As if Blizzard’s problems with Warlords wasn’t enough, it seems that another MMO is having DDOS problems right now. Final Fantasy XIV’s servers have been unreliable for the last few days and Square Enix are blaming it on a DDOS attack.

In a blog addressing the issue Square say that “Currently we are experiencing DDoS attacks from an anonymous third-party targeting the FINAL FANTASY XIV game servers on the NA/EU data center” with a “massive amount” of access attempts hammering the servers and making it so that it’s difficult for any actual players to log in. However players are to be reassured that all character data and personal information is safe.

Their technicians have been working to stop the attacks and return the game to normal service but the third-party is changing their strategy every few minutes making it hard to keep up with them. Square have said they are continuing to monitor the attack right now and hope to restore full service soon, although they haven’t given a timescale for when to expect the servers to be back.

Far Cry 4 released recently, and came with a day one patch to fix up a few things – most notably adding some Field-Of-Vision/FOV controls to the options menu. At least, it will have done for any owner of a legitimate copy of the game that was connected to the Internet.

This seems to have caught a good few people who managed to download copies online before launch out, as their copies would not have had the patch and some took to the social networks like Reddit and Twitter to complain about what they perceived to be an error on Ubisoft’s part. Some even complaining to Ubisoft’s official accounts themselves. Oops.

PC players! If you’re online complaining about the lack of FOV control … You pirated the game.

— Alex Hutchinson (@BangBangClick) November 18, 2014

As for the launch itself, as of right now Far Cry 4 seems to be faring better than its older brother, Assassin’s Creed: Unity, at least on the initial reception front. Having a game that seems to be mostly free of the obvious bugs that made news with AC:U helps. Three big errors have been popping up regularly though and another patch is already being worked upon to help fix those issues. They are crashes on the PC build due to peripherals, PS3 save problems for those with Far Cry 3 savefiles and an issue where some users have not received pre-order bonus items.

Doubtless illegal copies won’t be getting automatically updated with this patch either.

To say that the launch of Warlords of Draenor did not go as Blizzard had planned is putting it lightly. The return of more players than had been estimated led to server overcrowding, hour-long queues and problems were further irritated by a DDOS attack that led to players being kicked out of servers only to be sent back to the end of the same long queues. Although it’s still not quite perfect, the situation is now better thanks to higher server caps and implementation of phasing technology to create more than one instance of Draenor at a time.

Now Executive Producer J. Allen Brack is hoping to go some way to making up for the launch’s problems by offering an extra five days worth of subscriptions for everyone who had one that was active as of November 14th.

“I know how much everyone was looking forward to this expansion… all the comments I’ve seen indicate that this is one of our best yet… But the quality of the content does not excuse the subpar launch experience we delivered… The support voiced by many of you as we worked through the challenges was immensely appreciated”

There were still some server issues even as recently as earlier today, DDOSing still going on and having an effect even on some of Blizzard’s other games such as Hearthstone. The worst however seems past.

In the lead-up to Goblins vs Gnomes, Hearthstone’s new expansion there are going to be a lot of cards revealed – they are adding 120 new ones after all. Because of this, I’m going to be doing a weekly article like this one to reveal all of the new cards that have been released in the past week to make it much easier for you to find the new card entries.

Now, here are the new cards that have been revealed:

  Shieldmaiden

Minion, 6 mana cost, 5 attack and 5 health. Battlecry gives your Hero 5 Armor.

  Jeeves

Minion, 4 mana cost, 1 attack and 4 health. At the end of each player’s turn allows them to draw until they have 3 cards in their hand.

  Foe Reaper 4000

Legendary minion, 8 mana cost, 6 attack and 9 health. Will also damage Minions next to the one they attack.

  Ancestor’s Call

Spell, 4 mana cost. Puts a random minion from each player’s hand onto the battlefield.

Evolve’s gameplay mechanic for a 5 player game sets 4 of those players against the lone 1, with that 1 playing what is essentially the ‘boss’ monster. The Hunters are there to trap the Monster, the Monster needs to eat and evolve to better lay down some hurt onto the Hunters. There was an Alpha back at the start of the month for both Xbox and PC and Turtle Beach have been looking over the records to see how matches went.

Out of all the matches played it seems that the Hunter team won more often with there being around a 200,000 victory difference between a Hunter win and a Monster win. To be exact, it’s a 753,414 Hunter victories opposed to 574,079 Monster victories, which can feel a bit disconcerting when you realise that the Hunters are essentially harassing the poor creature on its native habitat.

Other stats reveal that the Assault class was the most popular class to play as, just beating out playing as the Monster itself. Simple as the Assault is to use, I’m a little bit surprised that the appeal of smashing your friends to a pulp and toasting them with fiery breath didn’t result in the monster being most popular.

Matches lasted all kinds of lengths of time, and would be down to how well the Monster player was able to evade the Hunter and how well the Hunters worked together as a team. The longest match on record was around 40 minutes long and I can only imagine how much chasing occurred during it.

Evolve will be released in the new year, around the February mark.