting the company to this point. The site has been around for little more than 3 years and it seems that the CEO is awed by how far they’ve come since then thanks to the gamers who use their service to broadcast live lets plays and more to their fans across the globe.
“Your talent, your passion, your dedication to gaming, your memes, your brilliance – these have made Twitch what it is today… Together with you, we’ve found new ways of connecting developers and publishers with their fans. We’ve created a whole new kind of career that lets people make a living sharing their love of games. We’ve brought billions of hours of entertainment, laughter, joy and the occasional ragequit. I think we can all call that a pretty good start.” wrote the CEO in the post.
The post then went on to announce the acquisition and said that they had chosen to accept Amazon’s offer because they felt that Amazon were the right choice because “they believe in our community, they share our values and long-term vision”. Google lost out due to antitrust concerns meaning a deal could not be closed between Twitch and Google in the end.
We’re pleased to announce that we’ve been acquired by @amazon. Here is a letter from our CEO: http://t.co/PEwrXm402n
In terms of how this could turn out, Amazon are a little less tested in the area of live video than Google. On the other hand, this could turn out to be the start of something wonderful for both companies. It’ll certainly sit better with more people than a Google-owned Twitch ever could have done.
Last week Blizzard responded to a fan-made petition, asking if Robin Williams, who had recently died, could be paid tribute to by adding an NPC that would utter some of the comedian’s best jokes. Now some datamined files from the latest beta build have thrown up some character models that could become that NPC.
Chief among them of course is a genie to pay homage of one of Williams’ best known roles, especially around children of the 90s who grew up loving his voice role as the Genie in Disney’s Aladdin. The NPC is tagged as “Robin the Entertainer” and people have pointed out that as a genie he could very well be able to shape-shift into other forms. A human female form and human male form have also been found, both potentially linked to the new NPC and speculated to be tributes to Mrs Doubtfire and Mork respectively.
Other details are so far unknown, and as of writing Blizzard has not confirmed that the datamined characters are to be the tribute NPC in question.
