Wynncraft, Little Nightmares and Alan Wake – your news update!

Right now there’s a lawsuit ongoing over two developers who have been making unauthorised mobile versions of Dota, something Valve is obviously not a fan of. Now the defendants are seeking to prove that Valve doesn’t own the rights to Dota at all, hinging their argument on a forum post over 10 years old.

The forum post is from 2004 and is from one of the original creators of Dota, which could prove that far from Valve owning the rights Dota is actually open source and has been all along. This story all began back when Blizzard and Valve launched the lawsuit in question against the two defendant developers, Lilith Games and uCool, publishers of two very popular Chinese mobiles games – Dota Legends and Heroes Charge. Both use Dota characters, hence the problems Valve has with them. It’s uCool who has brought up the question of who owns the rights to Dota, and if they’re right then Valve doesn’t actually own the trademark to the original Dota and thus would be unable to bring this claim against uCool.

Already another argument that uCool brought about Dota being a collective work has been shot down, but judge Charles Breyer is investigating whether the purchase of the Dota name to Valve by creators Icefrog and eul could infringe upon the original EULA for Warcraft 3 from which Dota draws its roots as a mod. The Warcraft 3 EULA forbids the distrubution of mods fgor “commerical purposes” and the sale of Dota to Valve has been said by Breyer to be “as commercial as uses go.”

Further, the aforementioned forum post from 2004 shows that eul seemingly abandoned his ownership of Dota stating that “whoever wishes to release a version of Dota may without my consent” although he does also “ask for a nod in the credits to your map,” so whether he did give up ownership or not is up for debate because of that. It will be up to the jury to decide whether any perceived rights abandonment will apply for everyone (including companies like uCool) or if it was just for “the motley group of modders making up an informal Dota online community.”

This will all be sorted out in a court case to determine whether uCool and Lilith Games are indeed in violation of a trademark that Valve is the owner of. If the judge finds in their favour, expect to see more Dota clones or Valve seeking to close the loophole as soon as they can. If the judge finds in favour of Valve, expect the two defendants to be paying a hefty sum for their trouble.

For Honor’s second season has recently gone live, and so as is the way of gamers some have been datamining the new content to get sneak peaks at upcoming content that’s already been programmed in. And they found quite a bit.

Dataminers have found not only unreleased ornaments and outfits for the new Shinobi and Centurion classes (which were to be expected) but also additional Mythic and Elite outfits for all of For Honor’s original hero roster as well. Well, except the Lawbringer for some reason who seems to be missing their Elite outfits. Maybe Ubi’s still working on them?

All the content is shown here in this video, compiled by dataminer XDeadzX who has found that each hero has two Elite and Mythic outfits (except the Lawbringer as mentioned before). The Shinobi and Centurion also each has six unreleased ornaments as well as handful of new outfits. He’s also included some of those two’s emotes in the video too. Needless to say this content will probably be unlocked through future updates to the game by Ubisoft.

It’s all very interesting and a nice little sneak peek at what’s coming up for For Honor – at least cosmetically. No word on any sort of release dates though, that wasn’t in the datamine.

This week has seen something happen that I called a few weeks back. Also, I finally got to start that furbolg uprising after a lot of travelling through the Barrens and Stonetalon Mountains. Woo.

Wait, There’s More?!

Ashenvale, I finally have returned to you! Let me just wrap up this quest and…

Oh, there’s another three markers on the map… guess I didn’t complete everything after all. Good thing I came back.

So yes, seems I wasn’t quite as done with this area as I had thought. Not only was there a marker still in a place I’d visited to go to, but there were two small areas on the edge of the map I’d not visited, both with their own quest marker. I decided that since I was here, I might as well start on and finish them as well. So, on I ran in Run Wild and Travel Forms, on down the path and past Horde encampments until I finally reached the location of the chosen questline at a new settlement called Forest Song.

Pretty place. Shame about the neighbours. Satyr are quite the impressive looking race, but they’re not at all nice. I’ve had an encounter with a few before, including one who I helped to be redeemed… but oh well. I need to visit them to complete a quest anyway, and more battle means more experience. Not that Bodeclaw needs it, she’s a higher level than Teddired is… although I guess that’s as it should be given that she is my original player character.

I dropped down into the back of Satyrnaar from Forest Song, which let me get right into the thick of the areas I needed to search for the tainted wood for the quest and let me avoid a good few satyr and other nasties while I did it. Then I ran out and used Dash to run to the Ancient who would cleanse the tainted wood… oh, and to yet another quest-giver. This time I was stealing back wood felled by Horde woodcutters and hopefully giving it a respectful send off. As well as planting more saplings into the fel-tainted area nearby (bloody satyrs…) to hopefully reclaim it as they grew. Now I stand ready for my next quest… to take fight into the Horde’s area nearby.

I am ready. And majestic as hell.

Losing Teddired’aka The Raptor

I knew it. I called it back when I found the Lashtail Hatchling; something was going to happen and I wouldn’t get to keep them. Her, now I should say as this questline has determined that for us.

So, over the last week or so I’ve been following a questline to do with reviving a troll whose large skull my raptor recovered from a bonepile. This week we finally had all the items needed to do the revival and… well, this was not a very nice troll. Legendarily bad, and he threatened to murder the gnome who had helped me revive him unless I gave him one thing…

My Lashtail Hatchling.

I had no choice and so, my little baby raptor was taken from me. Of course, the gnome who had helped me reach this point directed me to another person nearby who could help me out. Because I wasn’t just going to let Bloodlord Mandoklr steal my raptor from me like this, oh no.

And so, I sought out this other person and began a questline in which I discovered that this hatchling had quite the lineage. Seems this was the daughter of Mandoklr’s old raptor companion, and now he was going to train her to obey him. That was not something I was going to let happen. Oh no.

And she has a name, she has my name. Teddired’aka is my raptor and together with me in her mind we began to escape from the troll encampment. Only… it didn’t quite work. Now she’s caged more securely and that training is going to try and wipe me from her mind…

But I’m not going to give up. That raptor chose me and she is mine, and right now she needs me. That troll cannot have her. I swear, as soon as I can I will go into that place and I will leave with Teddired’aka by my side once more.

This has also sort of put me off having a troll as my Horde alt too… guess that’ll have to wait a little longer still.

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